Benefit deaths: IDS lies while DWP evades

Denied benefit: This is the late Karen Sherlock. Her illnesses included chronic kidney disease, a heart condition, vitamin B12 deficiency, anaemia, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, underactive thyroid, asthma, diabetic autonomic neuropathy, gastropaeresis, and diabetic retinopathy. She died on June 8, 2012, of a suspected heart attack, after the Department for Work and Pensions stopped her Employment and Support Allowance.

The Department for Work and Pensions has commented on this blog’s success in forcing it to reveal the number of Employment and Support Allowance claimants who have died between November 2011 and May 2014.

Readers of this blog will recall that the DWP had refused a Freedom of Information request, made in May last year, but the Information Commissioner’s Office upheld an appeal that used its own rules to demonstrate that the Department had been wrong in law.

The comment appeared in an excellent article by Ros Wynne-Jones of the Daily Mirror. She had contacted the DWP after receiving a press release on the subject from Vox Political – and we should be grateful to her for doing so. Comments to the mainstream media are invariably delivered much more quickly than responses to members of the public.

It is more interesting in what it does not say than it what it does. There is no reference to the fact that the DWP had been found to be wrongly applying the law; no suggestion that it will abide by the Information Commissioner’s ruling; in fact no reference to the Vox Political appeal at all.

Instead, we are told: “It is irresponsible to suggest a causal link between the death of an individual and their benefit claim. Mortality rates among people with serious health conditions are likely to be higher than those among the general population.

“We’ll respond to the Information Commissioner in due course.”

Irresponsible, is it?

There are several ways to disprove this...

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Heartless Iain Duncan Smith Misled Public Over Benefit Deaths

‘Heartless’ Iain Duncan Smith misled the public over the number of benefit-related deaths caused by suicide, says the Green Party.

The Tory Work and Pensions Secretary told BBC Daily Politics that he had no knowledge of the number of benefit claimant deaths shown to be caused by suicide, despite evidence uncovered by Disability News Service (DNS) revealing that the DWP has secretly reviewed 49 benefit-related deaths since 2012.

Commenting on the exposure by the DNS, Jonathan Bartley, Green Party Spokesperson for Work and Pensions, said: “It is utterly shameful for Iain Duncan Smith to have misled the public and the families of those affected by these tragic deaths.

“It’s not enough that his Department appears to have sat on research revealing the immense damage his welfare policies are causing to families up and down the country.

“To deny all knowledge of the reports is heartless and blinkered – hardly the kind of approach we want the person in charge of national welfare to be taking...

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Remember those killed by Tory austerity when you cast your vote on Thursday

Ros Wynne-Jones says this election is the story of how ordinary people who had nothing to do with causing the financial crisis have paid for the recovery in blood

Austerity victims: Clockwise from top left are David Clapson, Stephanie Bottrill, Sheila Holt, Brian McArdle, David Coupe and Linda Wootton

When you vote on Thursday , do so remembering the names of austerity’s dead.

David Clapson. Stephanie Bottrill. Sheila Holt. Linda Wootton. David Coupe. Brian McArdle...

A list dozens of names long.

All people who desperately needed the support of the welfare state, but who were treated with brutality, incompetence or indifference...

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Benefit deaths: We have seen just the tip of the iceberg

Reblogged from Vox Political:

It grieves This Writer to report that today, Vox Political Towers has received no envelope from the Department for Work and Pensions containing details of sickness benefit-related deaths between November 2011 and May 2014 – nor has there been any email contact.

It seems the DWP intends to keep us waiting the full 35 days legally afforded to it before providing an answer to that question – meaning we may be waiting up to four weeks after the general election.

There is good news, though – certain members of the mainstream media have been in touch and we may see news stories on the subject later today – depending on the decisions of editors.

In the main, though, it’s still down to those of us in the social media to raise awareness of this.

So here’s the latest infographic. Please feel free to copy and share, everywhere:



Hopefully there will be another infographic tomorrow – along with more positive news of the campaign to get this information out...

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NHS ‘In Grave Danger’ As Two-Thirds Of Hospitals Face Cash Crisis

The full extent of the financial crisis faced by NHS hospitals across England has been revealed in a leaked document.

The document, revealed by the Labour Party, shows that two-thirds of hospitals are expected to be in deficit in the current financial year (2015/16).

An analysis of 98 NHS trusts shows a projected deficit this year of £759 million, three-times higher than 2014/15 and equivalent of £1.86 billion across all England’s 240 trusts.

Facing the prospect of a financial black-hole, many hospitals could be forced into making ‘recovery plans’ which include cutting staff, bed numbers and even ending some services.

Labour argues that the government’s inability to get to grips with NHS funding is as a direct result of £3bn wasted on top-down reorganisation of the health and social care system.

According to Labour, community services like social care and GP services were stripped-back under the Tory-led coalition and hospitals were overwhelmed with rising demand.

They also claim that nurse training has been cut, leading to ‘severe staff shortages and rising wasteful spending on agency staff’.

This has led to a growing crisis in A&E, claims Labour. More than one million patients had to wait over four hours for treatment last year and waiting lists for operations are at a seven-year high.

And one in four patients are waiting a week or more to see a GP.

A Freedom of Information request by Labour shows hospitals declaring significant “operational problems” on more than 1,000 occasions last winter.

It also suggests that hospitals are having to call in rat catchers and pest control teams, after David Cameron axed more than 2,000 cleaners.

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Cameron has given up on winning the election claims LibDem Lord Scriven

Lord Scriven, a Lib Dem peer and aide to Nick Clegg, said the PM has 'taken to lying' in comments the Tories branded '100% not true' 

David Cameron had already given up on winning the election before the campaign began, the Lib Dems revealed today.

A close aide to Nick Clegg said the PM privately admitted weeks ago that he cannot win a majority.

“Cameron has taken to lying on (winning) a majority,” tweeted Lord Scriven, a Lib Dem peer and one of Mr Clegg’s closest pals.

“Nick Clegg told me that Cameron privately admitted to him that the Tories won’t win a majority.”

The claim was furiously denied by the Tories, as in public Mr Cameron still insists he is on course to win the election.

The desperate PM has been touring the country telling voters he needs “just 23 more seats” to win a House of Commons majority.

But Mr Clegg said that was a “big fat fib”.
“All I can tell you is that the Conservatives know that they’re not going to win a majority,” the Deputy PM said yesterday.

“I have never met a senior Conservative who has ever claimed in private that they’re going to win a majority. They know they’re not."

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Over 80 suicides directly linked to Coalition cuts

The Black Triangle campaign group found more than 80 cases since 2010 and believe even more will suffer and die if David Cameron wins the election

Suicides: (L-R) Jo Stephenson, David Clapson and Trevor Drakard were all said to have taken their lives after being hit by the effects of public spending cuts

A huge number of disabled, sick and vulnerable people took their lives due to savage Tory benefits cuts, campaigners have warned.

And they believe even more will suffer and die if David Cameron wins the election.

Research from the Black Triangle campaign group found more than 80 cases of suicide directly linked to billions of pounds in benefit cuts.

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said: “The Dept of Work and Pensions refuses to reveal the findings of their own peer reviews of suicides linked to the sanctions so we will never know the truth in those cases.

“We are supposed to be living in a democratic society where Parliament hold the executive to account but even they cannot find out. It is scandalous.”

He said the Work Capability Assessment regime applied to all sick and disabled people, without adequate risk assessment 'built into the system'.

He added: “If it was a medical trial, it would have been abandoned long ago. So many have died as a direct result of the withdrawal of benefits, as confirmed by numerous coroner's inquests.

“There are so many which are not reported, and we believe that could run into many thousands.”
It remains British Medical Association policy that work capability should be scrapped.

Mr McArdle described the ConDem cuts as barbaric, and warned cuts to the Independent Living Fund in England this June would hit 14,000 of the 'Highest Need' disabled.

He said: “These are the very people the Coalition pledged to protect. Many will be forced back into institutions. It makes a mockery of the pretence – especially from the Lib Dems – that they cut the deficit fairly. It is truly despicable...

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Benefit deaths: time to put pressure on the DWP

Reblogged from Vox Political:

Believe it or not, there may still be some people in the UK who don’t know the Department for Work and Pensions has been ordered to release details of the number of sickness benefit claimants who have died since November 2011.

People of good conscience across the country – including several celebrities – have been publicising Vox Political‘s article on the subject, on Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets – but the mainstream media of TV, radio and the national newspapers have been quiet so far, despite having been alerted to the issue by This Writer.

Quelle surprise, as the French might say.

It was never really likely that the right-wing press was going to publish material that is as critical of the last government as this undoubtedly is. It seems, if the message is to get out to the wider electorate, then we must get it there ourselves.

Here’s a handy infographic, for that very purpose:



Feel free to copy it and paste it onto your own Facebook page, Twitter messages, and emails to friends/family/local newspapers and anyone else you believe would benefit from the information.

This is a major issue. The mainstream media want to sideline it because it isn’t convenient for them. They find matters involving the sick and disabled very awkward as it might cast their moral stance in a bad light when they support right-wing political parties.

Don’t let it be sidelined.

Many Vox Political readers are doing their bit to inform the public. We all need to keep up the pressure, right up to polling day (Thursday).

Do it for the sick and disabled. Do it for the sake of your conscience. Do it for the UK.

This article originally appeared on Vox Political

Shocking Cameron’s Britain: terminal cancer patients told to work or starve

(not satire – it’s Cameron’s Britain!)

The Cameron government has not been clamping down on benefit fraud.

He and his ministers have been attacking genuinely sick and disabled people instead.

There are now numerous cases of terminally sick cancer patients being told by the DWP they are unable to receive sickness benefit and will have to work or starve because they are supposedly ‘fit for work’.

We also have parents of child cancer patients having to rely on food banks because the Cameron government decided being a carer means you will get no help from our increasingly non-existent welfare state:

Cameron’s Britain: 7-year old cancer patients on foodbank handouts

Another example of a victim of the coalition government’s slashing of help and support for the sick, disabled and dying was Chris Smith, a plumber from Leicester with terminal cancer who sadly died recently:

Fit for work?

The fact is, that under the Cameron government…

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Harper suggests backing for mental health treatment sanctions

The Tory minister for disabled people appears to have accidentally admitted what many disabled activists feared: that a Conservative government would cut the out-of-work benefits of people with mental health conditions if they refused treatment.

In a debate broadcast on local radio, Mark Harper strongly suggested that people with mental health problems would be among the group with “long-term yet treatable” conditions who could be sanctioned if they refused treatment.

The pledge to review whether such sanctions should be introduced is included in the Tory manifesto, under a promise to “review how best to support those suffering from long-term yet treatable conditions, such as drug or alcohol addiction, or obesity, back into work”.

It adds: “People who might benefit from treatment should get the medical help they need so they can return to work.

“If they refuse a recommended treatment, we will review whether their benefits should be reduced.”

But the party has refused to confirm that people with mental health conditions would be among this group facing potential sanctions.

Disabled activists have described the plans as “wild, stupid”, “unconscionable”, and “highly dangerous”, while the Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston, who chaired the Commons health select committee in the last parliament, has said on Twitter that sanctions linked to medical treatment would be “unethical”.

But this week, at an election hustings event hosted by the BBC in Harper’s Forest of Dean constituency, the minister for disabled people appeared to confirm that people with long-term mental health problems would be among those facing sanctions...

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17 Demands on the New Government elected on 7th May from Disabled People’s Organisations

 

Four leading Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) have got together to produce a list of 17 things we need the new Government to implement in the first 100 days after being elected. These are based on making the British Government compliant with its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Disabled people have been disproportionately affected by the Coalition Government’s austerity programme. By the 2015 election, more than 28 billion pounds in benefits and entitlements will have been taken away from disabled people. At the same time, disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty as non- disabled people. In Austerity Britain, where the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer continue to claim “We are all in this together”, disabled people will pay 9 times more towards reducing the budget deficit than the average citizen. Those who are severely disabled will pay nineteen times more.

Disabled people have been forced to report the UK Government to the UN CRPD committee for human rights violations. They in turn have launched an inquiry into possible grave or systemic violations of “disabled people’s human rights.”

The following demands from Equal Lives, Inclusion London, Disabled People Against Cuts and the Alliance for Inclusive Education, if implemented, will bring the UK Government back in line with its obligations to the UN CRPD and ensure disabled people enjoy equal rights with non-disabled people...

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Petition Demands Optional State Pension Retirement Age

Sign the petition here

As you are probably aware, at the request of the EU, the Conservative Government announced plans to equalise state pension age (SPA) for men and women in 1995.

They added 5 years to women’s SPA. They could have just as easily have lowered the men’s retirement age or met men’s and women’s somewhere in the middle, such as 62.5 years. However, they didn’t. Men have lost out as well, because when pension credit was introduced in 2003 men were entitled to pension credit at 60 if unemployed, in an amount equal to retirement pension, which effectively closed the gap between age of retirement for men and women already.

These changes wouldn’t be introduced until 2010, which was 15 years later, but it was done under the radar, sneakily one might say.

After all one would assume that such a big change to women’s SPA would involve notifying individually those most effected e.g. those born early to mid-1950s.

However, incredibly, this was never done. There are still women in the UK who have no idea that their retirement age has changed and it is only now, since the changes started in 2010, that women are becoming aware.

Consequently, for so many, it is as though the changes were both legislated and initiated only recently, without any notice at all! This has had a devastating effect on those women, who have had little or no time to prepare for those changes...

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DWP ordered to give details of benefit-related deaths - Victory for Vox Political

Brian McArdle. On the BBC’s Question Time in November 2012, Iain Duncan Smith flew into a rage when Owen Jones challenged him about what happened to Mr McArdle, “57 years old, paralysed down one side, blind in one eye; he couldn’t speak. He died one day after being found ‘fit for work’.”

The Department for Work and Pensions has been ordered to disclose the number of Incapacity Benefit and ESA claimants who have died between November 2011 and May 2014.

The ruling comes from the Information Commissioner after an appeal by Vox Political‘s Mike Sivier.

But it seems likely to have been delayed – possibly for political reasons. If the number of deaths has been high, then it would generate a backlash against the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties that presided over them in the Coalition Government.

Mr Sivier said: “The decision notice was ready in February, but the Information Commissioner’s Office delayed its release for reasons that have not been given. Suppose a large number of deaths have taken place – I have heard suggestions that 60,000 people or more may have died as a result of government policy.

“It seems clear that the revelation of many deaths may turn voters away from supporting the Conservatives or Lib Dems – so it seems appropriate to question that delay. Will the election result be valid if the number of deaths is not known on May 7?”

The DWP had refused a Freedom of Information request on the grounds that the information would be published in the future (a section 22 exemption) – but the Information Commisioner found that officials had been wrong to do so.

The ruling means the DWP must disclose – within 35 calendar days of April 30 – the number of IB and ESA claimants who have died between November 2011 and May 2014...

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Mind Control (In a Jobcentre near you)

Psychobabble in a Jobcentre near you

On top of punishing claimants with sanctions that leave people destitute, the Government now has plans to use psychological treatments to force people into work.

George Osborne’s budget announced measures to ‘improve employment outcomes’ for people with mental health conditions. These include online cognitive behavioural therapy (change the world by changing how you think) for people on ESA or JSA and putting psychologists in JobCentres.

Unemployment is being redefined as a psychological disorder and the main purpose of psychological therapy will be to force people off benefits.  Or to promote yet another specious reason to cut people off benefits.
Meanwhile, the Tory Manifesto states that claimants who ‘refuse a recommended treatment’ may have their benefits reduced. This is an assault on the human rights of people on benefits and an attempt to co-opt medical professionals as state enforcers.

We’re hearing more and more reports of the misuse of psychology to coerce, bully and punish claimants into ‘getting the right mindset’: “all new starts must attend an initial two week course to develop their confidence”.



Change your attitude

The ‘change your attitude’ message of positive psychology is enforced in mandatory ‘employability’ training courses promising to help with ‘self-esteem, self-confidence and motivation’ and in unsolicited ‘positive thinking’ emails.  Making people take part in various pointless and humiliating psycho-group-activities e.g. building paper clip towers to demonstrate team work, or take completely meaningless and unethical psychological tests to determine their ‘strengths’.

The Department for Work and Pensions issues contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds (Focus the Mind, Achieve your Potential) designed to ‘address negative perceptions’ and ‘instil a positive attitude to work‘.  A programme for JSA/ESA claimants over 50 aims to persuade people that age discrimination doesn’t exist:

“to challenge perceptions that employers discriminate on the grounds of age”.

Fraud

These fraudulent programmes don’t result in real paid work you can live on. The companies that run them are making millions out of a big con: that with a total personality makeover, anyone can get a job.  That positive thinking can change the low pay, no pay UK economy...

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Austerity is a Con

The Tory austerity narrative is a simple and oft repeated one. It doesn't matter that "we've got to cut our way to growth" is nonsensical from a macroeconomic perspective, it's been repeated so often now that millions of people accept it as fact.

Some people (myself included) have maintained all along that it was always a simple con designed to give the Tories an excuse to continue their agenda of transferring ever more wealth to the tiny super-rich minority under the guise of bringing the national debt under control.

There is bountiful evidence that the austerity narrative is a misleading one, especially the myriad of counter-factual Tory slogans used to support it. They claimed that "we're all in this together" while handing the UK's income millionaires an average £100,000 per year tax cut and trying to defend 200%+ bankers's bonuses from new EU rules. They claimed they were "making work pay" whilst overseeing the longest sustained decline in average earnings since records began, and slashing in-work social security; and they claimed over and again that "Labour bankrupted Britain" when it was George Osborne that lost the UK's AAA credit ratings for the first time since the 1970s.

Now that their government is over we can look at what ideological austerity has actually achieved...

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IDS fails to show up for General Election hustings in his own constituency

Sister of David Clapson, the diabetic ex-soldier who died after having his benefits cut, was there to protest and said Tory ministers were too scared to defend their record

Protests: Campaigners said Iain Duncan Smith should have his pay docked after he missed his own hustings

 Voters from Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency last night called for him to be sanctioned – with his MP’s salary suspended – for failing to show up at his local hustings.

Candidates from six other parties – Labour, Green, Lib Dem, Class War, TUSC and UKIP – managed to make the event at Woodford Memorial Hall. But the sitting MP failed to show up in his constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green in north London....

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Former DPP Ken MacDonald Explains The UK’s Two-Tier Justice System

If you are a ‘prominent’ person, i.e. part of the establishment like MPs, the CPS protocol is that  the criminal file is forwarded to CPS Headquarters. This takes time and police forces are naturally cautious in such cases.
If you are Joe Schmo then the regional CPS will deal with you and justice is swift.

Is it unreasonable to ask what the CPS definition of a ‘prominent’ person is ?

Royal family, MPs, Lords… what about CEOs of companies, civil servants, and celebrities ?

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Brixton Rises Up As Rage Against The Rich Explodes Across The Capital

[...] Thousands of people were out onto the streets in Brixton on Saturday for one of London’s biggest ever anti-gentrification protests.  At one point hundreds of people mobbed the town hall with many fighting past police lines to gain entrance to the building.  Traffic was brought to a standstill as people danced in the streets to a soundsystem taking over the road for several hours.  A march through Brixton led by London Black Revs was received with cheers and applause as it passed the railway arches where long standing local businesses have just been told they face closure.  Brixton Village, once a well loved part of Brixton Market and now an ethnically cleansed yuppy dominated enclave of over-priced bars and restaurants, was briefly occupied.  Even the police station was attacked.  And the Jobcentre got their window broken.

The mood was angry and defiant, but positive.  Reclaim Brixton followed the hugely successful March for the Homeless just two weeks ago and the mass action at the vile Property Developer’s awards last week.  At every housing protest the number of people attending is growing.  London has had enough...

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How Benefit Sanctions Have Driven Brits to Suicide

[...] Sam Clement, 42, also reached the point of wanting to take his own life after his benefits were cut. Fortunately, he survived. “It might make no sense to you, but I was sanctioned for attending a self-employment training course with my housing association,” he explains. “Although my advisor told me this was fine, when I got back another advisor said it wasn’t an approved training course so she’d have to sanction me, and that was that. My money stopped coming through.”

Clement went into the Job Centre every day to find out what was going on. It took a month and a half for them to tell him he would be sanctioned for a month in December of 2013, meaning all money was cut off. “The situation rapidly deteriorated. I only had five pounds, so I very quickly ran out of food,” he recalls. “And after two or three days of not eating, I got diarrhoea, but by that time I’d run out of toilet roll. I was too stressed and hungry to sleep, and if I did sleep I made a mess.”

Unable to afford electricity or heating, Clement’s Christmas was cold and dark. “I remember sitting in the living room on Christmas day, watching families walking around happily out the window, while I sat hoping for darkness to come so I could go to bed,” he says.

Like most of us, Clement didn’t know what a benefit sanction actually was until he was on the receiving end of one. “I had no idea they could just take your money away like that,” he says. “It shocked me how quickly I fell to pieces. The whole thing destroyed my mental health.”

When his sanction period finally came to an end, Clement returned to the Job Centre. “When I arrived back, my advisor told me that I needed to learn a ‘work ethic’, and that if I didn’t attend an unpaid work programme I would be sanctioned again. Obviously I became extremely anxious.” He pauses as his voice catches in his throat. “As soon as I got home I swallowed every pill I had in the house and tried to overdose. I wasn’t in a good place. I ended up in A&E having my stomach pumped. It was the worst day I’ve ever had.”

After a turbulent seven months of waiting, the doctor finally put Clement in touch with a therapist. Since then he has undergone individual and group therapy, as well as CBT. Nevertheless, the repercussions of his sanction continue to haunt him.

“Before the sanction, my mental health was fine. I certainly wouldn’t have called myself anxious,” he says. “But I am now. I haven’t wanted to leave my flat in 15 months. Home is my safety blanket. I can be perfectly OK inside, but if I walk to the Job Centre my hands start shaking. In the back of my head, my mind is screaming at me to go home.”

Since his sanction, Clement has developed insomnia, as well as a whole raft of stress-induced health problems. “My legs have swollen due to psoriasis and I’ve put on three stone. It’s all down to the anxiety. You can’t plan for a sanction, and it’s always at the back of my mind,” he says…

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Govt fiddles unemployment figures by classifying all people sanctioned as having left claimant count

Sanctioning’ is a particularly harsh and brutal way of treating unemployed people.   They have all their benefit removed even for the most trivial infringements, e.g. being 5 minutes late for a job interview or for a work programme session.   Their benefit (£71 a week JSA) is removed for 4 weeks for the first infringement, for 3 months for the second, and (almost unbelievably) for 3 years for the third.   This quickly reduces the victims of this abhorrent policy to destitution and leaves them with no alternative but to beg for board and lodging from family or friends.   There is no appeal against these decisions which could well be regarded as a breach of the common law by deliberately reducing a person to penury by administrative edict against which there is no redress.   There are now nearly a million people who have been subject to this inhumane practice of sanctioning.   That is awful enough, but it has now become clear there is another motive on the part of government driving this policy.

There has been great puzzlement in economic circles at the plunging drop in the unemployment figures over recent months from 7.8% to 7.1% which was far bigger than might be expected from the state of the economy and the very low level of labour productivity.   It even caused consternation in the Bank of England where the governor Mark Carney was forced to revise his ‘forward guidance’ which had been based on raising interest rates when the unemployment level fell to 7%.   It now seems this enigma can be explained.   The government has adopted the utterly dishonest practice of excluding from the claimant count all those persons who have been sanctioned.   Thus the abrupt fall in the claimant count is explained by the scam of regarding all sanctioned persons as no longer seeking work, though they clearly are...

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UN human rights chief compares UK tabloids to Nazi propaganda

Katie Hopkins (Image from facebook.com/pages/Katie-Hopkins)

UK tabloids like the Murdoch-owned Sun that compared immigrants to ‘cockroaches’ recall the dark days of the Nazi media attacking those they sought to eliminate, according to the UN’s human rights chief.

“The Nazi media described people their masters wanted to eliminate as rats and cockroaches,” the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said.

He singled out an article by former gameshow contestant turned-commentator Katie Hopkins, published by the Sun newspaper last Thursday, in which she wrote: “Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors.”

The comment piece was published just hours before a boat containing hundreds of displaced people capsized in the Mediterranean, killing 800...

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Poverty wages cost taxpayers eleven times amount of benefit fraud

Taxpayers spend £11bn to top up low wages paid by UK companies

Research published last week by Citizens UK found that companies in the UK are paying their workers so little that the taxpayer has to top up wages to the tune of £11bn a year. The four big supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys and Morrisons) alone are costing just under £1bn a year in tax credits and extra benefits payments.

This is a direct transfer from the rest of society to some of the largest businesses in the country. To put the figure in perspective, the total cost of benefit fraud last year was just £1bn. Corporate scrounging costs 11 times that.

Worse, this is a direct subsidy for poverty pay. If supermarkets and other low-paying employers know they can secure work even at derisory wages, since pay will be topped up by the state, they have no incentive to offer higher wages.

None of this makes sense. We are all, in effect, paying a huge sum of money so that we can continue to underpay the 22% of workers who are earning below the Living Wage – the level at which it is possible to live without government subsidies. The only possible beneficiaries are business owners.

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Crisis? What crisis? How politicians ignore the existence of food banks

'Those of us referred to food banks are the lucky ones with a good doctor or health visitor who knows us well enough to recognise that something has gone seriously wrong.'

 It’s like Groundhog Day. A report into food bank use is published. There are more people now than there were last year, month, week using them. Many people are referred to food banks due to delays and cuts to their benefits. Of the remaining referrals, a significant number are in low-paid, insecure work.

You might be forgiven for thinking that the UK doesn’t have a food bank problem, so absent have they been from the election debates and manifesto launches of the past few weeks. Yet the sharp rise in the number of people going hungry in our country seems to be an indicator that something has gone horribly wrong.

In 2009-10, the Trussel Trust’s food banks helped 41,000 people. This has risen to 1.1 million over the past year. What use is pontificating about numbers when you are one of the million? When it’s not a statistic, but a child crying in the night because they wake up hungry?

It is a problem so big that the main political parties don’t seem to know how to even talk about it, let alone address the issue. Instead, they distract us with staged walkabouts and soundbites, hen parties and hashtags, bread and circuses.

When David Cameron visited a food bank in his affluent constituency he reportedly turned up empty-handed, posed for photographs, and helped himself to a free lunch. Perhaps this is what Lord Freud and Edwina Currie were referring to with their comments about people taking advantage of the service. In fact, this is a luxury afforded only to the prime minister, as everyone else needs a voucher and a referral from a doctor, social services or similar agency...

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Commit a crime and get treated far better than you do by the DWP

Originally posted on The poor side of life:

A while ago I wrote about the governments war against the poor. Indeed, I said that they treat you worse than a criminal. Well I was right. I know people that I have talked to outside the Jobcentre who have said that they’ve had to steal to eat. Getting caught was a bonus because they would get a bed for the night and some food. And sympathy from the police officers. Compare that with the distinct lack of sympathy and compassion from the DWP. The polic aren’t happy with this either. The crime levels have risen as a result but police staffing has been cut to the bare bones. I speak to the PCSOs that sometimes attend our demos, and they say the same thing. They say that their workload has got much harder and they are dealing with alot more suicides and attempted suicides than they have ever known…

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Psychologists Against Austerity: mental health experts issue a rallying call against coalition policies

I wrote an article in March about the government plans to make the receipt of social security benefits for those with mental illnesses conditional on undergoing “state therapy.” I raised concern about ethical issues – such as consent, the inappropriateness of using behaviour modification as a form of “therapy,” and I critised the proposed Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) programme on methodological and theoretical grounds, as well as considering wider implications.

The 2015 budget included plans to provide online CBT to 40,000 claimants and people on the Fit for Work programme, as well as putting therapists in more than 350 job centres.

Since I wrote, over 400 psychotherapists, counsellors and mental health practitioners have written an open letter, published by the Guardian, about the broader, profoundly disturbing psychological and quality-of-life implications of the coalition government’s austerity cuts and policies. However, the letter was particularly critical of the government’s benefits sanctions scheme, which has been condemned by many of us – human rights advocates across the state – as brutal, unjust, ill-conceived, ineffective and inhumane.

In particular, the letter stated that the government’s proposed policy of linking social security benefits to the receipt of “state therapy” is utterly unacceptable. The measure, casually coined “get to work therapy,” was discussed by Chancellor for the Exchequer George Osborne during his last budget.

The letter’s supporters included psychotherapist and writer Susie Orbach. She called the Conservative proposals “beyond shocking.” Echoing the concerns I raised earlier this year, she said:

“It undermines the fundamental principles of one’s right to physical and mental care – that you have to be able to consent and that the people you go to have to be highly trained and have your best interests and aren’t meeting targets.”

The letter’s signatories, all of whom are experts in the field of mental health, have said such a measure is counter-productive, “anti-therapeutic,” damaging and professionally unethical. The “intimidatory disciplinary regime” facing benefits claimants would be made even worse by further unacceptable proposals outlined in the budget...

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Foodbank use tops one million for the first time

The Trussell Trust says that 400,000 children were referred to foodbanks in 2014

The Trussell Trust, the UK’s biggest foodbank charity, has released figures today showing that foodbank use is at an all time high.

Last year more than a million people used Trussell Trust foodbanks to receive three days’ worth of emergency food, including 400,000 children. This figure is up from 900,000 last year...

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Did David Cameron admit multiple murders to Andrew Marr?

David Cameron tries to defend the indefensible on Andrew Marr’s Sunday morning TV show.

A friend of Vox Political sent in the following transcript of David Cameron’s interview with Andrew Marr, in which the soon-to-be former Prime Minister appears to show callous disregard for the deaths of people with long-term illnesses or disabilities, caused by his party’s policies.

On the BBC interviewer’s show yesterday (April 19), as our correspondent suggested, “Cameron implied that dying is somehow an appropriate punishment for failing to attend an interview at the Jobcentre in order to save ‘the taxpayer’ money. He showed a complete lack of remorse and basic compassion.”

Read it for yourself ...

Continued...

Open Letter to Ed Miliband - #newapproach

Dear Mr. Miliband,

We never thought we would see a Britain in which terminally ill people rely on foodbanks to eat, or cancer patients miss their treatment because they don’t have the bus fare to get to the hospital. We never thought a bedroom for a severely disabled child would be seen as an undeserved luxury, or sick and disabled people would have their incomes reduced or removed for missing an appointment at the Jobcentre. We never thought people with incurable illnesses like Parkinson’s or Motor Neurone disease would be told by the Department for Work and Pensions that they would get better, and should prepare for work.
But we are seeing all this and more. Quite simply, the sick and disabled people of Britain are facing an unprecedented crisis which we never imagined could happen in the UK. It is a national scandal.

We are all of us caught up in a system worthy of Kafka. We are either awaiting assessments, or reassessments, appeals, or reconsiderations. Others are living in fear of being caught up in that system, and losing the means to survive. For us, there is no longer any ‘social security’, just an ever-present anxiety that at any moment the dreaded brown envelope may arrive on the doormat and put us at the brink of destitution. Some are just too ill to keep fighting, and simply give up.

The Employment and Support Allowance fiasco has now escalated to a DWP case load of over 6 million. Over 4 million Work Capability Assessments have been carried out as part of the relentless programme of assessments triggered by the current government, and it was clear from the outset that Atos were never going to be able to cope. The human suffering caused by this reckless implementation of the over-rigorous & target-based Work Capability Assessment has now become a national scandal which demands immediate action...

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Tories Plan To Destory Human Rights Laws

‘Soldiers will be safe from the “persistent human rights claims” that have dogged the British military for years because the Conservatives will “rip up” human rights legislation if they win the general election, two top Tories have pledged.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon called for an end to what he called the “abuse” of the Human Rights Act to bring about costly inquiries into the conduct of British soldiers during wartime operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He warned that legal claims such as those emerging from the Iraq War had undermined the military’s work and had cost the taxpayer millions of pounds.’

Read more: Tories Plan To Destory Human Rights Laws

Forced CBT: The power of positive thinking is really political gaslighting

The power of positive thinking.

The government invests a lot of time and money in making people accept the unacceptable.

George Osborne announced in the budget that the government will be funding a “package of measures” to improve “employment outcomes” which will entail putting Cognitive Behaviour therapists in more than 350 job centres to provide “support” to those with “common mental health conditions” who are claiming employment support allowance (ESA) and job seekers allowance (JSA).

The government have put up an online contract notice which specifically states: “This provision is designed to support people with common mental health conditions to prepare for and move into work, with intervention at the earliest possible point in a claim to benefit or access to the Fit for Work service.”

We really must question the ethics of linking receipt of welfare with “state therapy,” which, upon closer scrutiny, is not therapy at all. Linked to such a narrow outcome – getting a job – this is nothing more than a blunt behaviour modification programme. The fact that the Conservatives plan to make receipt of benefits contingent on participation in “treatment” worryingly takes away the fundamental right of consent.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is used to change how you think (“Cognitive”) and what you do (“Behaviour”). It bypasses emotions, personal history and narrative, to a large extent, and tends to focus on the “here and now.”

CBT is an approach that facilitates the identification of “negative thinking patterns” and associated “problematic behaviours” and challenges them. This approach is at first glance a problem-solving approach, however, it is of course premised on the assumption that interpreting situations “negatively” is a bad thing, and that thinking positively about bad events is beneficial.

The onus is on the individual to adapt by perceiving their circumstances in a stoical and purely rational way.
So we need to ask what are the circumstances that the government are expecting people claiming benefits to accept stoically. Sanctions? Work fare? Being forced to accept very poorly paid work, abysmal working conditions and no security? The loss of social support, public services and essential safety nets ? Starvation and destitution?

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