Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff have been caught stealing disabled people’s benefit money and paying it into their own bank accounts. The iPaper reported on the fraud, valued at nearly £2m. However, it somehow – just somehow – still managed to paint disabled and non-working people as the real problem with the DWP.

DWP staff: fraudsters

As the iPaper “exclusively” revealed, DWP staff have been siphoning off benefits meant for disabled people into their own bank accounts. As it noted:

In total, more than £1.7m was lost in 2024-2025 because of DWP employee benefits fraud.

In the past, staff have been jailed or received a suspended sentence for stealing employment and support allowance, carer’s allowance and winter fuel payments by diverting the money into their own bank accounts.

The iPaper said:

The Government’s internal fraud team carried out 25 investigations – resulting in the discovery of losses of £1.7m – into benefits-related fraud among DWP employees and contractors from April 2024 to March 2025. The DWP has 87,000 staff members in total.

However, the slant of the outlet’s article was to say ‘nothing to see here’ – and then swing the article to say ‘but benefit claimants are far worse fraudsters’. It got Tory peer Ros Altmann to weigh in, saying:

Unfortunately, it seems there will always be a few bad apples, but overall I would think that our civil service staff are trustworthy and will also be horrified to hear some of their colleagues have helped themselves to money needed by disabled or vulnerable claimants.

That’s like saying there are a ‘few bad apples’ in the institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic Met Police.

This is because the latest DWP betrayal deepens a long pattern of incompetence, cruelty, and systemic failure – all of which is intentional.

Systemic problems and willful harm

DWP staff are meant to be guardians of public welfare. However, this scandal reveals gross misconduct: money that should have allowed pensioners to afford heating, or granted essential support to disabled people, was allegedly pocketed from within the department.

The public rightly expects rigorous staff vetting and safeguarding measures—but clearly, neither was in place. This isn’t a mere individual failure; it’s an institutional collapse that places blame squarely on the shoulders of senior leadership and ministers.

This headline-grabbing theft is the latest in a long line of abuses.

Internal DWP data revealed that staff make thousands of potentially fatal errors in disability benefit claims every month.

Meanwhile, an Ombudsman report exposed how over 118,000 people—largely disabled or chronically ill—were denied compensation after the DWP mishandling their ESA claims.

then, older people have been forced to repay up to £38,000 due to DWP mistakes.

Also, disabled people continue to report sudden, unexplained cuts to Access to Work funding—slashed by 60–70% at review points—with no transparency or justification. 

And at worst, the DWP has directly overseen the deaths of tens of thousands of disabled people – thousands of whom it said were fit for work before they either died or took their own lives.

The fallout

These aren’t one‑off glitches; they’re symptoms of a deeply broken system, insensitive to human suffering and resistant to accountability.

The fallout is personal and devastating. Disabled individuals face real hardship: lost independence, mental health crises, even risking homelessness. Pensioners rely on fixed, necessary income—yet DWP errors force them into debt or destitution.

Carers, who depend on modest allowances to look after loved ones, are burdened with overpayments, sudden debts, and even criminalisation. The financial hardship is compounded by emotional trauma, stress, and a pervasive fear of further arbitrary cuts.

Yet despite repeated public scandals, DWP officials and ministers have faced minimal consequences. Politicians shrug, citing “snapshot data” and claiming errors are too few to worry about. But when you consider that the DWP handles over £200 billion annually, “few” errors still translate to thousands of individuals suffering irreversible harm. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has launched a limited investigation—though only as far back as 2021, ignoring a decade of documented abuse.

Cash-strapped departments quietly launch internal fraud plans, touting millions “saved”. But what of the stolen funds? Are those accountable being prosecuted? Is the stolen money being returned? Or is the scandal being hushed up in civil service silence?

Abolish the DWP

The DWP scandal isn’t just a moment of shame; it lays bare the moral rot at the heart of a system meant to protect people. Stealing benefits from older and disabled people is not a tragic outlier—it’s the culmination of a culture that treats human suffering as acceptable collateral. It’s a microcosm of a system with harm and neglect hardwired into it.

So, for ministers, civil servants, and MPs, the question is no longer “can this be fixed?” but “will you fix it?”.

If the DWP cannot be reformed and held to account, it should be dismantled—and rebuilt from scratch around empathy, transparency, and justice.

Featured image via the Canary

By Steve Topple

This post was originally published on Canary.