the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues
The equality watchdog is to commission a major piece of research into whether the government’s welfare reforms have harmed the human rights of disabled people and other minority groups. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says it wants to examine […]
Labour’s former work and pensions secretary has attacked Tory ministers for failing to order an urgent review of the “fitness for work” test after a coroner warned that it had triggered a disabled man’s suicide. Yvette Cooper has told Disability News […]
Civil servants and ministers dismissed a coroner’s concerns about the safety of the government’s “fitness for work” test, according to a draft response that apparently lay in Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) files for six years. Coroner Tom Osborne wrote […]
Ministers are to push ahead with plans to tighten eligibility for their new disability benefit, ignoring the views of the overwhelming majority of disabled people and organisations who took part in a consultation on the changes. The changes, which will apply […]
A tribunal judge has hinted that he may order the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to release vital information from 49 secret reviews it carried out into the deaths of benefit claimants. Judge Andrew Bartlett QC was chairing a three-person […]
Civil servants have refused to release information that would show how many secret reviews the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has carried out into benefit-related suicides in the last 15 months. The refusal emerged in a response to a freedom […]
Work and pensions ministers have been accused of another attempt to avoid improving the safety of its “fitness for work” test for benefit claimants with mental health conditions. A year after ministers told a tribunal – following a lengthy judicial review […]
The sister of a disabled man who died after his benefits were sanctioned has launched a campaign to persuade the attorney general to order an inquest into his death. Gill Thompson needs to raise £10, 000 to instruct lawyers, apply for […]
A disabled man has accused the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of victimising him and ruining his life after it tried – and failed – to prosecute him for benefit fraud, despite letters from medical professionals confirming his serious medical […]
Disability News Service (DNS) will this week ask a tribunal to require the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to publish information about secret reviews it carried out into the deaths of 49 benefit claimants. DNS has been trying since August […]