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Campaigners are calling on the government to scrap a policy that prevents disabled people with complex healthcare needs receiving the benefits they need to stay mobile if they are living in residential homes. Little-known regulations apparently state that recipients of NHS […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing claims that it has been running a discriminatory benefit sanctions regime, following the publication of new research. Academic Ben Baumberg Geiger has found that more than 900,000 disabled claimants of the mainstream […]
The disability benefit assessment system is being undermined by a “pervasive culture of mistrust”, fuelled by widespread claims that assessors are deliberately trying to prevent disabled people receiving the support they are entitled to, according to a committee of MPs. The […]
Disabled campaigners have welcomed a report by MPs on disability benefit assessments, which they say highlights “serious multiple failures”, but many believe it should have done more to highlight the serious “preventable harm” caused by the system. The report by the […]
Ministers have quietly dumped their promise to test a gentler approach to dealing with claimants who breach strict benefit conditions for the first time. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) agreed in October to trial handing out warnings instead of […]
A senior opposition MP is to write to the minister for disabled people to ask how she plans to penalise government contractors Atos and Capita, following last week’s “devastating” revelations about their “shocking” failings in delivering disability benefit assessments. Stephen Lloyd, […]
A Deaf chief executive has won the right to question the government’s “discriminatory” cap on Access to Work (AtW) payments in the high court, in the latest legal challenge to the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) disability policy agenda. David […]
Outsourcing companies have been failing to request vital evidence from GPs and social workers that would help disabled people secure the benefits they are entitled to, confidential Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) documents have revealed. The “absolutely shocking” reports, released […]
Scores of healthcare professionals may have been able to continue carrying out disability benefit assessments despite being the subject of multiple complaints about their behaviour, competence and honesty, confidential new documents have revealed. The official reports, prepared by outsourcing giants Capita […]
Nearly one in three of the disability benefit assessment reports completed by a private sector contractor were significantly flawed, confidential Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) documents suggest. The figures were revealed through a government audit of personal independence payment (PIP) […]