DWP lies exposed as minister admits they’re cutting Access to Work

Disabled people in the UK have been sounding the alarm about unofficial cuts, changes, and delays to the Department of Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Access to Work scheme since February 2024. The DWP has insisted that nothing has changed.

However, the whistleblowers were finally vindicated last week. Security and disability minister Stephen Timms admitted to signing off on an order that led to far-reaching ‘stealth cuts’ to Access to Work grants.

Now, a disability campaign group is taking the fight to the government with a new campaign.

‘No change’ to Access to Work policy claim DWP

Access to Work is a government scheme intended to help people with physical or mental health conditions or disabilities get and stay in work. The level of support given is meant to be assessed according to an individual’s need. It can include things like:

• grants to help with the cost of practical support at work.
• support with managing mental health at work.
• money for communication support in interviews.

The DWP have repeatedly and consistently denied making any cuts to Access to Work. Just last month, the department stated that:

We inherited an Access to Work scheme that is failing both employees and employers, which is why – as part of our welfare reform – we consulted on how it could be improved.

We are reviewing all aspects of the scheme and will develop future policy with disabled people and the organisations that represent them.

It also insisted that there had been “no change in Access to Work policy”.

‘This is a pattern’

In spite of these denials, disabled people have been speaking out about the inconsistency in decisions and mounting waiting list times regarding their DWP Access to Work claims. Back in May, Decode – an organisation which supports disabled people with Access to Work in the arts – released research showing the direct effects of these stealth cuts. Over the course of 15 months, 117 disabled people whom Decode supported were severely impacted by cuts to Access to Work.

Likewise, accessibility consultant and campaigner Dr Shani Dhanda said:

What we’re seeing, especially at renewal stage, awards are being slashed by 60% to 70%. We didn’t know it was a trend at first, then we kept hearing it and we realised – this is a trend, this is a pattern.

Some 33,000 people were waiting on Access to Work payments as of February 2025. They were accompanied by 62,000 applications waiting to be processed. Lets be frank here – these are cuts in everything but name.

Early this month, Disability News Service (DNS) reported that DWP disability minister Timms had finally admitted to giving the go-ahead to an order which led to the widespread cuts. Timms told DNS that he’d “very likely” signed off a civil service proposal stating that Access to Work staffers should apply grant guidelines more “scrupulously”.

The minister was extremely vague about when and how he approved it. However, he guessed that the order would have been an ‘advice to ministers’. As such, it might not be released even under freedom of information laws. This is in spite of the claim Timms made early that same day, that he was:

very substantially changing the culture of the department in a pro-transparency direction.

‘Gaslighting on a national scale’

In June 2025, the Access to Work Collective – a non-profit organisation bringing together various Access to Work stakeholders – launched its #AccessToNowhere campaign. It’s made up of disabled people demanding urgent reform to  DWP Access to Work. Dr Dhanda, the collective’s co-founder and originator of #AccessToNowhere, explained:

Disabled people have been lied to, again. The Minister and DWP have continually denied that there had been any policy change, when there clearly has. That is not just incompetence, it’s gaslighting on a national scale. These cuts have forced people out of work, into poverty, and in some cases into worsening ill health. Access to Work is meant to remove barriers, not create them.

Mounting its fight back, the Access to Work Collective will deliver a petition to the government on 15 October. It currently has over 2,000 signatures from people speaking out against the cuts.

Under the Labour government, disabled people who are trying to get or stay in work have faced cuts, barriers, and waiting lists at every turn. Not only that, but they’ve been repeatedly lied to by a DWP that insists nothing has changed. As Dr Dhanda put it:

The government must come clean, apologise, reverse the damage, and start treating disabled workers with honesty and respect. Nothing short of genuine co-production with all stakeholders will fix Access to Work.

Featured image via the Canary