Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey maintained complete silence on nine DWP secrets during a grilling last week by MPs and then added another to the collection.
As we reported last month, the work and pensions committee wrote to Coffey on 15 June asking about nine reports that should have been published as long ago as 2017, but which the DWP is desperate to keep secret.
The reports cover issues including sanctions, claimant deaths and the transfer to UC.
The committee said they looked forward to discussing the matter with Coffey at their meeting on Wednesday 29 June.
However, the committee made the tactical error of giving Coffey until 15 July to reply to their letter.
So, at the meeting, whenever any of the reports were raised Coffey simply insisted that she would deal with everything in her letter and would not respond to questions in person.
For example, the chair, Stephen Timms MP, put it to Coffey that “On the general point, would you recognise that the Department committing to publish reports of this kind and then choosing not to do so does damage trust in the Department?”
However, Coffey declined to answer even a general question like this, responding: “I accept that is what you say, but I am going to respond fully to your letter, for which you have given me a deadline of 15 July.”
Tellingly though, Coffey did say “As a general principle, I am not necessarily going to be bound by previous Governments and what has been done, but I will respond fully to your letter.”
So, it seems likely that one of Coffey’s excuses for refusing to publish reports is that it was a previous minister who made the promise to publish and she doesn’t consider herself obliged to do what a former secretary of state undertook.
But in the course of the meeting Coffey also hinted that the DWP have a secret plan to help claimants who fail to complete the managed migration process within the time limit and thus face destitution.
“I have added a policy that I would rather talk to you privately about, because I do not want to deter people from responding to our requests to migrate.”
But a secret policy, even if it is shared with the committee, is a worthless one that no claimant can possibly rely upon. If you don’t know what the policy is then it is solely in the gift of the DWP and staff can withhold it as easily as grant it.
Given the way the DWP ignore legal rights that claimants know about, what chance that they will be generous with secret ones?
You can read the full minutes of the work and pensions committee meeting here.
