BUCU have been saddened to learn that the University of Birmingham is now teaming up with the notorious Maximus.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the University of Birmingham’s collaboration and legitimation of Maximus – a corporation that has profited off the oppression and exploitation of disabled people in the UK through its contracts with the DWP – as evidenced in the dozens of news articles published by the Disability News Service. Their involvement in social security assessments, their active attempts to stop disabled people from accessing social security through Work Capability Assessments, and their complicity with the state’s ostracisation of disabled and unemployed people should be opposed, not endorsed by higher education institutions. Maximus assessors have also been found to have asked highly inappropriate suicide-related questions in social security assessments, and an ongoing research project has revealed the links between social security assessments and the deaths by welfare of thousands of disabled people. This month’s government announcement of plans for ‘fit notes’ no longer to be issued by GPs signals a further outsourcing of health and wellbeing assessments to corporations such as Maximus, Capita, and Atos. This is alarming.

We also note that in March 2024, the United Nations’ investigation into the UK state’s treatment of disabled people stated that: “The Committee finds that the State party has failed to take all appropriate measures to address grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities and has failed to eliminate the root causes of inequality and discrimination as framed in General Comment No. 6 on equality and non-discrimination. This failure exists particularly with respect to the State party’s obligation to guarantee the right of persons with disabilities to live independently and be included in the community (art. 19), to work and employment (art. 27), and to an adequate standard of living and social protection (art. 28) in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.

In the context in which the University of Birmingham has opened an EDI Centre and a Disability Hub, the decision to collaborate with one of the companies that has been most harmful to disabled people in the UK shows that University management are continuing to make this institution a hostile workplace for its staff. All of this is taking place while senior management are also continuing to refuse to bring disability and mental health-related support in-house, and while the BUCU and UNISON branches have been forced to consider referring the University to the Health and Safety Executive for failing to address and minimise the overwhelming stress that so many staff members have been put under for years. We strongly encourage members not to engage with the university-advertised Maximus events/sessions. We have no confidence that the information shared in these meetings would not be used against those attending them, at a later date, when seeking to access social security’.