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Disabled people’s organisations and allies have offered strong support for a user-led plan to build a social security system that treats all benefit claimants with “dignity, fairness and respect”, and replaces the government’s “chaotic” universal credit. The plan has been drawn […]
The Conservative party has undermined its new minister for disabled people just days after her appointment, by refusing to back her promise that disability benefits will be uprated next year by the full rate of inflation. Claire Coutinho (pictured, above right) […]
Labour’s shadow disability minister has promised that her party’s plans to “target” those who are out of work because of long-term ill-health will not see claimants punished if they refuse an offer of support. Shadow work and pensions secretary Jon Ashworth […]
A disabled man who lives in a mobile home because of his agoraphobia says he faces being made homeless because of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) rules on housing support that were introduced alongside universal credit. David* says he needs […]
Newly-promoted Chloe Smith faces a claim that she misled parliament about the failure of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to publish “essential” figures about its “fitness for work” assessments. The claim has emerged just days after Smith was appointed […]
A disabled benefit claimant has spoken of his relief at securing the chance to challenge a court’s finding that the government did not break the law when refusing to offer recipients of so-called legacy benefits a £20-a-week increase during the pandemic. […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has dismissed a call from the UK statistics regulator to provide figures that would show how many universal credit claimants are being found “fit for work” through the work capability assessment (WCA) process. Despite […]
Information released by work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey suggests that failings within the universal credit, personal independence payment and employment and support allowance systems have all contributed to the deaths of benefit claimants in the last three years. In a […]
The minister for disabled people has told MPs it is too expensive and too much effort to produce statistics about key parts of an assessment system linked to hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths over the last decade. Chloe Smith told […]
MPs have asked the work and pensions secretary to justify her refusal to release nine potentially embarrassing reports about her department’s work, at least four of which focus on disabled claimants of benefits. Stephen Timms, chair of the Commons work and […]