DWP spent £50,000 trying to stop release of review into disabled man’s death
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Previous government spent almost £1m trying to prevent release of documents in 56 legal cases. More than £50,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on lawyers to try to prevent the release of a safeguarding review ordered after a disabled man starved to death in his own home.
The costs were part of a bill of nearly £1m spent under the last government to prevent the release of various documents under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. It included spending by the Home Office of £30,000 to block a request by the Guardian for the total cost to the public of protecting the royal family.
The figures were revealed after requests by the Democracy for Sale newsletter, which sought details of spending under the last government in attempts to prevent the release of information. Some of the spending that was uncovered related to an attempt by a campaigner at the Child Poverty Action Group charity to obtain the results of a review by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) into its safeguarding procedures.
The existence of the review was revealed in reports about the death of Errol Graham, who starved to death in June 2018 after the DWP wrongly stopped his out-of-work disability benefits, leaving him without any income. The information commissioner ordered the department in 2022 to release the results of the review, which the DWP had been trying to keep secret for two years.
