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A UN expert has heard how a man with learning difficulties died a month after attempting to take his own life, following a move onto the government’s “chaotic” universal credit benefit system that left him hundreds of pounds in debt. An […]
A minister has suggested that the government would be doing a “great disservice” to disabled people if it stopped sanctioning their out-of-work benefits. The comment by Alok Sharma, the employment minister, came in correspondence with the Commons work and pensions committee […]
The failure of ministers to make a key change to the way the government will move existing benefit claimants onto universal credit could see hundreds of thousands of disabled people left without any income at all, campaigners fear. Work and pensions […]
Ministers are refusing to say if they acted on the recommendations of a secret review that linked the death of a benefit claimant with the “threatening” conditions they were forced to accept when signing up to universal credit. The Department for […]
The chancellor’s decision to pump billions of pounds into universal credit will not halt the “humanitarian crisis” that will be caused by its systemic flaws, disabled activists have warned. Philip Hammond announced in this week’s budget that he had found £1 […]
A benefit claimant left a disabled peer in tears after describing to a parliamentary meeting how the application of the government’s brutal sanctions regime by a jobcentre adviser had left him so desperate that he attempted to take his own life. […]
Labour has failed in a bid to force the government to publish secret papers that would show the true financial impact of universal credit on benefit claimants. In a debate lasting nearly four hours yesterday (Wednesday), Labour and SNP MPs lined […]
Labour has infuriated its own disabled members by backtracking on a public pledge by the shadow chancellor that the party would scrap universal credit if it won the next general election. John McDonnell drew widespread praise when he told Sky’s Sophy […]
A charity has refused to criticise the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over four deaths linked to universal credit, hours after a minister announced it would receive tens of millions of pounds to support claimants on the new benefit system. […]
The minister for disabled people has admitted that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) needs to “make improvements” in order to increase disabled people’s “confidence” in the social security system. Sarah Newton told a fringe event at her party’s annual […]