Report was meant to be kept secret. This might explain why it produced damning information.
Capita is known for steering the majority of BBC complaints into the dustbin before they are even seen by the BBC.
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A Conservative peer was commissioned to examine how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) dealt with reports of claimant suicides linked to DWP, even though she was a director of a company closely connected to one of those deaths.
Baroness [Lucy] Neville-Rolfe is a former civil servant and member of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit under John Major, and at the time was a non-executive director of Capita.
She was commissioned in February 2020 to produce the report by Therese Coffey, who was work and pensions secretary at the time.
She was asked to examine “whether DWP manages complaints in a consistent and efficient way and whether the department is learning systematic lessons when things go wrong”, although she was not paid for her work.
Her Complaints, Suicides and Other Matters report, completed in September 2020, said it had been made clear by Coffey that “a primary focus of concern was suicides among benefit claimants”.
Disability News Service (DNS) has only been able to obtain the report following pressure from the Information Commissioner’s Office, after DWP’s freedom of information team initially refused to even acknowledge a request to see the document (see separate story).
Just four months before Coffey commissioned Baroness Neville-Rolfe to write the report, Capita and DWP had been told of the death of Philippa Day, who had taken her own life after months of failings by both organisations in dealing with her personal independence payment (PIP) claim.
A coroner uncovered multiple failings by Capita and DWP in the 11 months leading up to her death.
A safeguarding review later found the actions of Capita had had a “profound impact” on the 27-year-old and caused her “debilitating anxiety”.
Capita has also been closely associated with other deaths and harm caused to claimants, and other safeguarding concerns, since it was first contracted by DWP to carry out PIP assessments in 2013.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe’s report concluded that the “cases of suicide are very small in number given the scale of DWP”, even though DWP figures showed the department began 43 secret internal process reviews (IPRs) into suicides and other deaths linked to its actions between July 2019 and June 2020.
Although these will not all have been suicides, it is widely accepted that DWP only carries out IPRs into a small proportion of suicides to which its actions and failings may have contributed.
Neither Capita nor DWP had commented by noon today (Thursday) on the decision to commission Baroness Neville-Rolfe.
But Coffey – now Baroness Coffey – told Disability News Service (DNS) yesterday (Wednesday) that Baroness Neville-Rolfe had declared her interest in Capita, and that she believed her fellow peer had been an appropriate person to carry out the review, despite her directorship.
She said in a statement to DNS that she “knew she was a non-executive director of Capita.
“I appointed Baroness Neville-Rolfe because of her vast experience, particularly as an executive director at Tesco though having worked in the Civil Service previously was an added dimension.
“I had also interacted with Baroness Neville-Rolfe when we were both ministers.
“She was an obvious person for me to consider asking to do a focused review on an area I wanted to consider in depth. I’m very grateful she did.”
She added: “Her report was helpful in shaping improvements to customer service.
“It reinforced some of my own perspective on how to better get systemic learning on issues, particularly serious ones.”
Baroness Neville-Rolfe told DNS on Tuesday that her non-executive directorship of Capita “was on the public record and in my parliamentary register of interests”.
She said she had not informed Capita about the project.
She declined to say if she believed she had been an appropriate person to carry out the review when she was at the time a director of Capita, which had been linked with so many safeguarding concerns, and the recent death of Philippa Day.
But she said in a statement: “I thought it was sensible of secretary of state Coffey to seek to draw on outside expertise when faced with a problem.
“It was my understanding that in asking me to take on this work she was mainly influenced by my past experience at Tesco – it being a company experienced in dealing with consumer complaints.
“She may also have been aware that I had been company secretary at Tesco and chaired their compliance committee and could contribute on the best form of governance in relation to problematic matters.
“My non-executive directorship of Capita was on the public record and in my parliamentary register of interests.
“I judged that it was not necessary to register this unpaid exercise as an interest with Capita.
“It was not relevant to my task which was to draw on my experience, primarily at Tesco, to help the secretary of state to judge how her department was performing in matters related to her concerns and how to improve matters.
“I stand by the contents of my report and its recommendations for improvement as giving an informed view at the time.”
The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press