11 August 2023 , 13:37
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It’s been a long hard slog for campaigners who are trying to uncover the true scale of disability deaths at the hands of the Department of Works and Pensions.
Today new research by the Deaths by Welfare Project. Dr China Mills and John Pring has uncovered that the DWP has used “delay tactics” to distance itself from deaths linked to government policies. The report finds that the department frequently delays responding to freedom of information (FOI) requests, and postpones the publication of reports on claimants’ deaths. The DWP also claims that data collection on claimant deaths would be too time-consuming and costly. The government is able to avoid accountability further due to the time lapse between the introduction of new policies and their eventual impacts - almost as if that was their plan.
We saw this last year with the then minister for Work and Pensions Therese Coffey who was able to simply refuse to release any of the five reports into the running of the department including the effectiveness of support for vulnerable claimants moving from previous benefits onto universal credit, the impact of benefits sanctions as a deterrent and finally an internal investigation into the deaths of benefit claimants.
As part of The Mirror’s Disabled Britain, John Pring alleged that the DWP was responsible for hundreds, or even thousands, of deaths over 30 years and failed to do anything about it. But Coffey refused to release the documents into internal findings - because they were conducted by a previous minister. The Tory equivalent of shrugging and going “Not my problem mate”. She even had the gall at the time to say: “We do not have a statutory duty of safeguarding, though of course we do care about our claimants.”
Mills and Pring have also criticised the secret internal reviews carried out by DWP into the deaths of claimants, known as internal process reviews (IPRs). They claim that “despite being one of the main governmental tools to investigate deaths linked to the social security system, the design of the reviews makes it almost impossible to hold the Department to account for deaths linked to its policies, procedures and failures.”
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The true scale of deaths may never be fully known. However, it was found that over 17,000 people died between 2013 and 2019 whilst waiting for decisions to be made over their benefit claims. And 2020, 5,000 disabled people died still waiting to be reimbursed by the government to the tune of £16m in underpaid benefits.
The government knows that they might have blood on their hands, so are determined to stop this from being uncovered in any way possible. Meanwhile, their sadistic policies are allowing disabled people to die on a huge scale and brushing their bodies under the carpet. That’s why we must keep fighting, holding them to account for decimating our community. In the hope that one day disabled people will actually receive the help they need, instead of being left to die.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We reject the claims in this report, which contains numerous errors and inaccuracies. The Department’s current FOI performance level is 99% and we responded to 98% of FOI requests within 20 days throughout 2022, well above the Information Commissioner’s Office target of 90%. We support millions of people every year and our top priority is they get the benefits to which they are entitled as soon as possible, and to ensure they receive a supportive and compassionate service.”