With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Anti-poverty charity Z2K have made an official complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the DWP’s taxpayer funded fake news campaign.

Earlier this month we revealed that the DWP was launching an advertising blitz disguised as news in the Metro newspaper.

In a leaked memo, Universal Credit Director General Neil Couling boasted that people would not be able to tell that the 9 weeks of fake features were written by the DWP and would instead “wonder who has done this ‘UC Uncovered’ investigation.”

The adverts have now begun running in the Metro and online and Z2K have complained to the ASA on a number of grounds.

They point out that one ‘myth buster’ claims that it’s a “myth” that “you have to wait 5 weeks to get any money on Universal Credit”, followed by “fact: Jobcentres can “urgently pay you an advance.”

Z2K point out that:

“It is not clear that an advance must be paid back, the advert omits that these advances are taken out of future benefits and have to be paid back over several months, leaving people in subsequent months, with less money than they are entitled to, and less money than they will have actually budgeted for.”

The charity also takes issue with the simplistic claim by the DWP that they can pay your rent directly to your landlord.

Instead, Z2K explain that:

“In reality, you have to apply to the job centre for this to happen, and you have to meet certain criteria. As an advice agency, we have applied for people with numerous vulnerabilities to have the housing element of their Universal Credit paid directly to landlords, and we have not been successful in securing this.”

Finally, Z2K takes issue with the statement that it’s a “myth” that “Universal Credit doesn’t work”, followed by: “fact: it does.”

They point to the “damning evidence” the work and pensions committee have published on the hardship caused by UC and also quote the committee’s chair, Frank Field, whose furious reaction to the DWP adverts was:

“If the DWP wants to understand the facts about Universal Credit, it could look to the horrific, harrowing evidence we heard this morning. People – mostly women, single mums, students – are telling us that they are forced through sheer desperation to exchange sex for the means to feed, house and warm themselves and their children. Instead of going out to get the evidence for itself, the DWP just dismisses this testimony as anecdote and brushes it aside.”

“Rather than wasting huge chunks of desperately needed resources on 10 weeks of advertorial, why won’t the Government just take a look at the terrible reality of the facts we and so many others are showing them, for free, and instead spend that money on making some of its claims about UC helping people come true?”

Z2K have warned that the adverts could lead people on legacy benefits to wrongly believe they would be better off on UC and make a claim as a result. They have asked the ASA to act as quickly as possible.

You can read the full text of the complaint on the Z2K website.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Come with me on an eerie visit, where we step through the looking glass into an alternative universe where everything is as good as can be. You will like it here. Everyone smiles: they only want to help their clients fulfil themselves, nothing bad ever happens here. They love their work. This little utopia is the Middlesbrough jobcentre. As everywhere, they are rolling out universal credit to new claimants or existing “clients” with any change of circumstance. Here they prompt unemployed or underemployed people into work or more work, telling them how many jobs to apply for, what appointments and courses to take, and (whisper it) with what penalties if they fail (“But that’s very, very rare”).

It has taken me all of seven months’ applying to the Department for Work and Pensions to get here – my requests ignored, forgotten or parked, despite regular prodding. Pre-2010 I often sat in with jobcentre staff: but since then, in department after department, visiting any frontline is tortuous. With HMRC, eight years of requests to visit minimum-wage inspectors has yielded nothing – though they have never been outright refused.

Finally, here I am in a jobcentre I chose. Accompanied by a Whitehall press officer, I talk to work coaches and managers and sit in on some interviews with claimants. Recently the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, tweeted a little YouTube video of her visit to a Lancaster jobcentre, so I knew what to expect. “I love my job,” one member of staff told her. Another said: “The good thing about work coaches is we are the human side of [universal credit].” Rudd says to the camera: “It’s been a really inspiring visit,” to “hear first-hand about the really personal, tailored, caring approach that work coaches have with helping people into work”.

That’s exactly what they told me too, but does she actually believe this is how universal credit works?

I now guess why my visit just came through. My colleague Aditya Chakrabortty wrote on Tuesday about a leaked memo from DWP top brass planning a charm offensive to promote universal credit, with £250,000 wrap-around ads on the Metro newspaper’s front cover. They complain UC “is portrayed incorrectly and/or negatively in the media” with “negativity and scaremongering”.

The Middlesbrough staff did their valiant best to hold that line. I’ve met many jobcentre staff and most are genuinely decent people, trying to make the system work against the odds. But their answers on this supervised visit floated in airy realms beyond the credible. Have staff cuts made their caseloads harder? “I think cuts have made us work smarter and harder,” said one. How often do they sanction people? “We find sanctioning doesn’t help,” another said, adding, “We’re all passionate and proud about our work. We live here and we’ve all had friends and family using our services. We ask, how would I want my husband to be treated?”

What about benefit cuts as people move to UC? “My impression is that the vast majority get more when they move on to it,” says one. The Commons work and pensions select committee says the switch leaves 2.2 million people in work better off by £41 a week, but with another 3.2 million losing an average £48 a week, I ask if any workplace changes could make it easier to do more for clients? No, nothing they could think of. A test question: what did they think of wider cuts in Middlesbrough, where the council has been hit hard? “I’ve not noticed we’ve got a lack of anything round here since the cuts, and I live here.”

Visit schools, hospitals, councils or any public employees trying to deliver against a backdrop of the deepest cuts in living memory and you hear their determination and despair, what works and what doesn’t, pride mixed with frustration at lack of the right tools. But this felt like conversations with automata in Stepford. It felt like my visit in the old USSR to the national women’s committee led by cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, when they all clapped to hear every single Soviet female worker had donated voluntarily to the state’s peace fund.

Numerous reports reveal the chaos and cruelty of the UC upheaval. Arrogantly dismissing experts, the former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith promised to “simplify” six benefits into one, varying the sum with each change in earnings and circumstance. At 10 times original costs, full rollout promised by 2013 is now pencilled in for 2023. The National Audit Office says it will never be value for money, or be proven to get more into work. George Osborne’s cuts leave claimants destitute and food banks swamped, with 73% in rent arrears.

Families half starve waiting the official five weeks for payment, or sink into debt. For every extra pound they earn, 63p is deducted: what if the rich paid 63% in income tax? Over the years, an informant inside another city jobcentre has told me what’s really happening. Yesterday, they told me it was “panic” in their office – some caseloads at 400, everything set aside to unblock urgent benefit payments. Yes, Rudd had eased things: sanctions targets were dropped, and the savagery had diminished from the days when they were ordered to catch out the vulnerable. My informant recalls the day their office made its first three-year sanction and the managers celebrated: Rudd has ended three-year sanctions, but they can still last many months.

Is Middlesbrough jobcentre an exceptionally happy planet? The local MP’s office deals with pile-ups of UC disaster cases. I asked the Middlesbrough staff if things had got better, but they denied they’d ever had sanction targets or whips on their backs. If they had admitted anything was ever less than pluperfectly flawless I might have believed them, but the DWP will need a more realistic script or its upcoming charm offensive will fall flat.

A cross-party group of MPs have written to Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, demanding more details of a reported £250,000 “unbranded” PR campaign to promote universal credit.

A leaked internal document revealed by the Guardian this week says the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has taken out newspaper advertorials purporting to “myth-bust common inaccuracies” about universal credit in a “UC-uncovered investigation.”

The campaign, consisting of an advert wrapped around the Metro newspaper and a four-page feature inside, will not feature any DWP branding, according to the leaked memo. “The features won’t look or feel like UC – you won’t see our branding,” it states.

This week the Leicester Mercury carried a lengthy feature under the headline “I think universal credit is great – here’s why”, based on interviews with staff at a jobcentre. “It’s a good thing. It is helping people and it is making a difference,” Steve Bruce, a team leader at Leicester’s Wellington Street jobcentre, was quoted as saying.

Bruce appears to have been well briefed by the DWP communications team on the lines to take about universal credit. “It’s designed to break the cycle, get people into work, and it is doing that,” he said.

A write-up of the article in other regional titles owned by the publishing group Reach was similarly sympathetic. The headline “Universal credit: why it is actually a great idea” appeared in Reach titles in Newcastle, Kent and Wales.

The original article noted that claimants had “spoken about hardship” after transferring to universal credit, and acknowledged its reporter had been invited by Rudd to meet the jobcentre staff. But it did not mention the DWP’s PR campaign, and the other articles did not mention the DWP’s invitation.

The memo, published on the DWP intranet, suggests the campaign will be a counterweight to “negativity and scaremongering” in the media, which it blames for putting people off applying for the benefit.

The chair of the work and pensions select committee, Frank Field, has written to Rudd asking to see the internal DWP documents in full. He has asked for details of the cost of the campaign, whether Rudd personally approved the plans, and what guarantees the department can give as to the accuracy of the advertorial.

“I know that the department will be keen to ensure the accuracy of its communications. Will you ask Citizens Advice, who deliver your Help to Claim service, to approve the wording of any written communications – including the reported wraparound in the Metro – to ensure that they are clear to claimants and do not risk misleading or confusing them,” Field wrote.

He called for guarantees from the DWP that the unbranded advertorials would not confuse claimants or potential claimants, and he asked for evidence that the department had assessed the risk that the PR campaign could prompt people to sign up to universal credit when they did not need to.

The committee is concerned about reports that some jobcentre staff wrongly advise benefit claimants to switch from legacy benefits to universal credit even when in some cases they will be left hundreds of pounds worse off as a result.

Field has also asked for more details of the DWP’s plans to partner with the BBC on a documentary about universal credit. The Guardian revealed that the DWP would have access to the film before transmission, although the BBC insists it has editorial control.

Universal credit, which is running six years behind schedule, rolls six benefits into one single monthly payment. An estimated 8 million people will claim it by 2023. Current estimates suggest millions of claimants will be up to £1,000 worse off when they move on to it.

The online benefit has been subject to widespread criticism in the media – from the Guardian to the Sun – especially for its designed-in five-week waiting time for a first payment, which has been blamed for an increase in food bank use. MPs of all parties, campaigners and the National Audit Office have criticised it.

Last year the UN rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston, highlighted universal credit in his critical interim report on the rise of poverty in the UK. “Although in its initial conception it represented a potentially major improvement in the system, it is fast falling into universal discredit,” he wrote.

How to sell the unsellable? How to pretend utter chaos is a plan coming together? How to persuade the public, who just refuse to buy it, to at least keep on paying for it? I believe I have found the answer.

It comes in the form of an internal memo from the Department for Work and Pensions that somehow floated past my desk. Published on the staff intranet just a few days ago, on 2 May, it is signed by three of the department’s most senior officials, including the DWP’s director of communications and Neil Couling, its head of universal credit. And it is that toxically controversial benefit which is its subject.

Addressed to the department’s employees, the letter sympathises: “We share your justified frustration when our hard work – in particular our work on Universal Credit – is portrayed incorrectly and/or negatively in the media.” The circular condemns this “negativity and scaremongering”, and blames it for putting people off even applying for the benefit.

It was said that Steve Jobs could conjure up a “reality distortion field”, bending facts into a parallel universe to spur on Apple designers to achieve the impossible. I can only assume that the DWP’s overlords are creating their own distortion of reality, because I cannot think of a single bigger policy failure this decade than universal credit.

After years of ministers pretending otherwise, Amber Rudd, the DWP secretary, now admits universal credit’s introduction has left people so short of cash that they have resorted to food banks. What Iain Duncan Smith hailed in 2011 as a transformation of welfare has turned into something grotesque, with massive delays and huge flaws both of administration and design, repeatedly damned by MP select committees. The independent National Audit Office judges that universal credit has neither saved public money nor helped people into work. But it has left thousands of vulnerable claimants penniless, while others starve and even lose their homes. In a House of Commons debate last summer the London Labour MP Catherine West recounted how one of her constituents had “fallen off benefits” and ended up “sleeping in a tent in a bin chamber” on a housing estate.

Such are the horrors whose very documentation by journalists the DWP letter dismisses as “unfair”. Rather than halt universal credit, as demanded by so many groups, the department’s managers now say they will respond “in a different way … very different to anything we’ve done before”.

What follows is an elaborate media strategy to manufacture a Whitehall fantasy, one in which the benefits system is running like a dream while a Conservative government generously helps people on the escalator to prosperity. It begins at the end of this month with a giant advert wrapped around the cover of the Metro newspaper; inside will be a further four-page advertorial feature. This will “myth-bust the common inaccuracies reported on UC”. What’s more, “the features won’t look or feel like DWP or UC – you won’t see our branding … We want to grab the readers’ attention and make them wonder who has done this ‘UC uncovered’ investigation.”

Not only is this a costly exercise, with a Metro wraparound going for a headline rate of £250,000 (of your money, let’s not forget), but the Advertising Standards Authority will doubtless be interested in that description of the feature. Its guidelines stipulate that“marketers and publishers must make clear that advertorials are marketing communications”.

Two and a half million adults pick up a daily copy of the Metro freesheet, and they will see these advertorials every week for nine weeks. Meanwhile the secretary of state, Amber Rudd, will invite “a wide range of journalists at regional and national publications … to come [to a jobcentre] and see the great work we do”. Doubtless, the Jobcentres will be carefully chosen and everything will be arranged so that when the dignitaries descend, all will be as precisely ordered as the innards of a Swiss watch. Perhaps it’s not too indelicate to mention here that the Tory party is weeks into an unannounced leadership contest, during which plummy columns commending Rudd for turning round a failed service do no harm to her prospects.

Then comes the letter’s grand reveal: BBC2 has commissioned a documentary series, which is “looking to intelligently explore UC” by filming inside three jobcentres. “This is a fantastic opportunity for us – we’ve been involved in the process from the outset, and we continue working closely with the BBC to ensure a balanced and insightful piece of television.” Wading through such adjectives, one remembers how the most important of the letter’s signatories, Neil Couling, told Holyrood parliamentarians that the rise of food banks was down to “poor people maximising their economic opportunities” and that “many benefit recipients welcome the jolt that … sanctions can give them”.

When the BBC’s Panorama last November went to Flintshire in north Wales and found single, elderly men being made homeless as a result of universal credit, and the local council in meltdown, the DWP criticised the corporation for its “lack of balance”, even complaining that the interview with a minister was “unfairly cut”. A Tory backbencher was wheeled out to declare the investigation “fake news”.

No such danger with this three-part series, which is driven by access rather than led by a reporter. When the civil servants’ trade union, the PCS, found out about the filming, it asked if staff could talk frankly to the crew, only to be told no: they would still be subject to the civil service code, which demands complete impartiality. Perhaps this explains an internal PCS note on the BBC series I have seen, which remarks that staff are unhappy about being identified on screen. At one of the nominated jobcentres, in Toxteth in Liverpool, “It is our understanding that there have been no volunteers to take part in the filming.” The risk is that any staff who do participate toe the management line, making the film an advert for universal credit.

The PCS briefing also reports a senior universal credit manager telling union reps that “the DWP would have access to the film before transmission”. The BBC confirms that is the case, although it says it has “editorial control”. When I contacted the DWP it refused to answer even the most basic of questions, advising me to submit them via a freedom of information request.

It’s not uncommon for the Ministry of Defence to use newspapers to recruit soldiers, nor for government departments to grant TV crews access to their workings. What is very unusual is to see a car-crash policy damned even by the Archbishop of Canterbury airbrushed with vast public resources into a triumph.

After reading the documents, I spoke to Jennifer Jones of Sheffield Stop and Scrap Universal Credit. Severely disabled, she is awaiting transfer to the benefit, a move that she believes might deprive her of nearly £400 a month. She showed me Facebook posts of others, who have already lost out under universal credit, and told me how after her autistic son goes off to school she neither heats the house nor cooks, in order to save money. What would she do with the £250,000 that the government may spend on a single newspaper advert?

“I’d make sure there was enough on the gas and electric, that we had food in the cupboards and new school uniforms,” she said. “Then I’d see about the neighbours.” I weighed up the smallness of her wants, against the DWP’s planned extravagance. So what did Jones make of the government’s PR campaign?

“They’re taking money off the public, to lie to us about how well universal credit is working. They could be spending that money on us, but they’re spending it to con us,” she said. “It’s scary our government doing that.”

The government is to abolish “counterproductive” three-year benefit sanctions, in an official acknowledgement that depriving jobless people of social security income for long periods undermines their attempts to move into work.

The announcement, made by the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, during a speech on employment on Thursday morning, was welcomed by campaigners and MPs, who encouraged her to make further changes to the controversial policy.

The move marks a sharp change of tone by the government, which has for years doggedly defended the sanctions regime as a way of persuading people into work, despite mounting criticism from MPs, academics and campaigners that sanctions are major drivers of poverty and hardship.

Sanctions withhold unemployment benefit as punishment for apparent infringements of benefit rules, such as failing to attend a jobcentre meeting, or not spending enough time looking for work. Most are imposed for four weeks, a loss of benefit income of about £300. Three-year sanctions are issued when a claimant has made three or more serious breaches of work-related requirements.

Sanctions are notorious among claimants for the way they are issued, often for seemingly capricious and absurd reasons, such as arriving at a jobcentre meeting two minutes late, or for missing an appointment after being taken to hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Rudd said the three-year sanctions would be phased out by the end of the year. In a House of Commons statement, she said: “Three-year sanctions are rarely used, but I believe that they are counter-productive and ultimately undermine our goal of supporting people into work.

“I have reviewed my Department’s internal data, which shows that a six-month sanction already provides a significant incentive for claimants to engage with the labour market regime.

“I agree with the Work and Pensions Select Committee that a three-year sanction is unnecessarily long and I feel that the additional incentive provided by a three-year sanction can be outweighed by the unintended impacts to the claimant due to the additional duration.”

Three-year sanctions were introduced in 2012 under the auspices of the then work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith and the then employment minister Chris Grayling as part of a severe tightening-up of benefits rules.

Sanction numbers increased rapidly as a result, reaching a high point in 2013 when over 1m were issued. In 2015, academics found a link between sanction levels and increased food bank use.

A major five-year academic study of welfare conditionality, published last year by the University of York, concluded sanctions were ineffective at getting jobless people into work and were more likely to reduce those affected to poverty, ill-health or even survival crime.

The National Audit office criticised the government’s sanctions policy in a scathing 2016 report, which concluded ministers had no evidence to show that sanctions worked, and no interest in finding out the effect on individual claimants. Disabled people who were sanctioned were less likely to find work as a result, it found.

Official figures published by Labour indicated that 32,647 claimants had been issued with sanctions of more than six months duration since 2012. Some 20,000 of these were accounted for by people on universal credit.

Margaret Greenwood, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said Labour would scrap the sanctions regime. “There is clear evidence that sanctions and excessive conditionality do not help people into sustained employment. They also cause stress and anxiety for many and are one of the key reasons that people ask for help at food banks.”

The sanctions expert David Webster, of Glasgow University, welcomed the move and said he hoped it was a sign social security policy was beginning to be guided by evidence rather than ideology.

Frank Field, the chair of the work and pensions select committee, said: “Today’s announcements are a step in the right direction – gone are the days of those appalling three-year sanctions – and show she has not been put off by the size of that task, but there is still very much to do.”

Alison Garnham, the chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, welcomed the change: “We hope today’s announcement will be followed by a review of the sanctions system overall because all the evidence shows it is overly harsh and counterproductive for claimants.”

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Government regulations that would leave thousands of people with severe disabilities worse off by about £100 a month as a result of moving on to universal credit have been ruled unlawful in the high court.

The ruling followed a legal challenge to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over arrangements for claimants who were receiving severe disability premium (SDP) benefits and moved on to universal credit before 16 January this year.

Two men known as TP and AR, and a woman known as SXC, who all have severe disabilities, had argued that the regulations, which restrict the amount of compensation to those affected, were discriminatory.

The challenge followed a court case last year in which TP and AR successfully argued that the DWP had unlawfully discriminated against them after their benefit income was reduced when they were required to claim universal credit because they had moved house into a different local authority area.

As a result of that case TP and AR received £6,517 and £4,788 respectively, in compensation for the “pain and distress” caused to them. They also received payments of £173.50 and £176 a month respectively to meet the continuing shortfall in their benefits.

The government subsequently proposed regulations whereby SDP claimants who lost benefit income after moving to universal credit before the establishment of income protections on 19 January would be provided with just £80 a month in compensation, while those who moved after would receive £180 a month.

TP and AR, represented by the law firm Leigh Day, and SXC, represented by Central England Law Centre, argued that the discrepancy was unjustified because the estimated 10,000 people who moved before 19 January would receive significantly less in compensation than those who moved afterwards, despite their needs being the same.

Severe disability premium and enhanced disability premium are supplementary benefit payments designed to meet the extra costs of living alone without a carer. An estimated 500,000 people in the UK receive one or both payments.

TP and AR said in a statement after the ruling: “After the high court judgment last year, we thought we had finally forced the government to ensure that people with severe disabilities who had to move on to universal credit from the old system would not be without adequate protection or worse off.

“However, we then learned that the government was proposing to short-change us and thousands of other severely disabled persons by around £100 a month. It is extremely frustrating that we have had to fight these cases through the courts when it is clear to all that the government’s unfair and dysfunctional universal credit system is indefensible.”

Tom Short, a solicitor with Leigh Day, said: “We are delighted that our clients have once again triumphed in their struggle against the government’s discriminatory universal credit policies.”

Michael Bates, who led on the case for Central England Law Centre, said: “This is a really important decision from the court. It confirms that the government’s universal credit scheme continues to treat severely disabled claimants differently, and that this treatment is unlawful. There is an obvious solution to this and we look forward to seeing the government’s response.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “We have received the court’s judgment and will be considering our response.”

The mother-of-two, who lives with her two teenage boys, aged 16 and 19, said she had not been able to afford a proper food shop since she was discharged from hospital following a fall caused by her condition two weeks ago.

“We’ve been struggling,” she said. “The three weeks I was in hospital I had to take a £250 overdraught so the kids could feed themselves. Going food shopping is not an option at the moment, we just can’t afford it.”

Ms Woods, whose husband passed away suddenly four years ago, said that since losing her disability benefit she receives £200 a fortnight in bereavement benefit, £53 a week in child tax credits, and £20 every week child benefit – amounting to just £173 a week.

 “My 16-year-old son has been eating pasta and tins of tuna. I try to get eggs, bread and milk – the basics, to keep us going until we can afford to do a big shop. Since I got out on 11 April, I haven’t done a proper food shop. Money has been a real problem,” she added.

“The boys get priority. I’ve skipped a lot of meals. I do feel hungry but there’s too much going on in my head to worry about it. The GP gave me some vitamin drinks – I take one of them instead of a meal.”

Ms Woods, who lives in Manchester, said that after being admitted to hospital her weight dropped from 11 and a half stone to just eight stone over a period of six weeks. She is appealing the decision to stop her PIP, but has been told it won’t be heard until next year.

“I was on the highest rate and they put me on zero. I’ve lost my car. It’s made me not want to go outside. I have good days and bad days – and on the bad days I have seizures and my speech gets messed up. It’s very scary for my children,” she added.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Margaret Greenwood said the “shocking” report highlighted the scale of the UK’s hunger crisis.

“Food insecurity simply should not exist in one of the richest countries in the world. Yet this report suggests that the number of people going hungry is increasing as a result of changes to the social security system,” she added.

The report states that the “rising vulnerability to food insecurity” observed in the survey suggests the “poorest in the UK are worse off today”.

“While the Great Recession also occurred between 2004 and 2016 and may have contributed to a rise in food insecurity at that time, by 2016 the UK was no longer in recession. By contrast, welfare reform continued, the effects of which were keenly felt by those with longstanding illnesses,” it adds. 

“Food insecurity has certainly always existed in the UK, but in light of the welfare changes that occurred over this period, it is possible the current social security system is providing increasingly inadequate protection from food insecurity for more and more people.”

The researchers who produced the findings cautioned that it was an observational study, and as such cannot establish cause, but that if anything, the observed increase in food insecurity among those on low incomes was likely to be an underestimate.

It comes after figures from the Trussell Trust revealed last week that food bank use had soared to record levels, with the number of emergency supplies distributed across the UK having risen by nearly a fifth in one year,

Genevieve Edwards, director of external affairs at the MS Society, said the charity was increasingly hearing from people with MS that they’ve had to cut back on food and other essentials because of problems with disability benefits.

She added: “More than 100,000 people live with MS in the UK and our research shows 39 per cent of those who lost PIP support spent less on food as a result. We’ve also heard from people who turned to foodbanks after struggling with universal credit. It’s simply unacceptable that disabled people in the UK today can’t rely on our welfare system to provide the most basic level of financial security.”

Jess Leigh, Policy and Campaigns Manager at disability equality charity, Scope, said the findings were “further shocking indications of the dire impact extra costs can have on disabled people”.

She added: “Life costs more in you are disabled […] Disabled people often have no choice but to spend more on essential goods and services like heating, therapies and equipment.

“We need a welfare system that recognises these extra costs and provides disabled people and their families with the financial support they need.”

A government spokesperson said: “No family should have to experience hunger and tackling disadvantage remains a priority. Whilst we’ve seen food insecurity fall over the last few years, we recognise we need to do more.  

“That’s why we’re supporting over 1 million children with free school meals, investing up to £26m in school breakfast clubs and spending more than £95bn a year on working-age benefits. Meanwhile employment is at a record high and wages are outstripping inflation.”

The health of vulnerable patients may be being endangered by benefit advice given to GPs by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), doctors have warned.

Medical bodies said they were “deeply concerned” about government letters informing them that they no longer need to issue “fit notes” to refused benefit claimants. 

Issued to doctors since 2017, they raised concerns about the potential impact of the letter, called an ESA65B, on potentially vulnerable patients. 

Experts said the letter fails to make clear that if the claimant is challenging the decision in relation to Employment Support Allowance (ESA), they still need the medical evidence from their doctor.

In a letter to the DWP, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, said: “Without a fit note from their GP, claimants who are awaiting the outcome of their appeal will not be able to receive ESA.

Staff shortages at the Department for Work and Pensions have led to thousands of carers being overpaid benefits that they could be repaying for years, a report by the government’s spending watchdog has found.

In some cases, carers face repaying more than £20,000 they received in error, a task that could take 34 years, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.

In 2018-19, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) detected 93,000 overpayments of carer’s allowance, compared with an average of 41,000 a year in the previous five years. The NAO said the department was detecting “significantly more” overpayments because it had recently put in place more people and new systems.

While many overpayments were for just one week, some went on for more than a decade before they were discovered. At the end of March, 133 people owed more than £20,000.

Frank Field MP, chair of the work and pensions committee, said the report “devastatingly laid bare the incompetence at DWP, and its stark human cost”.

Carer’s allowance, now worth £66.15 a week, can be claimed by those who provide at least 35 hours of care to someone who receives a qualifying disability benefit.

But carers do not always realise that the sum they receive is linked to their earnings, and that if they take home more than £123 a week the allowance stops, or that studying more than 21 hours a week is a bar to claiming.

Carers have to give details of their earnings when they apply, but can be caught out when their circumstances change.

The NAO found that staff shortages meant that many people who had notified DWP about changing circumstances had not had their details processed.

In November 2018, the department had 104,000 unprocessed change in circumstances notifications. It said that these delays meant that overpayments had not been dealt with in a timely manner.

Overpayments are clawed back through lower benefits and deductions from earnings, and the NAO said that while on average it would take a carer just over three years to clear their debt, those owing £20,000 could be making repayments for the next 34 years.

The NAO’s investigation followed the Guardian’s revelation that a growing number of carers were facing fines and prosecutions as DWP sought to claw back overpayments.

Emily Holzhausen, director of policy and public affairs at Carers UK, said overpayments had caused a lot of stress.

“It is clear the DWP’s decisions about the handling of carer’s allowance have resulted in carers not being told about overpayments quickly enough and this must be urgently addressed,” she added.

A DWP spokesman said the report recognised the progress it had made in addressing overpayments. “We have introduced new technology to prevent overpayments and improve debt recovery. And we continue to make people fully aware of their responsibility to correctly report earnings and changes of circumstances.

“We have a duty to the taxpayer to recover money in cases of fraud or error but safeguards are in place to ensure deductions are reasonable.”

Field said: “There was already plenty wrong with the way we recognise carers’ invaluable contribution. Rather than making things worse, why doesn’t the department just spare us all: end this massive scandal, focus on the real fraudsters and write off the overpayments it has allowed to build up unchecked.”

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The victim of an acid attack who suffered 50% burns to her face and body has overturned an attempt to strip her of a disability benefit after being told she was fit for work.

The woman, who finds it difficult to sit or stand for long without pain, and is bed-bound for weeks after reconstructive operations, appealed after officials awarded her zero points at an assessment to test her eligibility for disability employment benefit.

A tribunal hearing on Thursday took less than 20 minutes to uphold her appeal, awarding her 24 points, and restoring her employment and support allowance (ESA). The appeal panel, consisting of a judge and a medical doctor, paid tribute to the woman’s courage.

Her solicitor, Sophie Earnshaw of Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre in west London, said the case was one of the most upsetting of its kind she had been involved in.

She said: “This is a truly horrific example of the Department for Work and Pensions’ poor decision-making when it comes to disability benefits.”

The DWP said it was unable to comment on an individual case but insisted it was committed to ensuring people received the benefits they were entitled to, and would review cases to learn lessons where they had fallen short of “high standards” and ensure claimants were paid any money owing to them as a result.

The case comes amid continued concern over the reliability of the assessments for both ESA and personal independence payment benefits, which are carried out by private contractors on behalf of the DWP. Nearly three-quarters of ESA appeal and 73% of PIP appeals are successful.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a British citizen who suffers from constant pain, trauma, headaches and isolation. She rarely leaves her home except to go to her GP, the hospital or local shops.

Having received ESA for several years, she was reassessed and found fit for work by a healthcare specialist employed by the private firm Maximus last October, not long after she had undergone an operation to reconstruct part of her ear.

She then submitted her case to the DWP for reconsideration, but officials upheld the assessment award of zero points. Had she not subsequently appealed the decision, she would have been moved on to universal credit, seen her benefit income cut, and be required to spend 35 hours a week looking for work or face sanctions.

Earnshaw said the failure of the work capability assessment to properly assess her client’s health was compounded by the DWP’s failure to take into account the evidence presented to them. The DWP did not send a representative to the tribunal hearing, which was held in London.

She said: “This case should not have been before a tribunal. Already our client is suffering from life-changing burns that have a significant impact on her physical and mental health. The anxiety of appealing the decision and attending a tribunal has been extremely upsetting.”

The woman was referred to Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre by her local Citizens Advice Bureau. The removal of welfare benefits from the scope of legal aid in 2013 meant specialist support for her appeal was only possible through a pro bono project the law centre runs with the City law firm Debevoise & Plimpton.

The DWP was heavily criticised earlier this year after a Liverpool man, Stephen Smith, 64, was denied benefits and deemed fit for work, despite multiple debilitating illnesses that shrank his weight to 38kg (6st) and left him barely able to walk.

A man who took his own life after running out of money for his electricity meter left a suicide note sarcastically “thanking” Universal Credit bosses.

Brian Sycamore was having trouble getting the controversial benefit, his brother told his inquest.

Mr Sycamore, of Long Eaton, wrote the note on his phone before taking an overdose of pills.

The 62-year-old had suffered with back pain for many years but his brother claimed the problems he was having with Universal Credit were the “trigger” for his suicide.

Mr Sycamore’s housemate Paul Baker found him dead in his bed with a large amount of medication on his bedside table on September 30, 2017.

An inquest at Derby and Derbyshire Coroner’s Court yesterday heard that all the medication was legitimately prescribed to Mr Sycamore for his back conditions.

A GP said Mr Sycamore, of Bennett Street, had no record of mental health problems or previous suicide attempts, and a psychiatric doctor said he had never been admitted to Kingsway Hospital.

Assistant coroner Louise Pinder said Mr Sycamore’s brother, Henry Sycamore, believed he took his own life because of problems with his benefits.

She said: “Henry has said to us that he believes this was a deliberate act.

“He had been in pain for many years. But he believes the trigger was down to problems he was having with his Universal Credit.”

PC Mark Karim, of Derbyshire police, read a note that was left on Mr Sycamore’s unlocked phone.

He said: “There was a note that said ‘can you thank the people who work at the Department for Work and Pensions?’

“There was also a reference to the electricity meter running out.”

The coroner and PC Karim both agreed that the “thanks” in the note were intended to be sarcastic.

Housemate Mr Baker last saw Mr Sycamore alive two days before his death. Mr Baker spent the day before the suicide in bed, due to illness, but decided to check on Mr Sycamore when he stopped hearing noise coming from his room.

Mr Baker did not move the body but called East Midlands Ambulance Service paramedics, who recorded the time of death as 3.33pm, and who also called police to the scene.

A post-mortem carried out in Derby, and toxicology tests completed in Sheffield, found that Mr Sycamore had lethal levels of four different medicines in his system.

The coroner recorded Mr Sycamore’s death as “suicide” and said the cause of death was “mixed drug toxicity”.

However, while she did state that there was a note left on his phone, she did not refer to problems with Universal Credit as a cause or contributing factor when recording her conclusion.