Fresh DWP fears after Kendall helps launch report that calls for ‘duty to engage’ and cuts to disability benefits

Comments by new work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, and her support for a controversial report, suggest she wants to increase pressure on disabled people to move off benefits and into work, while disregarding risks to their health.

Kendall announced this week that she wanted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to move from being “a department for welfare” to becoming “a genuine department for work”.

She made her comments after travelling to Barnsley to help launch a report by the Pathways to Work Commission, which was chaired by Labour’s former health secretary Alan Milburn and makes an almost identical call, for DWP to become a “department for work”.

It is one of several similarities between the report and comments made by Kendall.

Although she did not formally endorse the commission’s recommendations, she called it a “pioneering” report and welcomed many of its conclusions, and there will be concerns that its work has already influenced her plans to reform DWP.

The report focuses strongly on the need to push more people with long-term health conditions into work and includes a controversial recommendation for DWP to introduce a “duty to engage” with employment support.

It says this should apply to all those who currently receive benefits and are “economically inactive”*, which it suggests will “support more of them into work”.

This would mean disabled people who currently do not have to engage with the department and its work coaches – for health or disability-related reasons – would be forced to do so, although the report says there would be less emphasis on “tough conditionality rules” for those with “complex barriers to overcome in order to return to work”.

Kendall made a similar commitment when she told the launch event: “Under this government there will be obligations to engage with support, look for work and to take jobs when they are offered.”

Among the commission’s other recommendations is for DWP to cut benefits for disabled people who are out-of-work – except for those with “severe disabilities” – to “close the financial gap between incapacity and unemployment benefits”.

Although Kendall did not call for cuts to out-of-work disability benefits, she did tell the launch that “spiralling economic inactivity” was “bad for our public finances”, and she pointed to steep rises in spending on “sickness and disability benefits”, adding: “Imagine what a fraction of that money could do instead.”

Despite its calls to force more disabled people into work – and to cut benefits – the report completely ignores the serious safeguarding issues within DWP, including those linked to the work capability assessment (WCA) process and universal credit and associated with efforts to pressure disabled people into work or work-related activity.

Kendall and her party have themselves repeatedly ignored the DWP safeguarding issue in the lead-up to the election, and since they won power.

Milburn’s report also calls for local health services to be “better integrated with employment support services and… focussed on the major health conditions that are driving rising rates of economic inactivity”.

Earlier this month, health and social care secretary Wes Streeting said his department would “expand its focus to boost economic growth”, while Kendall told MPs this week that she wanted local areas to have the “resources to design a joined-up work, health and skills offer… as a key part of their local growth plans”.

Disability News Service (DNS) established yesterday (Wednesday) that not a single disabled people’s organisation is listed as a contributor to the commission’s work, and that none of its 12 commissioners self-describes as a disabled person in their profiles on the commission website.

Instead, the list of “contributors” includes a swathe of employers’ organisations, thinktanks, public bodies, and businesses.

The commission was funded by Barnsley council and South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.

DNS pointed out to the council yesterday that countless deaths have been linked to DWP’s actions over the last 14 years, including suicides of universal credit claimants and those forced through the WCA process.

But despite the report calling for reform of the WCA and for “more regular reviews of work capability” through the “duty to engage”, there is no mention of the potential risks to disabled claimants.

The only mention of “safeguarding” is when it refers to “safeguarding the economic prospects of Barnsley’s residents”, and there is no reference to harm, safety, and deaths linked to DWP activity, including reports by coroners calling for action by DWP to prevent further deaths.

There are multiple mentions of “risk” in the commission’s report, but they relate to the risk of falling out of work, the risk of becoming economically inactive, and the risk of employing people who have been out of work for a long time, with no mention of the risk of harm caused by DWP’s actions.

Kendall also failed to mention the risk of harm in her speech, and she is not believed to have spoken publicly about that concern since the election.

A Barnsley council spokesperson said: “The focus of the report was primarily on understanding who is out of work, who needs help to work, and what helps people to work.

“As you can imagine, a wide range of evidence on what helps people to work was considered and our commissioners worked together to simplify and identify the most critical issues in raising labour market participation.”

Asked about engagement with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), it said that a local disability charity, DIAL Barnsley, helped it “platform the voices and concerns of disabled people through 1-1s and a focus group” – DIAL Barnsley describes itself as a user-led organisation – but DIAL is not mentioned in the report’s list of contributors.

The council said the commission did speak to more than 400 disabled residents as part of its research, and it said its commissioners were chosen by Milburn “in order to cover a broad range of professional experiences”.

On Monday, during the debate on the king’s speech, Kendall claimed that 2.8 million people were “locked out of the workplace due to poor health” and that her government would “cut NHS waiting times, improve mental health support and transform skills and childcare to tackle the root causes of the problem, and fix the foundations for work, not just paper over the cracks”.

She said DWP would “drive down economic inactivity through new local work, health and skills plans led by mayors and local areas”.

She added: “Under this government, there will be obligations to engage with support, look for work and take jobs when they are offered, as there always have been since the original Beveridge report, but there will be no more divisive, derogatory rhetoric or claiming that people just think that they are too bluesy to work.”

Labour’s Debbie Abrahams warned fellow MPs that there were many disabled people “for whom the possibility of working is unrealistic” and she said that “disabled people have been absolutely battered by consecutive Conservative governments”.

She said: “We need to ensure that the right to adequate social protection and social security is in place, and we know that is not the case at the moment.

“We must do better, not just in changing the culture of the Department for Work and Pensions, but in recognising the extra costs, the fear and the poverty disabled people face and feel, because otherwise I fear that we will be seeing more deaths of disabled claimants.”

*Economically inactive people are disabled people and others, such as students and carers, who are not actively seeking work

Picture: Liz Kendall (right) and Alan Milburn (centre) at the report’s launch in Barnsley

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