The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is facing severe criticism after a new report by Amnesty International labelled it as “consciously cruel” and damaging the lives of disabled and non-working people.
Speaking directly to people struggling to get by on benefits, the research reveals a welfare system riddled with stigma, inflexible rules, and a relentless approach from the DWP that treats claimants not as humans, but as suspects.
The DWP: cruel, and intentionally so
Amnesty’s extensive investigation, based on interviews with hundreds of DWP benefit claimants, presents a depressing picture of the department’s practices. Claimants described experiences that left them feeling humiliated and targeted.
One claimant told Amnesty researchers:
I would often be asked the same question three times to see if I’d change my answer. The process feels like you are on trial for murder, they act like they are trying to catch you out and that you are begging.
The report highlights how the welfare system not only fails to deliver a decent standard of living but also erodes human dignity by design.
People on benefits are subjected to relentless checks, punitive sanctions, and a bureaucracy that leaves many without the vital support they need. One claimant told how she suffered a panic attack at the Jobcentre but was met with a threat of sanction:
They look down on you when you walk into the Jobcentre. I had a panic attack in the Jobcentre. I couldn’t breathe, and she went ‘you better get upstairs now and see your work coach, or we are going to sanction you’.
Another advisor reported heartbreaking cases, including a disabled man who lost both benefits and his home after missing an assessment because he soiled himself on the way to the centre and had to return home.
Lives are being ruined
Jen Clark, Economic and Social Rights Lead at Amnesty International UK, summed up the situation saying:
Lives are being ruined by a system that is cruel – it erodes dignity by design. We are in a state of severe human rights violations. The social security system is impenetrable, inadequate, and for some completely inaccessible. There can be no tinkering of the system – it has gone too far, and it is too late. There must be full reform. It is broken from start to finish and intentionally sets people up to fail.
These harrowing accounts coincide with personal stories from across the country, showing how the system is failing those who need it most.
John Stainton, 63, dedicated much of his life serving his country as a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, even earning an OBE for his work in Afghanistan. But after being diagnosed with aggressive Multiple Sclerosis (MS), his life took a terrifying turn.
Forced into early retirement in 2022, he found navigating the DWP’s Personal Independence Payments (PIP) claim process “alien” and “disjointed.” Despite the impact MS had on his life, assessors initially gave him a low mobility score and refused him points for the daily reality of his condition.
“It took me about 15 months in total from when I first rang up to when the appeal came out,” John said:
The DWP wrote to me chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, and said they were delighted to tell me they’d decided I deserve PIP. I thought, you haven’t decided, you’ve been told by a judge.
John added that many others with MS live in constant anxiety and discouragement, choosing not to apply or appeal because of the stressful ordeal the system forces on them:
The DWP could treat people with a bit more compassion. The trouble is they start from the wrong process… the start process seems to be that anyone claiming benefits must be a scrounger.
The DWP is like a production line
John sees the thousands of disabled people he meets regularly, either desperate to contribute to society or having done so already.
Phil Davidge, 66, from Leeds, also suffered under the DWP after unexpectedly losing his job in September 2023.
He applied for Universal Credit early to avoid gaps but was unaware the claim would start from that day. When he tried to fix this, the DWP refused, causing him to lose a month’s benefits:
I just didn’t have the money. I actually missed my father passing away because I couldn’t get the money together to come down [to Swansea].
The DWP did not assist him with travel costs despite his desperate situation. Phil described the Jobcentre experience as:
like being on a production line… they asked me the same questions in a robotic fashion as if they were reading off a script or I was talking to an AI programmed robot.
The emotional toll of the system also came across in Carly Newman’s story.
A single mother in London, Carly juggled part-time work with Universal Credit to cover nursery and rent costs. However, during a complicated pay month in 2019, her Universal Credit claim was unexpectedly cancelled without warning after she received outstanding holiday pay:
When I went to pay my rent and the money wasn’t there, I just remember being at the train station on the way to work, crying.
Faced with a cold, inflexible system, Carly was forced to apply again and wait 10 weeks to get any payment. She told the Mirror:
The feeling you’re consistently living with on Universal Credit is one of vulnerability. The inflexibility of the system is like ‘computer says no’ situation. You’re not treated as a human. You just feel really vulnerable all of the time.
Carly also challenged the damaging stereotypes around benefits claimants, saying:
The narrative… that somehow we all just want to be on benefits and not to go work and have this free money. Actually most people on Universal Credit are in work and most people want to be at work earning a secure income. Universal Credit doesn’t feel secure. It feels so vulnerable and insecure and that’s a horrible feeling to have to live with, especially as a single parent. It just feels like it can be ripped away from you at any moment – no one wants to live like that.
A broken system that is only going to get worse
The DWP responded by stating that the welfare system was inherited broken and that reforms are underway; the same reforms that are going to be further cutting DWP support for chronically ill and disabled people, with hundreds of thousands set to be thrown into poverty.
The voices of those forced to endure the system paint a very different picture to the DWP and government’s one.
It is one of cruelty, anxiety, and constant threat.
The DWP’s approach appears to have created an environment where benefit claimants are made to feel less than human, pushing the most vulnerable to the edge.
The experiences of John, Phil, Carly, and countless others highlight a system that desperately needs more than just “tinkering.” It needs compassion, understanding, and a complete overhaul to restore dignity to those it claims to support.
Featured image via the Canary
