Disability Equipment Provision

John Milne Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) for securing this debate, which is timely because I want to highlight the case of a constituent and ask the Minister to work collaboratively with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to intervene urgently in what has become a deeply troubling example of administrative failure in the DWP’s Access to Work scheme.

My constituent lives with cerebral palsy and ME. She wants to do exactly what Government policy encourages people to do: work, contribute and maintain her independence. To do that, she requires a wheelchair through the Access to Work programme—an essential piece of equipment that enables her to remain in employment. My constituent has done everything asked of her ever since her first application in July 2024. Her assessment was completed, quotes for a suitable chair were submitted and the case had progressed to the point of an award. Then, the system failed her. In September 2025, her case manager informed her that he was retiring, and that the case had been passed to a colleague, who would contact her. That contact never came.

Despite my constituent’s repeated attempts to follow up, no one in the Access to Work scheme took ownership of the case or progressed the order. Instead, months later, she was told that her case had been closed due to “no contact” since July, which was demonstrably untrue. When my office intervened, the Department acknowledged the issue, and stated that it would contact my constituent within 10 working days. That deadline then passed. When she attempted to chase the matter herself, she spent nearly an hour on hold, only to be told that the manager was unavailable. What is perhaps most concerning is the reason now being given: the Department would prefer my constituent to submit a completely new application for the wheelchair, rather than reopen the existing case, purely because reopening it would affect its management information.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

Last year saw the first fall in Access to Work approvals in more than a decade, including a 16% drop in approvals for aids and equipment, despite the alleged surge in disability claims overall. That suggests that, behind the scenes, the Government have instructed the DWP to get tougher on approval criteria, but without announcing any formal change to policy in public. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a strange way to go about improving employment prospects for the disabled?

[Alison Bennett]

My hon. Friend makes an important and interesting point, and I very much want to get underneath the detail of why that change has happened.

Returning to my constituent’s case, I want to ask the Minister three questions to which I believe my constituent deserves a response; if he is not able to answer them, perhaps he can write and raise these matters with the correct Minister. First, does the Minister agree, as I hope he does, that the case should urgently be reopened? Secondly, does he disagree with the DWP’s apparent position that the integrity of its management information is more important than ensuring that a disabled person has the equipment that they need to work? Thirdly, will he ask his colleagues in the DWP to review the so-called integrity of the Department’s management information, given the serious concern that cases may be closed and replaced with new ones in a way that creates the appearance of efficiency, when the reality for constituents like mine is repeated failure?

At its best, Access to Work is a transformative scheme, but when the system fails and the metrics appear to matter more than the people who the scheme exists to support, confidence is undermined. My constituent is not asking for special treatment; she is simply asking for the Department to finish the job it started. I hope the Minister will help me to swiftly put that right.