Conservative Philip Davies demonised welfare claimants in the Commons while a man died waiting for benefit payments a mile from the MP's constituency
Gloating: Philip Davies
On Monday, in the House of Commons, the Conservative MP Philip Davies gloated over the portrayal of welfare claimants in Channel 4’s Benefits Street.
Esther McVey’s flatmate asked her boss Iain Duncan Smith: “Have you, like me, been struck by the number of people on there who manage to combine complaining about welfare reforms whilst being able to afford to buy copious amounts of cigarettes, have lots of tattoos done and watch Sky TV on the obligatory widescreen television?”
All the while, on real-life Benefits Street, a mile or so from Davies’s West Yorkshire constituency, a man lay dead.
He died alone in a freezing cold flat, wearing several layers of clothes and two dressing gowns – waiting for benefits that had been stopped for months by the DWP.
Next week, the man will be buried in the Nab Wood Crematorium in Shipley, the constituency Philip Davies represents.
I have agreed not to give his surname in this article as his daughters have yet to be told of the circumstances surrounding his death.
Paul, 51, worked hard and paid taxes until a year ago, when he became depressed due to family problems. He also began getting help for alcoholism. He was assessed and awarded Employment and Support Allowance.
But in October, he failed to attend a Work Capability Assessment. The reasons for him not attending are disputed by his friends and the DWP. For the next 14 weeks, while he battled to get his benefits reinstated, Paul received no money. His health began to deteriorate.
This was a sick man who couldn’t put the heating on or eat properly, too proud to ask for help from his friends.
On January 2, the DWP wrote to him to say his benefits were being reinstated, backdated to October 5. But by this time, Paul was too ill to go to the cash machine to collect the money that had been placed in his bank account.
So he asked his friend David if he’d go to the machine for him and withdraw the money.
David went every day, but the money wasn’t there.
Finally, on January 7, David managed to withdraw cash. He went straight to give his friend the money he so desperately needed, but there was no answer.
David, by now deeply worried, broke down the front door. His friend was lying dead in the hallway wearing several layers of clothes and two dressing gowns.
“I found him dead on the floor,” David wrote on Facebook.
“With his cash in my pocket... he never got to see a penny.
“He gave me the bank card on the Saturday because he got notice dated 2/1/14 to say he’d be paid and then still didn’t get paid until Tuesday the 7th. I just feel so angry with DWP. He deserved better. He was only 51 and had worked all his life and paid taxes until he became ill last year.”
Mirror
