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The Information Commissioner has told the Department for Work and Pensions that it was wrong not to publish an email apparently linking it with multiple deaths.

Disability News Service writer John Pring had called for the Department to release an unredacted email from then-Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey, sent in February 2021.

According to a DNS report…

It related to a secret “critical friend” report written for her by Tory peer Baroness Neville-Rolfe, saying the DWP should reduce the number of benefit claimant suicides and other “very bad cases” linked to its actions.

Coffey’s email was released to Pring – but it was almost completely redacted, with eight of its nine bullet points blacked out.

The DWP refused to release the unredacted email, telling DNS in response to a freedom of information request in February 2025 that the request was “vexatious”.

After DNS then complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), DWP told the Commissioner, John Edwards, that Pring had imposed a significant “burden” on the department over “a period of years” relating to “the work the Department undertakes to support vulnerable customers”.

DWP said Pring’s work indicated “a negative approach to the work that the Department undertakes to support vulnerable people” and “leads to the view that this request is part of a persistent and repetitive campaign and so vexatious in nature”.

It said this indicated that Pring could be considered a “vengeful requester”.

Pring responded by describing the initial claim that he was being “vexatious” as “ridiculous”.

In return, the DWP told the Commissioner that the “repeated requests for information and the tone and language used by the complainant in communications… could be considered as harassment and has the potential to cause distress to DWP colleagues”.

Because the February 2021 email was written four years previously, DWP added, the freedom of information (FOI) request was “diminished in value and not justified”.

“In his decision notice, Mr Edwards said the Department had failed to provide “any evidence or detailed explanations to substantiate its assertions”, while he was “not persuaded that the request can be characterised as vexatious”, and he was “disappointed at the paucity of DWP’s arguments”.

“He said: “The complainant is an investigative journalist specialising in disability and welfare rights.

““Whilst FOI requests to DWP may cause a burden, they are a recognised part of the journalistic process.”

“He added: “Scrutiny of information relating to previous decisions or actions by a public authority is clearly in the public interest, for example to aid understanding of actions taken and whether lessons were learned.”

“And he concluded: “It is not the role of a journalist to cast a positive light on information obtained under FOIA**.

““DWP cannot label a requester vengeful on the basis that they publish articles that do not agree with DWP’s actions.”

“The commissioner also dismissed any suggestion of harassment, saying in the decision notice: “It is well established that public officials should be open to scrutiny and criticism.

““Whilst they should obviously be protected from excessive or distressing criticism, DWP has provided no evidence that this has occurred in this case.”

“DWP will now need to provide a new response to Pring’s FOI request to see the unredacted email.”

I’ve had my differences with John Pring in the past… That being said, this is an important ruling – especially if it helps put an end to the DWP’s habit of labelling almost every freedom of information request that could lead to the release of information about benefit-related deaths as “vexatious”.

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