Disabled children and young people should get 20 minutes of exercise each day and strength and balance activity three times a week in the first ever physical activity guidelines released for them by the four chief medical officers in the UK.

The recommendations, underpinned by research from Durham University, the University of Bristol and Disability Rights UK, note that the health and wellbeing benefits include stronger muscles and improved confidence.

While chief medical officers have previously issued physical activity guidelines for UK children and young people, it is the first time such recommendations have been made for those with disabilities.

The chief medical officers, Sir Chris Whitty, Sir Michael McBride, Sir Gregor Smith and Sir Frank Atherton, said: “We are delighted to present this report and infographic which are an important step forward in addressing the gap in physical activity guidelines for disabled children and disabled young people.

“We encourage schools, parents, carers and healthcare professionals to communicate and promote these guidelines across their wider professional networks to enable appropriate physical activity opportunities for disabled children and disabled young people in their communities.”

Brett Smith, professor of disability and physical activity at Durham University, who led the work, said while many disabled children and young people wanted to be active, they and their parents often had questions, including whether it was safe for them to exercise and how much they should do. “They don’t have any guidance to say physical activity done at certain levels is really good for you. They need that reassurance that it’s good,” he said.

Indeed, the evidence showed that physical activity could be just as beneficial for disabled children and young people as those who did not have a disability. But Smith said it was also crucial that disabled children and young people had access to spaces such as playgrounds and leisure facilities.

“From a public health perspective, we can say x amount of physical activity is good for you or not, but until we have inclusive environments, until we have equality in those contexts, then children will always struggle, and their parents will always struggle to be able to do that,” he said.

The new guidelines recommend that disabled children and young people aim for 120 to 180 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity aerobic activity a week, or 20 minutes a day, and engage in strength and balance-focused activities around three times a week.

“We don’t have any evidence to make a minutes​ recommendation for strength and balance,” said Charlie Foster, professor of physical activity and public health at the University of Bristol, who was also involved in developing the guidelines. He said strength and balance-focused activities included dance, yoga and gymnastics.

Foster added that, as for other groups of individuals, all movement mattered and all “bite-size chunks of activity” counted – a phrasing he said was preferred by the disabled children and young people involved in communicating the guidelines.

Smith said that the participants stressed that while the amount of physical activity was a useful message, it was important to them to emphasise equality, inclusivity, fun and exploring what made them feel good.

“The lesson they taught us [is] that public health resources and messages will have more impact if they are co-produced in genuine partnership with people with lived experience,” Foster said. He also suggested the approach could prove useful for other areas of public health, including the uptake of Covid vaccines.

The guidelines did not break down recommendations by different impairment groups, not least because evidence specific to some groups was lacking. Instead the team said it was important for people to find what worked for them, and to tailor exercise to what they could do on that day – a point raised by the disabled children and young people themselves.

The guidelines, said Smith, were important not only from a public health perspective, but also because they covered a group of individuals that were often forgotten.

“If people have forgotten about the health disparities, the health inequalities are just perpetuated implicitly if not explicitly on that,” he said, adding that disabled people had often been overlooked during the Covid pandemic.

“It’s just putting disabled people and disabled young people at the forefront of policy, at the forefront of our agenda, at the forefront of our thinking, because there are so many young disabled people in society,” he said.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A secret survey being carried out by the DWP looks set to blame claimants themselves for going cold and hungry, Benefits and Work can exclusively reveal.  Poor budgeting skills, rather than poverty levels of benefits payments, are likely to be suggested as the cause of claimant hardship.

This latest survey comes hard on the heels of the publication of a disability benefits report which the DWP tried to suppress and which showed that some claimants could not afford necessities including food and heating.

Individual claimants are being contacted and invited to take part in the new survey. 

At this stage we don’t know how many claimants are involved or how they are being selected.  But the survey is being carried out by one of the UK’s leading polling companies on behalf of the DWP, so the numbers are likely to be considerable.

The introduction to the new survey says it is intended to help the DWP “better understand people’s financial situation and what support they may need”.

The online survey asks a number of questions about what kind of debts claimants have, what effect the debts have had on them and what support they need.

They are asked if they  have ever “fallen behind on, or missed, any payments for domestic bills or credit commitments”.  A list of possible payments they might be behind on includes : a loan from a bank, building society, money lender, friend or relative; a payday loan; a pawnbroker; court fines.

Claimants are also asked the reasons they have borrowed money, with suggestions including: house or car repairs; paying interest on debts; buying gifts; essential items such as food and bills; holidays.

It is the question about the support that struggling claimants need which is most concerning, however.  The full question and list of options is as follows:

What types of help or support, if any, would be most useful in helping you manage your finances?

• Help with working out what money I have left to spend each/day/week/month.
• Advice on how to spread my spending so I don’t run out of money
• Advice on how to reduce my spending
• Advice on how to reduce my debt
• Advice on how to increase my income
• Help with setting up a direct debit/standing order
• Help with opening a bank account
• Other (specify)

In this context, advice to increase my income is most likely to relate to those in employment.  In general claimants cannot increase their income unless there is a benefit they could be claiming that they are not aware of.

What is entirely missing from these options are the ones that would actually make a difference to claimants, such as:

• Pay benefits at a rate that is enough to live on
• Remove the 5 week waiting time for UC
• End the long delays for PIP assessments and WCAs

Because there are no such options, this survey will produce results that say that, of claimants who are in debt:

X% say they need advice on working out what money they have left to spend

X% say they need advice on how to reduce their spending

X% say they need advice on how to reduce their debt

Whilst some people may indeed say in the ‘Other’ box that the help they need is a higher rate of benefits, this will not be listed as a percentage in outcomes as everyone’s answers will be worded differently.

In other words, all the support needs will be around claimants not understanding how to manage their money, rather than it being impossible to manage on the money they receive.

Benefits and Work has made Freedom of Information requests to ask how the claimants taking part in this survey are selected, how many are taking part and whether the results of the report are going to be published.

But the DWP are still smarting from the recent publication of the secret benefits report which showed how disabled claimants are struggling to pay even for necessities.

So if this report allows the DWP to claim that the reason some claimants are unable to eat or heat is that they are failing to budget wisely, then we suspect it will be published as quickly and widely as the DWP can possibly manage.

A million UK adults went an entire day without eating over the past month because they could not afford to put a meal on the table, according to research highlighting how the cost of living crisis has driven up food insecurity.

Soaring energy and grocery prices – along with the removal in October of the £20 Covid top-up to universal credit – were having a devastating impact on the food consumption of millions of people, the Food Foundation thinktank said.

More than one in five households said they have already faced a ”heat or eat” dilemma, cutting back on the quality or quantity of food to pay energy or other essential bills, while 59% of households fear the cost of living squeeze will leave them with less to spend on food in the future.

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Altogether, nearly one in 10 UK households reported experiencing some degree of food insecurity over the past month – defined as skipping meals, going hungry or not eating for a whole day – because they were unable to afford food.

“There is little doubt that the cost of living crisis is putting very real pressure on the ability of many to afford a healthy diet and is set to widen health inequalities,” the foundation said.

Millions of households are under increasing financial pressures as a result of soaring energy bills and rising inflation. Gas and electricity bills will rise by an average of £700 a year from April, pitching 5m households into fuel poverty, despite measures introduced by the government to ease the strain.

Grocery bills have also risen sharply, up 3.8% in January and potentially adding an extra £180 a year to the average household’s grocery bill this year. The strain on low-income family budgets is reflected in soaring demand at food banks and cut-price food clubs.

The anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe recently revealed how food price rises had pushed up the price of the cheapest 500g bag of pasta in her local supermarket from 29p to 70p (an increase of 141%), rice from 45p a kilo to £1 for 500g (344%), and baked beans from 22p to 32p (45%).

The Food Foundation survey was undertaken online between 18 and 20 January, polling 4,200 adults. It found 8.8% of all households, containing 4.7 million adults, reported that they had experienced food insecurity, up from 7.3% in July, when the last survey was undertaken.

About 2 million children were living in households that do not have access to a healthy and affordable diet, putting them at risk of diet-related diseases such as obesity, and poor physical growth, the foundation said.

Some groups were more likely to have experienced food insecurity over the last six months than others. People with serious disability were five times more at risk than those without a disability. People on universal credit were five times more likely to be food insecure than those not claiming.

“The rapid escalation in disabled people experiencing food poverty is truly shocking. It is disabled people facing the biggest barriers to independence and inclusion that are in the worst situation; how can this possibly be acceptable?” asked Kamran Mallick, the chief executive of Disability Rights UK.

The Department for Work and Pensions was approached for comment.

MPs have forced the publication of a government-commissioned research report that found low-income people reliant on disability benefits are struggling to meet essential living costs such as food, rent and energy bills.

The report has been kept under wraps for over a year, with the work and pensions secretary, Theresa Coffey, repeatedly refusing to release it on the grounds it was necessary to “protect the private space” in which ministers develop policy.

The report was finally published on Thursday morning after the cross-party work and pensions select committee invoked rarely-used parliamentary powers to force its release, and accused ministers of “trying to bury uncomfortable truths”.

Stephen Timms, the chair of the work and pensions committee, said the report gave “valuable insights” into the experiences of people on disability benefits: “While the system is working for some, we now know that others reported that they are still unable to meet essential living costs such as food and utility bills.”

Theresa Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, had not wanted the report released. Photograph: James McCauley/Rex/Shutterstock

He added: “By persisting in its decision to hide away evidence of the struggles people are facing, the DWP will only have further harmed its reputation with disabled people at a time when – as its own officials have acknowledged – lack of trust is a major issue. In order to rebuild its relationship with disabled people, the DWP must stop trying to bury uncomfortable truths.”

Anastasia Berry of the MS Society charity said the report highlighted the inadequacy of benefits for many disabled people: “Despite the DWP’s relentless attempts to bury this research, we can finally see what they’ve been so desperate to hide … It shows some are struggling to pay for essential day-to-day expenses, such as food, heating and medications, let alone these extra costs.”

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has already faced allegations from a whistleblower close to the research team that it intervened to reduce the number of references to unmet needs and the adequacy of benefits in the report.

Separately, last week it emerged that Coffey had blocked the publication of an internal DWP research report into the effectiveness of benefit sanctions, arguing its release was not in the public interest. This is despite promises made to MPs three years ago that it would publish its findings.

Under government social research protocols, the completed disability benefits report should have been released no later than 12 weeks after it was handed to the DWP in September 2020. Participants in the research – 120 people with a health condition or disability were interviewed in depth – were reportedly promised the report would be published, according to the Disability News Service.

At the time, the adequacy of benefit levels was a major political issue amid a fiery debate over whether ministers should scrap or maintain the £20 universal credit Covid top-up, or extend the top-up to people on “legacy” disability benefits who were not in receipt of universal credit.

The government announced last June that it would withdraw the £20 top-up in October, brushing off criticism that this would put the living standards of low-income households at risk. This amounted to the biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security since the second world war, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The disability benefits research, carried out by the National Centre for Social Research, found that for claimants with “restricted financial circumstances”, benefits offered the prospect of a regular income vital to enable them to meet basic day-to-day living costs.

Despite this, some of the cohort of disabled claimants interviewed by researchers reported that the low value of benefits meant they “were still unable to meet essential living costs such as food and utility bills”.

The DWP said: “We’re providing extensive support to millions of disabled people and those with a health condition to help them live independent lives. As the research shows, health and disability benefits, alongside other income streams, helped to meet almost all identified areas of additional need.

“We are currently considering a range of policy options, drawing on wide evidence, research and analysis as part of the upcoming health and disability white paper.

“Protecting a private space for policy development is important and we had committed to publish this report as soon as this policy work concluded.”

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The latest edition of the PIP Assessment Guide contains improved guidance for assessors on the significance of whether or not a claimant with a mental health condition is receiving medication.

Assessors very often use the fact that a claimant with, for example depression, is not receiving any medication as evidence that their condition must have very little effect on their daily living or mobility.

However, the guidance issued by the DWP now points out that the severity of a mental health condition “does not necessarily correspond with the type or dosage of medication that the claimant is receiving”.

The guide points out that factors such as side effects, problems complying with a medication regime or the medication not being effective for that individual may all result in someone with a severe condition not receiving medication.

The guidance also goes on to say that assessors should take into account the use of treatments such as psychological therapies instead of medication.

The document does not, unfortunately go on to point out the difficulty that many people have in getting access to therapies, due to a lack of provision in their area.

As a result, some people for whom medication is not appropriate will have no support whatsoever in spite of the severity of their condition.

The full text of the updated guidance on mental health medication is as follows:

When considering mental health medication HPs should remember that not all claimants with a mental health condition will be on medication or receiving therapy. Severity of a mental health condition does not necessarily correspond with the type or dosage of medication that the claimant is receiving. There are a number of reasons why a claimant may be unable or choose not to take mental health medication, for example, but not limited to:

poor compliance due to the nature of mental health condition

side effects or difficulty tolerating medication

lack of efficacy

preference for psychological therapy instead of medication

complicating factors, for example excessive alcohol consumption

Therefore absence of medication does not automatically mean that the health condition is not severe. However, HPs should consider the type and context of certain medications, for example use of depot antipsychotic injections in psychotic disorders.

HPs should also take into account that some medications are used to treat different conditions, for example some antidepressants are also licenced to treat anxiety. HPs must also consider the use of other treatments such as psychological therapies.

We’ll be updating our PIP guide to take account of these changes.

You can download a copy of the PIP Assessment Guide from this page.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Universal credit claimants are to have the time they can look for a job in their own field drastically cut from three months to one month as the government aims to force 500,000 people into work of any kind by June. Claimants who do not comply with the new Way To Work regime will face having their benefits sanctioned.

At present, claimants are allowed to seek work just in their preferred area of skill for the first three months of a claim. Even this is a relatively short time to secure work if you have experience and qualifications where vacancies arise less frequently.

One month is a highly unrealistic time in which to find a vacancy, go through the recruitment process and be appointed.

Once claimants are forced to take any vacancy offered, or have a sanction imposed on them and their family, they will find it much harder to obtain work in the area they are qualified in.

They will have less time for job seeking, less opportunity to attend interviews and are likely to be looked on less favourably by some employers if they have been working in a lower skilled field for some time.

Having to take often insecure work is also more likely to lead to repeated periods of unemployment, potentially having to serve another five week qualifying period for universal credit, with all the damage that does to household finances.

The DWP say that:

“Targeted predominantly at those in the intensive work search group on Universal Credit, Way to Work will support people back into work faster than ever before and filling vacancies more quickly.

“To support people into work faster those who are capable of work will be expected to search more widely for available jobs from the fourth week of their claim, rather than from three months as is currently the case.

“This clearer focus will ensure that, if people are not able to find work in their previous occupation or sector, they are expected to look for work in another sector and this will be part of their requirements for receiving their benefit payment.

“For the vast majority of people who are already engaging fully with Jobcentre Plus, this could be the extra support they need to secure a job. However, for the small minority who do not engage, the sanctions regime will operate as usual.”

“They will be supported in this with more time spent face to face with a Work Coach to receive better, tailored support. We know work is the best way for people to get on, to improve their lives and support their families because people are at least £6,000 better off in full time work than on benefits.”

At the same time as the DWP is ramping up the threat of sanctions, it is also refusing to publish a report which they themselves created in 2019 into the effectiveness of sanctions. At the time, the DWP said they would make the findings public.

However, they have now refused a Freedom of Information Request from a Glasgow based economist and social security expert for a copy of the report.

The DWP say they have changed their mind about publishing the report because it contains details of a sensitive nature.

The reality is that there is ample evidence that the threat of sanctions simply makes claimants more stressed, ill and unable to obtain employment.

But a crackdown on claimants is one of the populist measures that governments of every persuasion resort to when they are in trouble. It now looks like just such a crackdown has begun.

Benefits and Work members can download a copy of our 30 page guide to Ways to prevent and overturn ESA and UC sanctions from the ESA and UC page

Read the DWP press release on Way To Work

Read more about the Way To Work regime and about the secret sanctions report in the Guardian.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A newly updated version of the PIP Assessment Guide suggests that the DWP have abandoned the struggle to prevent claimants openly or secretly audio recording PIP assessments on their mobile phones, as well as now giving an undertaking that everyone can have their assessment recorded by their assessor.

The PIP Assessment Guide is issued to health professionals and their employers by the DWP and also published online.

The latest version makes it clear that everyone can ask to have their PIP assessment recorded, whether it is a telephone or face-to-face assessment. It states that:

“Upon prior request, providers have the facility to audio record telephone and face to face consultations. There is an expectation that this will remove or reduce the need for claimants to record consultations.”

The guide goes on to say that face-to-face claimants must sign a consent form in which they agree to not use the audio recording for unlawful purposes. Telephone clients have to give a verbal agreement.

If you use a recording for your own information, share it with an advisor or use it as part of an appeal, this is all entirely lawful.

The guidance also says that:

“In some circumstances, claimants may wish to use their own equipment to audio record their consultation. The consent process above should be followed.”

There no longer appears to be a requirement that claimants must use very expensive dual tape recorders if they wish to record their assessment.

In relation to covert recording, the guidance now says:

“A claimant may make a covert recording of the consultation without the HP being aware. If the HP notices that a claimant is covertly recording their consultation, the restrictions above should be explained to the claimant.”

Previously, if a claimant was found to be covertly recording an assessment the guidance said that they should be asked to stop and, if they did not do so, the assessment would be terminated for failure to participate.

All of this guidance relates to audio recording only, video recording by claimants is not permitted.

We would encourage everyone to ask for their assessment to be audio recorded.

We would also suggest that you consider making a recording of your own as a backup, just in case the official recording somehow fails or goes astray.

However, if a badly informed health professional insists you cannot use your own device we would strongly advise you to stop recording and make a complaint afterwards, rather than risk your claim being stopped.

We’ll be updating our PIP guide to take account of these changes.

You can download a copy of the PIP Assessment Guide from this page.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman has told the DWP to give a claimant £7,500 compensation and called on the department to compensate 118,000 other claimants it says have been treated unjustly, in a report released this month.

The claimant, Miss U was transferred from incapacity benefit to ESA, but the DWP failed to assess her for income-related ESA. As a result Miss U not only missed out on ESA but also on passported benefits, such as the Warm Home discount and free prescriptions.

Between 2012 and 2017 Miss U was about £80 a week worse-off than she should have been, roughly halving her ESA income for five years.

Miss U had severe physical and mental health issues. The lack of money meant that she was unable to have an adequate diet or to heat her home, causing both her mental health and her arthritis to deteriorate.

As a result, amongst other things, Miss U’s depression worsened, her hair fell out, she lost a lot of weight, was unable to afford urgent medical treatment and was due to have a toe amputated

Miss U was given arrears of £19, 833 by the DWP.

However, the Ombudsman has instructed the DWP to also make a payment of £7,500 to compensate her for the years that she lived in hardship and also add interest to the benefits arrears payments as well sending a written apology.

The DWP have agreed to the apology and the interest payments but are arguing that the compensation award is too generous.

Miss U, along with thousands of other claimants had missed out on income-related ESA when they were transferred from incapacity benefit, because the DWP did not assess them properly.

After a long battle to evade responsibility, the DWP launched a LEAP exercise to identify claimants who had lost out and pay them arrears.

However, Miss U had received help from a welfare rights worker and so had obtained her arrears payment without having been part of the LEAP review.

The Ombudsman is now recommending that the DWP should offer a remedy to all of those who went through the LEAP process and suffered an injustice as a result of their maladministration.

The DWP, however, argue that they should not pay blanket compensation to other claimants, essentially because it would cost too much and because it is in their view sufficient that they have now improved the way they work in regard to identifying claimants entitled to income-related ESA.

It says the unfortunate handling of Ms U’s case was a “simple misunderstanding” and there is no evidence that other non-LEAP exercise claimants were affected.

However, the Ombudsman says “If Ms U’s decisions were typical, DWP will have declined to make others special payments on wrongly applied grounds, will have told them they could not complain to its Independent Case Examiner and will not have told them about the Ombudsman. That means that likely routes for such evidence were closed off.”

The Ombudsman has given the DWP three months to:

• says what action it will take and when to remedy financial and non-financial losses caused to those people adversely affected by the migration not included in the LEAP exercise
• reconsiders its decision to rule out compensating people included in the LEAP exercise for financial and nonfinancial losses
• report to the Work and Pensions Select Committee on its progress and what decisions it makes about how to remedy its failings.

The Ombudsman went on to say:

“We think it is extremely disappointing that having accepted the maladministration we identified, DWP has not accepted our recommendations to do something proactive about others it knows must be in the same position as Ms U.”

You can read the Ombudsman’s full report here.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

We are hearing from members whose PIP renewal has faced repeated delays due to a lack of available assessments, to the point that they are now concerned that their PIP may be stopped entirely through no fault of their own.

Even where extensions to awards are being made, claimants are not necessarily being told how long they are for.

One member told us:

“It started in April 2020. I got a three month extension for returning the form, I think this was general rather than specific to me due to Covid.

“The form was returned in June and after chasing for over two weeks confirmed as returned.

“I chased in November and was told that it was still with the DWP but they would now refer it on for assessment, I got the impression that it would still have been with the DWP if I had not chased.

“They also said that the claim would end in February, as scheduled unless a Decision was made before then!

“I’ve chased again, still pending an assessment but was now told that the award would be extended, no mention of for how long, automatically four weeks before it ends, I’m now four weeks from the end, so will be looking for a letter next week.”

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A growing number of organisations are warning that claimants and low paid workers may be faced with a choice between heating and eating when energy prices rocket in April. Energy bills could consume 50% of some claimants’ incomes, one charity has warned.

Gas and electricity bills are forecast to rise by around 50% from April, when the current price cap is lifted.

As a result many on limited incomes will face very harsh choices.

Martin Lewis of the Money Saving Expert website told Radio 4 this week:

“We absolutely know we need a substantial increase in the billions of pounds funding to vulnerable people, and people on low incomes, or it is not an exaggeration to say some will have to choose between heating or eating and that is not appropriate in one of the world’s richest economies and a civilised nation.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) reported this month that claimants need a 6% increase in their benefits, rather than the 3.1% annual uplift that they are scheduled to get in April. Claimants will be £290 a year worse off on average if the current plans are followed, they warned.

The measure would cost an additional £3 billion but there is no sign that the government is likely to implement it.

At the same time, the treasury has announced that it is writing off an eye-watering £4.3 billion of the estimated £5.8 billion lost to fraud in relation to pandemic relief schemes for business, such as furlough payments and loans.

The lost funds would easily have covered a year’s 3% benefits uprating and it is impossible to believe the government would give up on pursuing fraudulent benefit claims so easily.

Meanwhile, the Joseph Rowntree Trust (JRT) has said this week that households on low incomes will be spending on average 18% of their income after housing costs on energy bills after April.

For single adult households on low incomes this rises to a shocking 54%, an increase of 21 percentage points since 2019/20.

Lone parents and couples without children will spend around a quarter of their incomes on energy bills, an increase of almost 10 percentage points in the same period.

JRF is calling for an immediate emergency payment for people on the lowest incomes to help prevent hardship in the months ahead.

Katie Schmuecker at JRF said:

“The case for targeted support to help people on the lowest incomes could not be clearer. But this must go hand in hand with urgent action to strengthen our social security system, which was woefully inadequate even before living costs began to rise.

“Our basic rate of benefits is at its lowest real rate for 30 years and this is causing avoidable hardship. The Government must do the right thing and strengthen this vital public service.

“Rising energy prices will affect everyone, but our analysis shows they have the potential to devastate the budgets of families on the lowest incomes. The Government cannot stand by and allow the rising cost of living to knock people off their feet.”

You can read the JRF report here.

You can read the IFS report here.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The commons work and pensions committee has confirmed it is going ahead with its plan to obtain a copy of a secret disability benefits report and publish it.

Regular readers will know that the DWP is fighting to keep secret a report entitled ‘The uses of health and disability benefits’ which deals in part with the unmet needs of benefits claimants.

The work and pensions committee had given the DWP a deadline of 11 January to publish the report themselves.

However, on 10 January the committee received yet another blunt refusal from Therese Coffey, secretary of state for work and pensions:

“As I have written to the Committee before and re-stated at the Committee hearing last month, my Department is currently considering a range of policy options, drawing on wide evidence, research and analysis, and protecting a private space for policy development is important. I have no intention to publish this research at present.”

The committee have now written to the authors of the report, NatCen, ordering it to provide a copy of the report to the committee by Thursday 27 January, for publication.

Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, said:

“After repeated obstruction from the Secretary of State to keep from public view a piece of work that falls within the Government’s own protocol for publication, we have reached the end of the road. We would have much rather the DWP had done the right thing and published the report itself, so it is with regret that we must now take the highly unusual step of using our parliamentary powers to obtain a copy from NatCen and publish it ourselves. We have been forced to do this to ensure that the reality of disabled people’s experiences of the benefits system can see the light of day.”

However, the DWP has admitted that the report was altered before publication and a whistle blower has said that this was in order to reduce the number of references to claimants’ unmet needs. The final report is, therefore, unlikely to fully reflect the reality of disabled people’s experiences of the benefits system.

Benefits and Work is continuing with our Freedom of Information request for a copy of the unaltered report.

You can read the full account from the work and pensions committee on the parliament website.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A coroner has issued a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report after the DWP forced a severely ill claimant to leave hospital to make a claim, rather than allowing him to do so electronically. The claimant, who was very vulnerable to infection, subsequently died.

Terence Talbot, who had Bipolar Affective Disorder, was being detained under the Mental Health Act when he had a rare reaction to the medication he was being prescribed.

This left him very vulnerable to infection.

However, the DWP refused to let Mr Talbot make a claim for benefits electronically, instead insisting he had to make the claim in person.

In her report, the Coroner says that health professionals had never experienced such an ill patient being forced to make a claim in person before:

“I heard from all the doctors and a senior nurse in this case who have a considerable experience across a range of specialties and across several different NHS Trusts that they have never experienced nor heard of a case where a severely ill inpatient was required by the Department of Work & Pensions to leave hospital to attend its offices in person to make a claim for welfare benefits.

“Terence Talbot was suffering with a mental disorder and an exceptionally rare and complex disease with a risk of death and suffering severe exfoliative dermatitis that rendered him very vulnerable to infection.”

The secretary of state for Work and Pensions has until 28 January to say how the DWP will make sure that nothing like this happens again.

You can read the full story on the Disability News Service website and download a copy of the Prevention of Future Deaths report from the Judiciary website.