February 2022

What: The Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) write their second letter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ask why it is failing to act over the links between DWP and claimant deaths. They first wrote in March 2020 after the death of Errol Graham, pointing to the years of evidence of such links, but now write again to highlight a series of deaths and other evidence that has emerged in the last two years. They highlight the deaths of Roy Curtis, Philippa Day, Philip Pakree, Ker Featherstone, Christian Wilcox, and Terence Talbot.

Why significant: ROFA and DPAC highlight the commission’s failure to act, despite promising in 2019 to hold an inquiry into the deaths, as they say ‘claimants continue to die as a result of the hostile climate created by the DWP for disabled people’.