“Hundreds of deaths!?” he cries.
On the other end of the line is Professor Sir Mansel Aylward, architect of the all work test, introduced in 1995 by the Department of Social Security (DSS) to assess whether disabled people were eligible for out-of-work disability benefits or, instead, were fit for work.
Now 80 years old, he is still working two days a week at Cardiff University. I hope our conversation will be the final piece in a grim puzzle that stretches across five decades.
I have just told him how academics concluded that an assessment process introduced in 2008 – built on the structure he devised in the early 1990s – was linked to nearly 600 suicides over just three years in the early 2010s.
“The figures you quote to me are, you know, I just don’t understand. Something’s gone wrong,” he says. He insists there were no such large-scale deaths when the all work test was introduced. “Why is it happening now?” he asks.
This is the complex and disturbing question that The Department seeks to answer. To do this, it examines the bureaucratic violence inflicted on disabled people who have relied on the benefits.
As my friend and collaborator Dr China Mills – who introduced me to the idea of slow bureaucratic violence – says, the consideration of time is crucial to understanding how this happened: how the everyday actions of bureaucrats, ministers and private sector executives combined to inflict awful violence on disabled people who rely on the welfare state.
But just as this violence has been slow, so has the process of uncovering its course. This book is the result of more than a decade of research and reporting and, most importantly, listening to disabled people and grieving relatives.
Troubling questions
I was not the first to draw links between the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP, the successor to the DSS) and its ministers, civil servants and private sector contractors and the deaths of disabled people who relied on the social security safety net. I have drawn heavily on other people’s work, particularly research carried out by the disabled people’s movement. Without that work, this book would have been impossible.
My own obsessive search for information about these deaths has filled in gaps and found answers to deeply troubling questions that began to emerge in the austerity years of the 2010 coalition government.
At first, I used the Freedom of Information Act and, more recently, have been trawling through the National Archives to find government memos and letters from the 1990s and early 2000s that help explain the shocking events I describe.
I also felt a need to tell the stories of those who died through the recollections of family members and – where possible – through their own words and the documents they left behind.
As a disabled person myself, with lifelong suicidal ideation and a recent autism diagnosis, I recognise my need for these innocent victims of government hostility to be remembered and for justice to be secured.
The everyday actions of bureaucrats, ministers and private sector executives combined to inflict awful violence on disabled people who rely on welfare
The deaths I describe are only a tiny fraction of those that could be linked to the actions of the DWP. Most of these deaths will remain hidden, particularly if those who died did not have family or friends to fight for justice in their names. I hope the disabled people I do write about can represent all those who lost their lives through this terrible, violent episode and those who will continue to do so.
I show how the DWP attempted to cover up and justify its actions, as it had to a lesser extent in the previous two decades, and angrily resisted appeals from disabled people and their allies to make the system safe.
Despite these efforts at cover-up and denial, evidence of negligence, dishonesty and hostility slowly emerged, through coroners’ reports, the department’s own secret reviews and the courage and determination of those left behind.
What is revealed, I hope, is the truth about the DWP and a clear and powerful demand for change and – finally – justice.
If you are affected by this story and need to talk, the Samaritans operates a free 24/7 helpline on 116 123. You can also email jo@samaritans.org or visit the samaritans.org website.
