The DWP may be illegally breaching sick and disabled claimants’ confidentiality by failing to provide a private room for work-focused interviews in seventy percent of its Jobcentre Plus offices.
The DWP were asked last month in a Freedom of Information act request:
“Please can you confirm whether every Job Centre Plus location has a private interview room available for work focused interviews?
“If private rooms are not available in every JCP, please confirm what % of job centres have private interview rooms.”
The questioner said they were asking in response to the claim by Mims Davies, DWP minister for disabled people, that the DWP was supporting claimants with mental health conditions by adopting a “Trauma Informed Approach”. According to Davies, this would ensure that to “anyone interacting with our services feels as safe, empowered and understood as possible; this will underpin our ongoing commitment to compassionate coaching and tailored services.”
However, in its response this month to the question about private interview rooms, the DWP stated that:
“Not every jobcentre has a publicly available interview room. Approximately 30% of our jobcentre network have one or more of these facilities.”
This means that claimants with physical or mental health issues which affect their ability to work may in seven out of ten jobcentre offices, have to discuss these in a public space. This is the very antithesis of making people feel “safe, empowered and understood”.
The failure to provide a confidential area for such discussions may breach a number of laws.
Article 8 of the Human Rights Act protects your right to respect for your private life. Forcing claimants to discuss their health issues in a public space or lose benefits seems to be a clear breach of this right.
The Equality Act 2010 gives everyone the right to be treated with dignity and respect. Organisations must not discriminate against you in relation to protected characteristics, including disability.
Obliging disabled claimants to discuss deeply confidential matters relating to their health and medical history in a public space appears to be clearly discriminatory and may also constitute a failure to make reasonable adjustments if a claimant asks to have a private room for such discussions. The DWP is a massively resourced organisation and it is not credible for them to argue that it would be too costly for them to provide a confidential space in each jobcentre.
The failure to provide a private space may also be a breach of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The GDPR covers information that forms part of a filing system or is intended to form part of a filing system. Health information collected from a claimant at a work-focused interview is unquestionably intended to be recorded in writing and form part of a filing system.
In David Scott v LGBT Foundation Ltd [2020] EWHC 483 (QB), the High Court ruled that oral information was not covered by what was then the Data Protection Act. However, in that case the defendant – a counselling organisation - passed on details of the appellant’s’ self-harming to their GP after they were disclosed in a telephone call.
However, it is likely that this case could be distinguished from the treatment of disabled claimants in Jobcentres on a number of grounds.
The LGBT Foundation’s policy, which the appellant had agreed to, allowed for them to breach confidentiality where there was a risk to a client if they did not. Breaching confidentiality by failing to provide a private space is a very different issue.
In addition, there was no element of coercion in that relationship, whereas the DWP can render a claimant destitute if they do not take part in a work-focused interview.
At Benefits and Work we are not specialists in the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act or the GDPR, but we hope that there are organisations out there who may be able to support claimants who have their right to confidentiality breached in this shamelessly cost-cutting manner.
Have you had your right to confidentiality breached by the DWP. Please let us know in the comments section below.
