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It is time for an independent advisory panel on DWP-related deaths, according to Mo Stewart, research lead for the Preventable Harm Project and friend of This Site.

She has put together a proposal that is to go before Parliament, for a body similar to the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody.

And she says a similar independent panel is long-overdue to expose the thousands of DWP-related deaths linked to the Department for Work and Pensions’s fatally-flawed work capability assessment (WCA).

The continued use of this system, adopted by the DWP to limit access to long-term disability benefit, is linked to a growing public mental health crisis and to suicides linked to the brutality of the DWP and the public fear of the next enforced WCA, she says.

Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP [pictured], who she described as a great friend of the chronically ill and disabled community, has already mentioned this need for a new independent panel during debate in the House of Commons.

He will be pressing for an Early Day Motion debate to gain political support.

The need for a new independent panel on DWP-related deaths has attracted a great deal of support, with Kamran Mallick, CEO of Disability Rights UK, saying:

‘Disabled people and those with long-term health conditions have been systematically harmed by a welfare system that prioritises cost-cutting over care, suspicion over support, and bureaucracy over basic human dignity.’

Academics, psychiatrists, and disability support groups including Independent Living, Black Triangle and DPAC are also backing the proposal.

You can read it here.

Do you support it too?

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