Frank Field MP accuses DWP benefits assessors of asking when terminally ill claimants “expect to be dead”

“They have been asked directly whether they think they will soon die, and by what date they expect to be dead.”

(Photo By A terminally ill patient in his hospice room. Photo: Getty)

The new chair of the Work and Pensions select committee, Frank Field, reports that two of his terminally ill constituents have directly been asked by benefits assessors when they expect to die. He is challenging the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on the intrusion his constituents claim to have suffered.

The Labour MP for Birkenhead wrote a letter to the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith on 30 June about two constituents who had written to him, distressed that they had been asked directly – one over the phone, and one face-to-face – when they will be dead.