Part of the disdain that the current and previous governments show for disabled people is exemplified by their refusal to conduct basic research on the impact of their welfare policies. We therefore have no understanding of the devastating human impacts of policies such as the introduction of Personal Independence Payment (PIP); the intensified use of the work capability assessment (WCA) (possibly the most violent and discriminatory tool ever handed to a government department); the increased use of benefit sanctions to punish people in vulnerable situations; or any number of other reckless and ill-evidenced policies (see also Chapter 4 by Jon Burnett and David Whyte).
Where we do have independent research, the evidence is shocking. For every policy, there is testimony from friends or family of the harm caused to individual disabled people who have been powerless to protect themselves, have had their freedom catastrophically affected, and have seen their dignity, health, choices and ability to control their own lives restricted in a way that can only be described as damaging and violent, and where some have lost their lives.1
George Osborne’s ‘emergency budget’ on 22 June 20102 signalled the first in a series of brutal cuts to disabled people’s support that would, six years later, lead to calls for a criminal investigation into the actions of two ministers at the centre of the austerity programme Osborne’s government was setting in motion. In all, the Tory-led Coalition government brought in £21 billion in cuts to working-age social security, while the Conservative government that followed announced another £12 billion cuts by 2017–18. These cuts had a brutal impact on disabled people’s income, and their rights. The think-tank Demos estimated3 that disabled people risked losing £28 billion in income support by 2018.
Budget documents4 show that the Coalition planned to cut 20 per cent of spending on working-age Disability Living Allowance (DLA) by introducing PIP as a replacement benefit, which would be designed to make it harder to claim. The psychological impact was felt almost immediately. A survey in 2011 found that nearly one in ten respondents believed death or suicide were possible outcomes of people losing their DLA.5 PIP was introduced in 2013, and by July 2016 up to 700 disabled people a week who had previously claimed DLA were being forced to hand back their Motability vehicles.6
The DLA cuts were just one element of what began to feel like an unceasing attack on the support disabled people relied on to remain independent, healthy and alive. But some of the most damaging cuts were those made to the out-of-work disability benefit, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). ESA eligibility was decided through the WCA. Disability News Service (DNS) had begun to report on emerging flaws within the WCA process in September 2009, a year after its introduction by the Labour government as a replacement for incapacity benefit (IB). Labour ministers had pushed the idea that ‘people who scrounge from the system’ through IB were taking money from ‘legitimate’ claimants,7 and vowed to ‘rip up sicknote Britain’.8 This pressure to find claimants ‘fit for work’ fed through into the WCA system. Citizens Advice Scotland marked the assessment’s first anniversary by warning that it had been ‘flooded’ with complaints about the WCA.9 By the spring of 2012, GPs were calling for it to be scrapped and replaced with a ‘rigorous and safe system that does not cause avoidable harm’.10
Since 2010, countless disabled people have come forward to testify to the WCA’s impact on their health, but it was not until September 2015 that the first case emerged of a coroner drawing a direct link between the WCA and the death of a benefit claimant. DNS found the case of Andrew Davidson11 after searching a database of reports written by coroners.12 A coroner had stated that Davidson’s decision to take his own life had been triggered by being found ‘fit for work’, questioned the failure of the assessor and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to seek medical evidence from his GP, psychiatrist or clinical psychologist, and called for the necessary improvements to prevent such deaths in the future.
Campaigners pushed the DWP to release statistics showing how many disabled people had died following a WCA, believing this would prove that the assessment system had caused thousands of deaths. When the figures were finally released,13 they were striking. Between December 2011 and February 2014, 2650 ESA and IB claimants had died soon after being found ‘fit for work’, and another 7200 died after being placed in the ESA Work-Related Activity Group (WRAG). But the DWP insisted that these figures showed no ‘causal effect’ and that many of these people would have died whether or not they had been assessed. A month later, it became much harder to maintain this position. A study showed that for every 10,000 IB claimants reassessed between 2010 and 2013, there were an additional six suicides and more than 7000 extra cases of antidepressants being prescribed.14 The same study showed that across England the reassessment process was ‘associated with’ an extra 590 suicides (see also Chapter 1 by Mary O’Hara).
One of the weapons used by successive governments to force benefit claimants to comply with their reforms has been the use of sanctions. The use of sanctions against ESA claimants increased rapidly after its introduction in October 2008 and while the number of sanctions issued dropped in the period 2010–12, they increased after the welfare reforms came into full effect. Ministers continued to insist that sanctions were used ‘as a last resort in a small percentage of cases’,15 but evidence shows that they have been used punitively, with violent, and even fatal, impacts. A survey by the Benefits and Work website produced hundreds of comments about their impact.16 One welfare rights adviser said:
Frequently clients do not know they’ve been sanctioned until they don’t receive their benefit. They’ve received no letter and given no information on the right of appeal. No advice has been provided on hardship payments and we are regularly issuing food vouchers. I’ve had an increase in referrals from courts due to shoplifting offences. Clients have told me they are shoplifting to eat.17
Despite the overwhelming evidence highlighting the violent outcomes of welfare reforms, the last two governments refused to accept that their cuts and reforms have any harmful effect on disabled welfare claimants. Not only do ministers refuse to accept the anecdotal evidence and research reports that demonstrate harm, they refuse to carry out ‘cumulative impact assessments’ that would prove the overall effects of austerity cuts, claiming that this would be impossible, and repeatedly argue that this view is shared by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. But it is not.18 And nor is it shared by the Equality and Human Rights Commission,19 the UK Parliament’s joint committee on human rights, DWP’s own social security advisory committee,20 the National Institute of Economic and Social Research or the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.21 They all concur that such a cumulative impact assessment can and should be carried out.
In mid 2014, DNS became interested in how the DWP responded to deaths linked to the social security system. Following a freedom of information request submitted by DNS, the DWP insisted that it kept no record of deaths found to be ‘connected to, or linked to, or partially caused by, the withdrawal or non-payment of disability benefits’. The DWP eventually admitted that it carried out internal, confidential reviews into the deaths of some claimants. Fresh freedom of information requests revealed that between February 2012 and October 2014, the DWP had carried out 49 internal ‘peer reviews’ into such deaths. It later admitted that in ten cases the claimant had had their benefits sanctioned, while 33 reviews contained recommendations for improvements to DWP policies or procedures.
But the DWP still refused to release the reviews, until the information rights tribunal forced it to publish them; even then they were heavily redacted.22 All that was released were the recommendations for improvements, many following the deaths of IB claimants who had been reassessed through a WCA. What the reviews did show was that ministers had been warned repeatedly that their policies were risking the lives of ‘vulnerable’ claimants.
DWP admissions of responsibility for harm caused to claimants have been grudging. The DWP repeatedly insisted that linking a death to someone’s benefit claim was ‘misleading’ and ‘wrong’. But after the reviews were released, the DWP began telling journalists: ‘Any suicide is a tragedy and the reasons for them are complex, however it would be inaccurate and misleading to link it solely to a person’s benefit claim.’23 A small victory, but a sign that ministers had finally accepted that their actions could, partly, be responsible for claimants losing their lives.
The birth of the disabled people’s anti-cuts movement can be traced back to the austerity protests held outside the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham in October 2010.24 Disabled activists wore t-shirts warning that ‘Cuts Kill’. The organisers of The Disabled People’s Protest subsequently formed Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), set up to fight the austerity-driven erosion of disabled people’s living conditions and human rights. DPAC’s most significant achievement has been to persuade the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to carry out – as a result of the austerity cuts to disabled people’s support – an unprecedented, ongoing inquiry into ‘grave or systemic violations’ of the UN disability convention by the UK government.25
Other disabled people’s groups have worked mainly online, including petitions on the UK Parliament website from the Pat’s Petition and WOW (War On Welfare) Petition campaigns, both calling for a cumulative impact assessment. Disabled people also carried out their own high-quality research, including several reports by the Spartacus online network. Spartacus put together reviews of the WCA in 2012 and 2013.26 The second review included pages of accounts from disabled people who had experienced anxiety, despair and hardship. Another user-led report revealed that 95 per cent of respondents said the WCA had damaged their health, with nearly a third reporting ‘severe damage’.27
Disabled people are also fighting back through the criminal justice system, focusing on former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and former Employment Minister Chris Grayling. After their appointments as ministers in May 2010, Duncan Smith and Grayling assumed responsibility for responding to a letter written by coroner Tom Osborne. The letter followed the death of Stephen Carré, who took his own life in January 2010 after being wrongly found fit for work. Osborne asked the DWP to review its policy not to seek medical evidence for ESA claimants with mental health conditions, just as another coroner would in January 2014 following the death of Andrew Davidson.28 Duncan Smith and Grayling failed to reply, and failed to share the letter with the expert they commissioned to review the WCA, Professor Malcolm Harrington.29 They then rolled out the WCA to hundreds of thousands of IB claimants the following year, against Harrington’s advice.
Black Triangle’s30 co-founder John McArdle also put together a dossier on three Scottish benefit claimants who he believed died as a direct result of those uncorrected flaws in the WCA, and took them to Police Scotland, suggesting that Duncan Smith and Grayling were guilty of the criminal offence of willful neglect of duty by a public official. The Scottish criminal justice agencies decided in December 2016 to take no further action.
Deprived of government recognition of the damaged health, the restricted freedom, the despair and the lost lives, disabled people have looked instead to the criminal justice system and the United Nations. This chapter is too short to describe the many individual cases that should scar the consciences of ministers who recklessly sought cuts at the expense of rights, and of the media and private sector contractors who cheered them on. But many campaigners are determined that their names, and stories, will not go untold, and that the violence inflicted on them over the last seven years will be remembered.
Websites were last accessed 28 October 2016.
1. See, for example, Disability News Service, ‘Testimony for UN hears of food banks and suicides’, 26 November 2013, available at: www.disabilitynewsservice.com/testimony-for-un-hears-of-food-banks-and-suicides/
2. George Osborne, MP, Financial Statement, Hansard, 22 June 2010, available at: www.parliament.uk/business/news/2010/06/emergency-budget-2010-statement/
3. C. Wood, Destination Unknown: Summer 2012, London: Demos, 2013.
4. HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs, Budget 2010 Policy Costings, London: HM Treasury, 2010.
5. Disability Alliance Survey, February 2011.
6. J. Pring, ‘PIP reassessments mean 35,000 will lose motability vehicles in 2016’, Disability News Service, 14 July 2016, available at: www.disabilitynewsservice.com/pip-reassessments-mean-35000-will-lose-motability-vehicles-in-2016/
7. ‘Get-tough tests face the sick on benefit’, Liverpool Echo, 9 April 2008.
8. ‘Incapacity benefit set for axe’, Daily Mirror, 5 November 2007.
9. Citizens Advice Scotland, ‘A very un-happy birthday for Scotland’s sick and disabled’, 23 October 2009, available at: www.cas.org.uk/news/very-unhappy-birthday-scotlands-sick-and-disabled
10. A. Gentleman, ‘GPs call for work capability assessment to be scrapped’, Guardian, 23 May 2012.
11. Not his real name.
12. Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, Prevention of Future Deaths, Reference: 2014-0012, 13 January 2014.
13. Department for Work and Pensions, Mortality Statistics: ESA, IB and SDA Claimants, London, 2015, available at: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/459106/mortality-statistics-esa-ib-sda.pdf
14. B. Barr, D. Taylor-Robinson, D. Stuckler, R. Loopstra, A. Reeves and M. Whitehead, ‘“First, do no harm”: are disability assessments associated with adverse trends in mental health? A longitudinal ecological study’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 70 (4), 2015.
15. Department for Work and Pensions, ‘Benefit sanctions down as more people helped into work’, Press release, 13 May 2015, available at: www.gov.uk/government/news/benefit-sanctions-down-as-more-people-helped-into-work
16. Benefits and Work, ‘Massive survey majority believes “inhuman” DWP causes and then covers-up claimant deaths’, 23 March 2015, available at: www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/3049-massive-survey-majority-believe-dwp-causes-and-covers-up-claimant-deaths
17. Ibid.
18. See, for example, J. Pring, ‘Ministers humiliated over cumulative impact assessment’, Disability News Service, 11 July 2014, available at: www.disabilitynewsservice.com/ministers-humiliated-over-cumulative-impact-assessment/
19. H. Reed and J. Portes, Cumulative Impact Assessment: A Research Report by Landman Economics and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) for the Equality and Human Rights Commission: Research Report 94, Manchester: Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2014, available at: www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/cumulative_ impact_assessment_executive_summary_30-07-14_2.pdf
20. Social Security Advisory Committee, SSAC Occasional Paper 12: The Cumulative Impact of Welfare Reform: A Commentary, London, 2014, available at: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/324059/ssac_occasional_paper_12_report.pdf
21. See the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Findings on France, Sweden, Honduras, Burkina Faso, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Angola and the UK, 28 June 2016, available at: www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20191&LangID=E
22. Department for Work and Pensions, ‘DWP FOI releases for May 2016’, 12 May 2016, available at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-foi-releases-for-may-2016
23. S. Fenton, ‘DWP repeatedly warned of failures to protect vulnerable benefit claimants, internal documents reveal’, Independent, 14 May 2016, available at: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dwp-repeatedly-warned-of-failures-to-protect-vulnerable-benefit-claimants-internal-documents-reveal-a7029691.html
24. J. Pring, ‘Spending cuts protest sparks birth of new campaign’, Disability News Service, 31 October 2010, available at: www.disabilitynewsservice.com/spending-cuts-protest-sparks-birth-of-new-campaign/
25. J. Pring, ‘UN investigators begin taking evidence in UK on “rights violations”’, Disability News Service, 16 October 2015, available at: www.disabilitynewsservice.com/un-investigators-begin-taking-evidence-in-uk-on-rights-violations/
26. See, for example, ‘Spartacus’, The People’s Review of the Work Capability Assessment, November 2012, available at: www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/the-peoples-review-of-the-wca.html; ‘Spartacus’, The People’s Review of the WCA: Further Evidence, December 2013, available at: www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/peoples-review-of-wca-further-evidence.html
27. R. Burgess, S. Duffy, N. Dilworth, J. Bence, W. Blackburn and M. Thomas, Assessing the Assessors, Sheffield: The Centre for Welfare Reform, 2014, available at: www.centreforwelfarereform.org/uploads/attachment/433/assessing-the-assessors.pdf
28. Not his real name.
29. J. Pring, ‘WCA death scandal: ministers “failed to pass 2010 suicide report to Harrington”’, Disability News Service, 9 November 2015, available at: www.disabilitynewsservice.com/wca-death-scandal-ministers-failed-to-pass-2010-suicide-report-to-harrington/
30. Black Triangle is a Disability News Service subscriber.