Race against time to secure DWP deaths evidence before parliament passes new benefit cuts bill

There is a race against time to force the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to release vital evidence about flaws in the universal credit system before parliament passes a bill that will cut billions of pounds from disabled people’s support.

The government appears set to succeed in forcing the bill through parliament before the summer recess on 22 July, after it passed its final Commons stages yesterday (Wednesday).

The bill will cut the health element of universal credit (UC) for most new claimants from £97 a week to £50 a week, from April 2026, although a small number of new claimants – less than 10 per cent – will see their health element stay at the higher rate and rise in line with inflation*.

Despite these cuts, DWP is continuing to hold back potentially damaging evidence that links universal credit with the deaths of disabled claimants.

This evidence includes a secret “critical friend” paper from 2021 on the department’s safeguarding failures; another paper that details the impact of its errors on “vulnerable customers”; and recommendations made by its own secret internal process reviews (IPRs) following deaths linked to UC, dating back as far as 2020.

It is possible that some of the IPR evidence could be included in the department’s annual report, but that is unlikely to be published before the bill becomes law.

Last year’s annual report was published on 22 July 2024.

Information secured by Disability News Service (DNS) shows there were 63 secret reviews into deaths linked to UC between January 2020 and November 2023, and another 28 IPRs into cases involving serious harm to a claimant that did not result in their death.

But DNS has also been trying for more than 18 months to secure information from DWP that would show what recommendations for improvements – relating to its “capability, culture, behaviour and process” – have been made by civil servants who carried out these IPRs.

The information rights tribunal has ruled that DWP does not need to release these recommendations to DNS because they are “intended for future publication”.

DWP previously told the tribunal that it would release the information bit by bit, beginning with recommendations from 2022-23 that would be released by 31 March 2025; recommendations from 2020-21 and 2021-22 that would be released by 30 November 2025; and recommendations from 2023-24 that would be released by 31 March 2026.

None of this information has yet been published.

Rick Burgess, from the grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin, said: “They are doing all this stuff without MPs having full knowledge of the problems of the system.

“Am I surprised? No, I am not surprised; it is 100 per cent a continuing cover-up.

“The whole attitude of the DWP remains utterly unchanged; I don’t know how any MP can expect that institution to do anything except cause harm.

“I think we need a new ministry of social security that administers social security and has nothing to do with work… and which is safe and says, ‘we will catch you when you fall’.

“How can you say that any functioning democratic processes are happening when you’ve got a system that has been responsible for many, many, many deaths, and that is allowed to cover-up its role in that.”

*Existing claimants of the health element and those new health element claimants meeting the severe conditions criteria (SCC) or considered under the special rules for end of life will see their UC standard allowance combined with the UC health element rise in line with inflation in the next four years. People in the SCC group will be exempt from future UC reassessments. The standard allowance of UC will rise above inflation in each of the next four years

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press

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