More than 130 international leaders in university governance, education and public policy have signed an open letter in solidarity against Birmingham City University’s (BCU) plan to end its MA in Black Studies and Global Justice.

The decision follows the university having folded its undergraduate course in Black Studies in 2024. The master’s course itself had been open for mere months before BCU made a unilateral decision to close it down.

As such, the open letter highlights that Black Studies itself is being erased and how university management are targeting Black faculty.

The only staff put at risk of potential redundancy are the only Black staff in the sociology division.

Course leader, Professor Kehinde Andrews, worked to develop the Black Studies courses and penned the open letter. He also launched a petition with the goal of saving the postgraduate course, which already has more than 3,000 signatures.

BCU’s Black staff ‘singled out for redundancy’

It’s reported that BCU decided to close the course back in February. However, course leaders were given just 24 hours’ notice for the meeting in which they were told the news.

In that meeting, they were blindsided and learnt the following:

• The decision had been taken, with no consultation from the staff team, to close the MA Black Studies and Global Justice, after less than a year of the course running

• A proposal to reduce the staff team, putting all of us at the potential risk of compulsory redundancy

As an attempted rationale for its decision, BCU highlighted the low recruitment levels on the MA. Currently, eight students are enrolled on the course. However, this excuse falls flat given that this is merely its first year of existence.

Five Black members of staff now face redundancy. Worse still, in spite of his colleagues’ expertise across the field of sociology, Andrews highlighted that BCU had selected its redundancy pool in a way that specifically impacted Black employees.

Even if the Board accepts the decision to close the MA programme, it does not logically or legally follow that permanent academic posts must be made redundant. These are separate decisions requiring separate justification…

By defining the selection pool around a single course rather than the department in which staff are contractually employed, the University has created a foreseeable and disproportionate impact on Black staff.

Three key demands from BCU staff

As an illustration of the racist nature of this redundancy selection, we can look to Andrews’ actual role. He was appointed as a professor for international leadership in research, rather than Black Studies itself. Likewise, teaching on the MA accounts for less than 10% of his time. Still, he is now up for redundancy.

It is also damning that, in spite of its claims to lead in equality, diversity, and inclusion, and a public commitment to retaining black staff, BCU hasn’t carried out an equality impact assessment before making this decision.

As such, the open letter’s signatories have made three key demands of the board of governors:

1. Direct the University Executive Team to remove the threat of compulsory redundancy and end the consultation, pending a full, legal departmental level review

2. Ensure the university undertakes meaningful engagement on retaining Black Studies content in the curriculum that is accessible across the university.

3. Ensure the university explores a distance learning MA Black Studies and Global Justice.

A broader pattern

Many UK universities are currently afflicted by financial crisis, and have begun making desperate cuts to courses.

However, Andrews highlighted that BCU’s actions fit into a broader pattern of erasure of “Black knowledge and critical education” in both the UK and the US.

He wrote:

Unfortunately, the lack of support for courses based on knowledge produced by Black communities has been glaringly absent in academia.

The high-profile closures of courses like the MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora, and redundancy of Professor Hakim Adi at the University of Chichester… are indicative of a worrying trend.

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In the US there is an attack on Black intellectual thought, in the UK there is so little of it on offer in higher education that the bigger problem is neglect. When we do manage to offer such courses they should be nurtured, not stamped out at the earliest opportunity.

With fascism and the far right on the rise again, both at home and abroad, attacks on the inclusion and knowledge-production of marginalised communities are also increasing.

In making its threats against Black Studies, BCU has demonstrated that its knee-jerk reaction to financial pressure is to pass the buck to Black staff.

University management must act now to show that its commitments to EDI and Black employees were more than mere words, and that its principles will not evaporate at the first sign of a political shift.

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By Alex/Rose Cocker

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According to Labour insiders, health secretary Wes Streeting will resign and launch his bid to topple Keir Starmer tomorrow, following a terse 16-minute meeting with Starmer at No 10 today. It would appear those who thought the monarch was visibly just going through the motions of his ‘king’s speech’ today were right.

As Skwawkbox predicted earlier, the bid was only delayed to spare the king’s ’embarrassment’ at having to deliver the supposed ‘plan for government’ on behalf of a PM facing an ouster. As also predicted yesterday, Streeting is rushing through his bid because he and his supporters know he would stand no chance against Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. Burnham needs time to get into a parliamentary seat before he can make any challenge.

The bid comes after former ‘Tinge’ MP Chuka Umunna visited Downing Street on behalf of an Israel-supporting US banking giant that is demanding a right-wing replacement for Starmer. Streeting has accepted huge donations from the UK Israel lobby and will, according to the latest polling, destroy the rotting carcass of ‘Labour’.

According to that analysis, in the next election a Wes Streeting-led Labour will retain only around five seats from the more than 400 it ‘won’ in 2024 with the help of Farage’s Reform UK ‘party’.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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TV cameras posted on Downing Street yesterday happened to catch an interesting development and none of them even noticed. They were there in hopes of news of Keir Starmer’s imminent resignation. Instead, amid the ‘bubble’ soundbites, they caught defunct former Labour and Tinge party MP Chuka Umunna entering No 10.

Number 10 claimed that Umunna was not there in connection with Starmer’s tenure, but as part of his ‘routine’ visits on behalf of US finance giant JP Morgan. It’s interesting enough, if unsurprising, that a US corporate lobbyist has ‘routine’ access to the UK prime minister. But even more interesting when, in response to Starmer’s imminent demise, Umunna’s boss has just demanded that the UK government stay hard right when he goes.

Ransom demands?

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said yesterday, 12 May 2026, that his bank will cancel £3bn of investment in the UK if Starmer’s replacement is “hostile to banks”. The connection may have escaped the notice (or at least comment) of UK ‘mainstream media. But it didn’t escape the attention of everyone:

Even more worryingly, Dimon is a firm supporter of Israel and of the illegal US-Israel war on Iran.

Few would doubt that Starmer – or, in this case, his handlers trying to rig who replaces him – will sell out to Big Finance and/or the Israel lobby in a heartbeat. It seems that both have access at will, right at the heart of the matter.

Just when the needs and interests of the UK and its people should be front, centre and exclusively in the minds of those clinging on in Number 10.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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On Thursday 14 May, Reform UK is fighting a by-election in South Gloucestershire. Or it was, anyway. Reform has now withdrawn support for candidate Paul Heyward, with no time left for the party to field an alternative.

Heyward was binned after it emerged he had suggested someone shoot Kier Starmer on his since-deleted X account. Given that Heyward’s comments first came to light in April, the question is: why did it take so long to give him the boot?

Reform candidate Paul Heyward, from Winterbourne faces questions over posting 'Somebody shoot this ****' about PM
He has since deleted his account on Xhttps://t.co/siYQfBzVvP

— dave lawrence (@dave43law) April 29, 2026

Another one gone

Reform announced it had withdrawn support for Heyward on Tuesday 12 May – two days before the by-election. This means Heyward’s name will still be on the ballot, but if elected, he will not represent Reform. Given this, it’s unclear if he’ll want to sit as an independent or if he’ll immediately resign (should he win). The only other candidate is the Green Party’s Monica Maggs.

As reported by Bristol Live, Heyward’s other problematic posts include:

• Calling Ed Miliband a “mong” (an old-fashioned ableist slur);
• Describing himself as “anti Islam”;
• Being opposed to immigration and transgender people.

Heyward joins a long list of Reform councillors who’ve jumped or been pushed since the 2025 local elections:

Reform UK Councillors Gone: Updated

Paul Heyward has been suspended for social media posts.

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Kicked Out
Brian Black
Oliver Bradshaw
Paul Thomas
Bob Ford
Bill Barratt
Ed Hill
James Regan
Mark Broadhurst
Paul Bean
Adam Smith
Daniel Taylor
John Allen
Nicole Brooke
Patrick…

— Reform Party UK Exposed (@reformexposed) May 13, 2026

Perhaps the most surprising thing here is that Reform actually suspended him. As we reported in the runup to the local elections, Reform ran many candidates who said even worse things than Heyward with no action taken:

• Another Reform candidate praises Oswald Moseley – a rite of party initiation?
• Reform candidate wants to ‘tear down’ the NHS
• Another Reform candidate has praised Enoch Powell
• Reform welcomes ‘shoot the p*kis’ scandal ex-Tory
• Reform UK accused of ‘nil vetting’ as another racist candidate exposed

Low quality candidates

While we’re no fans of Keir Starmer, it’s obviously over the line to call for his murder. It’s true that social media has a desensitising effect, which means people fail to realise their words have weight, but that’s no excuse for someone who wants to run for public office.

The people representing us locally and nationally should be of the highest calibre. When it comes to Heyward, however, the man is clearly thinking about a different sort of calibre altogether.

Featured image via The Canary

By Willem Moore

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An illegal Israeli settler group has been photographed at an event in London, despite calls for it to be sanctioned.

The group, Shivat Zion, previously offered to help British people move to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

An exclusive investigation by Declassified UK found that the organisation recently held a fair at an Aliyah Fair, organised by the World Zionist Organisation. The event is supposed to help British Jews emigrate to Israel.

Only last month, Declassified revealed that the organisation had bragged about “awesome” illegal settlements, and told supporters it could benefit from UK tax subsidies.

Jonathan Vigné, the group’s “encouragement officer”, was filmed talking about the support the group would give to settlers moving to Efrat – an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The investigation then sparked a discussion in parliament. MPs called on the government to impose sanctions on Shivat Zion, along with Vigné and the charity’s CEO, Shraga Evers, who also lives in Efrat.

The government promised to take “concrete steps” to counter the expansion of settlements. However, it appears to have taken no action whatsoever. It even refused to explicitly condemn the organisation.

Since then, the EU has imposed sanctions on four settler groups and three CEOs. However, this does not include Shivat Zion.

‘Aliyah Day’

According to Declassified, the ‘Aliyah Day’ was supposed to provide:

information, guidance and community for British Jews considering moving to Israel. It featured lectures on everything from entering the Israeli jobs market, to the tax advantages given to immigrants.

However, they kept the venue a secret until the day before, suggesting it was not above board.

According to an anti-Zionist activist who attended the event for research purposes, it was well attended.

Ofir Sofer, Israel’s Minister of Aliya and Integration, was also at the event. Sofer has previously offered financial rewards to new immigrants who settle in the West Bank.

Sofer belongs to Israel’s far-right Religious Zionist party. The UK government has sanctioned its leader, Bezalel Smotrich, for:

repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities.

Sofer’s ministry had a stall at the Aliyah Fair, along with the Israeli Ministry of Education.

Government policy

According to the event’s floor plan, several other organisations promoting illegal settlements in the West Bank were also in attendance.

One such organisation is Israela. It is promoting relocation to at least 10 illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank, and Haspin, in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Importantly, though, occupation and stealing Palestinian land are a core part of Israeli government policy.

In December 2022, in a post on X, Benjamin Netanyahu stated:

These are the basic lines of the national government under my leadership:

The Jewish people has an exclusive and indisputable right to all spaces of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel – in the Galilee, in the Negev, in the Golan, in Judea and Samaria.

There are currently more than 737,000 illegal Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They have the full backing of the state – both ideologically and materially. The government arms them, and both the IOF and Israeli police protect them.

As the Canary previously reported:

These settlers only aim is to force Palestinians off their land, so their colonial settlements can be built there instead, and they do this by storming villages and terrorising residents, burning homes, killing livestock, and destroying crops and trees.

Currently, Israel is perpetrating its biggest expansion of Jewish settlements in decades across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Settlements are illegal under international law.

Article 49 of the Geneva Convention states:

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

Additionally, the Hague Regulations (1907) prohibit the seizure and destruction of private property. This means that both the building and the expansion of settlements breach international humanitarian law.

This means that settlers in and of themselves are criminals.

Increasing violence

From expelling an entire Palestinian village, to murdering a farmer, harassing Palestinian shepherds, and stopping children from playing football, there is a clear conscious effort among Israeli settlers to cause physical, emotional, and mental suffering to Palestinians.

Even the former head of Mossad has compared settler violence to the Holocaust.

It’s all well and good for the UK government to condemn the actions of organisations promoting illegal settlements, but words alone are not enough. The same organisations are parading around London, advertising their services and openly offering to move British families to illegal settlements; words are nowhere near enough.

Israel is a genocidal, terrorist state – and the settler movement is a prime example of the Jewish supremacist mindset going unchecked by the international community.

Feature image via Declassified UK

By HG

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Usually the kiss of death, although Streeting’s going to take matters into his own hands anyway…

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Calamitous US ‘secretary of war’ Pete Hegseth has launched a Pentagon investigation into a US senator for supposedly disclosing classified information. However, the information had already been made public by Hegseth himself under oath.

Hegseth said he ordered the investigation into Senator Mark Kelly after Kelly discussed massive US munitions expenditure against Iran during a TV interview. But Hegseth had already disclosed the information in April during sworn testimony to the UN.

Hegseth accuses Kelly of being a tell-tale

Following his equally hopeless master’s example, Hegseth took to social media to deride Kelly, accusing him of “blabbing” about a classified briefing.

“Captain” Mark Kelly strikes again.

Now he’s blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a *CLASSIFIED* Pentagon briefing he received.

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Did he violate his oath…again? @DeptofWar legal counsel will review. https://t.co/mPBZHxZqpr

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) May 10, 2026

Kelly, a former military officer, responded promptly with a restrained but ruthless put-down including a clip of Hegseth’s testimony.

We had this conversation in a public hearing a week ago and you said it would take “years” to replenish some of these stockpiles. That’s not classified, it’s a quote from you. This war is coming at a serious cost and you and the president still haven’t explained to the American… https://t.co/q3wX9AjRzO pic.twitter.com/5q7Gg81Xtg

— Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) May 11, 2026

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Pickled beef

Hegseth has been repeatedly accused of habitual heavy drinking and even being drunk in public, so maybe he just forgot.

But he has had it in for Kelly for months, including ordering an investigation into Kelly in November 2025 for “serious allegations of misconduct”. Hegseth has also tried to remove or reduce Kelly’s military pension for highlighting Hegseth’s failures. The move was blocked, at least temporarily, by judges as an attack on Kelly’s free speech rights.

Record of contempt (and more drinking)

Hegseth’s woeful record is not limited to his disastrous war on Iran at the orders of Donald Trump (and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu).

• He is a fan of torture with white-supremacist tattoos.
• He has accused serving US troops injured in an Iranian drone attack of lying about the lack of protection provided for them.
• He quoted fake bible verses during a speech to US troops and told them that their job is to bring about the Second Coming.
• He gloated about the “fun” of the US’ unprovoked and illegal sinking of an unarmed ship in international waters and Iranian ships.

And, of course, there’s (alleged) drinking. This has been posited as the reason for Hegseth’s bizarre, self-humiliating rant against US media for making him and his underlings look like “the bad guys”.

When he was a Fox News host, he was accused of repeated drunken behaviour.

He has even been accused of embarrassing his kids in a drunken rant on camera at the White House ‘egg roll’.

@therecount We’re this one —> #petehegseth #easter #easteregg #whitehouse #military #signal #groupchat #cringe #cringey #cringetok #kidsoftiktok #funnykids #fyp #news #politics #political #politicalnews #politicaltiktok ♬ original sound – therecount

The world is being wrecked by incompetent, petulant people of questionable mental capacity, and not even their own side is safe from them.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

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New global analysis reveals 790 recorded attacks in 2025 against people raising concerns about business-related risks and harms. This is the highest figure in the past five years, equivalent to more than two attacks per day on average. And it includes 53 deaths.

The Business and Human Rights Centre published the research. It records attacks against people speaking out about corporate conduct across 80 countries and almost every sector. These range from multinational technology firms and mining corporations to renewable energy companies and agricultural producers.

In 2025, the companies and / or projects linked to the highest number of attacks were:

• The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (oil and gas).
• Grasberg mine (mining).
• Leonardo (defence).
• Cobre Panamá (mining).
• Dinant (agribusiness).

160 companies linked to attacks

Those who experienced attacks raised human rights concerns about 160 companies headquartered in 37 countries. This points to the very clear human cost of irresponsible business practice.

Companies headquartered in China (47 attacks), USA (43), UK (41), France (41), Tanzania (40) and Uganda (40) were connected with attacks more frequently than companies from any other countries.

Meanwhile, industries connected with land use and environmental harm continue to be the most dangerous. Mining, fossil fuels and agribusiness are connected to the highest number of attacks.

There was a significant proportion of lethal violence, with 53 people killed for speaking out against corporate conduct.

Overall, the most common tactic was judicial harassment (52%), including arrests, detention, criminalisation and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). SLAPPs see powerful individuals or corporations misusing legal action to silence, intimidate and financially exhaust critics.

Christen Dobson, co-head of the Civic Freedoms & Human Rights Defenders Programme, said:

The attacks we recorded in 2025 point to a story about global power: who holds it, how it is exercised and what happens when people challenge it.

Those speaking out against corporate risks and harms are often portrayed as obstacles to progress when, in reality, they are its architects. They are leaders in protecting our natural environments, democracies and the health of our planet. They are our early warning systems: they expose risks before they become crises, they defend ecosystems before they collapse, and they challenge injustices before they become entrenched.

When people raising concerns about corporate harms are attacked – through intimidation, legal threats, or physical violence – these are not a series of isolated incidents, but a global pattern of retaliation against people exercising freedom of expression and advocating for rights-respecting economies.

These voices also provide vital information to businesses, without which companies and their investors risk remaining unaware about the risks embedded within their supply chains.

This often leads to increased risk of conflict, delays and financial losses, which could be avoided by ensuring respect for human rights and working towards shared prosperity with people affected by their operations.

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The increasing overlap between governments exploiting national security rhetoric to violate rights and corporate influence on governments, amplified by digital technologies used to restrict civic space, is heightening risks worldwide.

And it’s highlighting the urgent need for companies to adopt and implement zero-tolerance policies for attacks on those speaking against corporate harm.

The energy transition at risk

The findings are particularly significant for companies and investors involved in the energy transition. 42 attacks were against those raising concerns about at least one of the nearly 300 mines used for transition mineral mining.

Two of the top five projects or companies associated with the highest number of attacks in 2025 were mines extracting copper, which is used in wind turbines, solar panels, electrical grid infrastructure and electric vehicle charging stations and motors.

Mining has consistently been the most dangerous sector, with 181 attacks recorded in 2025 against people speaking about abuses. Only five mining companies have a policy commitment to zero tolerance for attacks, with none of these policies meeting expected criteria.

Meanwhile, people safeguarding the environment are among those most at risk, which jeopardises an energy transition that is fair and inclusive for all. An overwhelming majority of attacks (75%) targeted people protecting the climate, land and environment, while Indigenous Peoples experienced 30% of attacks, despite making up just six per cent of the global population.

Hannah Matthews, Civic Freedoms and Human Rights Defenders researcher and database coordinator, said:

Fast tracking business projects without meaningfully consulting with people affected is a key driver of increasing conflict, losing public trust and derailing the just energy transition.

Sustainability and long-term value depend on a fundamental fact: operating in environments where defenders are attacked, civic freedoms are restricted and democracy is weakened significantly increases risk, undermines market stability, and erodes the conditions businesses depend on to thrive.

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By The Canary

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The CIA used a car bomb to kill a mid-level cartel leader in Mexico’s capital, insiders claim. The US foreign intelligence agency is pursuing clandestine operations as part of president Donald Trump’s war on so-called ‘narco-terrorists’. In reality, the operations are about extending US control over the Americas.

Cartel boss Francisco Beltran was killed by an explosion on 28 March:

Video and pictures of the attack on March 28 show a quick burst of flames with the car continuing to roll forward, drifting off the highway.

The CIA has called accusations it was involved “false and salacious reporting”, which

serves as nothing more than a PR campaign for the cartels and puts American lives at risk.

Yet two CIA officers were killed in Mexico in April 2026. They were returning from a raid on a drugs lab in Chihuahua.

CNN said of the recent car bombing:

Mexican authorities have maintained extreme secrecy around the explosion, but multiple sources tell CNN that the attack was a targeted assassination, facilitated by CIA operations officers. An explosive device had been hidden inside the vehicle, the State of Mexico’s Attorney General told CNN.

Sowing chaos in Mexico

The US outlet quoted several figures familiar with the operation. They contradicted the official CIA response.

One said:

The lethality of their operations has been seriously ramped up. It’s a significant expansion of the kind of thing the CIA has been willing to do inside Mexico.

A former CIA officer said the US was trying to sow chaos through unattributable actions:

They definitely wanted this incident to create the question in everyone’s mind of, ‘Who did this?’

While Mexican journalist Jose Cardenas commented:

We have been living in anarchic war for many months in Sinaloa. But attacks like this, if confirmed, in an area near the country’s capital, well, I have never heard of anything similar.

In February, the killing of a senior cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes led to widespread fighting across several Mexican states. Mexican security forces reportedly pulled the trigger, but CIA intelligence supported the operation. Here is the Canary report on that mission.

Conflating drug trafficking and terrorism

The US has increasingly tried to frame drug trafficking in the same category as terrorism. The new US counter-terrorism strategy reaffirms this:

Last year, I rightfully designated the deadly cartels as terrorist organizations, and began using the strength and power of the U.S. military to stop and destroy their operations.

This approach was also used to justify the 3 January attack on Venezuela. That action saw president Nicolas Maduro kidnapped and taken to New York for trial. The same narrative is still being used to justify illegal drones strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. To date, 193 people have been killed at sea since September 2025.

As the Canary reported on 6 January:

The US justice department classified the Cartel De Los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda in November. 43 days later, the US has effectively admitted the organisation does not exist – at least not as a cartel in any conventional sense.

Adding:

The fact is, Cartel De Los Soles was always shorthand for high-level government corruption in Venezuela. It’s use goes back to the 1990s. The ‘suns’ refer to a rank insignia worn by grifting senior military officials. Which means the US classified a slang term in the same category as actual terror groups.

In reality, the Trump administration is aggressively pursuing hemispheric control. One writer has described this as building a ‘homeland empire’.

Trump’s homeland empire

Trump’s plan is driven by US decline, but also the increasing synergy between law enforcement, military and intelligence aims. This process is powered by the fascistic impulses of the US war on terror.

Historian Nikhil Pal Singh warned in a recent piece for Equator:

familiar analytical frameworks which rely on the distinction between foreign and domestic realms, normality and legality, policing and war, cannot provide the ‘world picture’ we need to grasp what’s happening here.

Instead, Trump:

conflates immigrants, drugs and free trade as sources of weakness coming from outside, “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Ultimately, Singh argued, Trump has combined:

the archaic geopolitics of a settler empire to the modern legal frameworks devised by his liberal predecessors.

US operations in South America are continuing under the name ‘Operation Total Extermination’. Canada, Cuba and Greenland have all been threatened with intervention or annexation. If not for the disastrous Iran war, Trump might already have acted. US rhetoric about continental politics has centred on drugs. But scratch the surface and you’ll find the same old colonial ambitions.

Featured image via N+

By Joe Glenton

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The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has released official figures for how many people have managed the move from legacy benefits to Universal Credit. They are, of course, trying to paint a pretty picture of the people they’ve supported. But the figures speak for themselves on how many have been left with less – or worse, with nothing.

DWP celebrates people losing money

If you were to take the media and politicians’ word for it, you’d think that welfare was ‘out of control’ and Universal Credit claimants have ‘increased significantly’ because nobody wants to work. But, as the DWP eventually had to admit, the reason for this is, of course, that over 2 million people were forced to migrate from legacy benefits to Universal Credit.

Back in February, I reported for the Canary that the DWP had celebrated stripping over 360,000 of their legacy benefits, as they announced the closure of Employment Support Allowance and Housing Benefit.

As I wrote at the time:

They bragged:

“Over 1.9 million people now better supported to find good, secure jobs as the Government moves customers off outdated benefits and on to Universal Credit.”

Considering ESA was a benefit for disabled people who couldn’t work as much or at all, it’s absolutely gross that the focus here is on work. But it doesn’t come as a surprise from the department that wants to force disabled people into work by any means necessary.

Well, now with the updated figures for completing the move to Universal Credit, we can see just how many people have lost their benefits. Not only that, but how many are worse off after being forced to move to Universal Credit.

DWP’s own figures show how screwed vulnerable people are

The DWP’s own stats show that, between July 2022 and the end of March 2026, 2,353,319 claimants were sent migration notices, or 1,822,374 households. Of that, 1,992,161 people in 1,580,239 households made a claim for Universal Credit and 1,131 people in 1,073 households are still going through the process.

This means that 360,030 people in 241,064 households did not manage to make a claim in the three-month period DWP imposed. That’s 15% of claimants and 13% of households that lost their vital support.

As the Canary has previously reported, making the move to Universal Credit is especially difficult for chronically ill and disabled people, who struggle with stress and lack the energy to fill in excessive forms.

An internal report also showed that some disabled claimants often had very little understanding of what they were being asked to do. As a result, many didn’t manage to claim Universal Credit and lost their legacy benefit.

The National Association of Welfare Rights Workers told Work and Pensions committee chair Debbie Abrahams that:

These claimants will all have long-term health conditions and/or disabilities, and their legacy benefits are likely to be their only source of income. A failure to migrate to universal credit therefore carries a high risk of destitution, rapid deterioration in their health, and even death.

Those who claimed still lost

The stats also showed how many people had managed to apply for ‘transitional protection’. This is awarded to even out the fact that many may lose money when switching benefits. But not everyone managed to do this. Of the number of 1,531,860 households eligible for protection, just 814,703 were awarded it.

This means that 717,157 households did not receive transitional protection and will have lost money by moving to Universal Credit.

What’s notable is we aren’t told in the report why people didn’t get the protection. As they were already eligible, this is presumably a problem of not contacting the DWP in time. And this again shows that, by putting a strict 3-month time-limit on claimants, many did not have enough time to jump through all of the DWP’s hoops.

But what’s really interesting is that, for the rest of the stats in the report, the DWP have provided individual and household figures; for transitional protection, they’ve only provided households affected. This means we don’t know how many individual claimants were affected, which could’ve been a lot higher than 43%.

It was previously discovered by Policy in Practice that around 200,000 households lost around £59.54 a week. That’s over £230 a month that people are just expected to do without.

DWP is a failure of an organisation

There are many things the DWP could’ve done differently here. Their system could be easier to navigate and phonelines easier to get through to. They could’ve made transitional protection a part of the main application that you didn’t have to apply separately for. But owt to save a few quid

The DWP are trying to market these stats as a good thing, but all they show, once again, is how much of a failure of an organisation they are.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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