The DWP very quietly published a series of damning disability benefits related reports at 4pm on Friday 2 May, on the eve of a bank holiday and on a day when the news was dominated by the results of the local elections held the day before. 

Had it not been for the ever vigilant staff at Rightsnet spotting them, the documents would have undoubtedly sunk without trace.

The reports show, amongst other things that:

  • additional work coach support makes almost no difference to disabled claimants employment prospects, in spite of being one of the main tools for getting people into work as set out in the Pathways To Work Green Paper;
  • Employment and Health Discussions also make almost no difference to disabled claimants, in spite of being another of the pillars of the Pathways To Work Green Paper employment drive;
  • few claimants find out about PIP from the media or social media, undermining the claim that “sickfluencers” are at the heart of a rise in PIP claims.

Additional work coach support

In a report entitled “The Experience of Additional Work Coach Support”, researchers carried out in-depth interviews with claimants on the “universal credit health journey” who had been given extra appointments with a work coach.

The experience was a positive one for many claimants,: “Many customers saw improvements to mental health and wellbeing because of the consistent, empathetic support they received from their work coach.”

Ironically, one of the ways work coaches improved their customers lives was by “helping with claims for Personal Independence Payment

However, the report found that “Feeling meaningfully closer to work was an outcome for only a minority of those interviewed.”

The researchers found that claimants with limited capability for work-related activity “were less likely to report an improvement in their work motivation and confidence following support from a work coach. This was mainly because their health condition(s) continued to be their over-riding concern.”

Work coach intervention had no effect where physical health was concerned:  “While support from a work coach often improved mental wellbeing, there was little change in the customers’ ability to manage physical health conditions. For those who saw their physical health as a barrier to work, this generally remained the case despite work coach support.”

Given that 72% of claimants facing the loss of their PIP under the Green Paper cuts have physical health conditions, this suggests there is little chance that increased support from the DWP would make any difference to their employment outlook.

Paragraph 228 of the Pathways To Work Green Paper boasts that additional work coach support raised the employment rate of LCWRA claimants from 8% to 11%.

There are two issues with this. 

Firstly, it is a very small increase:  if 1.3 million claimants lose their PIP daily living component, then a 3% improvement in employment rates would see just 39,000 of these claimants find work.

Secondly, the Green Paper made no reference to the fact that additional work coach support only appears to have any positive effect at all for claimants with mental health issues, whilst the overwhelming majority of threatened PIP claimants have back problems, arthritis, other musculoskeletal problems, respiratory disease and heart disease.

Employment and Health discussion

The Employment and Health Discussion (EHD) involves a conversation between a UC claimant with a health condition and a healthcare professional.

The purpose of the conversation is to identify the range of barriers affecting the claimant’s ability to work, identify solutions and put them together in a Workability Action Plan that the claimant can use to move towards work.

A report evaluating the EHD was one of those quietly slipped out by the DWP before the bank holiday weekend.

The report found that when surveyed immediately after completing the EHD, around half of claimants(48%) reported feeling more positively about work and (57%) reported that they were more likely to take up support offers such as training or volunteering. Smaller proportions reported feeling more confident about getting into work (40%) and that work was more important to them (35%).

However, according to the report, these feelings were not sustained:  “When a small sample were surveyed 6 weeks after completing the EHD, few reported continued improvements to their workability scores after the EHD, even when they had taken the suggested steps in their Workability Action Plan.”

The report went on to say that “in practice it appears solutions are not always best matched to obstacles in Workability Action Plans. Similarly, the full range of barriers within the biopsychosocial model may be underexplored in some cases.”

In layman’s terms then, EHD’s make claimant’s briefly feel more positive but the solutions they produce don’t work and fail to address may of the barriers to work that disabled claimants actually face.

Yet paragraphs 217 to 223 of the Pathways To Work Green Paper are devoted to the introduction of “a new support conversation” which will “enable people to get help early, providing access to more rapid and timely support.”

Except that, according to their own research, the support conversation won’t have any lasting effects at all.

Triggers to claiming PIP

In another buried report, “Triggers to claiming Personal Independence Payment” researchers found that: “People were recently made aware of PIP through contact with formal services (including Jobcentre Plus) friends and family. Few participants mentioned media or social media.”

The report was commissioned after a rise in PIP claims that took place in October 2021 and so may be out of date, but it does raise the question as to why the DWP have waited until now to publish it.

More importantly, it means that the DWP have no evidence to support the claim that young people are being introduced to the idea of claiming PIP by YouTube and TikTok “sickfluencers”. 

In fact, the only actual evidence they can produce about what prompts people to claim PIP says exactly the opposite.

The buried reports in full

When he became disability minister, Stephen Timms claimed that he would create a new era of transparency at the DWP, as part of an effort to restore trust in the DWP.

Yet his department deliberately buried reports that cast enormous doubt on the two main tools to be used to move claimants, who have had their benefits cut or stopped, into work.

They kept this evidence from MPs just weeks before they are due to vote on the Green Paper.

Perhaps you could share news of the reports with your MP, given that Mr Timms is so reluctant to do so? 

You can download all the DWP’s research reports from this page.

The reports that were all published on the eve of the bank holiday are:

Applicants’ Journeys to Claiming PIP: Research

Additional Support Needs in the Personal Independence Payment Claim Journey

The experience of Additional Work Coach Support: Findings from qualitative interviews with customers

Triggers to claiming Personal Independence Payment

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  • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
    · 2 months ago
    Nobody was fooled when they appointed Timms to be the so called “new face of the dwp, ushering in a new era of transparency and respectability.” He has sold out, probably with one eye on his final salary that determines his pension. An uncomfortable watch whenever he is in the spotlight. As for being Christian, I hope this current s***storm is giving him sleepless nights.
    • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
      · 2 months ago
      @Anon
      "Permission to email this to Timms?"

      No problem, though I don't rate your chances of getting a reply! Still, if you want to send it to him, feel free to add the following. It is a reading from chapter 3 of an esoteric Apocryphal text known as the Parable of the Fiscal Rules.


      1.  Now it came to pass at this time that Jesus and his disciples met a lame and starving beggar. And the beggar implored Jesus to help him, saying "Oh lord, I am lame and hungry! Behold, my beard is white, my belly is empty and my raiments humble! Come to my aid in my time of woe!"

      2. But Jesus was unmoved and refused to help the man.

      3. And this caused much confusion among the disciples, and they said to him, "Why oh lord, will you not help this lame and starving beggar? Is his beard not white, his belly empty and his raiments humble? Have you not often told us, lord, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? And have you not also told us that if a rich man shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven he must first renounce all his worldly possessions and live in humility?"

      4. But Jesus chided them for their blindness, saying, "You have not understood my teachings and have fallen prey to the wickedness of outdated anti-business dogma. This is a grave sin in the eyes of the Almighty". And he urged them to repent of their sinful ways.

      5. But the disciples said again, "Come to his aid oh lord, that his suffering may be relieved!".

      6. But Jesus was again unmoved, and he said to them, "you have forgottten the scribes who write the daily chronicles, which are owned by Rothermere the non-dom, whose family's shirts are black, and Rupert the Antipodean. If I give alms to the poor they will say I am encouraging a dependency culture, and this will undermine our competitiveness. And this is a terrible sin."

      7. So the disciples said to Jesus, "can we do nothing to help him lord?"

      8. And Jesus replied, "we can help him. We can tell him to stand on his own two feet."

      9. But Thomas, the disciple who harboured many doubts, said, "but lord......he hath no legs."

      10. And Jesus said, "such obstacles are as nought to one who has an aspirational attitude. But this man hath fallen into the ways of sloth and idleness. I say unto you, his disability is a lifestyle choice."

      11. So the beggar went hungry, and the disciples marvelled at Jesus' wisdom.   


    • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
      · 2 months ago
      @tintack Permission to email this to Timms?
    • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
      · 2 months ago
      @tintack Love your comment tintack 
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      · 2 months ago
      @Bert Anyone can be pious.
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      · 2 months ago
      @tintack Love it! We must keep up the fight.  Thanks Benefits and Work for your brilliant work.
  • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
    · 2 months ago
    How to get the information to the right destinations is the challenge, so that everyone is in the know.
  • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
    · 2 months ago
    Can Benefits and Work perhaps pass these to the national media? It would sound more plausible coming from a respected advice service such as B&W? Thank you for highlighting this. I will pass this to my MP who is prob fed up with me by now.
    • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
      · 2 months ago
      @Old Mother Old Mother -spot on
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      · 2 months ago
      @rookie The only thing they will listen to is 1. Losing votes. 2. Legal challenges. 3. Money - a real conversation needs to be had about the cost of perpetual changing systems, monitoring compliance and the departments and contractors running this farce. 

      Disability and illness should be a medical matter only - it doesn’t change because it’s being monitored or used to score political points.
    • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
      · 2 months ago
      @rookie agreed! 
    • Thank you for your comment. Comments are moderated before being published.
      · 2 months ago
      @Moose Yes, the media, print and broadcast, all need to get this, and Timms should be made to listen.

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