DWP announces disability advisory panel and it's already a mess

The long-awaited panel of disabled people, which minister for disabled people Stephen Timms has been promising for a while, has finally been announced. However, as is usually the case with the government pretending to include disabled people in decisions, it’s absolutely bullshit. On Monday 1 September, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published the Expression of Interest to join the Independent Disability Advisory Panel.

It said:

The Department for Work and Pensions is looking to create a Panel to support, advise and connect the department to the wider disability community.

Ten whole disabled people advising the DWP

The catch, though? The panel will only be made up of 10 people.

That’s just 10 disabled people who get to have their say across policy that affects all of us.

It’s absolutely preposterous that after claiming the government would be working with disabled people to co-produce policy that will affect our lives, they are letting just 10 people participate. But then, isn’t that just typical of a system that gives us the bare minimum and expects us to be grateful for the scraps?

The panel is also completely separate from the Timms review, which will be shaping benefits cuts and, apparently, ways in which disabled people will be “supported” into work. So they probably won’t even be involved with the most important thing the Department are doing, which will affect so many disabled people.

Not even worth selling other disabled people up the river for

The panel members will only be working 1.5 days a month, for which they will be paid £200 a day plus expenses. However, in that time they will be expected to:

Attend monthly workshops to “collaborate” with policy teams on DWP policy and strategy
Attend preparation meetings with the chair
Review departmental documents
Share questions with networks and gather wider feedback for the department
Travel to and from meetings
So they’ll either be expected to cram a lot of work into a short amount of time or work way over the time that they will be paid for – I know which one my money’s on.

As this is a paid role, it will also be subject to PAYE, meaning if the disabled panellists are on Universal Credit, it’ll count as income and they could end up losing some of their benefits for participating in a panel about disability policy. You couldn’t make it up.

The IDAP will run until 31 March 2026, which I’ve mixed feelings about. Members who won’t be paid enough will have to make themselves available for six months, but also, why is it only running for six months and not a long-term panel?

Do they want us all forced into work or not?

One good thing, I suppose, is that the majority of these sessions will be virtual, with some sessions held in DWP hubs in London, Leeds, and Sheffield. However, that’s still a fair way to travel if you’re not immediately near London or Yorkshire.

With these parameters, the DWP are effectively ruling out anyone who is working class and not within easy travelling distance to London, because let’s be honest, they included Yorkshire so us northerners wouldn’t complain.

So they want us all forced into work, but only those who can afford to donate this much time for so little pay for be involved? Almost like they don’t want to hear from the people who will be most affected.

But wait.

There’s an even bigger catch.

A gagging order on rights from the DWP

To take part in the panel, members must sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with the DWP, a legally binding contract which means if you share anything publicly about the meetings, you could face legal action.

This would ban any members from not only sharing with their networks their concerns about the running or actual role of the panel, but they’d also be banned from speaking out publicly online or to the press.

They’d also seemingly have to pretend everything was going great when asked about it. Put simply, it’s a gag order.

Some DDPOs almost welcome the panel

Disappointingly, some deaf and disabled people’s organisations are seemingly welcoming the panel and even encouraging other DDPOs and disabled people to apply for the roles. Disability Rights UK posted on Twitter

The DWP is ‘looking to create a Panel to support, advise and connect the department to the wider disability community. Let’s hold them to account!

While this is a great idea in theory, anyone who’s campaigned for disability rights knows by now how much the DWP is not interested in actually listening to us. It would be great to hold them to account, but I can’t see how this will be possible for 10 people who have a day a month and are banned from speaking out against the department. This tweet has since been deleted, so hopefully DRUK are revising their position on this.

Disabled People Against Cuts have today republished a letter by DPAC Cymru and six other Welsh DDPOs, signed by many other (mostly Welsh) organisations that was sent to the UK and devolved nations governments.

In the letter they said:

Promises to “engage widely over the summer” have not been met, and there has been no transparency over Timms’ plans for “ten people” to have “a lot of sway

They still, however, said that they “cautiously welcome” the announcement of the IDAP, whilst warning:

Trust remains very low, and the terms – of “up to 10” people – have already been set for us.

Others warn of becoming “government patsies”

Other disabled people and organisations however are seeing this for what it really is. Recovery In The Bin were one organisation that expressed their disgust at the announcement. They said on X:

It’s not an opportunity to make change, it’s an opportunity to be a patsy for a government who wants to screw disabled people and has a long track record of doing so.

Of the non-disclosure agreements, they warned:

The moment anyone signs a non-disclosure agreement with the DWP is the moment a person betrays every single disabled person.

Finally, they had a message for any disabled people considering working with the government on this:

We should not be promoting it we should be condemning it.

Activist Abigail Bloomfield put it simply:

You can’t hold them to account if you’re getting in bed with them and playing by their rules.

I will say that privately I’ve been told by other DDPO members that they oppose the panel, but we need to hear this opposition loudly and publicly

See this for what it really is: another DWP sham

At the end of the day, it’s clear that the DWP panel is just an attempt by the government to make it look like they’re listening to disabled people and actually care about us while they continue to ruin our lives. When an “opportunity” does not allow criticism or even concerns to be raised it’s really just tokenism that comes with a gagging order.

In my opinion, DDPOs and disabled people should not in any way be promoting or supporting the panel, and they most definitely should not want to be a part of something which will so transparently be used against us. We should all be boycotting and loudly speaking out against it, before they silence us all.

UPDATE: Since The Canary published this article DPAC Cymru have changed the wording of their letter to “[Some of us] cautiously welcome…”. The letter also demands that the panel must be “genuinely independent, representative, transparent, and have real powers.”

Featured image via the Canary