The Government hid reports on the deaths of benefit claimants from the independent expert they hired to review their “fitness for work” assessment, it has been suggested.

A response from the Department of Work and Pensions to a Freedom of Information request indicates that mandatory peer reviews into the deaths of vulnerable claimants were withheld from Professor Malcolm Harrington, who was commissioned to write a report into the work capability assessment.

Deaths of disability benefit claimants, including suicides, which could be linked to the work capability assessment are automatically subject to peer review. According to the Disability News Service, seven such peer reviews were produced between February 2012, when the DWP started collating them centrally, and November 2012, when the report was published.

DWP has admitted “there were seven peer reviews, from February 2012 until Professor Harrington’s report of that year, in which the terms ‘WCA’ or ‘Work Capability Assessment’ were mentioned.”

In its response to the FOI request it adds: “The Department does not hold any information to confirm or deny whether these Peer Reviews were shared with Professor Harrington.”

Professor Harrington, told the DNS he would have remembered being shown “such damning indictments of the system.”