Doctors' Legal duty over resuscitation orders

Doctors now have a legal duty to consult with and inform patients if they want to place a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order on medical notes, says the Court of Appeal in England.

The issue was raised by a landmark judgement that found doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge, had acted unlawfully.

Janet Tracey, who had terminal lung cancer, died there three years ago.

Her family say she and they were not consulted when a DNR notice was placed.

Guidelines for doctors already recommend that patients and families are involved in such decisions, but the court ruling now makes it a legal requirement.

In the judgment, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, said: “A Do Not Attempt Cardiac Pulmonary Resuscitation decision is one which will potentially deprive the patient of life-saving treatment, there should be a presumption in favour of patient involvement.

“There need to be convincing reasons not to involve the patient.”

He went on to warn that “doctors should be wary of being too ready to exclude patients from the process on the grounds that their involvement is likely to distress them”.

DNR

Mrs Tracey, from Ware, in Hertfordshire, was suffering from advanced lung cancer when she was taken to hospital after a serious car crash.

Her husband and daughters were distressed when a “do not resuscitate” notice was put on her hospital records.

It was cancelled after the family complained, though a second was later put in place – after talks with the family and two days before Mrs Tracey died at the age of 63.

Since her death, Janet’s husband, David, has fought for a full judicial review to seek clarity over DNR notices and consent.

Speaking after the judgment David Tracey said: “We’re all so pleased that the Court has agreed that imposing a do not resuscitate order on Janet without consulting with her was unlawful.

“It feels as though the wrong done to Janet has been recognised by the Court and the fact that her death has led to greater clarity in the law gives us all some small comfort.”

Lawyers Leigh Day, on behalf of the Tracey family, said: “The Judgment sends a clear message to all NHS Trusts, regulatory bodies and healthcare professionals that patients have a legal right to be informed and consulted in relation to decisions to withhold resuscitation.

“The belief such information would cause distress is no longer a sufficient reason not to inform and consult with a patient. There must now be convincing reasons to displace this right.”

The ruling does not give patients the right to have CPR, but it does mean they should be consulted.

Dr Keith McNeil, the head of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in charge of Addenbrooke’s said: “Today’s ruling hinges on a specific point of law. There was no criticism of our clinical care.

“It is a fact of life that every day people die in hospitals. From my own experience as a specialist hospital doctor, the most important thing is that these patients are treated with the utmost respect and dignity.

“End of life situations involve doctors and nurses having emotionally challenging but necessary conversations, with patients and their families about what happens in the final stages of their care. Medical staff use a combination of their compassion, experience and judgement at these difficult times, to try and find the right pathway for each individual patient, and provide the support needed for everybody involved.”

BBC

Bring Back immediately State Pension for Women at 60. Men/Women Against Tax Allowance Loss From 65

Older people forced onto workfare when disabled and chronic sick will just end up spending most of their time at doctors or in hospital and may indeed die. Forced off benefits they cannot access cold weather payments and cannot access vouchers to food banks.

By raising the retirement age, the government burdened themselves with unemployment benefits with the over 60s, when they do not list the over 60s on unemployment statistics.

Not one penny in tax has been saved by raising the retirement age, because the state pension fund has been full for decades and cannot be emptied by government for general expenditure.
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now

Loss of state pension is loss of food money and forced onto unpaid work, when do not have a bus pass.

Then there is the reality. Most of those going to food banks are in work. This will mean these older disabled and chronic sick being unable to get out to a food bank and rendered too ill by work.

Labour could do things differently in 2015 and end all Workfare, all benefits, all welfare reform admin, revoke Welfare Reform Act, Pension Bill and Flat Rate Pension, leave no-one to starve and pay off the national debt. Here is how:
http://www.theswansnewparty.org.uk/universal-citizen-wage/4584622902

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

Trade Unionists plan to oust McVey over disability rights

TRADE unionists in Merseyside plan to “depose” a government minister they accuse of making disabled people’s lives a misery by ensuring she loses her seat at next year’s general election.

They say Tory Employment Minister Esther McVey has helped condemn hundreds of thousands of jobless and disabled people to a life of penury, misery and uncertainty.

They have launched a campaign to overthrow the 2,436 majority which won her Wirral West Parliamentary seat in 2010.

The campaign has been launched by Wirral Trades Union Council.

Wirral TUC secretary Alec McFadden said: “We have already printed the first 1,000 ‘Sack McVey’ stickers.”

Ms McVey’s constituency includes the mansions of multi-millionaire footballers as well as working-class council estates and communities such as Woodchurch and Arrow Park.

Ms McVey was to her job at the Department for Work and Pensions in early 2013.

Mr McFadden said: “The number of sanctions against benefit claimants since she became Employment Minister has increased both in Wirral and across the UK and now stands at a record level.”

Sanctions deny jobless people benefits if they miss or are late for an appointment, refuse unpaid work, don’t apply for enough jobs — even if they are non-existent — and being too ill to attend an interview.

Mr McFadden said there were increasing reports of people committing suicide after their benefits were withdrawn.

Annette Francis, 30, a single-parent with an 11-year-old son, was found dead at her home in Garston in Liverpool in May. Her benefits had been stopped for six months by the Department of Work and Pensions.

Morning Star

Work Programme ‘Failing Those Most In Need And Should Be Broken Up’

A Jobcentre Office. Photo credit: jovike via photopin cc

The £1.2bn Work Programme, the government’s flagship welfare to work scheme, needs to be broken up in the face of figures showing that as little as 5% of unemployed people on the main disability benefit are finding a job through it, a thinktank will propose this week.

The proposal is one of a series from the Institute for Public Policy Research in its Condition of Britain report, to be published on Thursday, including a proposal for a “daddy month” – four weeks’ paternity leave on the minimum wage, a plan that would cost the taxpayer £150m. More than 400,000 working fathers a year would benefit.

The thinktank’s report, the product of two years’ research, is due to be launched by Ed Miliband. It will look at the social and economic problems facing the country and cover areas such as welfare, housing, childcare and improvements to social care, as well as handing more power to local councils.

The current legal entitlement for working fathers is paid at a flat rate of £138.18 a week – equivalent to just £3.45 an hour for a 40-hour working week, little more than half the minimum wage. The IPPR proposes that the statutory paternity leave entitlement should not only be extended but should be paid at least the national minimum wage, with employers also encouraged to bridge the gap between the statutory rate and the father’s actual pay.

Only 55% of fathers take the full two weeks off work when their child is born and a third do not take any of their statutory leave. Most say this is because they cannot afford to.

On the Work Programme, the report concludes that the scheme is especially failing mentally ill people, and the task of helping those on employment support allowance – the main disability benefit – to find work should be devolved to local authorities, with councils recouping some of the possible savings from the Department for Work and Pensions.

However, the report says private contractors should be left to find jobs for the mainstream long-term unemployed using a modified version of the current system of payments by results.

It says: “The Work Programme, while delivering acceptable results for the mainstream job seekers, is letting down those furthest from the labour market. Whilst one in five mainstream job seekers will find work through the Work Programme as few as one in 20 of those furthest from the labour market will.”

It also says those in areas of highest unemployment are receiving the least effective help.

It adds the “DWP has carved up the country between providers without any accountability to citizens or regard to local labour market conditions. Therefore for those out of work the system represents a postcode lottery in which success is determined not by individual effort but by geography.”

The report also says the government should offer a guaranteed six month minimum job paid at the minimum wage or above to anyone who has been unemployed and claiming job seekers allowance for more than 12 consecutive months.

The report will also set out plans to freeze child benefit to help fund a new network of children’s centres and extra free childcare, although it is understood that Miliband will reject this proposal.

This article titled “Work Programme ‘failing those most in need and should be broken up’” was written by Patrick Wintour, political editor, for The Guardian on Sunday 15th June 2014 18.29 UTC

UK poverty on par with former Eastern bloc

The poorest fifth of British households are among the most economically deprived in western Europe and suffer levels of poverty on a par with those in the former Eastern bloc, according to new research.

The High Pay Centre, an independent UK think-tank, has published an analysis of OECD data showing that “life is much worse here than it is for the poorest fifth in virtually every other northwest European country”.

Questions over how the proceeds of a recovering UK economy are being shared will form the backdrop to the campaigns in the run-up to the next general election in May.

The High Pay Centre found that, with average household incomes of $53,785, the richest 20 per cent in the UK were the third richest in their bracket of all EU countries measured by the OECD, lagging behind Germany and France.

However, a very different story applied to the bottom 20 per cent in the UK whose incomes were much lower than in other, more equal countries with a similar average income.

The OECD calculates the average income of the bottom fifth of UK households at just $9,530, much lower than the poorest 20% in France ($12,653), Germany ($13,381), Belgium ($12,350), the Netherlands ($11,274) and Denmark ($12,183).

Poor Britons’ living standards are much closer to those of the poorest in countries such as Slovenia and the Czech Republic, the High Pay Centre says. It argues the disparities reflect “political and economic choices that set us on the path of greater inequality”.

There are several ways to measure household incomes – which are tricky to compare across countries – and some other data sets point to less stark conclusions.

The Luxembourg Income Study Database, for example, suggests that UK and French households at the 20th percentile – poorer than the top four-fifths of households – have very similar incomes. And both are only slightly less worse off than equivalent households in Germany.

Yet both data sets agree the poor in the UK have lower living standards than the poor in the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Other figures confirm that some regions of the UK are on a par with the poorer parts of Europe. According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, gross domestic product per person is lower in West Wales and the Valleys than it is in Poland. Similarly, GDP per person in Tees Valley and Durham is lower than in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, Inner London is by far the richest region in the EU.

Deborah Hargreaves, director of the High Pay Centre, said: “These figures suggest we need to be more concerned about inequality and how prosperity is shared, as well as average incomes or aggregate measures like GDP. The fact that the rich are richer in the UK than many other countries hides the fact that the poor are poorer.”

The High Pay Centre suggests the difference is the share of income going to the top 1 per cent. In the UK, this richest group takes 13 per cent of total income, much more than in most other western European countries.

The figure is more than double the share of total income taken by the wealthiest 1 per cent in the Netherlands and Denmark, for example.

It cites the World Top Incomes Database, run by economists Thomas Piketty and Tony Atkinson, which puts total incomes in the UK in 2011 at £1tn, making the share of the top 1 per cent about £130bn a year, using 2011 data, the most recent availabl

FT

Clegg in ‘cash for honours’ row over his biggest donors: Two-fifths of Lib Dem donations came from three men… and they’ve recently been made peers

‘Nick Clegg was embroiled in a fresh ‘cash-for-honours’ row last night after the extent of the party’s financial dependence on millionaire backers who have been made peers became apparent.

Of all cash donations to the party in 2012, more than £600,000 – or 40 per cent – came from just three wealthy supporters – and all three have recently been appointed to the House of Lords by Mr Clegg, a Daily Mail investigation found.

They are among 34 Lib Dems who have been given life peerages by Mr Clegg since the 2010 election – compared with an average of only four a year between 1997 and 2009.’

Read more: Clegg in 'cash for honours' row over his biggest donors: Two-fifths of Lib Dem donations came from three men… and they've recently been made peers

Backlog of assessments for ESA. Double the passport backlog, but none of the coverage

Originally posted on alittleecon:

Via the Vox Political blog, I learn that it was admitted yesterday by the DWP that there was a backlog of 700,000 assessments for ESA claims. ESA is Employment and Support Allowance, a sickness benefit for those unable to work. 400,000 of the 700,000 backlog are new claims – that is people who feel they are too sick to work have lodged a claim for ESA, but have not had their claim assessed. While they wait, they have to make do with a lower level of benefit. The longer they have to wait to be assessed, the more anxious they are likely to become, risking exacerbating their health problems. The risk of falling into serious hardship also increases the longer they have to wait. The remaining 300,000 will be existing ESA claimants awaiting re-assessment of their claims. Any delay there brings with it the stress and worry of not knowing…

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If the DWP reckons it’s getting decisions right, why are people still suffering?

Originally posted on Vox Political:

He knows he’s in trouble: Mike Penning, shortly after removing his foot from his mouth while talking about ‘mandatory reconsideration’.

The minister for disabled people, Mike Penning, seemed to think he had something to celebrate this week, after official figures showed the number of benefit decision appeals dropped by 79 per cent between January and March this year (compared with the same time in 2013).

He said it means the government’s new ‘mandatory reconsideration’ process is helping people to challenge wrong decisions earlier and helping target government support on those who need it most: “Getting more decisions right the first time avoids the need for protracted tribunal appeals… This new safeguard gives claimants the chance to raise their grievance promptly, provide further evidence and have their claim reassessed without the unnecessary stress of an appeal.”

How wonderful for him.

Does the man with learning disabilities who was living on…

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Chris Grayling Is A Lying Bastard Court Hears At Workfare Tribunal

Originally posted on the void:

So desperate are the DWP to hush up the names of charities using workfare that they have been reduced to using a blog post titled “Chris Grayling is a lying bastard” to prove how horrible everyone is being to them because of their forced work schemes.

The post was part of the evidence provided by the DWP at yesterday’s tribunal brought to appeal the Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO) decision that charities using workfare should be named.  This followed a Freedom of Information request made two years ago asking for the names of organisations who are accepting workfare placements on the Mandatory Work Activity scheme.

The DWP have pleaded that if this information was made available then workfare will collapse such is the awesome power of Boycott Workfare.  Reams of evidence has been produced by the department, largely taken from the media and Boycott Workfare’s website, which they claim shows…

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IDS’s historic links to the far-right

Originally posted on Pride's Purge:

(not satire – it’s Iain Duncan Smith!)

No one should be surprised by the extremities of Duncan Smith’s attacks on the welfare state.
After all, Duncan Smith has a history of links to far-right politics – including racist and fascist organisations.

• In 1995,  Duncan Smith was one of a few Tory MPs who met with senior figures of the racist and anti-semitic French National Front in Westminster. Le Pen’s deputy, Bruno Gollnisch MEP, later said Duncan Smith and other Tory MPs they met were “sympathetic” to their views:

“I came to meet members of the Conservative Party sympathetic to our views… I met Duncan Smith and others in their offices and later we got together for less formal talks in a bar somewhere in the Parliament building.“

• The vice-president of Duncan Smith’s leadership campaign team in Wales was Edgar Griffin - the father of BNP leader Nick Griffin. Edgar later said the reason he was not a…

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Panellists hijack Question Time to attack Iain Duncan Smith

Originally posted on Vox Political:

Finger-jabbing protest: Iain Duncan Smith talked over Owen Jones in his last Question Time appearance; this time the other panellists didn’t give him the chance.

Around three-quarters of the way through tonight’s Question Time, I was ready to believe the BBC had pulled a fast one on us and we weren’t going to see Iain Duncan Smith get the well-deserved comeuppance that he has managed to avoid for so long in Parliament and media interviews.

There was plausible deniability for the BBC – the Isis crisis that has blown up in Iraq is extremely topical and feeds into nationwide feeling about the possibility of Britain going to war again in the Middle East. The debate on extremism in Birmingham schools is similarly of public interest – to a great degree because it caused an argument between Tory cabinet ministers. Those are big issues at the moment and the BBC…

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Food bank charity told to stop criticising benefit system or face shut-down – by the government

Originally posted on Vox Political:

What would you do in that situation?

It seems that food bank charity The Trussell Trust has been making too many waves around the Conservative-led Coalition government’s policies regarding benefits, social security and welfare.

Readers may recall how the charity warned that Coalition policies had created a need for a huge expansion in the number of food banks across the UK. The Tories countered this by accusing the trust of “misleading and emotionally manipulative publicity-seeking”, and also of “aggressively marketing [its] services”.

After this failed to make a dent in public opinion, the Daily Mail tried to discredit the trust by claiming it was handing out food parcels without checking whether the people claiming them were bona fide.

But it turned out that the paper’s claim of “inadequate checks on who claims the vouchers, after a reporter obtained three days’ worth of food simply by telling staff at a Citizens…

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Recession 'led to 10,000 suicides'

The economic crisis in Europe and North America led to more than 10,000 extra suicides, according to figures from UK researchers.

A study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showed "suicides have risen markedly".

The research group said some deaths may have been avoidable as some countries showed no increase in suicide rate.

Campaign groups said the findings showed how important good mental health services were.

The study by the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine analysed data from 24 EU countries, the US and Canada.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27796628

WCAs ‘Leaving Sick And Disabled On A Knife-Edge’

Leading mental health charity, Mind, has today released a damning report that shows the coalition’s work programme is failing to meet the needs of people with disabilities and is pushing them further away from rather than to work.

The report, Fulfilling Potential? – ESA and the fate of the Work-Related Group (pdf), authored by Catherine Hale, a Work Programme service user and endorsed by 18 other organisations, which include National Autistic Society, Disability Rights UK, RNIB, and Stroke Association, found that the provision of back to work support through the Work Programme and Jobcentre Plus (JCP) is causing severe anxiety for people with disabilities and pushing them further from the job market.

Catherine – who currently claims ESA due to Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME), a long-term debilitating health condition – along with support from Mind and the Centre for Welfare Reform, produced the report which researched over 500 respondents with a range of mental health and physical problems.

Respondents had been assigned to the Work-Related Activity Group (WRAG) following a claim for the disability benefit, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). People placed in WRAG can have their benefit suspended or ‘sanctioned’ if they do not engage with work-related activity.

The report examined not only the respondents initial feelings and expectations about work and the WRAG but also looked at their:

• Encounter with employment advisors
• The activities and interventions they were offered and which of those they were compelled to undertake
• The procedures and impact of compulsion
• Reflections (at time of research) in relation to work and wider psycho-social factors following engagement with the Work Programme or JCP

The data received from these respondents was shocking. It was found that only 5% of respondents had received help from the JCP or Work Programme. Whilst 6 in 10 people said that their “health, finances, confidence and sense of purpose had all suffered as a result”.

The research found that most of the respondents to the survey had been “compelled to undertake compulsory back-to-work activities or faced having their benefits cut. The majority of respondents said their disabilities were neither acknowledged nor accommodated, consequently making engagement in such activities difficult. Furthermore, eighty per cent said not being able to access activities made them feel anxious whilst 70 per cent were worried about their benefits being cut.

The purpose of actual or threatened cutting of benefits is to motivate people to get back to work. However, the report suggests the problem is not one of motivation.   Sixty per cent were “strongly committed to work”, 30 per cent were “not sure they could work” whilst 10 per cent either “did not want to or did not think they would be able to work.   In addition, for most respondents (90 per cent) the main barrier to work was their health or impairment.

The report also found:

• Most people received generic back-to-work support such as CV writing classes with very few receiving specialist support. Over half the respondents felt their ‘action plan’ of activities was inappropriate for them, and six in 10 people felt no adaptations were made to activities to take account of their barriers.
• Almost all respondents were threatened with sanctions if they failed to participate in mandatory activities. On average, respondents had at least three different kinds of difficulty in participating in activities due to their health condition or impairment. 50 per cent said these difficulties were not acknowledged and 70 per cent said no adjustments were made to accommodate their disability.
• 87 per cent of respondents who failed to participate in a mandatory activity were prevented by factors relating to their health or impairment. Only 6.5 per cent had actually received a cut in benefits.
• The majority of respondents said they wanted to work given the right support and a job suitable to their disability, and that they believed employers could make use of their talents if jobs were more inclusive. 82 per cent of respondents said their Work Programme provider or JCP made no effort to adapt jobs on offer to make it easier for them to work.
• Most people agreed the most helpful would be a package of support agreed upfront so that they could reassure potential employers of their ability to do a job. Adjustments that employers could make included flexible hours, working from home, working fewer than 16 hours per week, increased confidence on the part of employers and recruitment through work trials rather than interviews.

Catherine Hale, author of the report, said:

“The majority of disabled people want to work. However, people who have been awarded ESA have genuine and often severe health problems, which make it difficult to access employment.

“The current system ignores these difficulties, and relies on the threat of sanctions to get people into work. It is no surprise that it is not only failing disabled people but causing additional distress and anxiety, on top of the barriers that they already face.

“At my first back to work meeting, the Jobcentre adviser accused me of fraud and threatened to stop my benefits if I didn’t try harder to get well. They assume that people are not working because of defective attitudes and morals, not because they’re ill or disabled. This is wrong and deeply damaging.

“People claiming ESA need to be placed with specialist organisations experienced in supporting disabled people into employment, not into mainstream welfare-to-work schemes. Employers should widen job opportunities and consider making adjustments to accommodate people with disabilities including flexible or shorter working hours and the option of working from home.”

Tom Pollard, Policy and Campaigns Manager at Mind, commented:

“This report adds to the existing evidence that the current benefits system is failing people with disabilities and mental health problems. There is far too much focus on pressuring people into undertaking compulsory activities, and not nearly enough ongoing, tailored support to help them into an appropriate job.

“Just five per cent of people are actually managing to get into work through this process, while many people are finding that the stress they are put under is making their health worse and a return to work less likely. We urgently need to see an overhaul of this system.”

Read more...

Lancet classifies Fluoride as a neurotoxin. About bloody time.

This is HUGE news and no one is talking about it. The Lancet, the world's oldest and most prestigious medical journal, recently published a report classifying Fluoride as a dangerous neurotoxin. The report puts Fluoride in the same category Arsenic, Lead, and Mercury.


http://download.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laneur/PIIS1474442213702783.pdf?id=baak8dkBlaiXPhJTjuTsu

The Tap Blog

ESA Claims On The Rise: Is IDS Making Us Sick?

Originally posted on the void:

The total number of claimants claiming out of work sickness or disability benefits rose by 15,000 between March and April provisional DWP statistics report.

2.485 million people are were claiming Employment Support Allowance or Incapacity Benefit in April, representing a steady rise of 1.2% since November 2013. This comes despite the horrific Atos regime which has seen hundreds of thousands of claimants being stripped of benefits after being assessed as ‘fit for work’.  The number of people on out of work sickness benefits should be plummeting, and it was until just over a year ago.

It is hardly surprising that people are still becoming ill or disabled despite the magical Atos assessments. The UK did not have significantly more people on out of work sickness or disability benefits than other comparable countries even before the despised Work Capability Assessment began. It is unusual however that the number of people unable…

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DWP believes universal credit is dead, tribunal president reveals

Evidence has emerged that the DWP believes that universal credit (UC) is dead. 

Officially the department insists that ‘the vast majority’ of around 7 million recipients will move onto the benefit during 2016-17. Privately, however, the department is no longer predicting that there will be any universal credit appeals between now and 2019.

The revelation was made in the April edition of the Judicial Information Bulletin –which goes out to all tribunal members - by Judge Robert Martin, the outgoing president of the social entitlement chamber which deals with benefits tribunals.

Several times a year the DWP provides the tribunals service with estimates of how many appeals are likely to be generated in the next five years. This is vital for the tribunals service, who need to be able to plan how many staff to recruit and how many venues to provide for hearings. The DWP give estimates for each different type of benefit, as tribunals may be constituted differently depending on the benefit involved.

The Judge reveals that in its April 2013 forecast the DWP estimated that there would be 1,355 UC appeals in 2013-14 and 77,926 UC appeals in 2014-15. In fact, by the end of March 2014, due to the tiny number of claimants who have been able to claim UC, there had been just three appeals.

The DWP made further forecasts in December 2013 and most recently in April 2014. In the last of these the DWP estimated that there would be:

393,000 appeals in 2014-15
456,000 appeals in 2015-16
622,000 appeals in 2016-17
553,000 appeals in 2017-18
340,000 appeals in 2018-19

However, Judge Martin reveals that none of these appeals are now predicted by the DWP to be for universal credit.

It is not credible that the DWP now imagines that no claimant of UC will appeal in the next five years. The only reasonable explanation, therefore, is that the DWP now expect there to be so few people receiving the benefit that the number of appeals generated will be too small to make provision for.

In other words, when planning for the future in the real world rather than the world of departmental spin and propaganda, the DWP are making no provision whatsoever for UC.

The DWP seem unlikely to be grateful to Judge Martin for his disclosure, one of several in the article ‘Dark matter’ which can be downloaded from the Rightsnet discussion forum

Source

Tory policies cause poverty and trying to discredit Oxfam won’t mitigate that truth

Oxfam posted this image on Twitter as part of a campaign on falling living standards and poverty in the UK. Conservative MP’s are angry about it and regard it as “controversial.”


Lifting the lid on austerity Britain reveals a perfect storm – and it’s forcing more and more people into poverty.

Tory MPs have reported Oxfam to the Charity Watchdog for campaigning against poverty. I guess the Joseph Rowntree Foundation had better watch it, then. What next, will they be reporting the NSPCC for campaigning for children’s welfare?

The picture is part of a bigger campaign on poverty in the UK, and was posted on Twitter. Previously OxfamGB had invited people to hear how “we investigate the reasons why so many people are turning to food banks in Britain 2014”.

Another OxfamGB tweet said: “We think all political parties need to commit to action on food poverty in the UK.” 

Conor Burns, Conservative MP tweeted in response:”This has lost you a lot of supporters. Very foolish.”  I think he meant Tory supporters, as other people have realised that it is mostly the vulnerable who carry the burden of the Tory austerity cuts. Since when was a Government above criticism for its policies, especially when those policies are causing suffering and deaths?


Medical experts recently wrote an open letter to David Cameron condemning the rise in food poverty, stating that families “are not earning enough money to meet their most basic nutritional needs” and that “the welfare system is increasingly failing to provide a robust line of defence against hunger.” New research by Oxfam has revealed the extent poverty amongst British children living in poverty, with poor families taking drastic measures to survive. What kind of government is concerned only about critical discussion of its policies, and not about the plight of the citizens it is meant to serve? This is a government that attempts to invalidate the accounts of people’s experience of the suffering that is directly caused by this government. By blaming the victims and by trying to discredit anyone that champions the rights of the vulnerable.     

However, Burns has now written to the Charities Commission requesting an investigation into the “overtly political attack” on “the policies of the current Government.”

He questions whether the advert is breach of Oxfam’s charitable status.

The Conservatives are said to be particularly angry at the inclusion of unemployment and high prices in the list.

Well we know that the government lies extensively, and invents statistics. We also know that government “employment statistics” include those sanctioned, those awaiting mandatory review or appeal, those on workfare, in prison, hospital or dead – anyone that has had their benefit claim closed for any reason, since people are not tracked to check if they have actually found a job – The Department of Work and Pensions measures “employment” by off-benefit flows rather than sustained job outcomes. This can create perverse incentives to coerce jobseekers into short term employment outcomes, rather than refer them to long term contracted out support. It can also create a perverse incentive to sanction claimants, as we know.

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At last, Atos turn whistle-blower!!!!

We knew this day would come. We've known for a while that it was coming, but finally it's happened, as it always had to.

The gloves have come off between Atos and the DWP!

To be honest, I couldn't believe it had gone this long. For months we've known that the contract with Atos had failed, long before we heard officially in March that they would be walking away from the detested "work capability assessments" or WCAs. I'd been hearing of wranglings and arguments, deadlocks and very unhappy bunnies in general. On both sides.

To keep that quiet for so long has been quite an achievement in itself.

But today, Atos start the long journey of rehabilitating their decimated public reputation, by finally telling their side of the story on - wait for it - BBC news no less! Now that the contract is broken, for the first time, they get to defend themselves and point out the failures that were never anything to do with them but all set in stone at the DWP. Let's hope that at the same time they acknowledge their own very considerable failings too.

However, today is the day when absolutely every voice in the Employment and Support Allowance debate are against the DWP...

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Family demand answers after hospital-bound 86-year-old faces disability payment cuts

THE family of an 86-year-old woman are demanding to know why their loved-one is being forced to undergo medical tests to make sure she still qualifies for her benefits.

Maud Bould, of Ubberley Road, Bentilee, was diagnosed with respiratory problems caused by asbestos exposure three years ago and receives £80-a-week.

The great-grandmother-of-nine also suffers from emphysema, heart failure, vascular dementia, chronic kidney disease and Alzheimer’s and is currently receiving respite care.

But she has received letters from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) telling her to attend medical tests to make sure she still qualifies for the industrial injuries disablement payment.

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IDS blames rise of food banks on ‘evangelism’ – pot, kettle, black?

Crocodile tears: Everybody thought Iain Duncan Smith had a change of heart at Easterhouse and intended to help people. Instead, under his direction, the Department for Work and Pensions has caused the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

The Department for Work and Pensions reckons that the rise of food banks has more to do with Christian evangelism than with helping people who can’t afford food because of Conservative government policies.

According to Political Scrapbook, DWP director Neil Couling said: “For the Trussell Trust, food banks started as an evangelical device to get religious groups in touch with their local communities.”

How interesting.

Has Mr Couling forgotten Iain Duncan Smith’s ‘Road to Damascus’ moment on the housing estates of Easterhouse and Gallowgates in Glasgow in 2002?

Struck by the run-down housing, visible signs of drug abuse and general lack of hope, Roman Catholic Duncan Smith set out – with evangelical zeal – to do something about it.

He now sits in a government that kicks people out of their run-down houses and turns the lack of hope into abject despair by cutting off the benefits they need to survive (his government has pushed wages even further below the amount necessary for people to be able to live without government assistance than ever before).

As New Statesman columnist Laurie Penny puts it, Duncan Smith pretends to be “on a quasireligious, reforming crusade”, approaching his work with “particular fervour and self-righteous indignation”.

So, really, who do you think is misusing the plight of the very poor as an “evangelical device” for his own “quasireligious” ends?

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Atos was 'lightning rod' for anger over benefit changes

Atos has faced protests about its role in delivering welfare changes in the UK

The company which is quitting its contract to provide fitness-for-work assessments for the government has warned its successor will also struggle unless the process is improved.

Atos officials said their staff were "vilified" simply for carrying out what was asked of them by ministers.
They told MPs that other firms would find it hard to hire staff due to "negative coverage" about their work.
Critics say delays and wrong decisions have caused distress to the vulnerable.

Ministers announced in March that the contract to deliver Work Capability Assessments in England, Wales and Scotland was being terminated early by mutual consent after criticism of the French contractor's performance.

The contract had been due to end in August 2015.

More than three million people on employment and support allowance, including all those who previously claimed incapacity benefit, are being assessed to see how their illness or disability affects their ability to work in a process that began under Labour but which has been accelerated by the coalition government.
'Lightning rod'

Facing questioning by the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, Atos senior vice president Lisa Coleman acknowledged the firm had not got everything right since October 2010.


She also conceded an inability to make a sufficient profit was a factor in the firm's decision to withdraw from the contract, for which it has had to pay compensation.

But she said Atos had become a "lightning rod" for public anger with the principle of the fitness-to-work assessments and it was "massively over-simplistic" to think a change of provider would change that.

"Unless something is done around educating people what the actual operational reality of that policy really is and what they mean potentially for individuals going through that then I find it difficult to see that actually just changing the supplier will change things," she said.

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A Letter Provided By A DWP Whistleblower

From ATOS Miracles on Facebook.

If DWP lawyers don’t attend tribunals it means benefit claimants AREN’T cheating, Daily Mail!

Originally posted on Vox Political:

The Fail has struck again with a comically inaccurate piece about benefit appeal tribunals.

“Benefits claimants cheats (sic) are able to keep money they are not entitled to because government officials fail to turn up to legal hearings,” thundered the piece by MailOnline political editor Matt Chorley, who should know better – both in terms of grammar and logic.

“The Department for Work and Pensions sent lawyers to just four per cent of tribunals held last year to rule on decisions to cut benefits.

“It means that in many cases people are able to successfully argue in favour of keeping their money, because the government has failed to turn up to challenge it.”

No – that’s not what it means.

If the DWP has made a decision not to send lawyers to defend the cancellation of a claimant’s benefit, it means they expect the facts to speak for themselves…

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Top judge proclaims ‘virtual collapse of WCA process’

Judge Robert Martin, the outgoing president of the social entitlement chamber which deals with benefits tribunals, has claimed that the work capability assessment (WCA) process has virtually collapsed and that DLA claimants are having their awards extended, rather than looked at again, as the DWP goes into a welfare reform induced meltdown.

The judge was writing his final article before retiring, in the April edition of the Judicial Information Bulletin which goes out to all tribunal members . As a result, he has taken the opportunity to make a number of allegations and disclosures about the DWP that might be regarded as astonishingly forthright in a serving tribunal president.

In the article, Judge Martin tries to get to the bottom of why the tribunal service went from its highest ever number of cases heard in a month – over 50,000 – in July 2013, to a record low of just 8,775 in March 2014.

He makes it clear that he blames the DWP for the difficulties caused by this wild fluctuation in workload. The judge appears particularly angry because the tribunals service had taken on a large number of new staff after the DWP predicted a prolonged period of extra appeals.

Judge Martin is in no doubt that the biggest single cause of the drop in appeal numbers is a huge reduction in the number of WCAs being carried out.

He explains that in July 2013 Lord Freud announced that, due to a reduction in the quality of written reports, all Atos health professionals were to be retrained.

Initially, the DWP warned the tribunals service that there was likely to be an increase in the number of appeals as previous assessments were reworked and then challenged by unsuccessful claimants. However, at the same time the number of assessments carried out by Atos dropped from 200,000 to 100,000 per month.

As a result the DWP changed its advice, saying that there would be a drop of 9,500 appeals from September to December 2013 whilst remedial measures were put in place. Following this there would be a big surge of appeals as Atos regained its former rate of assessments and worked on the backlog caused by the slowdown.

In fact, the recovery in the number of appeals has still not happened and, as Benefits and Work exclusively revealed, the DWP stopped referring most existing ESA claimants to Atos for reassessment from late January 2013. In addition, Judge Martin claims that:

‘Anecdotally, it appeared that an increasing proportion of ESA claimants both on new claims and IB-ESA reassessments were simply being assigned to the support group without a face to face assessment.’

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Govt assessment delays are causing deaths – are ministers trying to shift blame?

Originally posted on Vox Political:

He knows he’s in trouble: Mike Penning, staring down the hole in his claims about Atos.

The Liverpool Echo has reported the death of a woman who had been ordered to claim the new Personal Independence Payment – and was then denied any benefit payments for six months.

At the same time, we have learnt that disabilities minister Mike Penning has been caught giving false evidence to a Parliamentary committee on the way contracts for the assessment of disability benefits have been awarded.

The two are not unconnected, it seems.

Annette Francis was found dead at her home in Garston on May 22. She had been suffering severe mental illness but had not received a single penny of disability benefit for six months, since the Department for Work and Pensions had stopped her claim for Disability Living Allowance and told her to apply for PIP.

She did so – but…

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Outrage as 'anti-homeless spikes' spotted outside London building

The spikes, designed to prevent vagrants from sleeping in doorways have sparked anger on Twitter after photos of a London doorway went viral

Andrew Horton / @worldviewmedia

Spikes: The metal studs on Southwark Bridge Road

Metal spikes designed to stop homeless people sheltering in doorways have caused outrage, after photographs of a London building went viral.

The property, a building of flats on Southwark Bridge Road, has a series of at least 17 inch-long metal studs embedded in the floor of an alcove next to the doorway.

The photographs were posted on Facebook last night, before being posted on Twitter, where they have been shared thousands of times.

The pictures upset a lot of people, with many comparing them to spikes used to stop pigeons landing on buildings.

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Britain's breadline kids: Up to 5 million children will be living in poverty by 2020

New research by Oxfam has revealed the true extent of the amount of British children living in poverty, with families taking drastic measures

Skint: Niomi is one of 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK

The true plight of Breadline Britain’s destitute children is exposed today.

A shocking 3.5 million youngsters are living in poverty in this country - and experts predict that figure will soar to 5 million by 2020.

In a devastating development, more and more desperate mothers are turning to prostitution in a bid to put food on the table.

Sick and cancer-stricken children are forced to queue up at food banks to stave off their hunger. And parents clinging on to jobs with zero hours contracts don’t know what money they’ll have from one week to the next.

Medical experts recently wrote an open letter to David Cameron slamming the rise in food poverty, saying families “are not earning enough money to meet their most basic nutritional needs” and that “the welfare system is increasingly failing to provide a robust line of defence against hunger.”

The British Medical Journal revealed how malnutrition in England has almost doubled in fives. It said: “This has all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late. Malnutrition in children is particularly worrying because exposures during sensitive periods can have lifelong effects.”

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Disabled mum died alone and penniless after her benefits were stopped

The heartbroken family of Annette Francis say she had struggled without any money for six months before she died

Anger: Annette's son Kieron and aunt Ann are distraught by her death

A mum-of-one suffering from mental health illness died alone and penniless after she stopped receiving disability benefits, her family claim.

Annette Francis, 30, was found dead at her home in Garston, Liverpool, after six months of no benefits payments – despite being eligible.

Annette suffered from a mental health condition similar to bipolar and was unable to hold down a regular job and her distraught family said she was tragically let down by authorities.

Ann Sorotos, Annette’s aunt, said: “Annette was penniless because she had no money coming in from the benefits people.

“I’m disgusted with them and think Annette was really badly let down.”

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End Sanctions Now – joint statement by DPAC, BT and Boycott Workfare

posted from Boycott Workfare

Boycott Workfare is a UK-wide campaign to end forced unpaid work for people who receive welfare. Workfare profits the rich by providing free labour, whilst threatening the poor by taking away welfare rights if people refuse to work without a living wage. We are a grassroots campaign, formed in 2010 by people with experience of workfare and those concerned about its impact. We expose and take action against companies and organisations profiting from workfare; encourage organisations to pledge to boycott it; and actively inform people of their rights.

Know your rights on workfare schemes and at the Jobcentre!

PCS need to ballot for non-cooperation on workfare and sanctions!

Members of PCS union work for the DWP and job centres so are involved in the day to day delivery of workfare and sanctions. Members have shown they oppose it by voting for national policy against workfare and sanctions. Now Disabled People Against Cuts, Black Triangle and Boycott Workfare are asking them to use their power to help put a stop to these punitive measures. 

Disabled People Against Cuts, Black Triangle and Boycott Workfare joint statement on PCS Union and non-cooperation:

1. We note that motion A81 that recently passed at the PCS conference makes reference to the PCS Union working with Disabled People Against Cuts and Black Triangle. (1)

2. We note that motions E340-E342 submitted by DWP branches also called for the PCS to work with Boycott Workfare, but that references to Boycott Workfare were dropped by the NEC from motion A81. (1)

3. Black Triangle and Disabled People Against Cuts wish to express their solidarity with Boycott Workfare who we believe have organised a broad based and successful campaign against workfare and sanctions.

4. We note that the legal advice received by the PCS in 2013 accepted that the tactic of non-cooperation could be used as part of a campaign of industrial action consisting of action short of a strike. (2)

5. We note that the PCS currently have a live mandate for industrial action and will be consulting members on 12th June about coordinated strike action. (3)

6. Disabled People Against Cuts, Black Triangle and Boycott Workfare therefore call on the PCS NEC to consult members on adopting a tactic of non-cooperation with workfare and sanctions.

References:

(1) http://www.pcs.org.uk/download.cfm?docid=3FBA9F5E-D8B1-4164-AA1B7CF5C50F3E33
(2) http://www.pcs.org.uk/download.cfm?docid=C20641E2-9DE4-4FFE-8E11590CCB7E0F51 (Motion A533)
(3) http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/pcs_comment/index.cfm/vote-yes-in-pcs-ballot-for-fair-pay