Disability Rights - Welfare



Although this section is headed Personal Independence Payment, it is worth pointing out that PIP was brought in as part of overall cuts and a cruel regime for the disabled whether being moved on to PIP or claiming DLA or ESA. PIP was a cash cow for companies like Capita and Atos, but the coalition with the connivance of those companies caused stress and suffering across the board.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was introduced in the 2012 Welfare Act. It was brought in to replace Disability Living Allowance (support with care needs) and Employment and Support Allowance (support claimants in work). It is available from the age to 16 to 64. Those over 64 are not eligible to claim the allowance, although if already on the allowance at 65 the claimant will remain eligible.

PIP has turned out to be a disaster for those moved onto it. Such are the issues around the handling of claims that it often leads to worsening health for claimants. The whole ethos of the DWP has been to deny a claim and then reward a claim later down the line under appeal. For many claimants this can leave them destitute, without mobility and often suicidal.

When changes to DLA were first proposed back in 2010, under the coalition, serious concerns were raised about the fairness of the system. The government identified it as a cost cutting exercise, rather than a method to make the system fairer. The government announced plans to tighten eligibility for a key disability benefit, to remove entitlement from at least 360, 000 disabled people with lower support needs. . Research carried out at by Disability Alliance identified that upto 50% of DLA claimants would have to cut their work hours or even give up work under the new PIP scheme.

The Disability Rights Partnership (DRP) – the working title for the proposed merger of Disability Alliance (DA), RADAR and the National Centre for Independent Living – said the changes would have “a hugely detrimental effect” on a “significant number of disabled people and their families” in response to a government survey on the new benefit. The three organisations were deeply critical of the reforms, which they said were “underpinned” by the government’s plans to cut DLA spending on working-age people by a fifth – saving £2.17 billion by the end of 2015/16.

DRP warned that it was “very likely” that all current DLA recipients were at risk of losing some support, through lower rates, reduced eligibility or direct cuts, with the 643,000 disabled people on the low rate care component most at risk The government’s own benefits advice body has delivered stinging criticism of its major reforms to disability living allowance (DLA). Even SSAC the coalitions own advisory committee said the reforms appeared to be driven by the coalition’s wish to cut the number of working-age disabled people claiming DLA by 20 per cent. In its response to the government’s public consultation on the reforms – which closed on 18 February 2011 – the committee called for clarification on whether the aim was to cut the number of claimants, reduce the length of time people receive DLA, ensure accurate targeting of support, or “achieve something else”. The SSAC also said that the government’s much-criticised plans to remove the mobility component of DLA from most disabled people in residential care should not go ahead because they would contradict the supposed aim to support disabled people to lead “independent and active lives”.

As has been the way with all consultations and reports on Disability Rights, the coalition government ignored the findings and went ahead as originally planned. In fact the coalition government misled parliament and the public about the scale of opposition to its reform of disability living allowance (DLA) according to a report by Responsible Reform.The researchers used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the 523 responses to the consultation that had been submitted by disabled people’s organisations, disability charities and other groups.They concluded that there was “overwhelming” opposition to replacing DLA with a new personal independence payment (PIP) for working-age claimants, with only seven per cent fully in favour. The report also showed that the government had consistently used inaccurate figures to exaggerate the rise in the number of DLA claimants as a justification for its reforms and cuts to working-age DLA spending..

The government were accused in 2013 of manipulating DLA figures to justify the introductionof PIP. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) claimed that the number of DLA claimants was increasing, but neglected to point out that working-age recipients have actually been falling. On Monday the DWP released a “statistical update”, which it said showed the number of successful claimants of DLA had risen by 15,000 between February and May 2012. But analysis of DWP figures by Disability News Service (DNS) showed that the rise in claimants was due to increases in the number of children and older people receiving DLA, while the number of claimants aged 16-64 actually fell by more than 1,600. This is important because the reforms and cuts will only affect working-age claimants, with DLA for that group to be gradually replaced by PIP.

DWP gave the assessment and delivery of PIP over to two private companies, ATOS Healthcare and Capita. Atos came under scrutiny early on after it was discovered it had made misleading statements to the DWP in order to win regional contracts of £540 million. On its tendering documents ATOS stated that it had worked closely with local disability groups, which the named groups denied. Richard Currie, an executive member of GMCDP, said the idea of his organisation working with Atos was “absolutely preposterous”.

In October 2013 it became clear that Atos was at crisis point due to not having enough doctors to carry out assessments of claimants. In November this led to Atos to pull out of the provision and led to non-medical qualified civil servants carrying out the assessments. Atos went on to say that the reason for pulling out of the “fitness for work” contract was because of assaults on its staff by disabled benefit claimants, although continuing with two lucrative contacts to assess claimants for PIP. The claims caused outrage among disabled activists, who say the company has devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of disabled people, and “trains its staff to push people off benefits”. At a time when there was major concerns that Atos was causing severe suffering Atos painted its own staff as the victims, claiming it was recording 163 incidents a month in which members of the public were assaulting or abusing its staff, and alleging that “many” of the staff employed to carry out WCAs had received death threats. However Atos failed to provide any evidence. Atos didn't make a single report of a criminal offence for assault. Of the incidents John McArdle, co-founder of the user-led grassroots campaign group Black Triangle said:


 * “It just shows that they are bare-faced liars. It confirms what we expected all along – their reason for withdrawing from the contract was commercial, it was to do with the damage being caused to their reputation.”

Atos continued to add to the misery of PIP claimants. Atos won the PIP contract by boasting in a tender document of its “extensive” network of 16 NHS trusts, two private hospital chains, and four physiotherapy providers, all of which it said would provide sites where the PIP tests would take place. But in the months after winning the contract, all but four of the NHS trusts and both of the private hospital chains dropped out. Atos stated in the £184 million disability assessment contract tender that it had a network of 740 assessment sites across London and the south of England, but after the contract was signed, it only managed to secure 96 assessment centres. This meant thousands of disabled people have faced longer delays in being assessed, and longer and more complicated journeys to reach their assessments, often by inaccessible public transport.

In March 2014 a report from the public accounts committee said:


 * An absence of competition for companies such as Atos and Capita – both of which assess disabled people for eligibility for benefits – had led to the growth of "privately-owned public monopolies which have become too big to fail".

In 2014 the National Audit Office confirmed that lengthy backlogs had built up in the first few months of Atos and Capita taking on the PIP assessment contracts in 2013

Also in 2014 representatives from three charities – DABD (UK), Citizens Advice and Mencap gave evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about the implementation of PIP. Lesley Hawes, chief executive of DABD, which is based in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham and works with socially-excluded people, said her organisation was being “bombarded” with appeals for help because of delays with PIP claims.

She said claimants were being forced to rely on food parcels and the Social Fund “to a huge extent” because of these delays.

Since last year, DABD has dealt with 185 PIP claims, but only 15 of the claimants have had decisions from the Department for Work and Pensions. Hawes said that was “typical” of claimants helped by organisations in other local boroughs. She said: “The whole timescale of waiting is ridiculous. And when we have challenged the DWP and Atos they are blaming each other for the delays.” Among the cases DABD has been dealing with is a person with a mental health condition who needed to be admitted to hospital because it took more than seven months for them to begin receiving PIP. Another was a client with diabetes and gastric problems who needs a specific diet, who submitted a PIP claim in September 2013, but heard nothing more. Despite two calls to DWP, she has still heard nothing from Atos about her assessment. She is using the Social Fund and other services “to be able to survive”, but her health has deteriorated, said Hawes. Vicky Pearlman, social policy officer for Citizens Advice, said her organisation had “seen far too many examples” of claimants who had arranged home visits from Capita but no-one had turned up, with some claimants experiencing this three times. Some claimants have arrived at Atos assessment centres to be told there was no-one there to see them, she told the committee, sometimes having travelled up to 90 minutes via public transport

Capita responsible for assessing disability benefit eligibility failed to make its own workplace accessible for a disabled employee for more than three years, and then sacked her when she became too ill to work. As a result of the treatment Sharon Dickens experienced at the hands of Capita, she was diagnosed with stress, depression and panic attacks.

Atos was mired in further controversy when it was found in 2015 that it was lying on its claimant assessments. A Atos nurse stated that Colin Stupples-Whyley had attended the PIP assessment alone, even though his partner had sat with him throughout the interview. This led to a number of people coming forward to reveal how Atos had lied about their assessments. Former nurse Sue Hardy, who lectured on nursing for 22 years at the University of Bedfordshire, until she was forced to retire due to ill-health in 2013, said she was appalled when she read the report written by the Atos nurse who assessed her for the out-of-work disability benefit employment and support allowance (ESA). The report was littered with errors, but most worrying was the cognitive tests section, which was filled in by the assessor even though none of the tests had been carried out. Hardy, who was accompanied by a friend to the assessment, said: “This nurse lied on my assessment form. Having just had to give up my 35-year career as a nurse and senior lecturer, I found her assessment erroneous in many areas.” She appealed against the decision to place her in the work-related activity group of ESA, and won her appeal at tribunal, but also lodged a complaint with Atos, and with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). In the NMC complaint, she said the assessor had “completely fabricated, and invented the results of the cognitive assessment”. A number of other claimants came forward to complain that their assessments were full of errors and parts of it were fabricated to downplay disability needs. After receiving criticism from the coroner over the suicide of a claimaint Michael O’Sullivan, Atos were unable to say whether the doctor who had made his assessment was still employed by them. The assessment of Michael O’Sullivan was found to be wholly inadequate and had not established his mental state coming to the conclusion the claimant is “at no significant risk by working”.

Maximus (a later entrant into the assessment process), Atos and Capita remained wanting. While costs of delivering the service soared, all three companies failed to provide an adequate service. In a damning report by the National Audit Office it was found spending on assessments was set to double in just two years while the three companies were failing to meet the required standards. the National Audit Office (NAO) said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had failed to achieve value for money from the health and disability assessments it had contracted out to Atos, Maximus and Capita. In 2014-15, DWP spent about £275 million on assessment contracts, but this is expected to more than double to £579 million by 2016-17. Between April 2015 and March 2018, DWP expects the three companies to carry out about seven million assessments, at an estimated cost of £1.6 billion. It also expects the contractors will increase the number of healthcare professionals they employ by more than 80 per cent, from 2,200 in May 2015 to 4,050 in November 2016. NAO said the cost of the assessments was rising and Atos, Capita and Maximus were “still struggling to meet expected performance standards”.

In April 2016 it was found that there were still “serious failings” with the disability assessments contracted out by the government, even though it is paying outsourcing giants half a billion pounds a year to carry them out, according to a new report by MPs. The Commons public accounts committee says disabled benefit claimants still do not receive an acceptable service from contractors, more than 10 years after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) first began paying Atos to carry out assessments for the old incapacity benefit. The report on contracted out health and disability assessments says the committee has particular concerns about the way claimants with fluctuating and mental health conditions are assessed. The committee examined contracts with Maximus, Capita and Atos, who between them are responsible for assessing eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP) and employment and support allowance (ESA). The report says that between seven and 20 per cent of assessment reports do not meet the standard required by the contracts signed with DWP, with most mistakes relating to decisions made by assessors “not corresponding to the evidence”.

In 2012 The government changed the eligibility for support for people with the highest mobility needs, without any warning or consultation – and then lying about what it had done. The publication of the final assessment criteria that will decide eligibility for the new personal independence payment (PIP), the replacement for working-age disability living allowance (DLA) showed that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) intended to tighten eligibility for the top – “enhanced” – rate of the mobility component of PIP. The changes will – by 2015 – see 20,000 fewer people eligible for the enhanced rate than under the previous version of the PIP regulations, with this gap rising to 51,000 by 2018. Previous drafts had stated that a claimant who could not walk at least 50 metres would be entitled to the enhanced rate, making them eligible to lease a Motability vehicle. But this was slashed to just 20 metres. There was no mention of the alteration in the Commons statement by Esther McVey, the minister for disabled people, or in any of the government’s consultations on DLA reform.

The mobility aspect of DLA is used by many people to fund their vehicle through the Motability scheme. People who need significant alterations to their vehicle in order to make driving possible, or to carry wheelchairs and mobility scooters, were forced to find the substantial funds needed elsewhere. In many cases, this took disabled people off the road and forced them to quit their jobs.

Many thousands of people who have relied on DLA to get around their community for years now face a situation where the goalposts have been moved considerably. Under the ‘moving around’ criteria of PIP, the enhanced rate of the benefit will only be available to people who can move less than 20 metres without assistance, but the complex nature of disability means it is very much up for debate as to whether that qualifying criteria is the right one.

There is an inherent irony in the mobility part of PIP, because the 20-metre rule affects those who move with the help of prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, walking sticks and crutches – the very equipment that people could struggle to buy when their application for the enhanced rate is rejected!

Anyone who is judged to have the ability to move more than 50 metres will be completely ineligible for the mobility benefit, unless they also have problems with ‘planning and following journeys’. There is no doubt that DLA was abused by a very small minority of people in the past, but why should people in genuine need be penalised so severely? The thresholds for claims under the DLA system were much higher than the new levels.

In 2015 it was revealed that more than 100 disabled people every week were losing their Motability vehicles after being assessed for the government’s new disability benefit the charity has confirmed. The figures confirmed fears that the replacement of working-age disability living allowance with the new personal independence payment (PIP) would see at least 100,000 disabled people lose their Motability car.

In 2018 Lord Sterling, who co-founded Motability in 1977, has told Esther McVey in a letter that he found the “litany of inaccuracies” in the comments made by her and fellow MPs in a debate earlier this month to be “deeply troubling”. Lord Sterling’s letter also revealed that of 180,000 Motability customers who were previously claiming disability living allowance (DLA) and had by 2017 been reassessed for the new personal independence payment (PIP), about 75,000 have lost eligibility to remain on the scheme and have had to return their cars, because of decisions by McVey’s department. He also told McVeyin a separate letter aimed at correcting the “many false statements” made in the debate was sent to her by Motability Operations, that she herself had made four serious errors :


 * 1) McVey had called for the charity’s trustees to be “held to account” after a constituent who had been a lifetime recipient of DLA had been threatened with having her Motability vehicle removed on Boxing Day. This was a result of a PIP reassessment, carried out by McVey’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which had found the constituent was no longer eligible for the higher rate of mobility support, and therefore no longer eligible to lease a car through the Motability scheme. Lord Sterling pointed out in his letter that PIP assessments were the responsibility of McVey’s department and that it was DWP’s decision to remove her eligibility
 * 2) He then highlighted McVey’s claim in the debate that it had been her intervention as minister for disabled people in 2013 that led to Motability agreeing to pass £175 million to former DLA claimants who lost their Motability vehicles in the reassessment programme. Lord Sterling said that minutes of the charity’s meetings showed that its own trustees had made this decision themselves the previous year because they had “felt a moral obligation to help people at risk of losing cars due to government policy changes”. He said they had already decided by December 2012, months before McVey’s intervention, “to provide a package of significant financial support and other assistance”. And he said that McVey had even suggested in 2013 that this support should only be focused on the initial stage of reassessments, up to 2015-16, whereas Motability’s trustees wanted to provide financial support “over the full period of the DWP’s reassessments”. The Tory peer told her that the charity had had to cope with the loss of about 75,000 customers through PIP reassessment, many of whom were “confused, distressed and even suicidal, as they worry about losing their mobility”.
 * 3) Lord Sterling also said that McVey was wrong when she said that DWP would use money regained from Motability to help constituents whose cars had been removed before their PIP appeals had been heard. She had told MPs: “When we have got the money back from Motability that we believe we should to support disabled people, that is one of the first things it should be used for.” Lord Sterling said this was wrong because there was “no basis on which the government can demand any money to be handed over”.
 * 4) He also said that McVey had been wrong when she claimed that the charity was piloting a scheme – “after direction from the department” – to help disabled children under the age of three, when the scheme was actually being piloted by MO and there had been “no direction” from DWP.

A DWP spokeswoman refused to say if McVey would be apologising for the “inaccuracies” in her statements to MPs.

The government always saw the move over from DLA to PIP as a massive cost cutting exercise, looking to reduce the overall costs by 28% regardless of need. To do this the government sought to create the impression of scroungers committed to a life of welfare at the tax-payers expense. Both Ester McVey and Ian Duncan Smith tried to create the impression that there had been a massive surge in the number of applicants for DLA. The figures used were from an earlier survey and proved that there had never been a surge, particularly in those impacted by PIP, where in fact there was a drop in number of claimants. DWP’s figures showed the number of working-age DLA claimants rose by just 550 across the entire country in the quarter from May to August 2012, and dropped by 5,650 over the year.

The Disability News Service revealed in 2014 that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has carried out 60 secret reviews into benefit-related deaths in less than three years. There have been numerous reports of disabled people whose deaths have been linked to the employment and support allowance (ESA) claim process, or the refusal or removal of ESA and other benefits, including the writer Paul Reekie, who killed himself in 2010, and the deaths of Nick Barker , Jacqueline Harris , Ms DE , and Brian McArdle.

Gary Moyse has chronic pain syndrome following a car accident in December 2007 as well as diabetic neuropathy and retinopathy, anxiety and depression, but was told by a diabetes consultant to stay as active as he could, however much pain it caused him. He had been claiming disability living allowance (DLA), with higher rate mobility support and middle rate care. Investigators working for an insurance company disputing the level of his claim for six-figure damages filmed him as he walked to his local high street, as he tried to follow his consultant’s advice to stay active, and then edited the footage to remove shots of him pausing, taking breaks, taking his medication, being assisted by friends, and falling over. DVDs of this footage were later used by DWP to try to prove he was claiming DLA fraudulently. The stress of the battle with DWP – which began in 2013 – has harmed his health even further, and last year he tried to take his own life. He is now recovering from a mini-stroke and a mild heart attack. A consultant psychiatrist who saw him concluded in January 2015 that he had been “unfairly victimised”. Moyse says that two DWP investigators told him not to bother applying for PIP which is replacing working-age DLA, and warned him that they would be watching him if he walked a single step outside his front door. When he did apply for PIP, an Atos nurse who assessed him said he was entitled to the benefit, but her advice was ignored by the DWP decision-maker, the same civil servant who had dealt with the fraud allegations. The DWP decision-maker also suggested that Moyse’s “perseverance” with his claim and his insistence that he had been unfairly treated was “inconsistent with the anxious, depressed man featured in his claim”. He also stated that DWP “dropped” the case against Moyse, when it was actually thrown out by the court.

In 2016 a report found that the whole basis for the attitude to disability claimants was flawed. An article by Professor Tom Shakespeare and Professor Nicholas Watson, and fellow academic Ola Abu Alghaib, concludes that the biopsychosocial model of health (BPS) “does not represent evidence-based policy”.BPS has also “played a key role” in the tightening of eligibility criteria for ESA and other disability benefits by the subsequent coalition and Tory governments, including the new personal independence payment and universal credit, even though there is “no coherent theory or evidence” behind it, say the three authors.The BPS was developed by Dr Gordon Waddell, an orthopaedic surgeon, and Professor Sir Mansel Aylward (pictured), who was chief medical officer for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) from 1995 to 2005. Key to the BPS model, say the three authors, is the idea that “it is the negative attitudes of many ESA recipients that prevent them from working, rather than their impairment or health condition”, essentially branding many benefit claimants “scroungers”. This allows supporters of BPS, including a string of Labour and Tory government ministers, to draw a distinction “between ‘real’ incapacity benefit claimants, with long-term and incurable health conditions, and ‘fake’ benefit claimants, with short-term illness”, with the model responsible for a “barely concealed” element of “victim-blaming”. Shakespeare, Watson and Abu Alghaib say that this distinction “drives media coverage and popular attitudes to disabled people”, by creating this supposed contrast between “the deserving and the undeserving poor”. They say BPS has been used to “underpin increasingly harsh and at times punitive measures targeted at disabled people” as the state tries to cut the number of people receiving ESA.

Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, caused outrage in 2016 after it emerged that he had threatened the man, who is waiting to give evidence about the abuse in court, that his benefits would be stopped if he failed to co-operate with a personal independence payment (PIP) reassessment by Atos. David is a key witness in the trial and has been told by police not to discuss his case, or allow the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or Atos access to his medical records, because the court proceedings are live and the case is sub judice. DWP finally agreed earlier this month to stop contacting David until after the end of the trial, although he later received a further letter from Atos and a threatening letter from Tomlinson via his MP. But he has now been sent a demand by another government contractor, Maximus, to attend a face-to-face work capability assessment in July 2016, warning him that his out-of-work disability benefit ESA could be affected if he fails to attend. David has severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), caused by the horrific sexual abuse he suffered as a child, and which has led to several suicide attempts.

Having publicly apologised after repeatedly contacting David, one year later the DWP continued to pester him, insisting he attend a PIP assessment. David told Disability News Service that he viewed DWP with “the same contempt” that he viewed his abuser, because of the harm it has inflicted on him. He said: “It is horrendous treatment by our government. It is humiliating and denigrating. It is hard enough to recover from sexual violence without DWP plaguing you. In January the DWP contacted David yet again insisting he must attend a PIP assessment

In 2016 government figures showed a steep fall in the proportion of disabled people being found eligible for out-of-work disability benefits. Disabled campaigners feared the figures showed the government was cutting spending on disability benefits “below the radar”, after being forced to abandon its attempts to reduce expenditure on PIP in March 2016. he Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) statistics, released this week, show the proportion of disabled people applying for employment and support allowance (ESA) who were placed in the support group – for those with the highest barriers to work – plunged by 42 per cent in just three months. For assessments completed during November 2015, 57 per cent of claimants were placed in the support group; but by February 2016 that had dropped by 24 percentage points to just 33 per cent. During the same period, the proportion of applicants found “fit for work” – and therefore ineligible for ESA – rose from 35 to 49 per cent, while those placed in the work-related activity group (WRAG) increased from 8 to 17 per cent. Fresh cuts to disability benefits spending will see a loss of nearly £30 a week for new ESA claimants placed in the WRAG from April 2017 ”. Disabled researcher and campaigner Catherine Hale said “If the back to work programmes for the WRAG really were about removing barriers to the labour market and increasing employment prospects, disabled people wouldn’t fear it. Instead, evidence shows, the outlook for disabled people in the WRAG is extremely poor employment prospects, unjust sanctions, a culture of stigma and bullying, and from April 2017, severe financial hardship.

It 2017 one of the outsourcing giants paid to assess disabled people for their eligibility for benefits admitted that it is standard practice, approved by the government, to ask claimants with mental health conditions why they failed to take their own lives. A leading clinical psychologist warned that such questioning “brings huge risks” and is one of the reasons behind the increase in suicides associated with the government’s work capability assessment (WCA) process. The admission from Maximus, which carries out WCAs for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), came after a disabled campaigner produced a recording of his own assessment. Alice Kirby sparked a horrified reaction on social media after revealing how the healthcare professional who assessed her eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP) had asked her: “Can you tell me why you haven’t killed yourself yet?” After she shared her experience, many other claimants came forward to say that they had been asked the same, or a similar, question by their assessors.

In May 2017 a number of claimants took to twitter to describe the "hell" and "abuse" they have suffered at the hands of the DWP :


 * Hazel Fairs @Hazel_Fairs - the benefits assessment process had been “hell”, and added: “It made me suicidal. It’s like having an insulting abusive controlling ex with the power to starve and evict you.”
 * @hufflewoof, - the process of assessing sick and disabled people for their eligibility for benefits was “an abusive process, built on mistrust. I have several MH issues anyway but my interactions with the DWP have exacerbated them significantly. It’s been awful.”
 * Payton Quinn (@PaytonQuinn) - the benefits assessment process had been “difficult and exhausting”. “Our PIP assessor lied on the report and they have ignored our complaints, rejected our appeal.”
 * Jen Byrd (@jenjenbyrd) tweeted: “Assessor had sweet, caring face on while writing inaccuracies and (purposeful?) misrepresentations. “Assessor had no understanding of my illness(es), medical terminology or even, having read his report, morals.”
 * Juliette Gazzard (@juliettegazzard) said her dealings with DWP “drove me to a suicide attempt, panic state I have never recovered from. Live in constant fear of contact with DWP.”
 * @victoriaclutton - dealing with DWP was “terrifying, frustrating, dehumanising and outright surreal”.
 * Jonathan Hume (@IamMrJ), who has previously told Disability News Service how an assessor working for government contractor Maximus asked him what was stopping him taking his own life, was another who described how his interactions with DWP had affected his mental health. “I used to be confident. I didn’t used to panic at a knock on the door or unexpected post.”
 * Social worker Brooke Winters (@brookewinters33) said she was supporting #cripthevoteuk because she can see that austerity “isn’t working”, harms disabled people, and does not save money. “As a disabled person I don’t have the support I need or adequate health care under the current government.”
 * @zagbah, - “I have a MH issue and I want to #CripTheVoteUK because I don’t want to spend another five years having to prove I ‘deserve’ disability benefits. “I feel really angry with the DWP. Because of them, all the progress I was making is in ruins. I have to start over, AGAIN. My agoraphobia is worse. I can’t take the rubbish downstairs now. I can’t even step into the communal hallway. Dealing with the DWP is like being forced to play a neverending, live action version of #snakesandladders.”
 * Journalist and presenter Mik Scarlet @MikScarlet - “I’m stunned at how scared I am every time I have a brown envelope in the post ever since my #PIP reassessment started. Nightmare.”
 * Activist Alice Kirby was another to discuss the impact on her mental health of continual communication with DWP, tweeting: “I hate contacting them, I hate them contacting me. Constantly receiving letters, sometimes every other day, feels like harassment. And Recovery In The Bin, the user-led mental health group, tweeted: We in @RITB_ want to #cripthevoteUK b/c we are suffering individually and collectively by ongoing fear, harassment, sanctions, destitution.”

Maria Lane was left to sit in her own urine for 2 hours by a physiotherapist who was assessing her benefit claim has had her benefits heavily cut. Maria Lane described the “inhuman” experience she endured during her personal independence payment (PIP) assessment earlier this month. She told, and showed, the assessor just 10 minutes into the assessment that she had had an accident and had emptied her bladder into her incontinence pad, and that urine was leaking into her trousers. But the female assessor, who works for the government contractor Atos “looked for a second at the pad” and then continued typing for the rest of the two-hour assessment. Despite Atos launching an investigation and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) describing her claims as “very concerning”, Lane was told that her benefits will be cut. The 59-year-old has a number of long-term health conditions, including diabetes, osteoarthritis – which affects all of her joints and has spread into her spine – sciatica, a slipped disc, high blood pressure, and depression. She is waiting for a major operation on her bladder, because of severe incontinence which means she has to wear pads permanently. Lane has now seen the report written by the Atos assessor, and she said she was “gobsmacked” when she read it. She said the report states that she showed the physiotherapist her pad, but fails to point out that she also told her that she had emptied her bladder 10 minutes into the assessment. The report also claims that she was asked to spell various words – which she said did not happen – while there were other “lies”, including accounts of tests that did not take place. Lane has also provided further details of her ordeal at the assessment centre in Enfield, north London, describing how the assessor forced her to walk up a long corridor before the assessment began. When she had to keep stopping because of the discomfort she was in, the assessor – who was walking behind her – told her to keep walking. She said: “I was walking and kept stopping and she kept making me go and go. She was getting annoyed with me. “She made me walk from one end of the building to another. I can’t remember how many times I stopped. I said, ‘I can’t walk anymore.’” As a result, the assessor wrote in her report that she could walk 50 metres, a finding which has been used by DWP to justify reducing her entitlement from the enhanced to the standard rate of the PIP mobility component. She was previously receiving the enhanced rate of PIP for both the daily living and mobility components, but has been told that both will be reduced to the standard rate, which means a drop from £141 to £78 a week. She currently has to spend up to £55 a week on incontinence pads, which is paid for with some of her PIP. She had also been concerned that she would have to hand back her Motability vehicle, which she needs for her hospital appointments.

Roy Bard, a long-term recipient of disability living allowance (DLA), described how his financial support was suddenly removed because he missed an appointment for a PIP assessment he was never told about. He had been told he needed to apply for the new PIP, which is gradually replacing DLA for working-age claimants. After DWP initially appeared to have mislaid documents he sent as evidence for his claim, which he sent by recorded delivery, he eventually received a phone call from Atos asking why he had missed his face-to-face assessment. He told Atos he had never received a letter telling him to attend an assessment, and made the same reply a few days later when Atos called him again. Bard then received a letter telling him his DLA had been stopped, and that his PIP claim had been cancelled. Following an appeal – through DWP’s mandatory reconsideration process – he was told that DWP had overturned the decision to cancel his PIP claim, but would still not reinstate his DLA. He was told to wait for another assessment appointment. This decision meant he lost about £560 a month in DLA and severe disability premium, even though DWP had overturned its original finding that he had no good cause for missing the assessment. Bard, a leading member of the Mental Health Resistance Network, said his mental health had been seriously affected by the way his PIP claim had been dealt with, and he told DWP that this “amounts to maladministration and it has caused me considerable harassment, distress and alarm”.Graeme Ellis, who founded the Lancaster-based social enterprise Here2Support, has told DNS that he received eight cases similar to Bard’s in a single week, some of them relating to PIP, and some affecting ESA claimants. All eight said they had had their benefits removed for not attending a face-to-face assessment, even though they had not received an appointment letter. In the last month, Ellis has been receiving one or two such cases a week, but that “just shot through the roof”. He believes these cases demonstrate a fresh DWP attempt to cut social security spending. Previously, he said, a claimant of disability benefits would be given another assessment if their appointment letter had gone missing. Now, said Ellis, they are finding – like Bard – that their claims are being cancelled. CeaJay Clem, from Gloucestershire, has chronic discoid lupus, which has caused a significant facial disfigurement. But despite the impact of the condition on her skin, the doctor who assessed her in January wrote in her report that her complexion was “normal” and that she “looked well”. Clem after reading about more than 200 cases in which claimants of personal independence payment (PIP) have described how their assessors from Atos and Capita produced dishonest assessment reports, which have led to them losing their benefits or having them cut. Clem’s reassessment was carried out by another contractor, Maximus, and was testing her eligibility for the out-of-work disability benefit, employment and support allowance (ESA). Because of her condition, she is unable to wear make-up and is highly sensitive to all UV light – which is used in nearly all work places – but she also has complex post-traumatic stress disorder, asthma and other health conditions, and uses a mobility scooter because she cannot walk or stand for long. She had previously been in the ESA support group, but as a result of what she says was a completely dishonest report, she lost all eligibility for ESA in February 2017, even though the assessor admitted that she had “current firm detailed plans for self-harm”.

In 2017 a House of Commons select committee carried out an inquiry into the government’s flawed disability benefit assessment regime. The inquiry receivedmore submissions from the public than any other previous inquiry with 2800 submissions made online and a further 450 written submissions. This compares with a normal submission rate of between 50 and 100 online and usually approximately 100 written. Much of the evidence submitted provided significant fresh corroboration for Disability News Service’s (DNS) year-long investigation into claims of dishonesty at the heart of the PIP assessment system. Below are just a few of the submissions :


 * A carer who posted evidence on the forum told how the “pack of lies and false information” provided in the report written by the healthcare professional who assessed his wife had caused her to have a significant relapse, after her mental health had been stable for eight years. Because of the “disgraceful” assessment, his wife had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
 * Another carer told how the only thing the assessor had got right in his report on her son’s PIP claim was his name. She added: “Just wish someone could help us, if my son does not take medication which I give him he has voices in his head and suicidal thoughts. “I really think they should tape [assessment interviews]. This assessor has turned our life upside down. I worry for my son’s safety.”
 * One of the PIP claimants who submitted a written statement to the inquiry said that assessors were “twisting words, telling blatant lies”. The claimant, who has the genetic condition hypercholesterolaemia, which has “very life limiting symptoms”, said the assessment in June 2017 had led to them being “made to feel like a liar by the assessor and two [DWP] decision makers. “I am now being treated for severe stress and medicated with diazepam due to this experience. “That is completely unacceptable as the last thing I need is to suffer stress with such a serious heart condition.”
 * One ESA claimant described how his assessor had “lied numerous times” and “painted a totally false picture”. He added: “Treated me with total disrespect, when I tried to explain my situation and ask some pertinent questions she opened the door and said, ‘on your bike mister’. “I have worked for over 30 years and have had spinal surgery this year. This inhumane process makes a mockery of paying years of tax and NI stamps. “Humiliating, demoralising and in no way professional.”

In 2017 figures showed attempted suicides among people claiming out-of-work disability benefits doubled between 2007 and 2014.

Sanctions

Between October 2012 and 30 September 2013, 104,200 disabled people had benefits ‘sanctioned’ following the introduction of the coalition's 2012 Welfare act. During the year, nearly 42,000 disabled people received just one low-level sanction, while nearly 40,000 received one mid-level sanction, and more than 8,000 received one high-level sanction, which saw them lose their JSA for 13 weeks. .

The coalition’s bedroom tax involved cutting housing benefit for those people in social housing with spare bedrooms. According to a leading housing association, disabled people are paying a disproportionate share of the estimated £550 million-a-year that the government hopes to save.

The study by Habinteg uncovered the disturbing truth – two-thirds of their tenants who have been hit by the bedroom tax are disabled people. And despite the prime minister’s assurances that there would be in-built protections, only a third of Habinteg’s disabled clients have been exempted by their local authorities.

Perhaps more disturbingly, however, is the fact that more than half the housing association’s properties that have been adapted for wheelchair use were not granted exemptions. The study also uncovered evidence of a postcode lottery – as some local authorities have been quicker at granting exemptions from the government’s bedroom tax than others.

This came at a time when thousands of disabled people in the UK were having their incomes drastically reduced by PIP. A great many wheelchair-users are opting to pay the difference in housing benefit out of their own shrinking incomes rather than move to a smaller home due to many areas of the country suffering from a chronic shortage of accessible properties. The disabled Labour MP Dame Anne Begg, who chairs the Commons work and pensions select committee, described the bedroom tax as “a pernicious and vindictive measure that blames people and is causing a huge amount of distress”. She described the case of a 37-year-old merchant seaman who was allocated a two-bedroom ground-floor flat after becoming disabled in a car accident, but who had since been hit by the bedroom tax.

This section covers just a few of the real life cases of the suffering created by the benefit regime.

Sheila Holt Holt has always been unable to work because of a “severe” mental health condition, but was pushed onto a government work programme, with no support from specialist services, and also had to start paying the “bedroom tax”, MPs were told this week.

She began falling into poverty, became increasingly agitated, and eventually was sectioned. A few days later, at the age of 47, she had a heart attack, and fell into a coma.

She hadn’t worked for 27 years. But she was admitted to the unit after being pushed into the Government’s Work Programme – terrified that her benefits would be cut. Sheila held on for 15 months, with her father Ken and sister Linda at her bedside. She was 48 when the brain injury she sustained during her heart attack took her life.

Brian McArdle Kieran McArdle wrote a harrowing letter describing how Atos benefits bullies killed his sick dad. Brian, 57, collapsed and died the day after his disability benefits were stopped. He had been assessed by Atos and deemed “fit for work”. The youngster said a previous stroke on Boxing Day last year had caused a blood clot on Brian’s brain. He was left paralysed down his left side, unable to speak properly, blind in one eye and barely able to eat or dress. But he was still summoned to an Atos “work capability assessment” – part of the Con-Dem Government’s drive to cut billions from the welfare bill. Kieran said he had another stroke days before his appointment because of stress, but was still determined to attend.

A month later, former security guard Brian got a letter telling him he would lose his disability benefits on September 26. Kieran said his dad’s health went rapidly downhill. He believes constant worry about how he would survive without the cash he needed robbed Brian of the will to live.

The day after his benefits were stopped, Brian collapsed and died in the street near his home in Larkhall, Lanarkshire. He had suffered a heart attack.

Jacqueline Harris Jacqueline who suffered severe pain due to slipped discs in her back and neck has taken her own life after having her benefits stopped. Despite being in agony which strong pain relief could not ease, the 53-year-old was deemed to be fit for work following a government health assessment and told to find a job. Her sister Nurse Christine Norman said Jacqueline's fitness-to-work assessment at a government-run centre lasted only a few minutes. “It is claimed that during the test she was only asked one question – ‘Did you come here by bus?’, to which she answered ‘yes’. The widow later received a letter by post telling her to find employment.

Ms Harris contested the ruling but was found dead at her home in Speedwell Road, Kingswood, on November 2 having taken an overdose.

Nick Barker George Osborne sobbed in a public show of grief at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral – meanwhile there were private tears for a victim of his government’s welfare cuts. They came after a dad of two killed himself because he was losing his disability benefits. Former sheep farmer Nick Barker, 51, was told he was fit for work, even though a brain haemorrage had left him ­struggling to walk. He shot himself after the shock verdict by Atos, the ­private drafted in by the Department of Work and Pensions to cut claimants.

Nick’s ex-wife Linda, the mother of his children, said yesterday: “It doesn’t seem right to see George Osborne crying over Margaret Thatcher when tragedies are happening because of the way his ­government is reforming the benefits system.” Linda, 52, who was still close friends with Nick, added: “He was a ­lovely man. I can’t help but feel anger. It was clearly distressing him. He wanted a way out.”

Nick had been told he did not score enough points to continue receiving benefits, but Linda, a chef who was wed to him for 12 years, said: “He clearly couldn’t work. He should have been top of the list for benefits. The points system doesn’t work.”

Michael O’Sullivan

The discovery that a coroner had directly attributed Michael O’Sullivan's suicide to his being found “fit for work” was a significant moment in the work capability assessment (WCA) scandal. It appeared to be the first time that a coroner had blamed the WCA process – designed and overseen by Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions – for directly causing a death.

“The anxiety and depression were long-term problems,” said Mary Hassell, the north London coroner, in her verdict on the death of Michael O’Sullivan. “But the intense anxiety that triggered his suicide was caused by his recent assessment by the Department for Work and Pensions as being fit for work, and his view of the likely consequences of that.” Hassell felt so strongly that something had gone badly wrong that she completed a Prevention of Future Deaths report, because she believed there was “a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken”.

Paul Donnachie Paul Donnachie’s disability benefit was ended in June 2015 after he missed four work capability assessments by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The DWP then informed Glasgow City Council that Mr Donnachie was capable of working, and that his housing and council tax benefits should also be stopped.

The welfare cuts were backdated, so by the time the 50-year-old was informed, he was already in arrears with rent and council tax.

His body was found in his Glasgow flat in January by bailiffs arriving to evict him, but he is thought to have killed himself two months earlier. He had severe mental health problems.

“The Government murdered him," said Mr Donnachie’s sister Eleanor, who is calling for an inquiry into his death. “They are driving ordinary people to suicide.”

Mr Donnachie’s application for a Scottish Welfare Crisis Grant in September to pay for his gas, electricity and food failed, and he was told to go to a food bank instead.

David Barr The Atos assessor completed David’s assessment by concluding, in June 2013: “He reports self harm in the past. He reports he attempted an overdose six weeks ago but he would not say what he took.

“He reports he has had no thoughts of suicide since. The evidence overall suggests that he is not at substantial risk.”

Despite David appealing against the decision that he was fit for work, and telling the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in a letter that he had “serious mental health problems that prevent me from doing everyday tasks which means I cannot work at this moment in time”, the Atos advice was rubber-stamped by DWP decision-makers.

The decision that he was not eligible for employment and support allowance (ESA) was confirmed in a letter to David on 17 July 2013. A month later, he took his own life. When questioned afterwards by the Procurator Fiscal’s office – which investigates sudden deaths in Scotland – the assessor claimed he couldn’t remember if he had made any phone calls to check on David's mental health, according to David’s father.