Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) boss Liz Kendall has delivered evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee that reveals her real attitude towards benefit claimants. She believes that Universal Credit gives chronically ill and disabled people “perverse incentives” not to work.
Yet Kendall was asked by the chair of the committee, Debbie Abrahams, if, given the U-turns and concessions of the last few weeks, whether she believed the DWP had built up public trust.
The secretary of state for work and pensions replied:
I think we have ended up in the right place now. We have a really positive story about how we will work with disabled people, with the organisations that represent them and with other experts to make sure we get a system that is fit for the future.
Kendall appears to be living in a fantasy world if she believes that the shambles that unfolded over the last few weeks in relation to welfare reform is the right place to be. However, it does lay much of the groundwork for the absolute evisceration delivered to the DWP via the newly published Safeguarding Vulnerable Claimants report.
DWP shamed by new report
The report has been published by the very same committee who heard Kendall’s comments. The members of the committee repeatedly asked Kendall if impact assessments had been done before proposing new legislation before Parliament. Of course, the DWP have been fiercely criticised for ignoring disability experts, organisations, activists, and disabled communities throughout this process.
Whilst dodging that question, one particular remark from Kendall revealed the DWP’s approach to claimants:
I think the reason we have these problems as a country is that we have failed on welfare because we have failed on work…The heart of the Bill that we put forward—I understand why it is not characterised as that—was to deal with perverse incentives in the system where, essentially, people are almost incentivised to define themselves as incapable of work to be able to afford to live.
Put simply, Kendall is arguing that the reason Labour have proceeded with current welfare reforms is because they believe that our scant benefit system doesn’t give people an incentive to work. This regressive attitude calls to mind Victorian era workhouse-owners who stigmatised poor people as lazy, feckless, and unwilling to work. Kendall continues:
Some need skills, but it is a pathway to work. We need to remove disincentives in the benefits system, and we need to provide a pathway to work for those who can work now or at some point in the near future.
“Disincentives” is a fancy way of saying that Kendall believes the current benefits system gives people so much money that they’d rather not work. This is a blatant lie. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that in 2023:
Our social security safety net no longer provides enough to afford even essentials.
Damningly, their research found that:
The basic rate of Universal Credit – its standard allowance – is now at its lowest level in real terms in almost 40 years.
Failures in safeguarding
Kendall is painting falsehoods for this committee. And, these lies are somehow even more galling when we consider that this is the same committee whose new report found that the DWP’s:
approach to safeguarding lacks coherence and direction, resembling a patchwork of mitigations and adaptations to existing policies, rather than a fundamental policy which underpins how our social security system operates.
The report repeatedly notes that information for claimants – particularly vulnerable ones – is not accessible. Their findings underline not only how incorrect Kendall is in her approach to claimants, but also how callous. The DWP were found to have no coherent policy on safeguarding:
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.
As such, the authors of the report state that public trust in the department is “sorely damaged.” In a rarity for reports written by government committees on how the benefits system functions, the authors of the report make it clear that:
some DWP policies can unintentionally create and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. For example, where sanctions and the threat of sanctions can lead to material deprivation, stress, and the deterioration of physical and mental health. Or, where the experience of engaging with the system and processes has been so difficult and distressing, that it has contributed to claimants deciding to take their own life.
And, the committee found that:
Where DWP does have a suite of measures to support vulnerable claimants, we heard that failures sometimes arose because DWP did not implement its own policies consistently.
Vulnerable claimants
The authors of the report are at pains to define what they mean by the term “vulnerability.” It could be argued that anyone applying for benefits is by definition vulnerable as, one way or another, it means that they cannot afford essentials necessary for survival. Regardless, the report states that:
The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute and Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger were clear that vulnerability was not an inherent characteristic: rather, it was situational, and created in the interaction between systems and individuals.
However:
Although DWP has a description or definition of vulnerability, we heard its effectiveness was limited because DWP does not clearly and consistently communicate how it defines ‘vulnerability’ to people outside of the Department.
Clearly, the DWP’s policies for dealing with vulnerable people – feasibly everyone that applies, to some degree – is a broken system. They don’t have department-wide policies or definitions to guide their work. Witnesses repeatedly told the committee that they felt “undeserving” of support, with one person saying that they felt as if:
a system that is meant to wrap its arms around us is strangling us.
Notably, the report also reads:
Disability, however, is not the only characteristic that makes claimants vulnerable, and we are concerned about the lack of focus on claimants with other vulnerabilities in the policymaking process.
The DWP are failing in every possible manner: claimants aren’t given enough to live – all whilst Kendall claims it’s too comfortable to live via benefits – and, their safeguarding policy is fundamentally broken. Not only are they failing people, but they’re actively harming people.
The DWP is causing harm
The report devotes space to the death of three particular people who were judged by coroners to have died because of their treatment at the hands of the DWP. Namely, Errol Graham, who died of starvation in 2018, Philippa Day, who died by suicide in 2019, and Kevin Gale, who died by suicide in 2022. The authors note that:
Over several years there are known to have been hundreds of serious harms and deaths of claimants, many of which could have been prevented had DWP discharged its responsibilities more effectively.
And, they also state that they’re aware that the actual figures of the serious harms and deaths of claimants are grossly under-reported. They write that:
We recognise the significance of every harm and death experienced by claimants, and the impact of these cases on loved ones.
And, there are many more not only unreported harms, but serious distress, self-harm, and prolonged mental health impacts for those the DWP chews up and spits out.
‘Kallous’ Kendall
Kendall’s comments just a month after the release of the safeguarding report are nothing short of scandalous. Research has repeatedly shown that benefits claimants are living in poverty, struggling to afford the basics. And, on top of that, research and lived experience tells us that disabled and chronically ill people are particularly vulnerable when it comes to having to deal with the DWP.
Kendall’s comments have barely caused a flutter in the mainstream media. However, the fact that she can claim that poor and vulnerable people need incentives to work – and currently do not have them – is horrific. Kendall has clearly never been in a position where people are ‘incentivised’ into choosing how many meals to skip in order to make it to the end of the week. She’s clearly never had to think about ‘incentives’ to work whilst in debilitating pain that forces people to break their bodies trying to feed their families.
Ultimately, the safeguarding report demonstrates what claimants for benefits have been saying for years: the DWP is not just failing to provide a safety net for people. It is causing active harm that piecemeal reforms cannot address. Kendall is just another piece of the rot at the DWP.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Guardian News
This post was originally published on Canary.