The DWP are making more redactions than the Epstein files

Thanks to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from Benefits and Work, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has released its latest Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessor training guide for neurodiverse claimants. Or at least, they’ve released around a quarter of it, anyway.

Ostensibly, the guide is intended to give ‘health professionals’ knowledge and understanding of Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia and Tourette’s Syndrome.

However, we don’t exactly know what the guide is really doing, because the DWP have chosen to redact huge swathes of it.

DWP indulge in huge redactions

The entire first section, a 17-page clinical overview, is blacked out. This would be a description of the particulars of each condition, and how they relate to workplace performance. The DWP claimed that the section is intended for future publication – as such, it’s exempt from FOI requests.

As Benefits and Work reported:

In their covering letter, the DWP say that they have now taken over producing training and guidance materials for health assessors and that “all training and guidance materials are currently undergoing a comprehensive review and update” using independent clinical experts to ensure they are accurate.

The department says it will publish the materials in the public domain once they have all been reviewed. They claim that “Releasing the current versions now would risk confusion and undermine the department’s efforts to provide clear, accurate and authoritative guidance.”

Of course, the department offered no explanation of why publishing the current guidance would actually cause confusion. Likewise, it also failed to offer any clue as to when it would actually publish the information (if it intends to do so at all).

Its claims of ‘future publication’ are also undone by the date on the redacted document, which states that it’s been in use since November 2025.

Hiding again

Of the second 15-page section, entitled ‘PIP’, only the first two pages are visible. Here, the DWP has changed tactics, claiming that its redactions are valid under a law-enforcement exemption. The would normally relate to withholding information which would interfere with the prevention or detection of a crime.

The DWP stated that:

providing detailed information for certain health conditions would allow a member of the public to use this information to make a claim to benefit to which they would not otherwise be entitled to.

And, as with Section 1’s redactions, we can tell that this is a complete and utter fabrication, too. As Benefits and Work rightly pointed out:

We know that according to the DWP’s own statistics, fraud in PIP is currently assessed to stand at 0.4%. For universal credit, the figure is 8%, twenty times higher.

Fraud in relation to ASD and ADHD is likely to be even lower, as these are conditions which cannot be diagnosed by a GP. If you planned to commit PIP fraud, these are not the first conditions you would be likely to choose.

And, of course, there’s the fact that the DWP has also redacted other guides on similarly spurious ground. Take, for example, their censoring of the in-house document on kidney failure – surely a condition that’s otherwise wide-open to benefit fraudsters.

Intentionally left blank

Finally, the department saved time with the third section – apparently on the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – which announces only that:

This section has been intentionally left blank.

So that saves us some time, at least.

In reality, the DWP isn’t keeping this information back to prevent fraud or public confusion. Rather, it’s allowing itself room to deny claims on whatever flimsy reasoning it chooses, without transparency or accountability.

They know what releasing a blanked-out document makes them look like – they just reckon they can get away with it under the aegis of Labour’s minister for disabled people, Stephen Timms, and work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden.

These aren’t sensitive state secrets.

There are no active agents in the field to protect in the warzone of PIP assessments.

The DWP sure isn’t protecting the names and identities of its victims.

It’s a guide to neurodiversity in the workplace.

The fucking Epstein files were less heavily redacted.

This is simply what accountability looks like for disabled people under Starmer’s Labour.

As a final note, Benefits and Work included the following request:

The refusal to release training documents for these conditions is also likely to extend to every other condition the DWP produce guidance for – though if readers choose to make FoI requests for their own conditions to [email protected], we’d be very interested to hear the results.

Feel free to drop them a line.

Featured image via the Canary