Using powers given to it by the House of Commons, the
Work and Pensions Committee is to obtain and
publish a DWP-commissioned report on disabled people’s
experiences of the benefits system after the Department once
again refused to make the research public.
The Committee last month gave
the Secretary of State one final chance to publish the
report, which she herself admitted fell within the
Government’s own protocol for
publication.
Following confirmation from Thérèse
Coffey that she will not be reconsidering her decision,
theCommittee has written to
the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), which
carried out the research, ordering it to provide a copy for
publication by the Committee by Thursday 27th January.
Rt Hon MP, Chair of the Work and
Pensions Committee, said: “After repeated
obstruction from the Secretary of State to keep from public view
a piece of work that falls within the Government’s own protocol
for publication, we have reached the end of the road. We would
have much rather the DWP had done the right thing and published
the report itself, so it is with regret that we must now take the
highly unusual step of using our parliamentary powers to obtain a
copy from NatCen and publish it ourselves. We have been forced to
do this to ensure that the reality of disabled people’s
experiences of the benefits system can see the light of
day.”
The report The Uses of Health and Disability Benefits
was received by the Government in September 2020. It followed a
research project led by the NatCen, which interviewed disabled
people about their experiences of receiving PIP, ESA and
Universal Credit.
Previous correspondence between the Committee and the Secretary
of State is available here. A transcript of
the Chair’s exchange with Dr Coffey at last month’s evidence
session is available here.
At this week’s Prime Minister’s
Questions, in response to a question from , promised that the Government
would publish the research ‘as soon as we can’.
