MPs bypass #DWP to publish controversial report on claimants’ experience of #benefits
Boris Johnson isn’t the only Tory minister facing serious consequences for their actions this week. It’s looking bad for Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey too.
Coffey has repeatedly refused to publish a DWP-commissioned report on disabled people’s experiences of the benefit system – so the Commons Work and Pensions Committee has given orders for its authors to provide a copy to Parliament, which will then be published.
The report, The Uses of Health and Disability Benefits was received by the Government in September 2020. The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) had interviewed disabled people about their experiences of receiving PIP, ESA and Universal Credit.
The committee last month gave the Secretary of State one final chance to publish the report, which she herself admitted fell within the Government’s own protocol for publication.
But Coffey said she would not be reconsidering her decision.
Why not? It seems likely that researchers at NatCen, who wrote the report, found that people on disability and other health-related benefits were overwhelmingly negative about their experience of the system under Tories including Coffey and her forerunners, going right back to Iain Duncan Smith.
NatCen has been ordered to provide a copy of its report by January 27.
“After repeated obstruction from the Secretary of State to keep from public view a piece of work that falls within the Government’s own protocol for publication, we have reached the end of the road,” said Work and Pensions Committee chairman Stephen Timms.
“We would have much rather the DWP had done the right thing and published the report itself, so it is with regret that we must now take the highly unusual step of using our parliamentary powers to obtain a copy from NatCen and publish it ourselves.
“We have been forced to do this to ensure that the reality of disabled people’s experiences of the benefits system can see the light of day.”
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The government will probably find some way of stopping it being published, they don’t want people to know the truth.
Whot do they think the reports going to say hmmm haven’t they had nearly eleven and a bit years of dla pip ESA JCP those who claim benefits of any kind have condemned the Tories dwp they had eleven bloody years of our cries report nah they now