Stop G4S: Protest Their Annual General Meeting Thursday 6th June

Welfare-to-work thieves G4S will be holding their AGM in Central London on June 6th. Join the protest outside, supported by Boycott Workfare.
From the Stop G4S website:

The last twelve months have seen G4S voted third ‘Worst Company of the Year’ in the global Public Eye awards, they also face a UK parliamentary inquiry into their disastrous handling of an asylum housing contract and will soon give evidence at the inquest into the death of Jimmy Mubenga who died while being restrained by G4S staff. Not that you would know it from the self-congratulatory tone of G4S’ latest Corporate Responsibility Report.

Across Europe, G4S are becoming a pariah company as trade unions, charities and faith-groups take a public stand in opposing its drive to put private profit above human rights.

Organisations in the Middle East have called for a boycott of G4S due to their complicity with Israel’s repression and detention of Palestinians including children.

On June 6th the company returns to the City of London for its annual corporate jamboree.

Stop G4S campaign is calling for a (Europe-wide) demonstration of outrage as G4Scongratulate themselves on another year of profiteering at the expense of human dignity.

Bring banners, flags and drums; bring yourself and your friends. Refuse to be taken in by their whitewashing of abuses, join us at the AGM to hold G4S to account.

Meet Thursday June 6th 2013 from 1pm
Salters’ Hall, 4 Fore Street, London, EC2Y 5DE

Please share, tweet, spread the word!

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/380705765383578/

The Government have got it wrong about Human Rights.

Sue Jones reveals that a Parliamentary committee has condemned the government for circumventing the law to deprive disabled people of their "right to live independently and to be included in the community". Please read and share widely.

Reblogged from kittysjones:

The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights has conducted an inquiry into the UK Government’s implementation of Article19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) – the right to live independently and to be included in the community. The inquiry which began in 2011 has received evidence from over 300 witnesses.

The inquiry has highlighted just how little awareness, understanding and employment of the Convention there is by the Tory-led Government.  Very few of the witnesses made specific reference to the Convention in their presented evidence, despite the inquiry being conducted by the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, with the terms of reference clearly framing the inquiry as being about Article 19 of the UNCRPD.

“This finding is of international importance”, said Oliver Lewis, MDAC Executive Director, “Our experience is that many Governments are of the view that the CRPD is nothing more than a policy nicety, rather than a treaty which sets out legal obligations which governments must fulfil.”

The report is particularly critical of the Minister for Disabled People (Esther McVey) who told the Committee that the CRPD was “soft law”. The Committee criticised this as “indicative of an approach to the treaty which regards the rights it protects as being of less normative force than those contained in other human rights instruments.” (see para. 23 in the report, the link is at the foot of this article.) The Committee’s view is that the CRPD is hard law, not soft law.

Dr Hywel Francis MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “We are concerned to learn that the right of disabled people to independent living may be at risk through the cumulative impact of current reforms. Even though the UK ratified the UNCPRD in 2009 with cross-party support, the Government is unable to demonstrate that sufficient regard has been paid to the Convention in the development of policy with direct relevance to the lives of disabled people. The right to independent living in UK law may need to be strengthened further, and we call on the Government and other interested organisations to consider the need for a free-standing right to independent living in UK law.”

“The Government is meant to include disabled people in making sure people have their human rights upheld. We are concerned that a part of the Law on treating people equally and fairly (Equality Act section 149) does not say any more that disabled people should be involved. This is a step backwards.”

In other words, the Tory-led Coalition has quietly removed this part of the Equality Act.

The budget of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which was established by the Labour Party when they were drafting this flagship policy, is being reduced by over 60%, its staffing cut by 72%, and its powers restricted by the Coalition. Provisions that are being repealed by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Bill include the duty on public authorities to have due regard to the need to reduce socio-economic inequalities.

Savage Legal aid cuts from April 2013 have also contributed significantly to creating further barriers to ensuring Equal Rights law protect us, and the Tory-driven Legal Aid Bill also contravenes our right to a fair trial under Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This is not a coincidental multiple policy timeline, but rather a very coordinated political attack on potential legal challenges at a time when Tory-led severe and devastating multiple welfare and provision cuts have affected disabled people so disproportionately. The changes, which came into effect in April, will hit “the same group of disabled people over and over again”.

The threats to the legal infrastructure make it all the more important to mobilise all disadvantaged groups around equality as a fundamental human right.
The Report draws attention to several significant Human Rights issues, including:

•       the need for freestanding legislation to protect the right to independent living in UK law,

•       the effect of current reforms to benefits and services on the ability of disabled people to enjoy independent living,

•       the role played by the UNCRPD in policy development and decision-making at all levels of government,

•       the need for the use of equality impact assessments,

•       the effects of devolution on implementation of the UNCRPD, and

•       hate crime

The right to independent living does not exist as a free-standing right in UK law. Although it is protected and promoted to some extent by a matrix of rights, the Committee believes that this is not enough. It argues that the Government and other interested parties should immediately assess the need for, and feasibility of, legislation to establish independent living as a free-standing right. In addition, the Committee concludes that the UNCRPD is “hard law” and that the Government should fulfil their obligations under the Convention on that basis.

The Committee finds that:

•       reforms (cuts) to benefits and services risk leaving disabled people without the support they need to live independently;

•       restrictions in local authority eligibility criteria for social care support, the replacement of the Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payment, the closure of the Independent Living Fund and changes to housing benefit risk interacting in a particularly harmful way for disabled people;

•      people fear that the cumulative impact of these changes will force them out of their homes and local communities and into residential care.

It also finds that:

•       the Government has not conducted an Equality impact assessment of the cumulative impact of current reforms (cuts) on disabled people. The Report urges them do so, and to report on the extent to which these “reforms “are enabling them and local authorities to comply with their obligations under the UNCRPD.

•       The Committee states that the Government should make a commitment to Parliament that they will give due consideration to the articles of the Convention when making legislation. The UNCRPD did not have a significant role in the development of policy and legislation, as is required by the Convention.

Furthermore, the Committee criticises changes to the duties of public authorities in England under the Equality Act 2010, which no longer require the production of equality impact assessments of changes in policy, nor the involvement of disabled people in developing policies which will affect them.

The Committee also expresses a major concern over a growing incidence of hate crime against disabled people and urges the Government take action to foster respect for the rights and dignity of disabled people.

Article 19 states that the Government must always ensure it “stops things getting worse.” This has NOT happened. The quality of so many sick and disable people’s lives in this Country has been so radically, significantly and DELIBERATELY reduced since the Tory-led Coalition took Office in 2010. This needs to change as a matter of urgency.

The Government’s “reforms” have led to a terrible increase in deaths amongst sick and disabled people, and we have already seen a significant rise in suicides that are directly linked with the Tory-driven austerity measures.

When we seek to improve the situation of ‘the poor’, first of all we need to spend time studying the lifestyle choices of tax avoidance, the Government’s handouts (of our money) to banks, sponsors/private businesses and the wealthy: we need to study the dependency and culture of entitlement that these acts have fostered, and of course special focus should be on the decisions and actions of the wealthy, and very careful scrutiny of the Government responsible for policies that distribute wealth and create poverty – perpetuating and extending it.

The Tory-led Coalition prefers to take money from the vulnerable, the sick and disabled, and hand it out to the millionaires.

What kind of Government refuses to instigate or agree an inquiry into the substantial rise in deaths amongst sick and disabled people that are so clearly a direct consequence of that Government’s policies? And that same Government uses the media to scape-goat and stigmatise sick and disabled people, by lying and inventing statistics to “justify” their persecution of our most vulnerable citizens and the withdrawal of their lifelines and support?

One that does not value those lives, or regard them as having equal worth to the lives of others.

“We are raising more money for the rich” - David Cameron, 12th December 2012

Further reading:
The European courts have their priorities wrong. Why aren’t they stopping the disability deaths? – Mike Sivier, Vox Political

Did They Hope We Wouldn’t Notice?: Under The Smokescreen -John D Clare

CRPD IS “HARD LAW” – UK PARLIAMENT
The Summary of the Report on Implementation of the Right of Disabled People to Independent Living: easy read version  and full length report

Many thanks to Robert Livingstone for his outstanding art work.

Thanks also to Tracey Flynn for her faith, inspiration, specialist knowledge and our dialogue regarding some of the implications of the CRPD Report.

ATOS To Amputee: Will Your Arm Grow Back Soon?

Reblogged from Same Difference:

A ONE-ARMED man trying to claim disability benefits said staff asked if he thought his limb might grow back.

Gary Swift, whose right limb is missing from below the elbow, says he faced the question while being medically assessed.

He had applied for an employment and support allowance — paid to people who can’t work through disability — and went to the meeting with his carer mum Tracey Perkins.

They say the interviewer asked: “Do you expect your condition to improve? Do you expect your arm to grow back within the next two years.”

Gary, 30, of Chesterfield, Derbys, said: “I replied, ‘Well it’s not grown back in the last 30 years, so I can’t see it happening over the next two’.”

ATOS Healthcare, who assessed Gary for the Department for Work and Pensions, said last night: “That question would never be asked. Staff carrying out the assessment are trained doctors, nurses and physiotherapists.”

Gary said he was later sent on a job seekers’ gardening course — and handed a spade.

He said: “If it wasn’t so ridiculous it would be laughable.”

Food banks now a lifeline for half a million people in Britain

Oxfam and Church Action Poverty call for parliamentary inquiry saying cuts and Jobcentre errors are causing destitution

Welfare changes and mistakes at Jobcentre Plus offices are delaying benefits, prompting people to turn to food aid, say charities. Photograph: Rex Features

 

Massive cuts to social safety nets have led to "destitution, hardship and hunger on a large scale" in Britain, with more than half a million people now forced to rely on food banks for sustenance, key poverty charities have warned in a report.

Welfare changes and mistakes by Jobcentre Plus staff are causing delays in benefits and errors or sanctions, which push vulnerable people into precarious situations, the report from Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam warns. The charities want an urgent parliamentary inquiry.

"The shocking reality is that hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are turning to food aid," said Mark Goldring, Oxfam's chief executive. "Cuts to social safety nets have gone too far, leading to destitution, hardship and hunger on a large scale. It is unacceptable that this is happening in the seventh wealthiest nation on the planet."

The report, Walking the Breadline, is backed by the Trussell Trust, the UK's biggest provider of food banks. It blames the increasing pressure on food banks on far-reaching changes to the benefits system, as well as on unemployment, increased underemployment, low and falling incomes and rising food and fuel prices.

Changes to the benefit system are the most common reasons for people using food banks, including delays in payments, sanctions, sickness benefit reassessments and changes to crisis loan eligibility rules, according to the report.

It outlines the case of Kay, a single parent in her 30s who was required by her Jobcentre Plus adviser to search for six jobs each fortnight. When the job club she attended lost internet connectivity one week, she only managed to inquire about one vacancy, looking at five more the following week.

At her next visit to the Jobcentre, her adviser said her search was "not good enough" because her six job searches were not spread evenly. She was sanctioned a week's money of £71 and forced to rely on her family for financial support.

The energy secretary, Ed Davey, told MPs this month it was "completely wrong to suggest there is some sort of statistical link between the benefit reforms we're making and the provision of food banks".

But the report concludes: "There is clear evidence that the benefit sanctions regime has gone too far and is leading to destitution, hardship and hunger on a large scale. There is a real risk that the benefit cuts and the introduction of universal credit … will lead to even larger numbers being forced to turn to food banks. Food banks may not have the capacity to cope with the increased level of demand."

The Guardian reported this week that many food banks were struggling to meet the explosion in demand for food parcels.

The report says that keeping the national minimum wage and benefit levels in line with inflation will allow families "to live with dignity and … afford to feed and clothe themselves and stay warm".

Niall Cooper, chief executive of Church Action on Poverty and the report's lead author, said: "The safety net that was there to protect people is being eroded to such an extent that we are seeing a rise in hunger. Food banks are not designed to, and should not, replace the normal safety net provided by the state in the form of welfare support."

The report calls for the Commons work and pensions select committee to conduct an urgent inquiry into the relationship between benefit delay, error or sanctions, welfare reform changes and the growth of food poverty.

It also urges the Department for Work and Pensions to publish data on the number of people sanctioned, and on referrals from Jobcentre staff to local food banks.

Imran Hussain, head of policy for Child Poverty Action Group, said: "It's a national scandal that half a million British people are now having to turn to food aid. It's a problem that has quickly escalated and shows that something has gone badly wrong with the safety net that is supposed to help families in need.

"It is particularly concerning that more and more of the families seeking food aid are actually in work but on poverty pay and facing cuts to their tax credits."

Mary Creagh, Labour's shadow environment secretary, called the figures "shocking" and urged the government to change tack.

"The UK is the seventh richest country in the world, yet we face a growing epidemic of hidden hunger, with people increasingly unable to meet their family's basic needs," she said.

A DWP spokeswoman said the majority of benefits were processed on time every day. She said: "We welcome the contribution voluntary organisations and food banks, including the Trussell Trust, play in supporting local communities, beyond the safety net provided by government.

"That is why Jobcentre Plus – for the first time – is now referring people to their services. Our welfare reforms will improve the lives of some of the poorest families in our communities, with the universal credit simplifying the complex myriad of benefits and making three million households better off."

Guardian

Council chief makes personal apology to blind widow following eviction threat over £117 bedroom tax bill

By Keith McLeod, Craig Robertson 30 May 2013 08:00

HELEN Sockell faced losing her Kilmarnock home because of the hated tax imposed by the Con-Dem government. But East Ayrshire Council leader Douglas Reid paid her a visit to assure her that won’t be happening.

 

 

Helen Sockell faces losing her home
Alasdair MacLeod/Daily Record

A COUNCIL chief has said sorry in person to a blind widow threatened with eviction over the bedroom tax.

East Ayrshire Council leader Douglas Reid visited Helen Sockell, 56, to apologise for the threat over a £117 bill.

Helen, from Kilmarnock, is one of 105,000 single people in Scotland who have been told they must move to smaller homes – or lose housing benefit. But only 20,000 single occupancy homes are available.

Reid has also raised Helen’s case with Scottish Office minister David Mundell and described the bedroom tax as “barbaric”.

Helen has lived alone in her three-bedroom house since 2005, when her husband John and son Andrew both died.

She said:

“Mr Reid came here to see me after the story appeared in the Record.

“He was very nice and went out of his way to reassure me. I can sleep at night without this hanging over me.

“If I lost the house, I would have to learn my way around a new house and that would be difficult.”

Helen, who was born with poor eyesight, lost her sight totally after an operation when she was 14.

SNP councillor Reid believes she should be exempt from paying the bedroom tax.
He added:

“We will also get officers to try to maximise her benefits as I don’t think she was claiming enough.”

East Ayrshire Council say 170 people in their area are now in arrears solely due to non-payment of bedroom tax.

But Reid said there was nothing the council could do to avoid implementing the tax. He added:

“It is draconian. There is a need to reform the welfare system but not in this way.”

The Scottish Daily Record

The Great Crapsby: Why Iain Duncan Smith isn’t all he seems

The Great Crapsby. Artwork by Dan Murrell for the New Statesman

Like Fitzgerald’s doomed, self-fictionalising hero Jay Gatsby, the Work and Pensions Secretary has constructed a personal narrative for himself that doesn’t quite take in all the facts. Look deeper, and you discover the powerful ideology and lack of empathy that motivates his politics.
BY SARAH DITUM PUBLISHED 29 MAY 2013 8:39

It’s a bold play for Iain Duncan Smith to reference F Scott Fitzgerald in the course of his tedious, risible political thriller, The Devil’s Tune.

 A female character approaches a grandiose house:

“Laura was reminded almost instantly of The Great Gatsby. She smiled at the absurdity […]”

(Anyone who’s battled through this shockingly bad novel will feel the absurdity if not the smile.)

A bold play, but perhaps not a wholly inappropriate one, since at least one of Duncan Smith’s barely distinguishable characters owes a debt to Gatsby himself. Democratic presidential pretender Kelp is the epitome of the American dream, according to the novel – an ex-military man who has made his own myth and risen from dirt, with the help of some dubious money and connections. He’s also a deeply crooked politician.

Iain Duncan Smith has his myths too.

He’s the “quiet man”, the man who had the “Easterhouse epiphany”, a man whose compassion for the poor drove him to found the Centre for Social Justice, where his honest intentions become honest research. He’d like it to be believed that he – like Gatsby – has hauled himself up from common stock, but that’s not quite true. Nor are many of the other things that are widely believed about him, but he is like Gatsby in one regard: he’s a great work of self-fictionalising. The end result, sadly, is no match for the luminous Mr Jay.

Let us think of IDS instead as the Great Crapsby.

The narrative of the Great Crapsby is one of fall followed by resurrection, hinging on a single dramatic incident of enlightenment. Following his unlikely victory, Duncan Smith was a humiliation as Conservative party leader, his reign of just over two years was marked by embarrassment and ineffectiveness. His pitiful parliamentary performance won him the name “Iain Duncan Cough” in Private Eye, and having once betrayed Major, Duncan Smith reaped the disloyalty of his party in turn.

After he was deposed in 2003, it seemed plausible that he would vanish into the political scrub. Instead, he founded the Centre for Social Justice – the allegedly independent think tank that would do so much to promote and shape Conservative policies on welfare and society, and that established Duncan Smith’s credentials to take on the work and pensions portfolio.

Stories of the CSJ’s origins routinely mention something called the “Easterhouse epiphany”:

“It was on the Easterhouse Estate in Glasgow where I began to appreciate the scale of social breakdown occurring in Great Britain,”

writes Duncan Smith in one of the Centre’s publications;

“The CSJ was born through a visit to Easterhouse Estate in Glasgow,”

he says in another.

In 2010, Tim Montgomerie described the Easterhouse visit as the moment

“something suddenly clicked […] he realised here was his personal mission and a mission for the Tory party.”

So far, so Damascene. And it’s worth remembering that the apparatus of piety plays a large part in the iconography of IDS – he has claimed that:

“My Catholic background […] has become integral to everything I do.”

But – besides people saying that it happened – what evidence is there for this miraculous moment of enlightenment? 

Not, it turns out, very much at all.

In 1994, Duncan Smith (then working in the Department of Social Security, predecessor to the Department of Work and Pensions) wrote an editorial for the Mail (the text of which is copied here). In it, he decried the growth of spending on welfare since the foundation of the welfare state; he claimed that the benefits system had betrayed the intentions of the Beveridge Report, and was being defrauded and abused on a vast scale.
Worst of all, he alleged, the welfare state had created a class incapable of self-help:

“[T]he system discourages people from getting a job […] people become trapped, remaining dependent on the State rather than on their working abilities.” His answer? “There should be just one, income-assessed benefit.”

In 2010, Duncan Smith (now work and pensions secretary) delivered a speech. In it, he claimed the benefits system had betrayed the intentions of the Beveridge Report, that it was being defrauded and abused on a vast scale, and worst of all, that it was counterproductively “supporting – even reinforcing – dysfunctional behaviour.” His answer? Universal credit.

Over 16 years, there was only one appreciable difference in the rhetoric: in 1994, Duncan Smith claimed that it was particularly appalling to see welfare spending expand during a time of economic growth; by 2010, the argument for urgent action was that “the economy isn’t growing as we had hoped”. But that change is simply a matter of shaping the argument to the political conditions. Whatever Iain Duncan Smith discovered in Easterhouse in 2002, it did nothing whatsoever to alter his politics. His diagnosis and prescription for the welfare state has remained constant, from the Nineties to now.

The “epiphany” is a useful fiction, nothing more.

It feels painful to impugn Duncan Smith’s honour like this, because the perception of him as a decent man is so strong, even among those who oppose his politics. In some ways, his ineptness as a party leader has come to be seen as evidence of his virtue: his failure as a politician is proof of his good faith. But a certain taste for self-fashioning has long been evident in him. In 2002, Michael Crick discovered what might kindly be called exaggerations in Duncan Smith’s CV. It stated that he had attended the Universita di Perugia. This was not true: instead he had been to a language school in Perugia, and had not received any qualifications. Duncan Smith is a Perugia man in precisely the same way that grifting Gatsby was “an Oxford man”.

When he isn’t bloating his qualifications, Duncan Smith can be found putting on the poor mouth and talking up his experience of poverty. Having haplessly claimed that he could survive on £53 a week “if I had to”, Duncan Smith was forced to plead personal experience. After he left the army, he told the Mail, he lived illegally with his then-girlfriend, now-wife Betsy Freemantle, in a ragged bedsit.

“They say love makes everything work,”

said Duncan Smith, although presumably the fact that his partner is the daughter of a monied aristocrat and the recipient of an inheritance in her own right also went some way to making everything work. Whatever privations the Duncan Smiths may have experienced, there was always the comforting hand of wealth to keep them from plunging into the underclass. They now live – rent-free – in the Freemantle ancestral home.

So he may not know directly what it is to be truly poor, his defenders can say, but at least he has studied the issue through the Centre for Social Justice. Well, that depends on what it means to study something. The CSJ has published report on report, all of them with the curious effect of reinforcing its founder’s prior positions and supporting government policy.(The intimacy of the CSJ and DWP is underlined by the fact that, until late 2012, Philippa Stroud was both a special advisor to Duncan Smith at the DWP and paid by the CSJ to be co-chair of its board of advisers.) Few of us have the divine inspiration that lets our hypotheses precisely anticipate the results of our research, but Duncan Smith appears to be one of those saintly, second-sighted few.

Either that, or he has no respect at all for evidence. In 2010, Duncan Smith made a number of claims about the stymied brain development of children who “witness a lot of abuse”, or whose mothers have “different, multiple partners”, citing the work of Dr Bruce Perry. Perry protested that his work had been “distorted”: while Duncan Smith implied that children of chaotic or neglectful households were destined to criminality, Perry’s work had in fact been on children who suffered extreme deprivation, including being locked in a basement without human contact. Yet Duncan Smith maintained, implausibly, that he not misrepresented Perry’s findings.

This wasn’t an isolated case of over-enthusiasm. Here’s another: in April, Duncan Smith claimed success for the benefits cap before it had even been implemented, saying:

“Already we’ve seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the cap move into jobs. This clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact.”

Again, the original research showed nothing of the sort. On 9 May, Andrew Dilnot of the UK Statistics Authority wrote:

“[the statement] is unsupported by the official statistics.” Furthermore, Dilnot’s letter to the DWP points out there have been previous incidents of statistical abuse in the department, and requests “further assurance that the working arrangements within the department give sufficient weight to the professional role and public responsibilities of statisticians.”

It is one thing to be an individual fantasist, telling flattering stories about yourself. It is another to insist that government policy should be directed by fantasy. But the final tragedy of the Great Crapsby is that, for all the dull power of his imagination, reality stubbornly refuses to comply. The work programme, which Duncan Smith launched two years ago, doesn’t work. The hardest cases are neglected while private providers profit from shuffling the easily employable into jobs.

Universal credit – the single benefit that Duncan Smith has been arguing for since the 1990s – seems unlikely to happen in this parliament, after widely predicted problems with the computer system saw the trial reduced to a minute population that included only individuals with the simplest circumstances. In the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority review, universal credit was given an amber/red status, meaning “in danger of failing”.

The Great Gatsby had his vast wealth and a belief in the green light. The Great Crapsby has his vast wealth and an irresistible attraction to that red light of failure – not just his own personal screw-ups, but a belief that the poor must be made to fail and ground down as far as possible. How we must hunger for saints in our politics if we accept a man as good purely because he says he is good, while so much of what he does bespeaks falsehood and a perfect absence of empathy.

The New Statesman

Hungry Britain: More than 500,000 people forced to use food banks, warns Oxfam

The number of people using foodbanks has trebled in past 12 months

NIGEL MORRIS  , CHARLIE COOPER 

THURSDAY 30 MAY 2013

 

 

More than half a million Britons have resorted to using food banks to stave off hunger and destitution, the Government has been warned.

Major charities signalled their alarm over a dramatic rise in the nation’s “hidden hungry” – families who are forced to ask for help to feed themselves – because of wage cuts, the squeeze on benefits and the continuing economic downturn.

The numbers have trebled in the past year alone and are likely to continue rising rapidly despite Britain’s status as one of the world’s wealthiest nations, according to a joint report by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty.

They say cuts to welfare payments – including below-inflation rises in benefits, new Jobseeker’s Allowance sanctions and reassessment of entitlement to invalidity benefits – are the biggest cause of the surge in demand for food banks in all parts of the country. The charities are also fiercely critical of the numbers of mistakes and delays in benefits payments, which leave claimants without cash through no fault of their own and lead to “food uncertainty” among Britain’s poorest families.

The hunger crisis has been exacerbated by the falling living standards of many people in employment, who have seen their wages trimmed or their working hours cut. Rising food and fuel prices are also driving families into poverty, the charities add.

The cost of basic foodstuffs has leapt by 35 per cent and the cost of heating a home has jumped by 63 per cent in the past five years – a period in which many incomes have risen only marginally or not at all.

Mark Goldring, the chief executive of Oxfam, said last night:

“The shocking reality is that hundreds of thousands of of people in the UK are turning to food aid. Cuts to social safety-nets have gone too far, leading to destitution, hardship and hunger on a large scale. It is unacceptable this is happening in the seventh wealthiest nation on the planet.”

The Trussell Trust, the biggest organiser of food banks in Britain, said almost 350,000 people received at least three days’ emergency food last year, compared with about 130,000 in 2011-12. But because there is an array of organisations distributing food, the new report conservatively estimates that well over 500,000 people are now relying on charity handouts.

Niall Cooper, the chief executive of Church Action on Poverty, said:

“The safety net that was there to protect people is being eroded to such an extent that we are seeing a rise in hunger. Food banks are not designed to, and should not, replace the ‘normal’ safety net provided by the state in the form of welfare support.”

The Government has sent out mixed messages over the steep rise in food bank use. While Downing Street sources had previously said welfare payments were set at a level “where people can afford to eat”, David Cameron has acknowledged the work of food-bank volunteers as “part of the big society”.

The Prime Minister visited the independent Oxfordshire West Food Bank in his Witney constituency in February, but did so without inviting photographers or journalists, and has so far failed to take up the Trussell Trust’s invitation to visit one of its more established centres. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has joined a Food Aware appeal for food donations, visited the Witney food bank and raised the issue at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Earlier this month, Tim Lang, a former adviser to the World Health Organisation and one of Britain’s leading food policy experts, told The Independent that he feared food banks were becoming “institutionalised” and taking Britain back to a “Dickensian” model of welfare.

The Trussell Trust launched a nationwide network of food distribution centres in 2004. It feeds people referred to it by social services and other professionals such as school liaison officers, doctors or Job Centre Plus staff. It now runs 350 food banks in all areas of Britain, manned by an estimated 30,000 volunteers, with an average of three new centres opening each week.

Its chief executive, Chris Mould, said yesterday:

“We are seeing massive growth in the numbers of people being referred to us. Low income is a serious problem across the UK, with people facing acute challenges in trying to survive. Increases in basic prices of food and heating your home have a really big impact on people’s ability to cope.”

Today’s report calls for an urgent parliamentary inquiry into the relationship between benefit payment delays, errors or sanctions, welfare reforms and the growth in the numbers of “hidden hungry”.

It is also damning about ministers’ failure properly to monitor the problem, and calls for agencies to record and monitor people experiencing food poverty in order to establish more accurate numbers.

Imran Hussain, the head of policy for the Child Poverty Action Group, said:

“It is a national scandal that half a million British people are now having to turn to food aid. It is a problem that has quickly escalated and shows that something has gone badly wrong with the safety net that is supposed to help families in need.”

Case studies: Living on the breadline

Brian Ahern
Retired postman, 57, from Stockwell, South London

I worked for my last company for two decades but had a nervous breakdown. I received a good pension of £95 a week, which meant I wasn’t entitled to any benefits. Unfortunately, I had a problem with alcohol and this swallowed up all my money for a period of time. I first went to the Brixton food bank in May 2012. I’d got myself into a bit of a mess and it was the last resort for me: I literally didn’t have a can of beans in the cupboard. I saw a sign in a shop window and was referred by Ace of Clubs, a soup kitchen and social centre in Clapham North. They do lunch for a quid – with dessert! I went three times, which was the most I was allowed with the vouchers I was given. They are very well stocked but I was surprised by how hard it was to have vouchers issued. They have helped me a few times and, now that I am over my crisis, I volunteer there. They are a great organisation and all the staff are very dedicated to what they do. People shouldn’t feel shame in using them when they need to, but unfortunately there is stigma attached.”

Karen Woods
Unemployed mother of one, 47, from south London

My daughter starts school in September. I went to a food bank because I couldn’t afford to put food on the table for her. I receive Jobseekers’ Allowance, child tax credit and child benefit but it is all swallowed by gas and electric bills, and by a loan I took out three years ago to pay for Christmas. Extra things need paying for – a missed bill, new shoes for my daughter – and then you can’t afford food. I saw the food bank advertised and went in to ask how it could be used. I was then referred by a community centre. I had to provide proof of income. I didn’t want to have to depend on charity – but it’s either that or nothing.”

Jane McBlane
Retired civil servant, 57, from West Croydon

I was at the Ministry of Defence for 20 years. I’m now unemployed but not old enough for a pension. When the council changed benefit payments on 1 April, I had no money for food. I complained to the council and they suggested a food bank. I have no family and don’t want my friends to know about my situation, so had no where else to turn.”

The Independent

Why mental health is a political issue

‘Mental illness has been depoliticised, so that we blithely accept a situation in which depression is now the malady most treated by the NHS’. Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters

First Published: Monday 16th July 2012 – but a relevant as ever

“Welfare suicides don’t exist. Suicide is a mental health issue.” That line, by the former Labour official Luke Bozier, pretty much sums up the standard rightwing response to the website Calum’s List. According to its founders, the aim of Calum’s List is “to list the number of deaths where welfare reform has alleged to have had some culpability, and to make the best effort possible to work towards reducing this death toll.” Bozier’s Twitter comments were a gloss on blogposts by The Spectator’s Isabel Hardman and the Telegraph’s Brendan O’Neill.

There’s more than a whiff of Freud’s “kettle logic” (I didn’t borrow your kettle; when I borrowed the kettle it was already broken; when I returned the kettle it wasn’t damaged) about the cluster of incompatible arguments that these three presented against Calum’s List. Their principal claims were as follows. The suicides have not been caused by the changes, and therefore to mention them is an act of opportunistic exploitation; if suicides have been caused by the reforms, this is no reason to abandon them; the problem is not the reforms themselves but how they are managed (ie those forced back to work should be given adequate support); suicide is not a rational act, which means that it can have no political significance.

I don’t wish to argue here about whether or not specific cases of suicide were caused by the new legislation. But I do want to contest the bizarre idea that, in principle, suicides could not be adduced as evidence against the changes in the welfare system. If people dying as a consequence of the implementation of measures cannot count as evidence that the legislation has detrimental effects, what would?

O’Neill displays a strangely judgmental attitude towards suicide, arguing suicide “is not a rational response to economic hardship; it is not a rational response to having your benefits cut”. This is a spectacular case of missing the point: for many of those suffering from mental illnesses, the capacity to act rationally is impaired, which is one reason that they need to be protected. As for the idea that those returning to work should receive proper support, the lack of such support is the issue. Atos, the agency responsible for testing whether claimants are fit to work, has seen a large number of appeals against its judgments upheld. And who can have faith the government will properly support those returning to work when it entrusts the transition to a discredited agency such as A4e?

But there’s a more general problem here. Some of the rightwing commentators condemning Calum’s List have deplored the “politicisation” of mental illness, but the problem is exactly the opposite. Mental illness has been depoliticised, so that we blithely accept a situation in which depression is now the malady most treated by the NHS. The neoliberal policies implemented first by the Thatcher governments in the 1980s and continued by New Labour and the current coalition have resulted in a privatisation of stress. Under neoliberal governance, workers have seen their wages stagnate and their working conditions and job security become more precarious. As the Guardian reports today, suicides amongst middle-aged men are on the increase, and Jane Powell, chief executive of Calm, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, links some of this increase with unemployment and precarious work. Given the increased reasons for anxiety, it’s not surprising that a large proportion of the population diagnose themselves as chronically miserable. But the medicalisation of depression is part of the problem.

The NHS, like the education system and other public services, has been forced to try to deal with the social and psychic damage caused by the deliberate destruction of solidarity and security. Where once workers would have turned to trade unions when they were put under increasing stress, now they are encouraged to go to their GP or, if they are lucky enough to be able to be get one on the NHS, a therapist.

It would be facile to argue that every single case of depression can be attributed to economic or political causes; but it is equally facile to maintain – as the dominant approaches to depression do – that the roots of all depression must always lie either in individual brain chemistry or in early childhood experiences. Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn’t address the social causation of mental illness either.

The radical therapist David Smail argues that Margaret Thatcher’s view that there’s no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, finds “an unacknowledged echo in almost all approaches to therapy”. Therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy combine a focus on early life with the self-help doctrine that individuals can become masters of their own destiny. The idea is “with the expert help of your therapist or counsellor, you can change the world you are in the last analysis responsible for, so that it no longer cause you distress” – Smail calls this view “magical voluntarism”.

Depression is the shadow side of entrepreneurial culture, what happens when magical voluntarism confronts limited opportunities. As psychologist Oliver James put it in his book The Selfish Capitalist, “in the entrepreneurial fantasy society,” we are taught “that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their familial, ethnic or social background – if you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame.” It’s high time that the blame was placed elsewhere. We need to reverse the privatisation of stress and recognise that mental health is a political issue.

---

This article titled “Why mental health is a political issue” was written by Mark Fisher, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 16th July 2012 11.57 Europe/London

Greece threatens labour camp for poor taxpayers

'If it depends on the government in Athens, Greeks who fly their taxes can not pay the jail. And that from an outstanding debt of 5,000 euros. One consolation: they do not have to share with rapists, murderers, drug dealers or the cell.

It goes from bad to worse with Greece.To force people to pay their taxes and make the legendary tax evasion in the country, so rid the government in Athens a bill ready with a serious stick: imprisonment.'

Read more: Greece threatens labor camp for poor taxpayers

UK security services 'completely out of control'

The UK security services are overrun with incompetence and vested business interests, without being subject to checks themselves, British investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT.

Germany sees "revolution" if welfare model scrapped

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned on Tuesday that failure to win the battle against youth unemployment could tear Europe apart, while abandoning the continent's welfare model in favour of tougher U.S. standards would cause "revolution".

Germany, along with France and Italy, backed urgent action to rescue a generation of young Europeans who fear they will not find jobs, with youth unemployment in the EU standing at nearly one in four, more than twice the adult rate.

"We need to be more successful in our fight against youth unemployment, otherwise we will lose the battle for Europe's unity," Schaeuble said.

While Germany insists on the importance of budget consolidation, Schaeuble spoke of the need to preserve Europe's welfare model.

If U.S. welfare standards were introduced in Europe, "we would have revolution, not tomorrow, but on the very same day," Schaeuble told a conference in Paris.

"We have to rescue an entire generation of young people who are scared. We have the best-educated generation and we are putting them on hold. This is not acceptable," Italian Labour minister Enrico Giovannini said.

Germany in particular, weary of a backlash as many in crisis-hit European countries blame it for austerity, has over the past weeks taken steps to tackle unemployment, striking bilateral deals with Spain and Portugal.

German ministers told the conference that, to help young people find jobs, Europe must continue on the path of structural reforms to boost its competitiveness as well as make good use of available EU funds, including 6 billion euros (5.1 billion pounds) that leaders have set aside for youth employment for 2014-20.

While all agreed on the urgency needed to tackle youth unemployment, ministers offered no concrete plans, insisting Europe must be pragmatic and work on various strands.

Source; Reuters

Europe's leaders, rather belatedly, are recognising that youth unemployment threatens the entire European project.

Europe is afraid - the battle for new jobs

At a conference in Paris on Tuesday, organised by the Berggruen Institute on Governance, fear and warnings flowed from every speech.

Jacques Attali, a French economist and former adviser to the late president Francois Mitterrand, warned of a Europe in danger of "falling asleep", of young people being excluded from a changing world.

Source; BBC

Playing games with welfare

Reblogged from Watching A4e:

The Telegraph has just put up an article which shows just how cynical the political games have become, as people's lives are used as counters by Iain Duncan Smith and others.  He has offered to cut another £3bn from the welfare bill in order to protect the armed forces.  This would mean, it's thought, revisiting the cuts which were proposed by the Tories and blocked by the Lib Dems; restricting housing benefit for the under-25s and limiting payments to people with more than two children.  The game works like this: further down we read, "A senior Conservative source said: 'It is now a simple choice, Iain Duncan Smith has offered a deal which will protect the country’s security. The Liberal Democrats will block it — and it will be for them to explain why it is more important for teenagers to be given council flats rather than for the nation and its citizens to be protected.'"  Under-25s have become "teenagers", versus the armed forces who are protecting the nation.  It's hardly subtle.  But: "The Lib Dems have indicated that they will not allow working-age handouts to be reduced again unless the Conservatives drop their opposition to means-testing some benefits paid to pensioners, including the winter fuel allowance."  So that's the other part of the game; hit those of working age or hit pensioners, which do you want?

If you're wondering where all this is going to end up, the Guardian has a disturbing article on the growth of food banks.  Read the whole thing to find the answer; as charities take over from the state, the state - including mainstream society - doesn't feel the need to address the root cause of hardship and poverty, and the foodbanks become part of what an academic calls "a secondary food system for the poor".

It occurred to me today that we haven't heard any more about what appeared to be inevitable a year or two ago; the privatisation of Jobcentre Plus.  Could it be that government realised that the bidders would be the very same companies which were failing so dismally with the Work Programme?

Woe to Cameron, Osborne, Smith

Reblogged from The SKWAWKBOX Blog:

I don’t think I’ve ever quoted a bible verse on this blog before, but I came across these passages today, having spent much of it reading about unjust decisions, people deprived of even the most meagre subsistence for months and even years for no sane reason. In the context of the things I’ve had to read, and to write about, lately they seem so apposite, so utterly appropriate, so evocative of melancholy, of weary grief and justified anger, that whatever your faith or if you have none at all, I think you’ll see their rightness. The first is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 10:

Woe to those who enact evil statutes, and to those who continually record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, and rob the poor of their rights… Now what will you do in the day of punishment, and in the devastation which will come from afar?

The second from the book of Job, chapter 22:

Is not your wickedness great?
Are not your sins endless?
You stripped people of their clothing, leaving them naked.
You gave no water to the weary
and you withheld food from the hungry,
though you were a powerful man, owning land—
an honored man, living on it.
And you sent widows away empty-handed
and broke the strength of the fatherless.

Could anything fit the triumvirate of obscenity with which we’re currently burdened better than these words? I’m tired, very tired – but I’m more angry than I am tired. A lot more.

Shame on them.

How would the Tories get rid of Cameron?

What the Conservative rule book says about a vote of no confidence and a leadership election. Tory MP David Ruffley broke cover at the weekend to warn David Cameron that his leadership would be at risk if the Conservatives performed poorly in next year's European elections. He told Sky News's Murnaghan programme: "I think next May's Euro elections might put pressure on him to go harder because there is a lot of speculation in and around Downing Street, so I am led to believe, that Ukip might come first.

"Now if that happens next May there'll be 12 months before the election and some of our colleagues in marginal seats might get a bit windy. I don't think UKIP are going to win seats but they could split the Conservative vote if they are strong and let Labour through in those marginal seats."

Over at the Telegraph, Benedict Brogan suggests that the threat of a putsch is real, reporting that the Conservative whips believe "there is a hard core of about 30 irreconcilables who will do anything to bring down Dave".

So how would Ruffley and his colleagues go about the putative regicide? Under current Conservative rules, a vote of no confidence is triggered when at least 15 per cent of Tory MPs ("in receipt of the Conservative whip") write to the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee (currently Graham Brady) requesting one. This can be done either collectively or separately and the names of the signatories are not disclosed. With 305 sitting Conservative MPs, 46 signatures would be required for a vote to be held. Once this threshold has been met, the chairman in consultation with the leader then determines the date of such a vote "as soon as possible in the circumstances prevailing".

If the leader wins the support of a simply majority in the vote, they remain leader and no further vote can be held for 12 months from the date of the ballot. If they lose the vote (again, on a simple majority basis), they must resign and may not stand in the leadership election that then follows. Unlike in 1989, when Tory backbencher Anthony Meyer stood against Margaret Thatcher, no "stalking horse" candidate is required to oust the leader. While Cameron would easily win any vote, he would be damaged if a significant minority of MPs either voted against him or abstained. In 1989, Thatcher defeated Meyer by 314 votes to 33, but once spoilt ballots and abstentions were included, it emerged that 60 MPs - 16 per cent of the parliamentary party - had failed to support her. In Meyer's words, people then "started to think the unthinkable".

Under the current Conservative leadership election rules, adopted in 1998, if there is only one valid nomination, that person is elected. If there are two, both candidates go forward to a vote of the party membership. If there are three or more, a ballot is held within the parliamentary party to determine the two who go forward to the membership.

In 2005, in the final act of his leadership, Michael Howard attempted to change the rules in order to give MPs, rather than party members, the final say. The move was prompted by the 2001 leadership election, which saw the popular Ken Clarke win the MPs' vote but Iain Duncan Smith trump him in the members' ballot. Unsurprisingly, after Duncan Smith's calamitous time as leader, most felt a Clarke victory would have served the party better. But Howard's proposals failed to win the two-thirds majority required, with only 58 per cent of activists endorsing them (although 71 per cent of MPs did), and the status quo prevailed. 

New Statesman

DWP Hides Behind Disability Charities In Fake Youtube Campaign

Reblogged from the void:



The DWP’s crude attempt at inspiration porn has disappeared from facebook after several people were critical of the “Role models: Inspire a generation” campaign.

This campaign appears to be a cheap way to provide soft cover for the the vicious cuts to disability and housing benefits currently taking place and features youtube videos of high profile disabled people with good jobs. At a time when many disabled people’s incomes – and even homes – are coming under savage attack, the Government’s inspirational message seems to be that those forced into poverty by the cuts only have themselves to blame for not being Paralympians or entrepreneurs.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this campaign however, is that anyone visiting the youtube page – which still exists – would have no idea this was a government run campaign. In fact the page even claims to be “By young disabled people; *for* young disabled people”.

This is a lie. The truth is revealed on the website for the Office For Disability Issues where the announcement for the launch of the campaign says:

“DWP has been working with a group of young disabled people who have provided advice and direction to the campaign. They were nominated by organisations such as National Children’s Bureau, Whizz-Kidz, Apasenth, Essex Unite, Include Me Too and Disability Rights UK.

“With the help of these young people, DWP has produced short, subtitled video clips of a wide range of role models, who talk about their aspirations and achievements, and any barriers they have had to overcome.”

  In other words, this campaign is by the DWP themselves and only exists to serve their grubby aims. This is why the youtube channel and facebook page were launched with an accompanying statement from a DWP Minister.

There is no information given at all on the youtube page to suggest that this is a DWP run campaign. The only clue to government involvement comes from scrolling through the youtube feed, where the only other channel the Role Models page has subscribed to is the DWP themselves.



This blatant and bungled dishonesty by the DWP could bring the entire charitable sector into disrepute.  The next time you see a campaign which appears to be run by a charity such as Whizz-kidz or Disability Rights UK then look very closely to check that Iain Duncan Smith isn’t lurking somewhere behind the scenes.

Why did the DWP push ahead with illegal sanctions, knowing they don't do any good?

Reblogged from Vox Political:

Don’t shrug your shoulders, Smith! It’s time the people of the UK found a way to make him care about the deaths he is causing.

Today’s article on the Skwawkbox blog is extremely interesting, for anyone with an interest in the public services and the welfare state.

It seems the Department for Work and Pensions has pushed ahead with a regime including the Work Programme and the sanctions imposed for those who refuse to take part, and even changed the law to reinforce its position, despite having documentary proof that is two years old, showing that these policies do more harm than good and are not in the national interest.

You can read the article here to get the full picture. The gist is that a DWP report from 2011 advised the secretary of state, Iain Duncan Smith, that these policies were a bad idea – but he went ahead with them anyway.

So the report concludes that the Work Programme, and other training programmes imposed by the DWP, cause harm by preventing people from looking for work and forcing them to attend useless training sessions (as flagged up in this Vox Political article).

It admits the policy harms people who were already involved in training or volunteer work – on their own initiative - because they had to end it to take part in ‘mandated’ training or face sanction if they declined (Cait Reilly, for a much-publicised example).

People who didn’t attend, didn’t complete or rejected a training course because it was unsuitable were still sanctioned (even though the policy states – and the government has adamantly claimed for many months – that this does not happen. Transport difficulties and childcare problems were also flagged up as potentially leading to sanctions, even though they were not the fault of the jobseeker.

The report went on to criticise the sanctions regime – because it is harmful not only to the jobseeker but to members of that person’s family and friends as well. This is because it forces them to rely on family and friends for their survival, if they are lucky enough to have such people around to help; it damages family relationships and harms the well-being of low-income families who have to stretch their resources to help a sanctioned person, including younger brothers or sisters who have to rely on the money earned by their elders for their own sustainance. In other words, not only do sanctions harm individual jobseekers, but they also harm people who have had nothing to do with the benefits being suspended. As Steve Walker writes, that is “about as unjust as you could possibly get”.

There’s more, but you should visit the article because I want to ask a few more, searching, questions.

We’ve seen that the DWP was warned against imposing Workfare onto people who were already involved in training or volunteer work that they had initiated themselves. Isn’t that exactly what happened to Cait Reilly?

Then, rather than admit its mistake, pay her back the money she had lost through sanctions and let her go back to the volunteer work that might actually help her get a long-term career, the government forced her to take the matter to a lengthy (and, one expects, expensive) judicial review to prove her case.

When Ms Reilly won at the Court of Appeal (meaning the costs had to be paid by the DWP), it meant that tens – maybe hundreds of thousands of jobseekers who had been wrongly sanctioned could claim their money back. Mr… Smith immediately told the world that he wasn’t putting up with that and, diverging even further from the path of wisdom, tabled a Parliamentary Bill to change the law, in order to keep the money he and his department had stolen – yes, I think ‘stolen’ is the appropriate word – from the many taxpayers they had wronged.

Faced with this evidence, one finds it necessary to ask: In the name of sanity, why?

Why go ahead with a policy that cannot possibly be in the national interest? It stops people getting jobs; it harms jobseekers, their families and friends; it drives them to despair.

It drives them to despair.

Another recent article came our way via Facebook, and relates to the Suicide Act, 1961. It draws attention to the fact that the DWP and the wider UK government has been told, repeatedly and at length, that its policies are leading to suicides. The article itself refers to the many deaths we know take place every week because of the work capability assessment for Employment and Support Allowance, but it is also known that jobseeker suicides rise by around 10 per cent during times of high unemployment and the figures should be available to support a contention that this is taking place now.

The article goes on to say that continuing to authorise procedures that are known to end in suicide – as Iain Duncan Smith and his various lieutenants, Mark Hoban, Esther McVey, Chris Grayling and Maria Miller, have done – may therefore be viewed as procuring suicide from the disabled and otherwise disadvantaged population of the UK.

This is a criminal offence under the Suicide Act, 1961.

So it seems we have a government that has ignored the advice of its own reports in order to pursue a course of criminality that has led (as we all know) to many thousands of deaths.

Does anybody feel like calling the police?

Workfare:Two more major retailers out!

Argos: boasted about using workfare at its ‘busiest times’ but now appears to have pulled out of workfare. Photo: olishaw/flickr

In yet another massive blow to workfare, Argos – which has 740 stores nationwide – appears to have pulled out of workfare. Argos had previously boasted that it was using workfare to cover its busiest period at Christmas. In at least one store, workfare workers were doing ten hours a week more than paid staff. That they have now pulled out is a testament to the strength of feeling amongst the general public and shows the results we can get when we keep up the pressure!

It gets better. Remember how Homebase were exposed for using 25 workfare placements in one store and boasting about it? How we heard some people’s paid hours were cut from 48 a week down to 8 as a result? They faced such a huge response from the public that they took their Facebook Page down repeatedly. People protested at their stores across the UK. Now, they too, have apparently stopped using workfare. Their statement is full of doublespeak, but people protesting during the bank holiday at the store where the story emerged were told by the manager that the last workfare workers finished on Friday and they won’t be using any more.

These companies were saving thousands on their wages bill by exploiting the unemployed. This, despite the fact that the CEO of Home Retail Group – which owns Argos and Homebase –  was paid £1.1 million last year. They didn’t ditch workfare out of the goodness of their hearts: it’s clear that your actions are making a massive difference, taking two big scalps! Please keep an eye on your local stores to check they don’t slip back into workfare when the pressure eases off.

There are still many scalps waiting to be taken – a list of which, unless the government manages to find a way out of it, it will now be compelled to reveal soon. One such example is retail chain B&M Stores, which was awarded a prize for its work with Work Programme provider Ingeus. While the award talks about the people who have been given jobs after their stint of unpaid work, it seems existing staff are having their hours cut as workfare is brought in.

If workfare is one side of the coin, then sanctions are the other. Without the threat of sanctions forcing people to undertake workfare, these schemes could not exist. To underline this harsh fact, last week it was revealed in research by London Assembly and Green Party member Jenny Jones, that one in three people in London and the Home Counties sent to Mandatory Work Activity was sanctioned. Another reason to challenge the London Mayor’s workfare scheme, which forces young people to work without pay from the first day they sign on.

With your support this campaign will continue to take action action against the businesses, charity groups or organisations exploiting jobseekers and the disabled through workfare, as well as those forcing people into workfare via sanctions. After all, it’s not only basic morality, it’s basic common sense. Workfare makes everyone poorer. It’s up to us to stop it, and as these successes show, together we can do it – and we are!

Boycott Workfare

Linda Wootton typed her ESA appeal “crying her eyes out” in hospital bed

Linda Wootton who had a double heart and lung transplant and died nine days after DWP-Atos stopped her benefits had typed her appeal on an iPad “crying her eyes out” as she lay in hospital bed

 By Ben Glaze 26 May 2013 00:01

She was told her employment and support allowance was being stopped as she lay dying in a hospital bed

Dying transplant patient: Linda

John Alevroyiannis

A double heart and lung transplant patient died just NINE DAYS after the Government stopped her benefits and ordered her to go back to work.

Linda Wootton, 49, was on 10 prescription drugs a day, suffering high blood pressure, renal failure and regular blackouts.

Yet Atos – the private firm carrying out the Government’s controversial work capability assessments – ruled she was fit enough to find a job after she was interviewed.

Cost-cutting officials sent Linda a letter telling her that her £108.05 a week employment and support allowance was being stopped as she lay dying in a hospital bed.

Her husband Peter said:

“I sat there and listened to my wife drown in her own body fluids. It took half an hour for her to die – and that’s a woman who’s ‘fit for work’. The last months of her life were a misery because she worried about her benefits, feeling useless, like a scrounger.

“But there was no way in a million years she could work.”

The Coalition hired Atos to carry out the assessments as part of the welfare cuts. The firm processed almost 20,000 incapacity benefit claimants a week last year… but a third of the people who appealed against its decisions were successful.

Linda also appealed but was rejected despite her history.

She had her first heart and lung transplant in 1985 and ­returned to her council office job. But her body began to reject her new organs and she had another transplant at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, in 1989.

There were complications and she was given 80 pints of blood in 31 hours of surgery. Afterwards, Linda was never fit enough to go back to work and claimed benefits. Refrigeration engineer Peter, 50, said:

“She would be listless, falling asleep, feeling faint… she had no stamina.”

She collapsed regularly and was in and out of the Harefield specialist heart and lung centre.

Then, three months ago, her employment support allowance was withdrawn under the Govern­ment’s cuts. New rules meant she would have to prove she was ill to Atos assessors.

Peter said Linda found the process humiliating. The assessments, which have also seen some terminal cancer patients denied benefits, have been blasted as arduous and degrading.

Linda’s was at a test centre in Southend, eight miles from her home in Rayleigh, Essex, on January 3.

“She couldn’t even drive herself because she kept feeling faint,”

said Peter, who was not allowed in to support her.

Linda spent just 20 minutes answering questions before the assessor ended the interview. 

She was judged fit for work and her benefit was stopped on February 13. Peter said Linda typed her appeal on an iPad “crying her eyes out” as she lay in hospital chronically ill with a chest infection.

But the Department for Work and Pensions rejected it – and wrote to her on April 16 as she lay dying.  The letter said:

“We have decided that you are not entitled to Employment and Support Allowance because you have been found to be capable of work following your recent Work Capability Assessment.”

Linda was told she would have to “score” at least 15 points from the assessment but her results were nil.

The Atos criteria for ability to work included “You can understand simple messages from a stranger” and “You can use a computer keyboard or mouse and a pen or a pencil with at least one hand.”

On April 22 Peter was called to Harefield.

“I was told Linda’s condition was unsurvivable and she would be dead within two or three weeks,”

he said.

“On April 24 they put her on palliative care. I sat all night with her and her breathing changed next morning.”

Linda died 30 minutes later. More than 100 mourners attended her funeral earlier this month.

While the Atos assessment failed to pinpoint any of Linda’s health issues, her death certificate listed lung and heart problems, hypertension and chronic renal failure as causes.

Peter cannot grieve properly because he is so angry at how Whitehall bureaucrats ruined his wife’s precious last days. He said:

“She paid her tax and national insurance – then she is treated like this. It’s disgusting.”

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “Our sympathy goes out to Mrs Wootton’s family.  A decision on whether someone is well enough to work is taken following a thorough assessment and after consideration of all supporting medical evidence.”

The Daily Mirror