The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) threw close to half a million pounds at defending its dangerous plans to deny hundreds of thousands of claimants their vital health-related benefits. This was over the Conservatives’ proposed work capability assessment (WCA) reforms – which would see more than 450,000 disabled people lose around £416 a month in Universal Credit.
Disabled activist Ellen Clifford won the case against the DWP in mid-January. Specifically, the court judge ruled that the DWP had acted unlawfully in how it had conducted the 8-week consultation. Of course, Labour shamelessly chose to continue with the case – when it could have settled with Clifford out of court instead.
Now, thanks to another disabled activist, we know it landed itself a near £466,000 bill in defending the former Tory government’s exclusionary, and unlawful consultation. However, the DWP has revealed something equally, if not more telling in tandem with this disclosure. Specifically, why Labour chose to defend the case in the first place. And the answer says a whole lot about the party’s attitude to centring disabled people’s voices and experience in policy changes that concern them. Needless to say, it isn’t good.
Dangerous DWP WCA reforms
The planned DWP WCA reforms relate to which claimants will fall into the limited capability for work (LCW), and the limited capability for work related activity (LCWRA) groups of Universal Credit.
The DWP ran a consultation on these between September and October 2023. As the Canary previously detailed:
the DWP is planning to change the WCA. Specifically, it’s planning on taking out or changing the following features:
- Factoring in people’s mobility
- Bladder or bowel incontinence.
- The inability to cope in social situations.
- People’s ability to leave their homes.
- Work being a risk to claimants or others – a clause which means that an individual is “treated as having limited capability for work and work related activity“
In November, the then Tory-run DWP responded to the consultation. Notably, it laid out how it would proceed with a number of these. Specifically, it decided to take forward DWP WCA changes to:
- Work being a risk to claimants. Specifically, it will tighten the criteria for this. Notably, it stated that: “We will specify the circumstances, and physical and mental health conditions, for which LCWRA Substantial Risk should apply.” In other words, the DWP will decide who this will apply to going forward – and will obviously move the goalposts.
- People’s mobility – which it’s removing as a descriptor altogether.
- People’s ability to leave their homes – which it will now reduce the points for in the assessment.
However, disabled activist Ellen Clifford took the DWP to court over the exclusionary consultation the DWP held on these proposals. And in January, the court found the eight-week consultation and “misleading” information the DWP communicated to consultees, was indeed unlawful.
Scrutinising the DWP
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) activist and co-founder of Unite the Union’s ‘Cut Sanctions Not Incomes’ campaign Andy Mitchell submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to find out how much the government spent defending the case. Separately, Independent MP John McDonnell also posed this to the DWP in a written question. Both came back with the same response, which was that, the:
DWP’s litigation costs as of 21 January 2025 are £211,345.42.
DWP has been ordered to pay the Claimant’s reasonable costs of the claim. The DWP will
endeavour to agree those reasonable costs with the Claimant following the standard legal
process where necessary. The DWP has been ordered to pay £254,458.63 as a payment on
account of the Claimant’s costs representing 60% of an estimate of the costs she has
incurred in bringing this claim.Internal DWP staffing costs by task are not recorded so this information is not held under
Section 1(1)(a) of FOIA.DWP does not intend to appeal the High Court’s ruling.
So it means the DWP spent close to £466,000 on the case. Additionally, this did not factor in staff costs, so the true figure will actually be higher than this.
DWP misuse and abuse of taxpayer funds
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a lot of money to the DWP. Moreover, it pales in comparison to the vast millions the DWP has ploughed into attempting to prevent disabled claimants from getting benefit awards. A previous FOI showed it had spent over £700m in the ten years between April 2012 and March 2023 on fighting appeals and mandatory reconsiderations.
For Universal Credit, this equated to £63m on mandatory reconsiderations and £26m on appeals. Obviously, the bulk of these would be on decisions over LCWRA applications. And notably, the success rate of appeals for social security is consistently high. This was 60% in the latest quarterly statistics (July to September 2024). For Universal Credit, it was 51%. It means that the DWP has wrongly denied benefits to upwards of half the claimants who have gone on to appeal. In other words, the DWP has put hundreds of millions of pounds towards trying to stop people getting the benefits they are entitled to and need.
Nonetheless, the fact still remains that Labour saw fit to waste £466,000 more taxpayers’ money to defend the indefensible. It could have accepted Clifford’s arguments, settled out of court, and have spared both Clifford and the DWP time and probably a significant portion of this.
While it’s grousing over the so-called ‘benefits bill’, it might do the Labour-led DWP some good to reflect on whether this was a good use of its staff’s time, and the public purse.
Instead of abusing what taxpayers have endowed it with fighting a disabled activist in court, it could have put some of this to use actually addressing the issues Clifford was highlighting in the first place.
Why Labour defended the case
Yet, while this figure was certainly revealing, it was the Labour-led DWP’s answer to why it chose to defend the case that really raised some serious red flags.
In a separate written question, McDonnell grilled the government over this. Minister for disabled people Stephen Timms responded for the DWP. The bulk of the answer was the same stock response the DWP had given the Canary (and other media outlets) when the ruling came in. Specifically, Timms wrote that:
The Courts have found the previous government failed to explain their proposals adequately. We felt, on balance that the consultation that was under challenge had provided people with sufficient information and time to respond intelligently to the proposals. However, we have accepted the judgment and do not intend to appeal.
As part of wider reforms that help people into work and ensure fiscal sustainability, the government will re-consult on WCA descriptor changes, addressing the shortcomings in the previous consultation, in light of the judgment. The government intends to deliver the full level of savings in the public finance forecasts.
Firstly, the department is being purposely obtuse in its answer once again. As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey previously pointed out, this acknowledged how the proposals are savings motivated. By contrast though, she noted that:
they’re still not being transparent about how the cuts would affect people.
This ‘savings’ line is also one that echoes Reeves’ statement on the WCA reforms in the Autumn Budget statement.
In particular, the supposed savings would amount to £1.3bn annually from 2028. Naturally, the former Tory government had undertaken reviews to calculate this. And notably, this also included estimating how many Deaf and Disabled people the DWP may no longer assess as having limited capacity for work or work-related activity, if it implements the proposals.
However, the DWP didn’t provide any of this information to consultees as part of the consultation process. This was something that judge Justice Calver ruled the DWP should have disclosed.
Ultimately though, the key takeaway here is that Labour is hell-bent on following through to make these savings. Given that, it’s little wonder it didn’t opt to concede and settle with Clifford out of court – because it wants to finish the work the Tories started. In short, as the statement suggests, it also seems to want to shift the LCWRA descriptor goalposts, and deny hundreds of thousands their benefits.
Cost savings conceal the true expense: disabled people’s lives
It’s that so-called ‘savings’ focus which also puts the DWP’s court costs into context too. The reforms would see at least 456,000 people lose out.
Essentially then, you could say that the DWP spent around £1 per claimant it plans to shunt out of the LCWRA category. In short, it made the decision to waste nearly half a million pounds of taxpayer’s money, because it reasoned that getting to pursue these reforms would ultimately save the Treasury more.
However, that perfectly encapsulates how the new Labour government is completely wedded to this neoliberal economic ideology. It is austerity-driven welfare cuts through and through – without any regard to the true costs. And of course, the true costs will be disabled people’s lives.
But it was the new part in Timms’ answer that really drove this home. This was that:
We felt, on balance that the consultation that was under challenge had provided people with sufficient information and time to respond intelligently to the proposals. However, we have accepted the judgment and do not intend to appeal.
While there is the caveat that it won’t appeal, it implies that on a fundamental level, Labour didn’t and likely doesn’t really agree with the judgement. That’s key, because what Timms is effectively saying, is that the Labour-led DWP think the Tories did give disabled people enough time and information to respond to the consultation.
Remember that the judge found the consultation to be unlawful and “unfair” on the following bases:
- The eight-week consultation was “unlawfully short”
- Running the rushed consultation at the same time as the consultation on the government’s Disability Action Plan placed an “unfair burden” on disabled people
- It was “misleading” because it failed to disclose its savings focus, and the impacts on claimants. It should have made these facts clear to consultees.
So Timms’ comment implies Labour thought eight weeks, while it was running another significant consultation, was sufficient. Moreover, it suggests too that it didn’t feel that the government should inform consultees on its savings motivation, nor the “substantial” financial losses the changes would mean for multiple disabled claimants.
A tick-box exercise
The first part speaks to a broader issue with Labour’s attitude to listening to and involving disabled people in its policy-making.
Not that this is anything new of course. For instance, it was only September that disabled campaigners were lambasting the government for sidelining disabled voices from its ‘economic inactivity’ board. This is the Labour Market Advisory Board that Kendall appointed to tackle this so-called ‘economic inactivity’ – people out of work and not looking for it – in the context of ‘long-term sickness’.
The point the judicial review ruling made was that many chronically ill and disabled people wouldn’t have been able to input in the allotted time. Clearly, Labour either thinks otherwise, or doesn’t care that it excluded them. Or alternatively, it could be a bit of both.
Whatever the case, it doesn’t exactly shout “the government understands disabled people’s lived reality”. There’s a certain paternalistic ableism in Labour saying it was enough time for people to “respond intelligently” too. It’s as if Labour is dictating what chronically ill and disabled people should be able to do, rather than listening to them telling it how the short consultation timeframe posed a barrier.
Largely though, what this dismissive and exclusionary answer from Timms underscores is that Labour will likely take disabled people’s views into account as tokenistically as the former Tory government did.
Yes, Labour will re-consult on these proposals – but it needs to. After all, the ruling made clear it would have to do this in order to carry out any iteration of these plans. However, that’s hardly reassuring when it’s repeatedly throwing out the line about its commitment to making the same cost savings.
It’s not a meaningful consultation if the government’s resulting plans are a foregone conclusion – it’s just a tick-box exercise.
Labour can’t hide its callous agenda
However, it’s the second point here that’s if anything, even more insidious. It didn’t think consultees needed to know the proposals’ savings basis, OR that they would mean huge numbers of disabled claimants substantially losing out on their benefits.
Labour should be well aware what this could result in. After all, Judge Calver even highlighted how it could:
drive vulnerable people into poverty as well as adversely affecting disabled people and substantial risk claimants who have mental health conditions and suicide ideation.
Of course, the upshot of this is: more disabled people dying from benefit cuts. These were therefore vital details. This is especially so for disabled claimants responding to the consultation, since it could have direct ramifications for them.
In suggesting this was extraneous information, Labour is proving once again that it’s quite content lying to disabled communities by omission. At the end of the day, Labour pursued the case for a reason. Like the Tories, it didn’t want the truth of the real costs to chronically ill and disabled communities to get in the way of its benefit cut ambitions.
However, thanks to Clifford’s and disabled activists’ tenacity, Labour can’t follow through with these reforms without another consultation. And now, it must do so with the harm its callous policies will do in full view.
Featured image via the Canary
