Timms goes back on his word by refusing to provide crucial evidence of Access to Work cuts

The disability minister has gone back on his word by refusing to provide crucial information that would help expose a “perverse”, secret programme to restrict grants made by the Access to Work disability employment scheme.

Sir Stephen Timms told Disability News Service (DNS) at Labour’s annual conference late last month (pictured) that he would provide the date on which he approved an order from senior civil servants for Access to Work (AtW) staff to be more “scrupulous” in how they applied guidance.

Now, three weeks on, he is refusing to reveal this date.

This will make it harder to secure the order through a freedom of information request.

Instead of responding to an email from DNS seeking the information, Sir Stephen forwarded the message to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) press office.

But DWP’s press office also failed to provide the information.

It said in a statement: “No changes have been made to Access to Work policy.”

Instead of providing the date of the order, it provided background information which failed to clarify when, or if, Sir Stephen approved a document about the guidance, but suggested that the changes were put into effect through additional training for AtW case managers.

The briefing did confirm that Sir Stephen had been made aware that this work was taking place.

The DWP press office had failed to clarify the information it provided by noon today (Thursday).

Last week, DNS reported how official government figures revealed the first signs that ministers had been engaged in a “perverse” programme to secretly restrict AtW grants.

The DWP figures showed that the number of people who had any AtW provision approved fell by more than 10 per cent in the year to March 2025.

The figures also showed that the number of disabled people who had AtW requests for aids and equipment approved plunged by 16 per cent on the previous year, while approvals for support for travel to work fell by 14 per cent, and the number of approvals for mental health support dropped by seven per cent.

Figures from the last six months – not due to be published for another 12 months – will eventually show how the cuts to essential funding are “far more severe” than those shown in last week’s DWP figures, one disabled expert has predicted.

In the interview at the Labour conference in Liverpool last month, Sir Stephen admitted that he had seen a submission, which he had approved, which stated that AtW guidance would now be “scrupulously applied”.

He said he could not remember when he saw the submission, but his special adviser told DNS: “I think we need to check.”

Sir Stephen then said he would check in DWP records when this took place, and he added later in the conversation: “But what I can check, John*, is when this happened.”

*DNS editor John Pring

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