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A damning new report has laid bare the Department for Work and Pensions’ catastrophic failure to protect the vulnerable people it claims to support.

The Failure of DWP Safeguarding, by disability researcher and former healthcare professional Mo Stewart, published this month, exposes not just bureaucratic incompetence, but a systemic culture of hostility, neglect, and silence — that has cost lives.

“When people are literally starving to death or taking their own lives after contact with the DWP, we have to stop calling this ‘policy failure’ and start calling it what it is: state harm,”

Ms Stewart writes.

For anyone campaigning against disability benefit cuts, this report isn’t just ammunition — it’s a smoking gun.

“Killed by the State”

Ms Stewart traces the origins of today’s benefits system back to Thatcher’s ideological war on the welfare state.

From there, successive governments — Labour, Coalition, and Tory — have weaponised policies like the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to force sick and disabled people into increasingly punitive systems.

The result: Starvation. Destitution. Suicide.

Cases like that of Errol Graham, who starved to death after his benefits were stopped, are not isolated tragedies — they are symptoms of a system deliberately designed to deny support.

Ms Stewart highlights that the WCA was modelled on tactics developed by private insurers to deny claims — particularly in the US, via UnumProvident — and that it continues to disregard clinical evidence in favour of bureaucratic box-ticking.

A culture of fear — and a broken government department

Backed by the House of Commons’ Work and Pensions Select Committee, the report shows that safeguarding within the DWP is not a priority — it’s a patchwork of afterthoughts created in response to media scandals.

“It is striking that despite being engaged with safeguarding on a daily basis, the Department has never had a clear and coherent, public-facing safeguarding policy or strategy,” the Committee concluded earlier this year.

Internal reviews into DWP-linked deaths are frequently non-transparent, non-independent, and not shared with the public or Parliament.

Worse, the DWP’s so-called Serious Case Panel, introduced in 2019, refuses to accept outside evidence — a clear sign that lessons from these deaths are not truly being learned.

The DWP needs independent oversight

This is where Ms Stewart’s report becomes more than just another exposé.

She calls for the creation of an Independent Advisory Panel on DWP-Related Deaths — a non-departmental public body, modelled on the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, to properly investigate deaths, identify patterns, and demand accountability.

This panel would:

• Be truly independent of the DWP

• Consult disabled people’s organisations and experts

• Review all cases of serious harm or death linked to benefit policies

• Report publicly and regularly to Parliament

It’s a clear, practical demand — and a potential lifeline for countless future claimants.

Demand an independent advisory panel now

The former Tory government spent 14 years cutting support, ignoring coroners, and dismissing deaths as isolated errors.

It must not be allowed to continue with the current – Labour – administration.

The creation of an Independent Advisory Panel on DWP-Related Deaths is the bare minimum needed to begin restoring trust and protecting lives.

📢 Contact your MP — use www.theyworkforyou.com – demand they support an immediate motion in Parliament to establish this panel.

🧾 Share this article and Ms Stewart’s report across social media, and with your networks.

💬 Use the hashtag #DWPDeathsPanel to amplify the campaign.

The bottom line

People are dying. This is not despite DWP policy — but because of it.

We don’t need more hand-wringing statements from ministers.

We need action.

We need oversight.

We need justice.

And it starts with an Independent Panel for DWP-Related Deaths.

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