Panorama 2020 E09
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00Tonight on Panorama, disability discrimination at the heart of the Department for Work and Pensions.
00:08The DWP managers that have done this to me have ruined my health, they've ruined my career. I won't be able to work again.
00:16The department meant to help disabled people into work.
00:20He was really nasty towards me and I ended up going back to my desk and crying for about half an hour.
00:26Has lost more disability discrimination tribunals than any other employer in Britain.
00:32There is a fear amongst disabled people and the DWP. There's no two ways about it.
00:40And it's had to pay out almost a million pounds of public money to its own disabled employees.
00:46If the DWP is constantly paying out tribunal claims around disability, somebody ought to be asking the question,
00:54is something fundamentally wrong going on here?
00:57Wales, home to 57-year-old Barry Calcutt and his family.
01:17What's that over there? Where's that? Anglesey. Anglesey, yeah.
01:22Like nearly 8 million people of working age in the UK, Barry is disabled.
01:27In the summer it was lovely, wasn't it? Yeah. Sitting on the wall, on the Anglesey wall.
01:33Barry has been diagnosed with a serious panic and anxiety disorder.
01:37At times it gets so bad it can trigger life-threatening asthma attacks.
01:42I'm a chronic asthmatic and I've always suffered from stress and anxiety.
01:48Anxiety can make you sort of panicky and bring on an asthma attack.
01:53The attacks that come on suddenly and violently are the ones that you can die from.
02:05For over 30 years, Barry worked in finance at the Department for Work and Pensions.
02:13Why did you take the job? What was going on here at that time?
02:16Well, basically it was a good job.
02:21I'm quite fortunate, really, to have the job.
02:26Barry's anxiety was under control until his employer moved him to a new job.
02:32I basically told them that the job that I was doing I couldn't do because of my disabilities.
02:37I provided evidence from my GP, their own occupational health service,
02:42told them that unless they moved me from the environment I was working in,
02:45then it would be a detriment to my health.
02:49Things came to a head when Barry was forced to spend a day in a small room.
02:55I was told I needed to go on a training course.
02:57It was in a very small room and there was about 12 people.
03:02I told my line manager, I told the business manager,
03:05that I wouldn't be able to attend that course because I suffer from panic attacks.
03:11And I was basically told that if I didn't do it, then I would be disciplined.
03:16So I attended the course.
03:19I wasn't taking anything in and I just had this overwhelming feeling of I had to get out of the room.
03:27I just collapsed to the floor. I thought at first I was having a heart attack.
03:32I had this tremendous crushing pain in my chest.
03:36I couldn't breathe. I realised then that it was an asthma attack.
03:42I'm not a religious person, but I was praying.
03:44I was praying, please God, don't make me die. Don't make me die now.
03:51And the next thing I was in the back of an ambulance and they were rushing me to the hospital.
03:57Despite knowing Barry had been admitted to hospital,
04:00the very next day his managers called him asking to know where he was.
04:05I told them, well, I've had such a bad asthma attack yesterday,
04:08I thought you'd realise that I wouldn't be in work.
04:10What did you make of that?
04:12I was astounded. I was just, I was gobsmacked.
04:15I can't put into words how obsessing it was.
04:21The Department for Work and Pensions should be second to none
04:25in understanding the needs of people with disabilities.
04:31Even its own website boasts of being the government department responsible for
04:36encouraging disabled people and those with ill health to work and be independent.
04:4611,000 of the DWP's workforce are disabled,
04:50so it seems they'd be the ideal government department to spearhead Disability Confident,
04:56a national scheme designed to motivate other employers to take on more staff with disabilities.
05:03If you want to employ disabled people, I would advise you to contact your local job centre
05:07and speak to your disability employment advisor.
05:09There you're going to get all the advice you'll need and access to grant aid.
05:13So, if you want to employ disabled people and get some adjustments, be Disability Confident.
05:22As part of the Disability Confident scheme,
05:24the DWP assessed its own employment practices and proudly declared that...
05:30DWP will not tolerate discrimination on any grounds, including disability.
05:38One of the country's leading disability discrimination lawyers
05:41believes there is a widespread and institutional problem in the UK.
05:46I got into disability discrimination law because of my own personal history,
05:52which was I was born with a heart problem,
05:54and I became quite conscious of how difficult it is to mix work and being unwell.
05:59There is a very thinly veiled contempt for people who have disabilities.
06:03Instead of thinking, oh, we might want to do a bit more for these people to help them out,
06:08to remove the barriers that come with certain kinds of disability,
06:11there just seems to be contempt and disdain.
06:18Disabled people are nearly three times more likely to be discriminated against
06:22and nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than those without a disability.
06:27So, in 2010, the Equality Act was brought in
06:31to make it illegal for employers to discriminate on the grounds of disability.
06:37It also compelled employers to make reasonable adjustments
06:40to help disabled people remain in employment.
06:45The Equality Act is all about removing barriers, eliminating barriers in the workplace.
06:49So a reasonable adjustment could be anything.
06:52It's the obvious things like widening doorways for wheelchairs,
06:56but also it could be things like where there are glass partitions in an office.
07:00They will really cause a problem for somebody who's visually impaired.
07:04So it would be to change them from being a glass partition to being some other kind of partition.
07:10Six months after his life-threatening asthma attack,
07:13Barry was moved to a role which he found less stressful.
07:16But Barry still took the DWP to a tribunal for disability discrimination.
07:22The main thing that came out of it was this horrible email.
07:26He was shocked at the contempt his managers had for him.
07:30A whinger. It was one of the words written in the email that my senior manager wrote.
07:36Sick and tired of reading about reasonable adjustments.
07:39Sick and tired of reading about disabilities. He's a whinger.
07:44The tribunal judge ruled that the DWP had discriminated against Barry and awarded him £26,000.
07:53The judge described his treatment as wholly inexcusable
07:57and recommended his managers at the DWP undertake disability awareness training.
08:04The DWP managers that have done this to me have ruined my health.
08:08They've ruined my career. I won't be able to work again.
08:13And Barry is not alone.
08:15Despite its stated aim of encouraging disabled people at work,
08:19the Department for Work and Pensions has a shocking track record
08:23of discriminating against its own disabled employees.
08:26Panorama has carried out an in-depth analysis of every employment tribunal
08:31where an employer has been accused of disability discrimination.
08:36We can reveal that between 2016 and 2019,
08:40the DWP has had to defend 134 claims of discrimination against its own disabled employees.
08:47The DWP lost 17 of these cases,
08:51and that's more than any other public or private sector employer in Great Britain.
08:57So the DWP lose around 13% of their employment tribunal cases for disability.
09:04Does that say anything to you?
09:06It's quite statistically significant to say that they lose 13% of cases
09:11because the average win rate for a disability discrimination case is around 3%.
09:18Do you think this might be indicative of something going on within the Department for Work and Pensions?
09:23I'm always a little bit wary of statistics,
09:26but I think in this particular case the numbers are quite compelling
09:31and the level of claims being brought for disability discrimination against DWP is quite high.
09:38To me that can only suggest that there is something quite fundamentally,
09:43systemically wrong within the culture of the organisation.
09:47There is a horrible irony that the organisation that is designed to look after
09:53the more vulnerable members of our society
09:56is constantly falling foul of the Equality Act around disability.
10:05At the very same time this was happening,
10:08the DWP was launching a nationwide initiative called Community Partnerships.
10:13The DWP recruited 200 people who had what they described as lived experience of disability
10:20to train its Jobcentre staff to encourage more disabled people into work.
10:29Phil Sanfire, who has cerebral palsy, was one of the first to join.
10:34There is a fear amongst disabled people that disability discrimination
10:40There is a fear amongst disabled people and the DWP.
10:45There's no two ways about it.
10:47And my job was to get a better understanding between the two different groups.
10:55The whole thing about Community Partners was
10:58they wanted external people to inform the DWP how to engage better.
11:05Phil was sent for an occupational health assessment,
11:08which recommended the DWP should provide him with voice-activated software for his computer.
11:15So your management in the DWP were given an occupational health report
11:20that the DWP paid for, that specified certain reasonable adjustments
11:24in the form of software technology.
11:27Did you, in your 12 months, ever receive any of that?
11:31No. I was made to feel like I was just asking for things because I could.
11:39Phil never got the reasonable adjustments he needed from the DWP.
11:43He also believes the Community Partners scheme was not taken seriously.
11:49Did you find yourself being listened to?
11:51No, no.
11:53Sometimes from individual staff members, yeah, but not from management.
12:01I...
12:04I think it looks good on paper, saying you employed disabled people
12:10to advise you how to deal with disabled people.
12:15But I didn't want to hear what could be fixed.
12:18I just wanted to hear what was going well.
12:21It was very much a tick-box exercise,
12:25where you just had to say everything was fine at DWP, like, job's done.
12:35Panorama has spoken to other former Community Partners
12:39who didn't want to be interviewed on camera.
12:42Several told us the scheme was badly thought through.
12:45More worryingly, there were claims some DWP staff had little empathy for disabled people.
12:54In March 2018, having spent over £16 million,
12:59the DWP decided not to extend the Community Partners scheme beyond its planned two years.
13:12One DWP employee has witnessed at first hand
13:16the poor attitude some of his colleagues had towards disabled people.
13:21He still works as a benefits processor in the department and doesn't want to be identified.
13:27I've heard comments about reasonable adjustments.
13:30Why does this person have this equipment?
13:33Why does this person get to adjust their working pattern?
13:36Why does this person need to use the disabled lift?
13:39They like to be seen as being an equal opportunities employer,
13:43so they employ disabled people, but then on day one,
13:46it's almost as if they're trying to get that person to resign,
13:49or be able to get that person on a disciplinary.
13:51Sounds like they don't really want disabled people to work there because they're a nuisance.
13:55Would that be a fair assessment?
13:57It is a fair assessment.
13:59Once those disabled people are in post,
14:01they're then subject to overzealous attendance management procedures
14:05and overzealous management practices regarding their disabilities.
14:10A barrister with extensive experience in disability discrimination cases
14:15worries that far too many employers are failing their disabled workers.
14:21One of the most common things that I come across is
14:25the reluctance around reasonable adjustments
14:30and an ignorance around reasonable adjustments.
14:33The reluctance around reasonable adjustments
14:37and an ignorance around reasonable adjustments
14:40that disabled people are in some way getting favourable treatment
14:44that other people should be getting as well.
14:47And it's insidious,
14:49and it displays a complete lack of understanding of what disability is
14:54and how important it is for disabled people to have the very basic tools
14:58to enable them to work.
15:01And there is no attempt
15:05at ensuring that people understand what adjustments are,
15:10either in the workplace or outside of the workplace.
15:13And that contributes to that hostility.
15:20In Newcastle, Fiona Alexanders worked for the Department for Work and Pensions.
15:25Although being diagnosed with diabetes, chronic back pain
15:29and a serious heart condition,
15:31Fiona was proud to be holding down a government job.
15:37After the heart attack and the other issues I've got,
15:41I could be a stay-at-home person, but I'm not like that.
15:45I want to be out there, I want to be working,
15:48I want to be, you know, productive in society.
15:53I don't want to be a droon.
15:58For more than three years, Fiona was happy with her desk job at the DWP.
16:03Then came a restructure,
16:05and Fiona was moved to a more physically demanding role.
16:08She began to worry about the effect this new job could have on her health.
16:13So her managers arranged for Fiona
16:16to have an occupational health assessment.
16:19The occupational health referral team said that it was too physical for me
16:24and I should have a desk-based job.
16:28This was ignored.
16:30So it still carried on and I ended up getting sciatica.
16:36Two years ago, Fiona was prescribed strong painkillers for her sciatica
16:41and her doctor warned her about the side effects of the drugs,
16:44in particular drowsiness and headaches.
16:47In particular drowsiness and confusion.
16:50In the morning, it was very hard to get up
16:53and I should have phoned in sick.
16:56But because I don't want to be off sick,
17:00I crawled out of my bed, sent a text to my manager
17:04to let her know I wasn't well, but I was coming in.
17:07I went straight to my manager and told her I was starting new medication
17:11and I wasn't feeling right.
17:13I didn't feel competent and if I'd said I didn't feel competent,
17:16I do feel that my manager would have tried to discipline me in some way.
17:25Fiona was to regret her decision to struggle into work that morning.
17:29Within hours, she'd made serious mistakes,
17:32including sending emails to the wrong people
17:35and not password-protecting them.
17:37The DWP dismissed her for gross misconduct.
17:42With no job, Fiona was reduced to using a pawnbroker
17:46just to be able to pay her mortgage.
17:51I was sacked 20th December.
17:58But Fiona is convinced her mistakes had been influenced by the drugs she was taking,
18:03so Fiona decided to take the DWP to a tribunal for discrimination.
18:10But Fiona has no money to pay for a lawyer.
18:13Her only option is to try to learn enough about employment law
18:17in order to represent herself in front of the judge.
18:21Unfair dismissal. Tribunal's handbook.
18:27Fiona has spent hours in the local library,
18:30getting her legal case ready before she faces her old employer at tribunal.
18:36It has been very difficult.
18:38I've had ten months of preparing and reading,
18:42looking for any case that might be relevant
18:46and then having to check that I'm actually writing everything in law terms
18:51rather than normal speak.
18:57It's not becoming an expert, it's becoming a fighter.
19:01Bringing a case to a tribunal can be a slow, laborious process
19:06and it's quite hard for individuals.
19:08I think there are very few people who've been through that process
19:11who wouldn't say it's incredibly stressful
19:14and it can be really dominating for people's lives.
19:16Lots of people who maybe haven't had stress to begin with
19:20develop stress during the process.
19:25Every time the DWP loses a case,
19:28it's public money they use to pay the compensation.
19:33Hi, Charlotte. Hi.
19:35Nice to meet you. You want my name?
19:37One of the biggest payouts made by the DWP for disability discrimination
19:41was awarded to former benefits worker, Charlotte.
19:45What was your job in the DWP?
19:47Personal independence payment decision maker.
19:49Personal independence payment is a benefit that's paid to disabled people
19:53in or out of work to help them with the extra costs of being disabled.
19:56So you're the person that received the assessment?
19:59Yes, the health assessment. And then you make the decision?
20:02We were called the decision makers.
20:04Charlotte claims her colleagues had a cynical attitude
20:08towards some disabled claimants,
20:10which created an unpleasant atmosphere for disabled workers like herself.
20:15They were quite nasty when people would be discussing certain claimants.
20:19You would hear people talking, they'd be like,
20:21oh, yeah, I'm not giving it to them.
20:23Other disabilities people wouldn't believe,
20:26and one of them would be fibromyalgia.
20:28Fibromyalgia can be quite serious, but people would be like,
20:31oh, I've got another claim here of fibromyalgia.
20:36And just, yeah, be quite...
20:38Dismissive? Yeah, dismissive.
20:40Towards it being an actual genuine illness.
20:44People weren't, like, empathetic towards people's illnesses,
20:49and I think it was quite a deep-rooted culture of being dismissive.
20:55Charlotte has serious health problems, including depression.
20:58She was eventually sacked by the DWP
21:01because they said she'd taken too much sick leave.
21:05Did you feel a kind of correlation
21:07between the way you were treated by management
21:09and the way that claimants are treated?
21:11Yeah. I think me being disabled, I kind of felt like if I had time off,
21:16people thought I was lying or faking it or I wasn't really ill,
21:20and that was kind of a culture.
21:22They always say, like, when your mental health deteriorates,
21:25you experience other physical conditions worse.
21:28So my hip, to me, it felt worse, my mental health was worse.
21:33It caused problems at home.
21:35It was very, very difficult.
21:37Like, mentally, it destroyed me.
21:39Are you aware of any other incidents
21:41where other members of disabled staff
21:43might have felt discriminated against or changed their behaviour?
21:47Yeah, definitely.
21:48I think people were too scared to have time off
21:51when they genuinely needed the time off,
21:54whether it was to do with physical or mental health.
21:59But could the DWP's role in reducing benefit fraud
22:03be affecting the culture of the organisation?
22:06It's difficult to ignore the fact
22:09that the DWP have focused on clamping down on, in particular,
22:16disabled people who are said to be claiming benefits
22:21that they are not entitled to.
22:23If you work in an environment like that
22:26and you then have disabled people coming to you for adjustments
22:30or saying that they need time off, then it's very difficult.
22:35I think the DWP and, really, the government have created...
22:39We had a hostile environment in the context of immigration
22:42and there is a hostile environment in the context of disability.
22:47At Charlotte's employment tribunal,
22:49the judge found she had been unfairly dismissed and discriminated against.
22:53She was awarded one of the largest ever payments
22:56for disability discrimination from the DWP.
23:00Charlotte is using this money to pay her way through university
23:04in the hope that a degree will help her get back into full-time employment.
23:09The judge was very critical of the DWP
23:11and the way they didn't follow their own procedures.
23:14I think a part of me thought that maybe I was sacked
23:18because I should have been sacked
23:20and that maybe I wasn't well enough to work,
23:23but then reading those words,
23:25it definitely made me peace of mind that I was treated badly
23:30and it wasn't my fault.
23:34Panorama has discovered that since 2016,
23:37the Department for Work and Pensions
23:39has paid out almost a million pounds of public money to disabled employees.
23:44The majority of this cash, more than £700,000,
23:48has been paid in out-of-court settlements.
23:52So the DWP is able to avoid both the publicity and costs of a tribunal hearing.
23:59Back in Newcastle, Fiona has been spending every moment of her spare time
24:04preparing for her discrimination case against the DWP.
24:08But it seems the DWP has had a last-minute change of heart.
24:13Just days before Fiona was due to appear in court,
24:16the Department for Work and Pensions lawyers offered to settle her case.
24:20Morning. Hi. How are you doing?
24:23So you were prepared to go through your case?
24:26So you were prepared to go through your employment tribunal,
24:29you were basically representing yourself, and then you got a phone call?
24:33I got a phone call on the Thursday with the first offer, which was £5,000.
24:39I said no, and then they came back with another figure.
24:43I said no, came back with another figure.
24:46Again, I said no, and then went up to not a ridiculous amount,
24:51just about a year's wages, enough to make me be able to keep my home, keep my car.
25:00Settling a matter out of court is pretty common in the litigation field.
25:08It's more significant, I think, in the case of DWP,
25:12because public organisations do behave quite differently.
25:15The fact that they are spending taxpayers' money settling claims out of court
25:20would suggest that they assess they have significant risk in that litigation.
25:26You generally don't, in the public sector, settle a case unless you think you're going to lose it.
25:33The law requires employers to make adjustments,
25:36and it requires employers to make adjustments for a reason,
25:38because disabled people can do the job just as well as everyone else.
25:41Disabled people bring a whole variety of things to the workplace, including diversity,
25:46and we need a diverse workforce.
25:49There's no reason not to make those adjustments.
25:52I would have thought that it was obvious that if the DWP is constantly paying out tribunal claims
25:59around disability, that somebody ought to be asking the question,
26:02is something fundamentally wrong going on here?
26:08We asked the DWP for an interview, but they declined.
26:12In a statement, they said...
26:14Fair and respectful treatment is a right, and we do not tolerate discrimination in any form.
26:22DWP has a diverse workforce of more than 80,000 staff,
26:27and we're proud that 11,000 identify as disabled.
26:33We are therefore shocked that when presented in this way, the data shows us in this light.
26:40We have worked hard to ensure staff always have a route, informally and formally,
26:46to raise any concerns with someone they trust.
26:50And while cases brought against us come from less than 2% of our staff with disabilities,
26:56this figure is still too high.
26:59We have made significant progress over the last few years to support employees with disabilities.
27:07We have improved how we manage absence and resolve complaints,
27:12and have introduced 1,600 mental health first aiders.
27:17But we know there is always more we can do.
27:21We have instigated a review of our processes and actions following tribunal cases
27:28to ensure all our employees are treated fairly and with respect.
27:38Fiona is looking forward to getting back into work and regaining her self-esteem,
27:43but it may not be easy to forget having to pawn her most precious possessions just to survive.
27:51You don't realise how hard it is to get to a point where you've got to use a pawnbroker.
27:59This is my grandma's watch.
28:03I feel like I'm going to burst into tears.
28:09I've ended up with a settlement, but I've had a year of absolute hell.
28:15They can't get away with the way they're treating disabled people.
28:22BBC3's Stacey Dooley steps inside the psych ward and in typical fashion gets right stuck in,
28:27streaming on iPlayer, and something I've just gobbled up in one go.
28:32Tell It My Death Row Pen Pal makes for addictive listening over on BBC Sounds.
28:37And we enter the third week of heats. Masterchef is next.