The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that it failed to appoint a chief medical adviser for more than five years, at a time when its policy decisions were causing countless deaths of disabled benefit claimants.

The department failed even to appoint a medical professional to fill the post in an interim capacity between July 2017 and November 2022.

The failure to fill the post – described as “criminally negligent” and “absolutely shocking” by disabled activists this week – has only emerged in response to a freedom of information request from Disability News Service (DNS).

Following the departure of Dr Bill Gunnyeon – who “retired” from the post in 2014, and then waited just six months before joining the US outsourcing giant Maximus to work on both its work capability assessment (WCA) and Fit for Work contracts – DWP appointed Dr Pui Ling Li.

She was in post until July 2017.

But DWP admitted this week that from July 2017 to November 2022 “there was no Chief Medical Adviser in DWP”.

A job listing for the position* from the summer of 2021 said the successful candidate would “ensure expert clinical advice informs policy, legislation and delivery decisions on social security and employment benefits and services – including the Personal Independence Payment [PIP] and Employment and Support Allowance”.

During the five-year period without a chief medical adviser, a series of high-profile deaths were closely linked to DWP’s actions and failures, including those of Errol Graham, Roy Curtis, James Oliver, Philippa Day, Christian Wilcox, Philip Pakree, Ker Featherstone, and Kevin Gale, who took his own life on 4 March 2022 after he became overwhelmed by the universal credit application process.

It was also a period when DWP’s own figures showed the number of its secret internal process reviews into deaths of benefit claimants more than doubled over three years; and the Commons work and pensions committee found the benefits assessment system to be undermined by a “pervasive culture of mistrust”. 

During these five years, DWP also secretly abandoned work on a £106 million plan that was supposed to prevent suicides and other deaths of benefit claimants, learn from its mistakes, and deliver reform “for the most vulnerable in society”.

In November 2022, the department finally made an interim appointment, with Dr Emily Pikett taking up the role until last September, when DWP appointed the current chief medical adviser, Dr Gail Allsopp, who does not provide her surname on her LinkedIn profile – describing herself as Gail A – and does not appear to be mentioned anywhere on the DWP website.

A spokesperson for the grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin, said: “This is another criminally negligent act by the DWP, while not being unusual across the shambolic government of the last 15 years. 

“It simply emphasises that they truly did not think they had a duty of care and were completely careless as to what harm they did. 

“Actions speak louder than words and this says loudly they do not consider us as human beings deserving of rights and respect. 

“It also shows the fake medical show trials the WCA and PIP assessments really are.” 

Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, said DWP’s failure to ensure it had a chief medical adviser was “absolutely shocking and appalling” and “downright negligent”.  

She said: “Yet again this shows the callous disregard the department has for claimants’ lives and safety and the total lack of empathy the department has towards families when they know that disabled people are dying as a result of their cruel and callous policies.

“They must be held to account for this and hard-hitting questions must be put to ministers to explain why there was no chief medical officer in post at the DWP for five years.”

DWP had not been able to comment by 1pm today (Thursday) on the failure to appoint a chief medical adviser for five years, despite a request being emailed to its press office by DNS on Tuesday morning.

DNS editor John Pring had submitted the freedom of information request to check on a claim made during an interview with DWP’s former chief medical adviser, Professor Sir Mansel Aylward.  

During the interview in March 2023 for Pring’s book, The Department*, Professor Aylward promised to contact the current holder of the role with questions about the WCA. 

Professor Aylward, who died on 29 May this year after a long illness, promised in the interview that he would investigate why the assessment – which was based on the “all work test” he developed in the early 1990s – had been linked to hundreds of suicides between 2010 and 2013.

He told Pring last year: “I have to do some background reading, obviously, but I don’t want something that I was associated with in developing being a cause of so much stress that people commit suicide.”

He promised to contact DWP’s current chief medical adviser to ask them about the training given to those who now carry out WCAs, how their work is monitored, and “why there are so many deaths”.

He said: “Because he must know, mustn’t he? Well, we want to look into it so you can, you know, put that element into your book as well.”

Professional Aylward had long been a controversial figure among disabled activists for his role in developing the all work test, and his links to the biopsychosocial model of health – which has played a hugely influential role in the department’s assessment systems – and the US disability insurance giant Unum.

Soon after last year’s interview, he became seriously ill with pancreatic cancer.

When Pring spoke to his wife in July 2023, she said he probably had just months or even weeks to live but still wanted to “set the record straight”.

She asked Pring to email some follow-up questions, but Professor Aylward never responded to them.

As well as asking for details of all DWP’s chief medical advisers since Gunnyeon’s retirement, Pring asked DWP in the freedom of information request whether Professor Aylward had written to the current chief medical adviser, as he had promised to do.

In response to the request, DWP said: “Following a search of our paper and electronic records, we have established that the information you requested is not held by this Department and advise that Professor Sir Mansel Aylward died in May 2024.”

*Although this post is described as “head medical practitioner”, it is believed to be the same role as chief medical adviser 

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, by John Pring, is published by Pluto Press 

– Credit for this article goes to the Disability News Service