DWP destroyed recordings that would have proved link to daughter’s suicide, says grieving mum

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) breached its own rules by destroying recordings that would have shown how a work coach told a traumatised disabled woman to attend a face-to-face jobcentre meeting, days before she took her own life. 

DWP’s rules say it must keep recordings of phone calls with benefit claimants for at least 14 months – and even longer if the claimant has taken their own life – but it has admitted that recordings of conversations with the woman’s work coach were not retained. 

The call took place on 8 April 2022, just seven days before Rebecca* died.

DWP had been told repeatedly of her mental distress, suicidal thoughts and fear of the department and the universal credit system.

Although Rebecca had been given a six-month “fit note” by her doctor that explained she was not well enough to work, she was still expected to have regular appointments with a work coach until her fitness for work could be assessed.

Following intervention from a mental health service, DWP agreed that her appointments could take place on the phone.

But on 8 April, Rebecca – who had multiple sclerosis and weighed less than five stone at the time she died – was told by the work coach: “We have let you off this time, but you will have to come to the jobcentre next time.”

An entry in her universal credit online journal stated that there would be a meeting in the jobcentre on 22 April, her mother says.

Seven days after the phone call, on 15 April, she ended her life by suicide.

Her mother, Debra*, has spent more than two years since her death trying to obtain records that would show DWP’s contacts with her daughter.

She and her son – the executor of his sister’s will – approached the jobcentre where the work coach was based in February 2023, 10 months after Rebecca’s death, to ask for the recordings.

They were told that all phone conversations from the jobcentre were recorded.

But the recordings were never provided and when Debra’s MP contacted DWP to ask for them again, he was told they had “not been retained”.

They also asked for a copy of the secret internal process review (IPR) the department had carried out into Debra’s death.

But despite DWP telling Disability News Service in September 2022 that IPRs could be released “with the signed written consent of the administrator or executor of the deceased person’s will”, the department refused to release the IPR to Debra’s son.

Now Debra has accused DWP of a cover-up.

Last week, she received a report from the Independent Case Examiner into her complaint about DWP’s actions.

But the report includes no discussion of DWP’s failure to provide the recordings of the work coach’s phone calls; of what took place during the 8 April call; and of whether DWP had arranged a face-to-face jobcentre meeting to take place on 22 April; and no mention of the contents of DWP’s own secret review into Rebecca’s death, or that DWP’s refusal to release the review to the family was in breach of its own promise.

Instead, Joanna Wallace, the Independent Case Examiner, failed to uphold Debra’s complaint and concluded that DWP “did as they should in [your daughter’s] case, and properly investigated your allegation that their actions were a contributing factor to [her] taking her own life in April 2022”.

Debra told DNS this week: “I think it’s a cover-up, I think the whole thing is a cover-up.

“Why would you destroy recordings if there is nothing incriminating on them?

“Why they haven’t addressed that [in the ICE report], I don’t know.”

Debra has previously told DNS that the idea of always having to be under the surveillance of DWP and its universal credit system left her daughter in despair.

She would shake and cry every time she had to log onto her universal credit “journal”, which she was forced to do every weekday to avoid having her benefits sanctioned.

Rebecca had told her mother: “They will always want to know where I am going, how much money I have got. They will always be in my life, they will always want to know.”

She was so concerned that she might make an error and have her benefits sanctioned by DWP that she did not turn on the central heating in her house for the last two months of her life, and she would not allow her parents to pay her heating bill in case DWP saw the payment in her bank account.

It is not the first evidence of DWP destroying records that implicate the department in the death of a claimant.

Only four months ago, DNS revealed how senior DWP civil servants destroyed vital documents relating to the case of Michael O’Sullivan – who had taken his own life in September 2013 after being wrongly found fit for work – months after a coroner linked his death with DWP’s work capability assessment.

The latest revelations should add to pressure on the new Labour government to order a public inquiry into the links between DWP and the deaths of countless disabled claimants**.

They add to years of evidence of systemic negligence by the department, a culture of cover-up and denial, and a refusal to accept it has a duty of care to those disabled people claiming support through the social security system.

DWP refused this week to explain why it destroyed the recordings and why it failed to pass the IPR to the family.

It also refused to comment on: why the ICE report included no discussion of DWP’s failure to provide the recordings of the work coach’s phone calls; why it included no discussion of what took place during the 8 April call, when the work coach said Rebecca would have to attend a meeting in the jobcentre; why it included no discussion of whether DWP had arranged a face-to-face jobcentre meeting to take place on 22 April; and why it ignored the contents of DWP’s IPR into Rebecca’s death, and DWP’s refusal to release the review to the family in breach of its own promise to do so to such families.

But a DWP spokesperson said: “Our sincere condolences remain with the family in this case. 

“We have noted the Independent Case Examiner’s report and its conclusions.”

*Not their real names. For family reasons, Debra has asked for their names not to be used until an inquest takes place

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press 

Credit for this article goes to the Disability News Service