British minister accused of trying to hide reports on impact of Tory welfare reforms

theguardian.com:

Ministers have been accused of deliberately attempting to hide the impact of the government’s wide-ranging welfare reforms by concealing a range of official reports on benefits.

Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said she would not publish five reports or research on the benefit cap, deaths of benefits claimants, the impact of universal credit (UC), and benefit sanctions, and that she had no plans to publish two further reports on unpaid carers and work capability assessments.

Her Conservative predecessors as secretary of state had promised to publish several of the reports.

“Thérèse Coffey has set out to minimise the evidence published by the department and a consequence of this is that public trust in the department has been badly damaged,” said Stephen Timms, the chairman of the Commons work and pensions select committee. “You understand why ministers are inclined to do this because it avoids them having to answer potentially embarrassing or difficult questions. But avoiding that short-term pain has a long-term impact, I think, badly undermining confidence in the department.”

Ken Butler, a policy adviser at Disability Rights UK, said: “We’re not talking about just one report and one subject. We’re talking about a whole swathe of reports about important aspects of the system. The DWP are operating behind a wall of secrecy.”

Coffey laid out her refusal to publish the information ina letter to the select committee. The reports are as follows. First, an evaluation of the reduction in the benefit cap, which has been at the same rate since 2016 and ranges from £13,400 for individuals outside London to £23,000 for families in the capital. About 1.3 million children in the cap have parents who struggle to buy basics