Credit: Jakub Pabis, Unsplash
The Work and Pensions Select Committee, which Stephen chairs, has repeatedly asked the Department for Work and Pensions to public research it commissioned from the National Centre for Social and Economic Research (NatCen) on disabled people’s experiences of the benefits system.
The DWP received the evidence in September 2020. The Work and Pensions Secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has previously said she had “no intention” of publishing it because she was “protecting a private space for policy development”.
According to the Government’s protocol on publicly funded social research, the report should have been published before the end of 2020. The Work and Pensions Select Committee has now used its powers to order NatCen to hand over to it a copy of the research, so that they can publish it.
Speaking about the development, Stephen said: “After repeated obstruction from the Secretary of State to keep from public view a piece of work that falls within the Government’s own protocol for publication, we have reached the end of the road.
“We would have much rather the DWP had done the right thing and published the report itself, so it is with regret that we must now take the highly unusual step of using our parliamentary powers to obtain a copy from NatCen and publish it ourselves. We have been forced to do this to ensure that the reality of disabled people’s experiences of the benefits system can see the light of day.”