• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Benefits and Poverty / Research exposes how DWP ‘weaponised’ time to avoid accountability for deaths
Eight head and shoulders pictures surround a picture of the DWP entrance

Research exposes how DWP ‘weaponised’ time to avoid accountability for deaths

By John Pring on 3rd August 2023 Category: Benefits and Poverty

Listen

New research has exposed how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has “weaponised” time as a strategy to avoid being held accountable for deaths related to the benefits system.

It shows how the department’s use of delaying tactics has helped deny justice to the relatives of those who have lost their lives.

The research highlights a decade-long battle by Disability News Service (DNS) and others to uncover the records that DWP keeps on the deaths of disabled people claiming benefits.

It draws on the online Deaths by Welfare timeline, co-produced by disabled people and published in draft format last summer, to show how the department has spent years attempting to “invisibilise” its role in the deaths of claimants.

The timeline tracks the slow, accumulated violence caused by the social security system over the last three decades by highlighting documents that are mostly publicly available.

The article, Weaponising Time in the War on Welfare, was researched and written by Dr China Mills – who leads the Deaths by Welfare project at Healing Justice Ldn, and is a senior lecturer in public health – and DNS editor John Pring.

It details the strategies that were used by DWP “to distance their policies from being linked to people’s deaths”.

The article, published in the journal Critical Social Policy, focuses on the secret reviews carried out by DWP into the deaths of claimants, now known as internal process reviews (IPRs).

It shows how, “despite being one of the main governmental tools to investigate deaths linked to the social security system”, the design of the reviews has made it almost impossible to hold the department to account for deaths linked to its policies, procedures and failures.

But redacted versions of the reviews – revealing their recommendations – did eventually show how the actions of DWP ministers, civil servants and private sector contractors have continued to be linked to the deaths of claimants, “making the disability benefits system deeply harmful and unsafe”.

The article argues that DWP has “weaponised” delays in releasing information from the reviews and other documents.

But it shows how the timeline provided a way to “piece together seemingly unconnected singular events, along with key evidence that only came to light years after it occurred”.

This has allowed patterns of harm caused by DWP to be tracked across time.

The article says that the IPR findings and recommendations “come from within the system that kills people, and therefore may never be enough for full accountability or justice”.

It concludes that the evidence of countless deaths suggests that the social security system needs “dismantling” and creating afresh, with disabled people and their lived experience “at the core” of that work.

Picture: Some of the benefit claimants whose deaths have been linked to DWP (clockwise from top left): Mark Wood, Faiza/Sophie Ahmed, James Oliver (right) with his brother Dave Smith, Stephen Carré, David Clapson, Errol Graham, Philippa Day, and Jodey Whiting

 

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Tags: benefit deaths Critical Social Policy Deaths by Welfare Dr China Mills DWP

Related

Anger over Labour’s ‘shameful’ silence on universal credit’s ‘deadly faults’
30th November 2023
‘Warrior’ disabled mum takes crucial step in ‘justice for Jodey’ fight
30th November 2023
Ministers push ahead with ‘highly damaging’ plans on ‘fit for work’ assessment
23rd November 2023

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

Anger over Labour’s ‘shameful’ silence on universal credit’s ‘deadly faults’

Activists welcome decision to reassess status of UK’s ‘pathetic’ human rights watchdog

Disabled HGV driver accuses ‘back to work’ ministers of hypocrisy over equality laws

‘Warrior’ disabled mum takes crucial step in ‘justice for Jodey’ fight

Disabled students told their access needs are ‘a nuisance’, survey finds

Music festival operator signs legal agreement after multiple access failings

Disabled people ‘must rediscover appetite for fighting oppression’

Ministers push ahead with ‘highly damaging’ plans on ‘fit for work’ assessment

DWP told to release ‘worst case scenario’ report on impact of errors on claimants

Flawed universal credit means government’s plans for sanctions ‘are inexplicable’

Advice and Information

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web