From the facebook page ‘ATOS miracles’ 27th August 2013:
Stephen Critchley:
An open letter to Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and all Con-Dem supporters.
Our last 12 months have been nothing but torture, my wife suffers from a rare illness which is life threatening and degenerative, for those of you that doesn’t know what degenerative means. A degenerative disease is a disease in which the function or structure of the affected tissues or organs will increasingly deteriorate over time. But do not worry you are not alone Atos healthcare did not know either they told my wife that she would be better within 3 years therefore is fit enough to return to work.
We appealed this and it has taken just over 10 months to sort out. All this worry and stress has done my wife no good at all, most people have no idea what is like to live with a life threatening illness, and in an ideal world nobody would but yet my wife was forced to relive her illness again and again. We had 3 letters from different specialists and one from our GP supporting us and we even went to visit our MP which was of no help. But still Atos and the DWP would not believe us and my wife’s specialists after all what do they know, so we had to go a tribunal at the magistrate’s court which we won.
What an ordeal that was for me let alone my wife, we were both searched like criminals and of course the court room is upstairs and at the other end of the building, this is no accident they do this to try and catch you out, the reason for this is if you put on your form you cannot walk more than 40 meter’s then how did you reach the court room? If this is not true then why after the hearing were we allowed to use the lift and leave via a short cut?
My question to you all is this why did it ever get this far, surely the letters from the specialists was enough evidence to stop it going this far and wasting tax payers money, what was the cost to the tax payer for this exercise and most importantly what is the cost to my wife’s health and state of mind.
On top of all that we are also in a fight to try and keep our house, because of the so called Bedroom Tax now there is a policy that makes no sense at all, for example if my wife and I moved to private rented accommodation with 4 bedrooms at a £1000pm they would pay it as we would not be affected by the tax, but because we live in social housing we are forced to find £125pm, of which we cannot afford so we have a choice do we eat and keep warm or pay the tax .
Now in 2 years’ time we will have to go through it all again but then it will be a lot harder because not only will we be fighting for ESA we will have to fight for PIP, it’s no wonder a lot of the sick and disabled have thoughts of ending their own life my wife included. All I can say to every MP who voted this in is this; you can take the Motability car off us, you can take our house off us (Bedroom Tax) and our benefits, all my wife wants in return is for you to take her illness off her she did not ask for it neither does she want it.
Many Thanks
Mr S Critchley
