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This weekend the government once again quietly revealed they wouldn’t be following through with another promise. This time Therese Coffey, Secretary for Works and Pensions said she would not be publishing any of the previously promised reports or research from her department.
Of the five reports Coffey has so flippantly dismissed, three were especially shocking. It’s research into the effectiveness of support for vulnerable claimants moving from previous benefits onto universal credit, the impact of benefits sanctions as a deterrent and to force people into work and finally an internal investigation into the deaths of benefit claimants.
Of the first two, Coffey said in her open letter to Sir Stephen Timms that they will simply not be publishing them.
Most angering, she said that they will not be sharing the true scale of deaths due to being denied benefits or the recommendations - because the investigations were internal.
This is heartbreaking to hear as a disabled person who has lived under the benefits system for decades, but far from not surprising. It’s the Tories once again not actually committing to something they’ve said they would and gambling with disabled lives via a loophole.
As part of the Mirror’s Disabled Britain Series last month, which I guest edited, we revealed that the DWP was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths over 30 years and failed to do anything about it. The Death by Welfare draft document was horrifying and should’ve made the government shocked to their very core that they allowed this to happen.
But they, as always didn’t care. The most infuriating of the open letter is perhaps the most telling “We do not have a statutory duty of safeguarding, though of course that we do care about our claimants.” It drips with venom and disdain for disabled people, from a government who have worked to ensure we don’t exist to complain about them.
But we can’t allow them to get away with this. How many more disabled people have to die? How many more of our amazing disabled community will we allow to die? Enough is enough. We must demand they release these reports and keep holding the Tory government accountable.
