October 2018

What: While other organisations refuse similar contracts on a point of principle, Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland sign contracts with DWP worth a total of £51 million in total to provide support to universal credit claimants

Why significant: Just hours after the announcement at the Conservative conference, Citizens Advice’s head of policy on families, welfare and work, Kayley Hignell, speaking at a conference fringe event on universal credit and its impact on mental health, failed to raise concerns, criticise the government or call for urgent action after being asked about secret DWP reviews that have linked the deaths of four universal credit claimants with the department’s activity, and whether she thought DWP had taken those deaths seriously enough. It will later emerge that both Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland signed gagging clauses that meant they could not take “any actions which unfairly bring or are likely to unfairly bring [DWP’s] name or reputation and/or [DWP] into disrepute”.