Northern Disabled People’s Organisations share their fury at DWP’s Disability Advisory Panel

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has finally announced who will be on the long-awaited Independent Disability Advisory Panel (IDAP). And spoilers: huge chunks of the disability community will not be represented.

DWP Disability Advisory Panel begins

The DWP announced that the inaugural meeting of the IDAP was held on 22 January, 2026. The department says the panel “will work directly with Ministers” on issues that affect disabled people. These include Access to Work, the Disability Confident scheme and Keep Britain Working.

However, as The Canary has previously reported, the panel will only be working 1.5 days a month. So how much policy can you actually influence in a department that likes to rush as much out as possible?

One single person from the North

They also waited until after the meeting to announce who was on the panel. The announcement brags that:

The Panel hail from communities across Great Britain – spanning Scotland to the Southwest

However, some parts of the country are significantly more represented than others. Six of the members are from southern England. Three from London alone. Meaning Scotland and Wales only get one representative for their whole countries. The Midlands also gets one. Leaving one person to represent the whole of the north of England.

That’s right, every disabled person from Northumberland to Sheffield will be represented by just one seat at the table. The panel, being made up of just 10 people, was already a farce, but it feels even more so for northerners.

Despite this, the DWP told The Canary:

The group was selected due to their personal and professional experience. We looked to have diversity across regional location, but members have not been chosen to represent an area.

If this is true, it then makes zero sense why the DWP chose to list their regions in the first place.

Lack of northern representation is unacceptable

Northern DDPOs are, as expected, not happy with this blatant exclusion.

Rick Burgess, Campaign Lead at Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, told The Canary:

I can see some names on there who will definitely do a good job holding the DWP’s feet to the fire. But they can simply be overruled by the Secretary of State Pat McFadden as he has said several times. But the lack of northern representation is unacceptable, they should have delayed and worked harder to solve the geographic biases. They could have re-recruited and also reflected on why people were reluctant to apply.

Burgess also expressed anger at the scope of the panel’s work, which was not co-produced by disabled people:

The remit specifically mentions Access to Work, Disability Confident and The Keep Britain Working Review recommendations but the Access to Work collective are the experts; they should have presence. As an organisation, we do not value or recommend disability confident. The KBW ‘review’ had a sham consultation, they are now ignoring the overwhelmingly negative response and protests and trying to sneak through piecemeal changes as they are afraid of losing further big legislation votes.

The fact is none of this government’s disability agenda was coproduced with disabled people and it is not a policy direction disabled people and our organisations have called for, they ignored the DPO Manifesto. Instead it is what non-disabled politicians still wedded to discredited austerity orthodoxy want to impose upon us.

Slap in the face for North East disabled people

One area where disabled people feel particularly excluded is the North East, with good reason.

Despite the North East having the highest level of disability — 21.2% — and the second highest level of poverty — 25% — it’s the area Westminster ignores the most.

When the DWP was consulting on benefits cuts last summer, the north east was originally left out of in-person consultations. It was only thanks to MP for South Shields Emma Lewell pulling then DWP chief Liz Kendall up that we got one at all. The event was then hastily thrown together with less than a week’s notice. The consultation was held on the outskirts of Newcastle to deter protesters and was an inaccessible nightmare for participants.

Lee Turner from the North East branch of Crips Against Cuts, who protested at the consultation, told The Canary:

As a disabled person in the North East, I’m appalled that the Disability Advisory Panel is going ahead without a single voice from our region. This isn’t a minor oversight, it’s a structural failure.

Disabled people’s lives are shaped by geography, access to services, and regional inequality. Excluding the North East erases our experiences and undermines the credibility of any panel claiming to speak for disabled people.

The consultation was also, coincidentally, we’re sure, held on the same day as Difference North East launched a new disability-led stakeholders network. The organisation resigned from the DWPs Regional Stakeholders Network saying:

We weren’t partners. We were decoration.

Claire Andrews, Development Manager at Difference North East told The Canary:

It’s disappointing to see that there is no North East lived experience representation on the Disability Advisory Panel. The North East has the highest proportion of Disabled People in the UK, facing a wide range of inequalities and barriers, yet the region continues to be overlooked.

This is the second time in the last 7 months that disabled people living and working in our region have been overlooked, as the North East was entirely missed out from the Pathways to Work consultation last year until Difference raised this and campaigned for our own regional event.

DWP must be prepared to be challenged

The creation of the panel in the first place shows just how little the government actually cared about working with disabled people and their organisations. Because one already exists. The DPO Forum, which brings together over 40 organisations. It’s thanks to pushback from the forum in the first place that the panel isn’t as strict as it was first designed to be.

Andrews told The Canary that Difference North East will be writing to the minister for disabled people, Sir Stephen Timms.

Further to this, Turner warned that if the panel does not pause to reconsider, it will face backlash from the disabled community in the North East

The panel must pause its work and urgently include disabled voices from the North East.If this exclusion is allowed to stand, the panel should expect its authority, decisions, and legitimacy to be publicly and formally challenged.

It’s absolutely ridiculous that the DWP ever thought they could get away with this, they clearly have never met northerners. Because one thing’s for sure, we’re not taking this lying down.

Featured image via the Canary