Pring’s The Department shows how the Department of Welfare and Pensions, with the aid of the media and politicians, created a system of social murder, finds Terina Hine

Hundreds, if not thousands, have died as a result of changes to disability assessments, claims John Pring in his recent exposé of state led stigmatisation and violence against the disabled. The publication of The Department follows ten years of detailed research and freedom-of-information requests. The result is an accessible and detailed account of welfare changes since the late 1980s running through to 2023, interspersed with heartbreaking stories of twelve individuals who died at the hands of the system supposed to support them.

Pring provides ample evidence of not just ministerial disdain for the disabled but of an entire system designed to victimise. In the name of efficiency, reform follows reform, and each time the DWP (formerly DSS) becomes ever more cruel. Sick or suicidal, never mind, what matters is making savings, even if the effect is fatal.

The book begins with the account of how a young mother, Philippa Day, committed suicide. A copy of her suicide note is reproduced: ‘My name is Philippa Day I’m a good person, I’m strong as fuck. I’m a damn good mother … I tried I really did … I’m sorry’ (p.1). Philippa Day was awarded a lifetime allowance (Disability Living Allowance) in 1994 but in 2018 her support was reduced to the extent that she was no longer able to look after herself or her son. The impact led her to take her own life. While Philippa was in a coma, Capita, on behalf of the DWP, and in the full knowledge that Philippa was in a coma in hospital, told Philippa’s family that if she failed to attend her assessment the following week, her claim would be cancelled (p.209). An inquest found DWP ‘errors and delays’ had been ‘significant contributory factors’ in her death (p.212). Pring’s book shows Philippa Day was not an isolated case.

The horrifying practices of the DWP are brought into sharp focus, the consequences so predicable it is difficult to conclude they were not deliberate. Evidence of repeated failures leading to severe hardship and death – sometimes by suicide, other times from neglect or starvation – failed to lead to change. Instead, politicians and civil servants denied and lied, the only lessons learned: how to make evidence disappear and sanctions on claimants tougher.

Pring reveals how senior civil servants designed a system that would cause harm to a great many, and how they were aided and abetted by private medical insurers waiting in the wings to make a fast buck. Civil servants covered up evidence of harm, failing to share key documents, including Prevention of Future Death reports and internal reviews, avoiding accountability or any change in policy.

Judicial reviews that revealed significant failures on the part of the DWP were ignored. In 2013, and again in 2017, independent judges concluded the DWP discriminated against people with mental-health conditions, yet things only got worse.

Culture of victimisation

Pring shows how the media shares culpability, time after time reinforcing the narrative of the undeserving sick and labelling disabled people as malingerers and scroungers. Even when it was acknowledged that some claimants may indeed be ‘deserving’, the majority are stigmatised as being on the fiddle.

The cruelty that runs through every pore of the system is countered in the book by the life stories of twelve individuals who have died. Their lives, not just the final months or years, are shown in full colour, in contrast to the dehumanising rhetoric of politicians, the media and DWP. Their stories are compassionately told, and in so doing, Pring gives the dead an agency denied in their lifetime.

The statistics quoted in the book are truly shocking: for every 10,000 claimants reassessed through the WCA (Work Capability Assessment) between 2010 and 2013, there were an additional six suicides, an additional 2,700 cases of self-reported mental-health problems and an increase of more than 7,000 in the number of anti-depressants prescribed. Not surprisingly, the most significant increases in harm were found in the most deprived areas.

The reassessment process during the three years 2010-13 ‘was associated with’ an extra 590 suicides (p.176). Two years later in 2015, the Tories won a majority and promised a further £12 billion in cuts to welfare spending.

Professor Sir Mansel Aylward is singled out as the ‘architect’ of the system, and confronted by Pring, but it is abundantly clear he is but one villain among thieves. Pring’s final message is a plea for justice ‘after decades of dehumanising bureaucratic neglect, cruelty and violence’ (p.262). However, justice cannot be achieved without the perpetrators of violence recognising their crimes.

Unfortunately the system Aylward set in train in the 1980s is still with us, and Starmer’s Labour has doubled down on the demonisation of disabled claimants. Today we are again hearing about the ‘sick-note culture’, ‘malingerers’ and how mental illness is over diagnosed. We are told that people who can work chose not to, and hard workers are paying for ‘fraudulent benefit cheats’. This damaging narrative which dates back to Margaret Thatcher and John Major is being given a new lease of life by the current Labour government, who have chosen to continue the violence against the disabled and sick. Pring’s book comes as a useful and timely reminder.