Parliamentary Questions Appeals against WCA - 22 May 2013

The Countess of Mar tabled the following questions about the work capability assessments carried out by Atos in respect of applications for the Employment and Support Allowance.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many appeals against initial work capability assessments to either Jobcentre Plus decision-makers or the First Tier Tribunal have been successful; what percentage of total appeals have been successful; how many successful appeals were attributed to errors in assessments conducted by Atos Healthcare between March 2012 and March 2013; and what percentage of successful appeals in period those appeals represent.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many work capability assessments have either not been challenged or have been appealed unsuccessfully; and what proportion of such assessments made between March 2012 and March 2013 those cases represent.

  The following written answer was provided on 22 May 2013 by Lord Freud, Minister for Relfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions:

The department regularly publishes official statistics on the outcomes of employment and support allowance (ESA) work capability assessments (WCAs) for new claims made to ESA and for incapacity benefits claimants being reassessed for ESA. The latest statistics include outcomes of appeals heard up to the end of February 2013 against Fit for Work decisions at initial WCAs (for new ESA claims that started between October 2008 and February 2012) and can be found on the internet at the link below (table 3).

Employment and Support Allowance: Outcomes of Work Capability Assessments, Great Britain: Excel spreadsheet download available HERE.

Information on how many successful appeals were attributed to errors in assessments conducted by Atos Healthcare is not available.

Source

‘GPs unaware they can flag up patients at risk’ ~ The Scotsman and Edinburgh Evening News

By John McArdle 

Published on 14/05/2013 12:00

Sick and disabled people are being subjected to enormous and avoidable suffering as a consequence of the UK 
Government’s draconian welfare reforms.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has reportedly written to Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron informing them that Scottish NHS and GPs surgeries are now facing meltdown dealing with the fallout of their welfare “reforms” that the vast majority of MSPs agree are badly failing Scotland’s people.

Over the last 12 months a succession of full Westminster debates have been held on the matter and last June the British Medical Association voted unanimously to demand that the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) be scrapped with immediate effect “to be replaced by a rigorous and safe system that does not cause avoidable harm to some of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society.”

However, the pleas of our doctors, charities, civil society organisations and politicians from all sides of the political spectrum – including 121 MPs who signed House of Commons Early Day Motion 295 in support of the BMA’s position – have fallen on deaf ears and even harder hearts.

In response to last week’s Evening News report on the issue, a DWP spokeswoman stated that “GPs have said they do not want to be responsible for making decisions on people’s benefit entitlement, which is why we request the appropriate information from GPs to enable us to make those decisions”.

The truth, as the department well knows, is that the DWP almost never requests information from GPs and it remains irrefutably the case that those performing the Atos Work Capability Assessments and DWP Decision Makers continue to make complex medical risk assessments based upon grossly inadequate patient information.

The inevitable result has been the sickening, daily occurrence of Scotland’s chronically sick and/or disabled people’s lives being devastated with individuals, families and carers pushed over the edge. Such a disgraceful state of affairs cannot be permitted to continue for one day longer in a society that deigns to call itself civilised.

ESA Regulations (21013) 25 and 31 deal with flagging up a substantial risk of harm to patients if they were to be found “fit for work” or to have “limited capability for work” and placed in the DWP Work-Related Activity Group (WRAG) where: “the claimant suffers from some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement and, by reasons of such disease or disablement, there would be a 
substantial risk to the mental or physical health of any person if the claimant were found not to have limited 
capability for work.”

Regrettably, it remains the case that only DWP and ATOS staff are aware of these regulations whilst GPs remain ignorant of their existence and those performing the WCA and DWP Decision Makers continue to make complex risk assessments based on grossly inadequate patient information.

Where GPs have applied the law the horrific suffering of the type reported in last week’s News has been avoided.

Contrary to suggestions by the DWP spokeswoman and DWP Minister for Work Mark Hoban, the use of these regulations by GPs is emphatically not about doctors policing the benefit system. They are about doctors discharging their ethical duty to patients. The GMC’s own publication Good Medical Practice states clearly:

“a doctor must (overriding duty or principle) take prompt action if he feels that patient safety is or may be seriously compromised by inadequate . . . policies or systems.”

Failure by the BMA to urgently publicise and make known to every GP in the country the existence and lawful application of these Substantial Risk Regulations 25 and 31 without any further delay would, in the words of the doctors’ letter to the BMA 
leadership, amount to negligence.

John McArdle is a spokesman for the Black Triangle Campaign against the current disability benefit reforms

The Scotsman and Edinburgh Evening News

This is what ESA/WCA means for sick and disabled people [Ekklesia]

As part of a new campaign to highlight the highly damaging impact of the government's welfare changes, particularly in relation to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), activist Sue Marsh (http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.co.uk/) launched #ESAendgame, the first of a range of mobilising activities, on Twitter and on her web page yesterday (6 March 2013).

The aim is to get people talking about the human impact of ESA, and of the WCA (Work Capability Assessment) overseen by the DWP and implemented by ATOS and others, which is what someone has to go through to qualify for ESA.

We have excerpted some of the comments and examples people tweeted below. They make harrowing reading. There are a few news and audio links included. These are the stories and experiences which politicians, civil servants, policy makers and media operatives need to see in order to understand the massive damage being occasioned by the government's assault on welfare.

Ekklesia believes that social, welfare and benefits policy should be shaped by human determinants, by an economics of sharing rather than hoarding, and above all by the expertise, experience and perspective of those living at the sharp-end - not by decision-makers living in remote comfort, protected by spin-doctors.


Here is what #ESAendgame revealed:

"The DWP sends very poorly terminally ill people like me into the Work Related Activity Group - we're not 'fit for work' any time soon, we're dying."

"Elaine's body was found in a drain. The Inquest heard she was worried about a benefit entitlement meeting."
"My terminal friend had to explain 'how terminal?' was her terminal cancer to the JSA office. She died four months later."

"If you became ill or disabled would you want to live in constant fear of becoming destitute?"

"A Freedom of Information document from the DWP has revealed that rather than an average of 32 deaths per week as a result of Welfare Reform that figure has now risen to an average of 73 deaths per week." http://welfarenewsservice.com/nothing-short-of-barbaric/

"I live in a crip's body, wracked with pain, high on drugs to dull pain receptors, have restricted movement but brain works fine."

"I was pushed into oncoming traffic whilst waiting at traffic lights in my wheelchair followed by shouts of 'scrounging scum'."

"Quote from ATOS Work Capability Assessment: 'And how long have you had Down’s Syndrome?'"

"According to the DWP's own research, 92 per cent of UK businesses will not consider employing a blind person. WCA [is] oblivious to this fact."

"Far from 'helping people back to work' the truth regarding ESA is [that] it causes additional suffering and makes sick people sicker."

"The DWP, with no medical experience, can declare you fit for work despite evidence from professionals. This is just wrong."

"Now too old for ESA, but hear about too many people with terminal cancer being told they should be in work."

"Fury as benefits bullies DWP force 50,000 disabled Scots to go back to work." tinyurl.com/b7fqneb

"I object to having my illness tested by a points scoring system. If doctors did this, hospitals would be virtually empty."

"New rules allow assessors to completely disregard symptoms."

"The One Year Time Limit totally undermines any contributory principle."

"Is it fair that ill/disabled have to justify said illness to someone who knows nothing about it? Justify it?"

"My WCA assessment stated I couldn't work. DWP overturned it and placed me in a WRAG. Took a year to overturn at tribunal."

"Claimants could be left without any income replacement benefit at all when challenging a decision that they are fit for work, the government has confirmed."

"My fight for my ESA is temporarily over, many more are still fighting."

"Why should someone who has to spend the bulk of their energy on dealing with pain, fatigue, and staying alive be forced to work?"

"Most people's impairments can be accommodated in the right job with the right support - but those jobs are few and far between."

"ESA is finding people fit for the dole queue, not fit for any kind of realistic and suitable employment."

"The worst thing about ESA is the constant reassessment of people who won't get better."

"The tragedy of Alice: How the Work Capability Assessment costs lives - its impact on people with mental health problems is more serious than ATOS have acknowledged." http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/03/tragedy-alice

"One day I was a valued member of society, the next day I was a dirty, filthy scrounger who bankrupted the UK."

"All the people I tweeted about who died were real and their stories can be found here." http://t.co/ZRsZzVlkoO [*.PDF file]

"Seems saying I have frequent co-morbid tendencies at my ESA WCA means I'm OK to work. Who knew?"

"Full of rage for the contempt in which people are held. Human beings. Full of fear for the future when I'll need to apply."

"A man who doused himself with petrol and tried to set himself alight in a job centre after a dispute over benefits has been jailed for 20 months."

"April 2013 sees the end of contribution-based ESA. All claims will only last for a year even if you have paid 40+ years of National Insurance (NI)."

"ATOS incompetence: 'When did you catch autism?'"

"The claimant has no right to know the qualifications of the WCA assessors. You could have a physio assessing autism."

"One ATOS [assessor] was described, by my brief at my tribunal hearing, as 'certifying a chair fit for work'. Everyone knew him."

"I'd like to know how qualified these ESA 'advisors' actually are. More visibility, please."

"A person whose cousin was on disability benefit, dying of liver failure: the DWP stopped her benefit and she had to appeal against it, enduring eight weeks of 'worry, hopelessness and grief' before dying two days before her family received notification that her appeal had been granted."

"One of the most stressful events in life, is moving home - the government's bedroom tax is deliberately inflicting this on disabled."

"A man 63 dies of kidney failure and starvation after being cut off benefits and declared 'fit for work'."
"Please tell me, Government, what have I done to deserve this abuse and suffering from you?"

"The bullying tactics of DWP and ATOS." http://alonewewhisper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-bullying-tactics-of-dwp...

"Why are we spending millions of pounds finding sick people fit for jobs that don't exist?"

"ATOS: The world's silliest interview." http://loopys-rollingwiththepunches.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/esa-sos-world...

"Worst thing about ESA is [that] they ignore long-term medical knowledge about people in favour of a 10-minute ATOS interview."

"Simon Hickmans ATOS assessment. This is how they treat people with mental health problems." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG9a22hbrcY

"This is very much like my assessment, but I felt couldn't walk out and I had no-one with me or any support of any kind, so I got trampled over by ATOS and got zero points."

"Government policy on disability assessment doesn't work and is wasting my taxes, and making the lives of the disabled even harder."

"We hope that you'll never understand what the fear of the brown envelope means, but just in case please sign the WOW petition: http://wowpetition.com/

------

Ekklesia is honoured and pleased to be working with disability researchers and campaigners in helping to link analysis with advocacy, political lobbying and media awareness-building around welfare, benefits and disability policy.

See also:

* Sue Marsh's blog on Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/suemarsh
* Disability issues on Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/disability
* Truth and lies about poverty, benefits and welfare: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/18086
* Thousands of disabled and sick people will be hit by new ESA/WCA changes: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17812

Source

Unum bragged about ‘driving government thinking’ on incapacity benefit reform

An insurance company set to make huge financial gains from incapacity benefit (IB) reform bragged about “driving” the government towards those reforms, evidence obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) has revealed.

The US insurance giant Unum has repeatedly denied attempting to influence IB reform over the last two decades, despite mounting evidence that it has done so.

Unum is the largest provider of “income protection insurance” (IPI) in the UK, and tougher welfare rules – including replacing incapacity benefit with employment and support allowance (ESA) – are likely to persuade more people to take out IPI, boosting the company’s profits.

Unum even launched a major media campaign in 2011 just as the coalition began a three-year programme to reassess about 1.5 million existing IB claimants through the new, stricter test, the work capability assessment (WCA).

Now DNS has secured a copy of a Unum document on the assessment of “incapacity”, which was published in 2005.

The document was written by Michael O’Donnell, then the company’s chief medical officer and now in the same role at Atos Healthcare, which carries out WCAs on behalf of the government.
O’Donnell says in the document that Unum has “always been at the leading edge of disability assessment and management”.

He adds: “We know that our views and understanding are not yet in the mainstream of doctors’ thinking, but Government Policy is moving in the same direction, to a large extent being driven by our thinking and that of our close associates, both in the UK and overseas.”

Unum has admitted there has been widespread criticism of its past actions in the US, mainly over its refusal to pay out on large numbers of genuine insurance claims by disabled people, a record mentioned in last month’s Commons debate on Atos and the WCA.

But Unum has also faced criticism in the UK. In a parliamentary debate in 1999, MPs accused the company of refusing to pay out on valid insurance claims from disabled people who had lost their jobs due to ill-health or disability.

Unum continues to dismiss claims that it pushed the government to introduce the ESA/WCA system.

In 2011, John Letizia, Unum’s head of public affairs, told Disability News Service (DNS): “At no time have we influenced the government on the design of the reforms to the welfare state or on the level of benefits that claimants receive.”

And in the same year, at the Conservative Party conference, Unum’s chief executive, Jack McGarry, said: “We haven’t tried to influence the welfare agenda around reducing welfare or making it harder to claim. To my knowledge we have not done that.”

This week, Letizia told DNS again that Unum had not attempted to influence the government’s welfare reform agenda.

He said: “We will never ever deny that there were discussions between Unum and the previous government and there continue to be [with the coalition].”

But he added: “In all the discussions going back over the last five years on welfare reform Unum made absolutely no attempt to influence government policy on the welfare debate, on the ESA or WCA or personal independence payment or disability living allowance, in setting the government agenda.”

After DNS shared the document with Letizia, he declined to comment further.

Mo Stewart, the disabled activist who has done most to highlight concerns about Unum, said the new evidence was “very significant”, and called for an independent inquiry into the role of the company in influencing UK welfare reform, particularly when it had such a “disturbing past history”.

She said: “This entire situation confirms the dangers of a government that confuses its priorities, and places the welfare budget as a much higher priority than the needs of its own chronically sick and disabled people.”

She added: “The WCA is a replica of the assessment system used by Unum to resist funding insurance claimants.

“It is a bogus, dangerous assessment and, with this evidence, it is now time that this DWP medical tyranny was ended.”

A DWP spokesman said: “The WCA was designed from the outset with the involvement of a wide range of experts and disability representative groups and has been subject to rigorous independent review.”

14 February 2013

Disability News Service

IDS slips up: “She was PAID jobseeker’s allowance to do this”



Illustration by @dochackenbush


Iain Duncan Smith was interviewed on the Andrew Marr show today. He made some telling statements.

“I understand she said she wasn’t paid. She was paid jobseeker’s allowance, by the taxpayer, to do this.”



Funny, the government have always said that this wasn’t a work-for-your-benefits scheme but IDS seems to think it is.  In fact, the official response by the DWP to a petition to abolish Workfare said:

“We do not have Work for Your Benefit or Workfare schemes in this country.”

Furthermore, in a response to a Freedom of Information request the DWP said:

“Benefit is not paid to the claimant as remuneration for the activity. “

They continue:



“Instead, performing it is one of a number of conditions which may have to be fulfilled by the claimant in order to be paid Jobseeker’s Allowance.  The relationship between the claimant, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and any third parties involved in providing the activity is not one of employment.”

In my opinion that is a serious mistake by IDS. If, as IDS says, benefits are being paid as wages for work experience schemes, then it I suspect that it breaches minimum wage laws. If they are not, as officially claimed by his department, then we have forced unpaid labour. I thought that people paid National Insurance in the expectation that when people needed help they would be supported. Having to work for it is a breach of contract.



“I’m sorry, but there is a group of people out there who think they’re too good for this kind of stuff.”



People don’t think they’re too good for shelf stacking, they think they’re too good for shelf stacking without receiving a fair wage for it. Is “A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work” really a controversial statement in the 21st century?

“Who is more important – them, the geologist, or the person who stacked the shelves?”

Every person is important, including shelf stackers. Geologists are pretty important especially in the oil industry.



“Let me remind you that [former Tesco chief executive] Terry Leahy started his life stacking shelves.”



He was paid for it!

BBC News: Duncan Smith: Shelf-stacking is more important than geology

My thanks to @A11_Seeing_Eye and @Spoonydoc for help with this article.

A Latent Existence



IDS: Shelf-stacking more important than geology

Iain Duncan Smith: "Terry Leahy started his life stacking shelves"

The work and pensions secretary has criticised people "who think they're too good" to stack supermarket shelves on back-to-work government schemes.

On the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Iain Duncan Smith suggested that many "smart people" overlooked the importance of effective shelf-stacking.

A geology graduate recently won a legal victory over the back-to-work scheme.

But Mr Duncan Smith warned against assuming that geology was more important than supermarket work.

Geology graduate Cait Reilly, 24, argued at the Appeal Court that her unpaid work placement at Poundland, which she had been required to undertake in return for continued benefits payments, breached laws on forced labour.


'Most successful' scheme

I don't think I am above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part-time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working”      -Cait Reilly

Although Miss Reilly won the case, Mr Duncan Smith said the judges had decided her argument that the scheme breached her human rights was "rubbish".

The court had ruled against the government, he explained, because "the regulations were set too wide and weren't specific enough".

"I've already put emergency regulations down, and that's ended it," he added.

Commenting further on the case, Mr Duncan Smith said: "I understand she said she wasn't paid. She was paid jobseeker's allowance, by the taxpayer, to do this.

"I'm sorry, but there is a group of people out there who think they're too good for this kind of stuff.

"Let me remind you that [former Tesco chief executive] Terry Leahy started his life stacking shelves.

"The next time somebody goes in - those smart people who say there's something wrong with this - they go into their supermarket, ask themselves this simple question, when they can't find the food they want on the shelves, who is more important - them, the geologist, or the person who stacked the shelves?"

Mr Duncan Smith argued that "most young people love" their work experience placements.

It was the government's "most successful" back-to-work scheme, he said: "It's been so successful that over half of those kids have left benefits."

The scheme had been launched to help young people trapped in a vicious circle where they could not get a job because they did not have any experience on their CVs, he said.

'Complete waste of time'

Mr Duncan Smith added: "But what we've said to them is: once you commit to doing that programme, because companies have to make arrangements around it, then if you don't do this you may suffer a benefit withdrawal because you have messed them around and they are therefore going to suffer as a result of that.
"It's a point that anyone out there listening to this will know. You have to learn early that if you commit to something, you stay and do it."

Miss Reilly, a University of Birmingham geology graduate, and 40-year-old unemployed HGV driver Jamie Wilson, from Nottingham, both succeeded in their claims that the unpaid schemes were legally flawed.

This was because the regulations behind the schemes did not comply with the Act of Parliament that gave the DWP the power to introduce the programme.

Miss Reilly said that in November 2011 she had to leave her voluntary work at a local museum and work unpaid at the Poundland store in Kings Heath, Birmingham, under a scheme known as the "sector-based work academy".

"Those two weeks were a complete waste of my time, as the experience did not help me get a job," she said, after the court ruling on 12 February.

"I was not given any training and I was left with no time to do my voluntary work or search for other jobs.

"The only beneficiary was Poundland, a multi-million pound company. Later I found out that I should never have been told the placement was compulsory.

"I don't think I am above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part-time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working."

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Duncan Smith also said:

• The UK faces a "big battle" in the EU institutions over rules governing access to benefits, accusing EU officials of trying to "take control" of policies previously left to member states.
• Labour's attempts to characterise planned housing benefit changes as a "bedroom tax" were "nonsense". He added: "We have in social sector housing a very large number of people in houses where they have many more bedrooms than they actually need."

Analysis

---

Alan Soady Political reporter, BBC News

The Cait Reilly case has clearly niggled Iain Duncan Smith. To him, it's about a wider political principle that there should not be a "something-for-nothing" culture.
While Cait Reilly argued she was being asked to work for free, Mr Duncan Smith has in effect said that Job Seeker's Allowance should be seen as an equivalent of a wage for those sent on work placements.
Meanwhile his remarks about the importance of supermarket shelf-stackers suggest he believes that some job seekers are too snobbish about certain kinds of work.

Related Stories

• Back-to-work schemes breached law
• Defeat for 'forced labour' claim
• Government work schemes explained

BBC

Video the UK Govt wants banned

ATOS call back cancer and dementia sufferers

NEARLY 20,000 cancer sufferers have been forced to return for repeated fit-for-work tests carried out by controversial French firm Atos.

The company have a £100million-a-year contract with the UK government to test whether disabled people are capable of working.

The government say the scheme helps weed out cheats, but the Department of Work and Pensions are asking people with incurable, life-threatening conditions to undergo multiple checks in order to keep benefits.

New figures reveal that 18,450 cancer sufferers have had to undergo multiple tests between October 2008 and February this year.

Another 2320 people with multiple sclerosis have been through repeated work capability assessments as well as hundreds of others with Parkinson’s and dementia.

Employment Minister Mark Hoban insists not all the tests involved face-to-face assessments.

But Tom Greatrex, the MP who has campaigned for reform of the fitness to work test, said: “It beggars belief that people suffering from illnesses like cancer and dementia are having to go through this process over and over again.

“If someone with an incurable and progressive condition like Parkinson’s isn’t fit to work after the first test, where is the sense in assessing them again?

“At a time in their lives when sick and disabled people need to be supported by the government, they are actually being hounded in the cruellest way.

“Tory-Liberal ministers need to get a grip on this chaotic and uncaring system.”

Maggie Mackay, an antique restorer before being diagnosed with breast cancer, has had to undergo two tests for benefits.

She was assessed as fit to work in 2010 when she was still recovering from chemotherapy but successfully appealed against the decision.

Maggie, 52, of Glengarnock, Ayrshire, who underwent another assessment last month, said: “I think it is an abomination that people like me have to keep going through this.

“It is despicable that people who have worked all their lives before falling ill are having to fight for their benefits.

“If my doctor thinks I’m not well enough to go back to full-time work, why is the government over-ruling what she says?”

Charities also hit out at the multiple tests.

Elspeth Atkinson, director ofMacmillan Cancer Support, said: “We need the benefits system and the NHS to work more closely to stop repeat assessments of people who are clearly unable to work during their illness.”

And Becky Duff, of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, added:

“The Work Capability Assessment is particularly inappropriate for people with complex and fluctuating long-term conditions like MS. It produces huge numbers of incorrect decisions, and has denied many people vital support.”

 

Kirsty Yanik, awareness manager at Alzheimer Scotland, said: “The change from the former benefit structure to this new system can be particularly confusing for people with dementia. They are likely to struggle with some of the administrative procedures.”

A DWP spokeswoman said: “Individuals with conditions where a return to work is unlikely will only be reassessed after two years and, where possible, this assessment will be paper-based.”

Atos stress it is not up to them to decide who they assess and if people are entitled to receive state benefits.

Daily Record

This is not wartime Nazi Germany and Cameron's attacks on the vulnerable and needy must be stopped [Sonia Poulton]

Dastardly: Sonia Poulton says David Cameron and the Coalition Government has surpassed itself in its campaign of terror against some of the most needy in our society

I'm unwell at the moment. I have a streaming nose, high temperature, cold shakes and low blood pressure. I get light headed when I stand and I have fallen over a couple of times this week. What I am experiencing has made me a bit miserable and snappy (sorry loved ones), not to mention bruised and sore from head to foot, but it's not life-threatening, not terminal. Unlike what many others are enduring.


I reveal my current state of health not because I wish to elicit sympathy (or even garner a gift or two, but either is always nice) but because I wish to highlight that even though I am physically poorly, I still felt compelled to rise from my sickbed and write.


Why? Because over the past week or so I have sat back and watched our Coalition Government surpass itself in its campaign of terror against some of the most needy in our society.

There we were thinking it impossible that David Cameron's Tory party could become even more dastardly, even more duplicitous, in their devastating aims against those in vulnerable groups - sick, disabled, single parent families and the elderly - but they have.

Take their next much-vaunted initiative - the Workfare programme. Controversial certainly - who can forget the graduate who declined to work at Poundland as part of the scheme? She who was reviled and martyred, depending on your political persuasion, reading pleasure and sense of justice, for refusing to work at the budget chain store so that she would continue to receive 'benefits' as she searched for the job she had studied and qualified for.


I agreed with her. I deplore the Workfare programme for many reasons but primarily because it is deplorable. Trumpeted as a programme that will give the unemployed key skills, it serves nothing of the sort.


What it is, in actuality, is a benefit system for sections of our work force. And there was I, foolishly, thinking that when you are part of the capitalist work force then the appropriate term for remuneration received is salary. Apparently not. These days, and under Cameron's stewardship, we receive 'benefits' to become part of the job market.

Controversial: The Government's Workfare programme has been trumpeted as a scheme that will give the unemployed key skills

Fair? Tesco is one of the firms set to benefit from the Workfare programme

Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with getting hands-on experience that will enable progression in your chosen path, and we've all done plenty of that, but there is everything wrong with being forced to work in a place that has nothing to do with your aims and ambitions and everything to do with creating a labour force that verges on slavery to the system.


Astonishingly, the deplorable - I think I mentioned that already - Workfare has reached new lows this week as it became transparently clear that it also serves to line the overflowing coffers of wealthy corporations while making the already poor, poorer still.
The thing about Cameron's Workfare programme is it's almost too easy to criticise.

The problem is not knowing where to start but wondering if I shall ever finish.

 

Presumably Tesco's slogan 'Every little helps' (the shareholder) is a similar mantra to the Coalition's 'We're all in this together' (politicians and bankers, that is). In that it benefits the few and not the many.

 

So I ask just this: how can it possibly be right for a multi-national - such as Tesco - to benefit from free labour?


That's wrong. Clearly. If staff are needed by our numero uno retailer then Tesco should have an absolute obligation to pay them the going rate. And not a penny less.


Presumably the company's slogan 'Every little helps' (the shareholder) is a similar mantra to the Coalition's 'We're all in this together' (politicians and bankers, that is). In that it benefits the few and not the many.


What Tesco, and other participants in the Workfare scheme, receive is far greater than what they give.


We, as the country, are, quite literally, paying the consumer giant to make even more money. And we are doing that by having our taxpayer funded job seekers work free for the company.


Does that sound right? It might if your view of life is from Downing Street, but it's not from elsewhere.


You have to wonder how many MP's have fat wads of shares at stake in the Workfare scheme. I know I do. It may not be illegal for them to benefit from increased corporate share prices that Government initiatives may bring them personally, but it sure is highly questionable.

Disability benefits

And this brings me to what I consider to be the most heinous of the Coalition's attacks this week and the one that finally prompted me from my sickbed.


As a result of Cameron's spurious recent behaviour in pushing through crippling, quite literally for some, amendments to disability benefits, it has become clear that the attached issues are even more heinous that the blueprint of the Welfare Reform Bill, itself.


And it is this: disabled people will now face the prospect of unlimited unpaid work or they will be subject to cuts in their benefits. For millions that is nothing more than a line on a page but for many terrified and suicidal others, it is anything but.

Unfair: Under new rules disabled people now face the prospect of unlimited unpaid work or be subject to cuts in their benefit

Even from the outside - in that neither I or my daughter currently require disability or sickness benefits, thankfully - it is clear that this will result in a deeply troubling outcome for those directly affected.


The consequences of this cannot be overstated. It will be, quite simply, devastating. As a number of institutes have not been slow in expressing their very real concerns.


The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) have written to the Coalition outlining the dangers of forcing sick and disabled people into the job market (the one that currently stands at almost three million unemployed by the way).


The RCP have a number of fears about the inadequacies of such a system. They worry, quite rightly, that managers in job centres and private companies - whose job it is to get people back to work - have inadequate health expertise and will push those with mental health issues into inappropriate placements.


Forcing people who have more than six months left to live - yes it is that stark, again - to earn a living is an outrage on a previously unseen scale.


Even I'm shocked by the ruthlessness of it and I wouldn't put anything past this compassion-free zone that is Parliament.

Cultural observers could not fail to notice similarities between what is taking place here and what occurred in Hitler's Germany

If nothing else the Coalition are proving themselves, over and over again, to be worthy defenders of the rich. If you're in the top percentage of income earners in this country then you, too, should be OK. I'm talking about the CEO, the landowners and shareholders. The banking industry, the pharmaceutical giants, the retail multi-nationals.


It's no great secret that one of the main reasons that MP's take care of business is because so many of them have financial interests in the businesses that they do business with. They are protecting their own interests while governing over the rest of us and insisting we do the same.


Morals aside, and I feel we must put them aside when referring to many, many politicians - and particularly much of the current shower in power - you can't really blame them for protecting their assets. They know which side their bread is buttered, or that of their colleagues, and they never fail to deliver or to resort to type in that regard.
Some people have written to me complaining that I get too angry when I write about our Government. But I AM angry. I believe we all should be outraged and I'm shouting because I want people to hear it.


Let us make no mistake what we are witnessing from our Coalition Government is absolutely, unquestionably, categorically scandalous.


The ritual humiliation, brutalisation, threats and punishment of anyone who is considered 'a burden to the state'. Anyone who is less than perfect, anyone who dares to find themselves in a position where they need the state to support them. Those people are the subject of shocking and terrifying behaviour at the hands of David Cameron's Coalition.


Cultural observers could not fail to notice the similiarites between what is taking place here towards sick, disabled, elderly or any group perceived to be vulnerable and weak and what occurred in Hitler's Germany.


This may not be ethnic cleansing that we are witnessing - and some are already experiencing - but it's a type of cleansing all the same.


There are hundreds of thousands of people around our country right now who are absolutely petrified for their future. It appears so hopeless. There have already been a number of suicides from people who left behind messages to the effect that they simply could not take the hardship any more. Could not face another winter without sufficient food or heat. And in the UK in 2012. Doesn't it make you proud?


Some of the actions that are being carried out around our great country - and it's still great no matter what the idiots trying to make it's not say - are an absolute living outrage and we cannot condone it in any way shape or form.


This Coalition have long since crossed the line of decency. Their attacks on those who need our help the most are vile, and transparently so, and must be stopped. Else we all live to regret it.
Sonia Poulton