DWP considers privatisation of pensioners

Reblogged from Pride's Purge:

(satire?)

Department for Work and Pensions considers privatisation of OAPs as part of search for savings.

The government is considering saving money by privatising state pensioners, according to Whitehall documents seen by Pride’s Purge.

In an effort to make up billions more in austerity savings, the Department for Work and Pensions has initiated a review of how it could sell off millions of pensioners and other social security claimants in the UK.

In a frank assessment, a policy review document distributed to senior civil servants in January says ministers and civil servants now need to “consider some more strategic shifts” such as looking at how state pensioners and other state benefit claimants can be removed in order to meet demands by the chancellor, George Osborne, to drastically cut their numbers.

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Commons Committee on ESA and WCA: your voice needed

There will be an inquiry into Employment and Support Allowance and the Work Capability Assessment. The committee are asking for submissions from you. DPAC will be sending a submission of the misery, destitution and deaths this process is causing. The deadline for receipt by the committee is March 21st

We ask you to take this opportunity to add to further evidence, if you would like to send experiences to DPAC to send on your behalf please email: mail@dpac.uk.net  with the subject line: ESA WCA inquiry

Otherwise, the details of how to send written experiences and data are copied below:

The Committee’s inquiry

In light of recent developments in this area, including the publication of a number of reviews of the WCA, expressions of concern from DWP regarding Atos’s performance in delivering the WCA, and the introduction of mandatory reconsideration, the Committee has decided to undertake an inquiry into ESA and WCAs to follow-up its 2011 report.

Submissions of no more than 3,000 words are invited from interested organisations and individuals.

The Committee is particularly interested to hear views on:

• Delivery of the WCA by Atos, including steps taken to improve the claimant experience
• The effectiveness of the WCA in indicating whether claimants are fit for work, especially for those claimants who have mental, progressive or fluctuating illnesses, including comparison with possible alternative models
• The process and criteria for procuring new providers of the WCA
• The ESA entitlement decision-making process
• The reconsideration and appeals process
• The impact of time-limiting contributory ESA
• Outcomes for people determined fit for work or assigned to the WRAG or the Support Group
• The interaction between ESA and Universal Credit implementation

Submissions do not need to address all of these points.

The deadline for submitting evidence is Friday 21 March.

How to submit your evidence

To encourage paperless working and maximise efficiency, select committees are now using a new web portal for online submission of written evidence. The web portal is available on our website.

The personal information you supply will be processed in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 for the purposes of attributing the evidence you submit and contacting you as necessary in connection with its processing.

Each submission should:

• be no more than 3,000 words in length
• be in Word format with as little use of colour or logos as possible
• have numbered paragraphs

If you need to send a paper copy please send it to: The Clerk, Work and Pensions Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA

Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed memorandum, in which case a web link to the published work should be included.

Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. It is the Committee’s decision whether or not to accept a submission as formal written evidence.

Select Committees are unable to investigate individual cases.

The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), or by making it available through the Parliamentary Archives. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.

Further guidance on submitting evidence to Select Committees is available on the parliamentary website ( PDF 2.41 MB).

DPAC

Welfare to Work Hits Sickness Benefits

Reblogged from Beastrabban's Weblog:


Experience says it will be a form of crude behavioural abuse, sorry, help called CBT. We all know how the Nudge Unit has worked before in ignoring all professional standards about coercion to participate. CBT has been proven (in published MEDICAL papers) to be worse than useless for people with long-term illnesses such as arthritis, and especially fibromyalgia and other chronic immune system problems with associated fatigue, and depression. The main study showed that for the first few weeks of CBT all seemed much better in treated group but 10 months later the untreated group – who had been left to manage their own illness – were in fact much better, more able to cope with pain, and more had achieved better mental & physical functioning.

The most telling remark came from someone who had been referred for CBT for fibromyalgia (aka complex regional pain syndrome). She said that it was tantamount to physical and mental torture, and in the end she agreed to everything that she was expected to, including doing exercise programmes that were causing extreme pain & distress, just so they would sigh her off from the programme. After, she needed treatment for depression.


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Private company given contract to harass the long-term sick

Reblogged from Vox Political:

The Department for Work and Pensions is setting up a new "service" offering "advice" to people who are off work with an illness for more than four weeks.

No reference is made to improving people's health.

It should also be noted that sickness absence in the UK is among the lowest in Europe, and has halved over the past decade.

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Tory plan to allow unrestricted access to your "confidential" medical records

Reblogged from Another Angry Voice:

Tory plan to allow police and civil servants unrestricted access to your "confidential" medical records

* Do you really want other people poking around in your private medical history simply because you were a witness to a crime, or inadvertently associated with a criminal (bought their second hand car, fixed their computer, taught their kids languages or music, bought an item from them on eBay, chatted with them in a pub, whatever ...)? 

* Do you want some police person or other employee of the state fishing through your intimate medical history, your mental health notes, your history of pregnancies, STDs, even whether you've been raped or had an abortion?

* Do you want people to be able to sift through this stuff without your permission, and without even the permission of a judge or your doctor?

* Do you want the possibility that some unscrupulous ex-copper or civil servant might try to blackmail you because yours happens to be amongst the batch of confidential records that they've pillaged? 

* Do you want the possibility that bent coppers or dodgy civil servants could sell your (not even slightly anonymised) private medical data to whoever might be prepared to pay for it?

One particularly interesting aspect to this is that allowing unwarranted access to our confidential medical records would appear to be in direct contravention of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects our right to privacy. There is even a ECHR judgement providing the precedent that warrantless fishing of people's private medical records is a breech of their right to privacy (Szuluk vs the United Kingdom -2009).

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SNOWDEN REVEALS DIRTY TRICKS

Edward Snowden has revealed some of the dirty tricks used by the spies to control top people.

'Royal Concierge': GCHQ Monitors Diplomats' Hotel Bookings / Snowden Docs: British Spies Used Sex and 'Dirty Tricks'

Leaked documents from the USA's National Security Agency reveal the methods used by the UK's Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG) to 'destroy, deny, degrade and disrupt' enemies.

These methods include honey traps and the spread of disinformation.

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Tory donors making £billions from NHS privatisation

Reblogged from The SKWAWKBOX Blog:

Whenever you hear 'NHS disaster' stories on BBC News, or read scare and horror stories in the right-wing print media - or see "patients' campaigners" being awarded honours by Cameron, just remember this is the reason behind all of it:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fury-tory-party-donors-handed-3123469

Tory party donors profiting by billions from NHS contracts that should be kept firmly and fully in the public sector.

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The Bedroom Tax is dead. Here's why

Reblogged from SPeye:

• 
• 

The bedroom tax is dead.  I’ll repeat that in case your eyes deceive you reader, the bedroom tax is dead!

There was a hugely significant appeal win in South Wales I discussed and posted about earlier and I called the bedroom tax a lesser spotted Dodo.  My apologies reader the bedroom tax is 'deader' than that upon reading the actual judgment!

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Punishing Poverty: A review of benefits sanctions and their impacts on clients and claimants

Reblogged from kittysjones:

Benefits sanctions are financial penalties that are given to people who are deemed to have not met the conditions for claiming benefits. The social security system has always been based on people meeting certain conditions - this has been true for all working-age benefit claimants, with sanctions applicable to those who fail to observe those conditions. This has been the case since its inception.

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Is this the DWP's latest statistics fix?

Reblogged from Vox Political:

According to the DWP, and dutifully repeated by the BBC, more than 3,000 people who were subjected to the government's benefit cap have now found work.

But have they?

This statistic - and the basis on which it is worked out - seems very suspicious to us here at Vox Political. That is why this site is appealing for anyone whose benefit cap has been removed because of it to contact us…

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Private Eye on Fraud and Corruption on Workfare Schemes

Gogol’s book, ‘Dead Souls’, about a man who mortgages dead serfs.

Last fortnight’s [Private Eye] also carried this story about allegations of fraud on its workfare programmes.

‘Fraud Popular

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP0 has been trying to bury bad news about allegations of fraud on its various welfare-to-work schemes even though some were so serious it referred them to the police for investigation.

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The document which proves the UK government is censoring on-line criticism

Reblogged from Pride's Purge:

(not satire - it's the UK today!)

After a FOI request, a DWP official has released a copy of the official complaint it made to Twitter which resulted in closing down a parody account on Twitter of the Department for Work and Pensions.

In the remarkable document, an official at the Department (Jon Woodcock, Brand Manager at Department for Work and Pensions…

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Winning The Argument On Welfare Means Never Giving An Inch To The Likes Of Katie Hopkins

Reblogged from the void:

With the constant stream of benefit bashing stories in the national press it is often easy to believe that the argument is over - the public no longer support a social security system and the poor are despised.

Yet this over-simplifies people's attitudes towards social security which in truth are varied and complex.  The most recent British Societal Attitudes survey…

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Is Britain becoming a facist state?

In modern Britain, today, right now, the basics of survival are being withdrawn from people whom British society deems unworthy.

Vulnerable people, often coping with an illness, a disability or both, are being tricked, bullied, punished and abused on an unprecedented scale.

A level of savage public scorn exists for the unemployed, the disabled, and the poor that has been deliberately manufactured by sections of the British media and political establishment.

We paid taxes so that social security would be there for us in hard times, but to be forced to rely on it in 2014, is to be labelled a shirker, a scrounger, a barrier to progress and a feckless drain on resources.

The evidence of the chill winds blowing through Britain are everywhere.

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Rise of the Daleks: California company builds 5-foot android robocops to control crime-ridden areas

‘The local neighborhood watch may be beefing up its robotic arsenal if a new technology startup gets its way anytime soon.

In a bid to make local communities safer and give local law enforcement agencies more tools to fight crime, California-based Knightscope recently unveiled a line of K5 robots that it believes will “predict and prevent crime with an innovative combination of hardware, software and social engagement.”

The new K5 units have a look that resembles R2-D2 from “Star Wars,” but their casual design masks a highly advanced robot that its creators hope will drastically cut down on crime. Weighing in at 300 pounds, the five-foot K5 can patrol a neighborhood and uses a built-in laser to form a 3D map of the surrounding area in 270-degree sweeps. Four built-in cameras, meanwhile, are capable of scanning up to 1,500 license plates a minute.

“Data collected through these sensors is processed through our predictive analytics engine, combined with existing business, government and crowdsourced social data sets, and subsequently assigned an alert level that determines when the community and the authorities should be notified of a concern,” the company’s website states.’

Read more: California company builds 5-foot android robocops to control crime-ridden areas

Inciting hatred against the poor and hungry – a new British bigotry

Hate attacks against poor people are fashionable at the moment.

Even people in the most dire of circumstances are fair game for bigoted attacks and smears.

Katy Hopkins is a prime example. Katy is the most minor of media ‘personalities’ (a failed contestant on a reality TV show) but got widespread coverage for her comments attacking people who are so poor they must rely on a food bank.

It should be remembered that to be eligible for a box of food from a food bank one must fill in a detailed form proving your poverty and even then you can only receive one voucher for three days emergency food if a care professional like a doctor or a social worker issues you with one.

That sounds like a slow, humiliating and temporary measure to me – if I had the money I would go to the shops every time before putting myself through that. But food banks are not for people with choices – they are a desperate option for desperate people.

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Send your ESA/WCA experiences to the new MP inquiry

Reblogged from Vox Political:

The government wouldn't do it - so an influential Parliamentary committee has decided to launch its own inquiry into Employment and Support Allowance and the Work Capability Assessment that determines eligibility for it.

I will be submitting evidence to this inquiry and I strongly suggest that, if you have a story to tell, then you should provide evidence as well.

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David Cameron's contempt for free speech

Reblogged from Another Angry Voice:

In November 2012 David Cameron bragged to parliament about how much the people of Britain can be be proud of: "the oldest democracy in the world; freedom of speech; a free press; frank and healthy public debate". In the same speech he expressed concerns about infringing on the freedom of the press. Here's exactly what he said:

"We should be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press. In this House, which has been a bulwark of democracy for centuries, we should think very, very carefully before crossing that line." [Hansard]

Now, you don't have to be any kind of politics obsessive to know that when David Cameron says something, you should immediately begin reading between the lines to see where the lies are. His track record is absolutely clear.

• Cameron said "We'll cut the deficit, not the NHS" then launched a £20 billion programme of cuts to the NHS.
• Cameron said "no more top-down reorganisations of the NHS" then launched the biggest top-down reorganisation in the entire history of the NHS.
• Cameron claimed that "We're paying down Britain's debts" even though the national debt is still growing rapidly.
• Cameron claimed that the OBR had stated that austerity is not responsible for depressed economic growth, when they had actually admitted that austerity was almost entirely responsible.
• Cameron said that the government are "making work pay" but the average wage has fallen in real terms every single month since he came to power.
• Cameron said that fracking would substantially reduce gas prices in the UK but even George Osborne admits that this is a misleading fiction.

In light of this track record, it is probably wise to start from the default position that when David Cameron says something, assume that the opposite to be true.

There have been ample demonstrations that David Cameron's fine words about the importance of "freedom of speech" and "press freedom" are nothing more than hot air. In this article I will briefly outline three of the most apparent.

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Liverpool 'Care' Pathway [The People's Voice]

Further details can be found at   http://www.thepeoplesvoice.tv

http://youtu.be/WbXCsSmw5Y0

The REAL Agenda behind Benefit Fraud Campaigns – With Spending

Reblogged from jaunelinney:


In my original post on the topic I argued that given the DWP admit “It is only a small minority who commit fraud“ Freud 03/01/2014; so surely these campaigns, which given the fairly constant level of estimated fraud don’t work, seem to be a case of overkill? That is unless you take a slightly more cynical view of the whole situation – If the Government was truly concerned with fraud,  wouldn’t a different, more efficiently way of managing it, have been designed by now; and, wouldn’t we have actual statistics, rather than than over 8 years of  ’around £1 billion’  estimates??

I also discussed how much the DWP had spent on these campaigns over the past 3+ years, and how much the budget for this latest reinvention is; I’ve now received a reply to my FOI request :

Expenditure for campaigns                                       Year Campaign Total amount

2010/11 Targeting Benefit Thieves                                                     £26,118
2011/12 Targeting Benefit Thieves                                                     £82, 605
2012/13 none                                                                                      Nil
2013/14 Benefits. Are you doing the right thing?                                £188,003  (forecast only)

So from the FOI we presume in the past 3 years the coalition have spent £296,726?

Well No! The February edition of Touchbase the DWP Newsletter for ’advisers, intermediaries and other professionals’ has this announcement “The Government has announced the launch of a single fraud investigation service (SFIS), to tackle all welfare benefit fraud…  investing an extra £140 million to deliver savings of over £2.3 billion by cutting the amount of money that is loss through fraud, error and debt”.

This is on top of the current forecast of £188,003, as the DWP was expressly clear this amount was for the “Are you doing the right thing” campaign only! Which, in REAL terms means an extra £140,000 over 18 months (Oct 16 -Mar 16)

This is a huge amount of money from a Government who persistently tell us, we as a nation are broke; so remember when you read in the press or the  internet, hear on the radio or watch on TV how this is to SAVE £1 billion ‘lost’ in the past year because other people are ‘cheating’ Stop & Think –  might this the is the same £1 billion that’s been lost for the past 8 years or more??

“Affordable Homes Programme”: an offer that should be refused

Reblogged from Keep our Council Homes:

You can download a PDF of this here ahp2briefing

The government Prospectus for the second round of it's “affordable homes programme” has recently been published. Councils and Housing Associations will be able to bid for grant from the Homes and Communities Agency in order to build new homes. The first round of grants, for 2011-15, was based on a massive reduction of grant, from £60,000 (in the previous government's programme) to an expected £20,000 per property built.

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Cameron announces plan to reduce flooding by forcing it to work in Poundland

Reblogged from Pride's Purge:

(satire?)

The Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a wide-ranging plan to reduce what he called the 'scourge' of flooding across the country by cutting its victims' financial help and forcing them to work in Poundland for free.

People who have been made homeless or have had their property damaged by the flooding and severe weather conditions could also be expected to attend classes to encourage them to feel more worthless and deferential to their betters under Conservative plans to change the way payments are made to flooding victims.

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How national cuts are crippling local services

Reblogged from Vox Political:

How many more underhanded ways can our underhanded Coalition government find to sneak crippling damage to public services in by the back door?

A particularly vile method has just been uncovered here in my own county of Powys, involving the collusion of councillors who are supposed to be independent (but you will see that their political colours are more blue than anything else).

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Welfare Cuts And Suicide: Care In The ConDemmunity

Reports show that there is a direct correlation between welfare cuts and assisted suicide

Recently there has been a resurgence in the campaign for the right to die, with Margo MacDonald pushing forward the assisted suicide bill in Scotland.

As a disability rights campaigner, I have always sat on the fence with regards to the assisted suicide debate. I have no idea what it is like to live with a terminal illness, be in constant agonising pain or to suddenly lose a significant amount of functioning ability. Nevertheless, I do know what it’s like to live with a significant physical impairment – I know what it’s like to receive good support and to be part of my community and I also know what it’s like to cope with inadequate support, and the negative impact that has.

Against the backdrop of cuts to welfare, particularly palliative and social care, should we be pushing forward the right to die? The harsh facts are that cuts to care are going to increase in the next couple of years. Nearly 30% of hospices have already had their statutory funding cut and since 2007 there has been a 25% reduction in people receiving care at home. Many of us have already had our care packages dramatically reduced or withdrawn completely.

Across the UK, Councils are limiting home care visits to just 15 minutes, and up to 220,000 care workers receive less than the minimum wage - flouting employment law and compromising quality. A small glimmer of hope has been the introduction of £3.8b Better Care Fund, an integrated social and health fund to fill the gap. However there is concern that this fund will be insufficient and inappropriately used by councils.

Until we can offer people appropriate care and “right to life”, how can we ethically offer them “the right to death”?

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Media Must Be Held To Account For Portrayal Of Sick And Disabled Benefit Claimants

The use of defamatory language is being used in a totally irresponsible and callous manner by a steadily increasing number of newspapers and other media providers.

I believe that the press and the wider media are blatantly using this language as a means of labeling all disabled benefit claimants as ‘cheats’ and ‘scroungers’, yet most are genuine sick and disabled people who are in many instances unable to work and are asking for only the very basic levels of support.

Such support is in no way over generous, as some newspapers are claiming, with administrative error and miscalculations at 0.5% and benefit fraud at just 0.9% of the total benefits expenditure. In fact disability benefits like Disability Living Allowance have some of the lowest levels of fraud of all forms of social security benefits, at around 0.5%, and it is estimated that up to £16Billion remain unclaimed in benefits every year. A significant fact that news provider’s and even the coalition government are neglecting to inform the public.

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Cancer patients ‘must pay for their treatment’ claims NHS specialist Dr Ajay Aggarwal

‘A London-based NHS cancer specialist claims charges are necessary if patients are to keep on receiving the best treatment.

Dr Ajay Aggarwal, of Guy’s and St ­Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, said “stagnating NHS budgets” make the current ­system unsustainable.

In the Journal of Cancer ­Policy, he said: “New approaches to paying for cancer care need to be found. Cancer is too personal and emotive for the public to accept decisions on restricting access to cancer treatments.

“User charges could provide the key to long-term sustainability of high-quality cancer care.”’

Read more: Cancer patients ‘must pay for their treatment’ claims NHS specialist Dr Ajay Aggarwal

Homelessness among young people up 57% in last five years – Citizens Advice

The number of young people without a roof over their head has increased by 57% in the past five years, according to figures published by Citizens Advice.

Homelessness among young people up 57% in last five years – Citizens Advice » Housing » 24dash.com.

Doomed Universal Credit cost £225k PER PERSON

The project has already cost the taxpayer £612million and has been dogged by delays and IT blunders

 

Botch job: Iain Duncan Smith

The cost of delivering Iain Duncan Smith’s troubled Universal Credit scheme is £225,000 for each person on it, it was claimed today.

The project has already cost the taxpayer £612million and has been dogged by delays and IT blunders.
Mr Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, had promised one million people would be receiving their welfare payments under the scheme by April this year.

But figures show only 2,720 claimants have been transferred onto the Universal Credit so far - a cost of £225,000 per person.

The universal credit bundles together the six main benefits - jobseeker’s allowance, income support, employment and support allowance, working tax credit, child tax credit and housing benefit - into a single payment.

In September 2103, Mr Duncan Smith told Parliament it would be delivered “on time and within budget”.
But the roll-out has been delayed three times and is now only available under a small number of pilot schemes.

The Department of Work and Pensions has had to write off £130million in IT costs and it emerged this week that the executive brought in to rescue the project, Howard Shiplee, has been off sick for a month.

Shadow Welfare minister Chris Bryant MP said: “Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship policy has been plagued with delay after delay from the outset and millions of pounds have been wasted.

“We were once told Universal Credit would be on time and on budget and that a million people would be on the system by April this year, but this has come to nothing. It is staggering that the Government has spent £225,000 per person on this project.

“With poor initial decisions by Ministers and endless indecision from Downing Street putting the whole scheme in jeopardy, it is increasingly difficult to have any confidence in the Government’s handling of welfare.”

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DWP to face further multimillion-pound bill for IT project problems?

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) could face further multimillion-pound charges as a result of two troubled IT projects.

A plan to provide an online benefits enquiry service has run into delays and delivery problems, while separately the government is negotiating with Fujitsu for a settlement over a £300m contract that was cancelled by DWP three years ago.

DWP has already had to scrap £40m of IT work on its Universal Credit programme, and is currently assessing its options over the two other projects that could end up requiring a similar total bill.

One project is My Benefits Online (MyBOL), a web-based enquiry service to allow recipients of certain benefits to view basic information online.

DWP issued a tender in January 2013 for detailed user testing on the system, but 12 months later it has still not gone live.

MyBOL was first conceived about five years ago, but the DWP has reduced its scope since then. Computer Weekly has learned that the Government Digital Service (GDS) vetoed the original version of the system, and DWP is now assessing a number of options for how best to move forward.

One option under consideration is to bring in an SME supplier with agile development skills to help bring the software up to GDS standards. But even this option means a significant reduction in the financial benefits anticipated from MyBOL, to the point that the project could be written off, according to sources.

A key question for DWP is whether any of the work on MyBOL could be reused by other digital services being developed, such as Universal Credit and Single-Tier Pensions, said the source. If the work is written off entirely, our source suggested the bill could be as much as £20m.

In response to a parliamentary question last week, employment minister Esther McVey said: “The vast majority of the My Benefits Online service has been developed. We have taken time recently to review the changing needs of our customers and the standards proposed for all government online services, as determined by Government Digital Standards. A total cost of the service is not yet available and we do not have a confirmed date for completion.”

Source: Computer Weekly

Claimants lose all their income under disability benefits reform

‘People with serious disabilities and health conditions are being left for weeks with no financial support by Government changes to benefit assessments.

Under new rules introduced by the Department for Work and Pensions in October, anyone wanting to appeal a decision that they are fit to work first has to have all their paperwork looked at again, while receiving no sickness benefits. The Citizens Advice Bureau believes this will result in thousands of people being wrongly forced to survive on no income at all.

The Government said that this “mandatory reconsideration” would cut down on bureaucracy and take just two weeks, but some disabled and sick people are being wrongly assessed and left with no support for months on end.’

Read more: Claimants lose all their income under disability benefits reform