A minister is refusing to release three documents that link the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) with the deaths of benefit claimants, despite criticising DWP only last month for “absurdly” refusing to comply with similar freedom of information requests.

Sir Stephen Timms, Labour’s minister for social security and disability, is defending his decision to keep secret a critically-important report on the impact of DWP errors on disabled claimants, and two other documents that link his new department with multiple deaths.

His decision not to release the information comes less than a month after he told Disability News Service (DNS) at Labour’s party conference that the new government needed to “open up what is going on in the Department for Work and Pensions to public scrutiny”.

He told DNS last month: “The department has absurdly refused to answer lots of the [freedom of information] questions that you have asked and that is something that we want to change… because public scrutiny is a good thing, and it puts pressure on ministers and on civil servants to have the consequences of what they are doing known about publicly.”

Both he and Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, criticised successive Conservative governments this week for hiding 31 DWP research papers, some of them for up to six years (see separate story).

Kendall told MPs that under her leadership DWP would “be honest about the problems that the country faces”, while Sir Stephen said the decision to release the papers was “a vital first step in rebuilding the trust in the department that was so shattered by the culture of secrecy, obfuscation and cover-up by Conservative ministers”.

He made those comments even though he is preventing the release of three key documents that link his new department with the deaths of disabled claimants.

Among those documents is a secret report, produced in 2022 by the previous government, that details the impact of DWP errors on “vulnerable customers”.

The report contains “worst case scenario” information about the impact of DWP’s errors, which it is desperate to keep hidden from the public as it could have “a negative reputational impact” on the department.

The information commissioner ordered DWP to release the report last November, arguing that there was a “strong public interest in understanding DWP’s approach to preventing future errors and safeguarding issues”.

DWP appealed that decision, and the case will now be heard by the information rights tribunal.

Despite his criticism of the department’s lack of transparency under Conservative leadership, Sir Stephen has dismissed the information commissioner’s ruling and insists there are “good public interest reasons” for refusing to release the report.

He is refusing to order DWP to halt the tribunal, which will cost thousands of pounds of public money, but he now plans to contact the commissioner about the case. 

The second document contains recommendations made between 2020 and 2023 by DWP’s secret internal process reviews, following deaths linked to its actions and failings and connected to its much-criticised universal credit system.

DWP appealed against a decision in July this year by the information commissioner that it should release the recommendations.

The department has previously argued that the “ad hoc release” of the information would “only serve to increase” the “misconceptions” and “incorrect views” held by the “general public”.

Sir Stephen has suggested that DWP will release this information “hopefully by the end of the year” – the department made a similar argument last December when it claimed it intended to publish them “at a future date” – but he has refused to halt the tribunal, a decision that will again cost thousands of pounds of public money.

And in a third transparency failure, he has refused to order his department to release information that would show what recommendations have been made to improve the work capability assessment (WCA) in the last five years, following the deaths of claimants.

He offered no defence of this decision, stating only: “I note you will be seeking a final review.” 

The information about the WCA and its links with claimant deaths will be crucial as the new Labour government is likely soon to publish its own plans for the assessment, either in the next few weeks or in the spring.

When DNS asked DWP to explain the three refusals, in the light of Sir Stephen’s comments at the Labour conference, the department refused to comment. 

But it did provide a background briefing note which said Sir Stephen was requesting that DNS clarifies the remarks he made at the conference to make it clear that he was referring to the previous government and not to DWP.

When DNS pointed out that his remarks had clearly referenced both “the department” and DWP “civil servants”, Sir Stephen said in an email that he was “referring to what the department was doing under the instructions of former Ministers”.

That was not made explicit in the comments he made at the conference.

Backtracking further from his conference comments, he then claimed that it “makes no sense to criticise the department when its decisions are made by Ministers”.

DNS pointed out that documents uncovered by DNS editor John Pring from the National Archives showed clearly how senior civil servants have been right at the heart of the “bureaucratic violence” inflicted on disabled claimants of benefits over the last three decades*.

DWP had not apologised for the incorrect briefing by noon today (Thursday).

*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