Campaigners from Police Spies out of Lives speak to the media after the publication of first part of the report from the Undercover Policing Inquiry, at Blackfriars Settlement, south east London, June 29, 2023
MORE than 100 victims have threatened to walk away from the long-running “unfair” spycops inquiry.
A total of 92 individuals and 20 activist groups have signed an open letter alleging mistreatment by the probe which began in July 2015.
They have threatened to withhold giving evidence to the next stage of the inquiry covering abuses by the Metropolitan Police’s political undercover units between 1993 and 2014.
The non-state “core participants” called for “full disclosure and reasonable timetables” and that “witnesses must not be excluded as a result of insufficient time to prepare — we seek assurances our evidence will be heard.”
A meeting of the child poverty taskforce. From left to right: Mayor of the North East Kim McGuinness, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall and education secretary Bridget Phillippson. Image: Department for Education/ Flickr
Tory ministers presented reforms to disability benefits as a way to support disabled people into work – and they would have seen many worse off by at least £416.19 per month
The Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) consultation into plans to slash billions of pounds from disability benefits has been ruled unlawful in a damning High Court judgement.
In a judgment published this morning (16 January), Mr Justice Calver said that the judicial review, brought by disability activist Ellen Clifford, had “surmounted the substantial hurdle of establishing that the consultation was so unfair as to be unlawful”.
Repeatedly describing the DWP consultation in autumn 2023 as “misleading”, “rushed” and “unfair”, he said:
• The consultation documents failed to highlight the “substantial” loss of benefits facing those affected by the proposals.
• The consultation gave the “misleading impression” that changes were required to ensure deaf and disabled people could access employment support, when they could already choose to access this voluntarily.
• Despite the consultation presenting the changes as being solely about helping disabled people into work, in reality “costs savings was at least one of the two bases, if not the central basis, on which decisions would be taken on which policies would be taken forward by the government”.
• The eight-week consultation was unlawfully short in the circumstances.
