Disabled Hit By Benefit Sanctions Lottery

Sick and disabled people across Britain are being forced to play the benefit sanctions lottery, the Welfare News Service can reveal. DWP figures show that the likelihood of having Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) payments docked can depend upon where sick and disabled people live.

Read more...

Labour Branded A ‘Disgrace’ Over Backing Tory Welfare Cuts In Scotland

Scottish National Party (SNP) Media Release:

The SNP has condemned Labour MSPs for failing to vote against Tory welfare cuts at the Scottish Parliament [yesterday].

The Scottish Parliament backed a motion by Nicola Sturgeon noting the damaging and destructive impact of the UK Government’s welfare policies, and recognising that a with Yes vote the UK Government welfare cuts be halted.


The vote passed by 65 votes to 44 despite Labour voting against the Scottish Government position, something Jamie Hepburn MSP described as “a disgrace”.

Mr Hepburn, who is also Deputy Convener of the Welfare Reform Committee, said:

“It is an absolute disgrace that Labour MSPs opted to vote against the Scottish Government and with the Tories.

“The Tory cuts come from the UK Government in Westminster, but shame also lies with Labour MSPs who are so blinded by their opposition to an independent Scotland that they have forgotten about the people they are supposed to represent.

“Disabled people in Scotland face disproportionate loss of income due to Westminster’s welfare cuts. But with a Yes vote we can stop these cuts and deliver dignity to everyone in Scotland, regardless of their needs and abilities.

“Scotland has voted Labour and ended up with Tory governments too often in the past – the one opportunity we have to reverse the cuts and build a fairer Scotland is to vote Yes in the referendum next month.”

Source: SNP condemn Labour “disgrace” on welfare vote

ESA sanctions: When did the ‘last resort’ become the first option?

Unfair treatment: The sick and disabled are used to poor behaviour from the Department for Work and Pensions, from the rigged ‘work capability assessment’ scheme to the current revelation that sanctions against them have rocketed.

The BBC is reporting a “shocking” rise in the number of sanctions given to those who receive a key sickness benefit, according to homeless charity Crisis.

“Official figures for the first quarter of 2014 showed sanctions on Employment and Support Allowance claimants were 4.5 times higher than in the same quarter in 2013 – although the 2014 figure still includes claimants who are appealing,” according to the BBC News website.

“In the first three months of 2014, there were 15,955 sanctions on ESA claimants, compared with 3,574 in the same period last year.” That’s three per cent of the 552,000 claimants in the Work-Related Activity group (the only ESA group that can be sanctioned) – uncannily close to the five per cent sanction target allegedly operated by Job Centre Plus workers on Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants.

Read more...

Margaret Thatcher’s father – a paedophile?

Reblogged from Pride's Purge:

(not satire)

A 15-year-old girl who used to work in a grocery shop owned by Margaret Thatcher’s father said that he had regularly molested her.

In 1997, the girl told a journalist from The Independent:

“He was a bad one. He came round and put his arms around me, feeling my breasts. He used to put his tongue in my mouth. I got quite frightened. I didn’t like it and I’d push him away.“

She also said Thatcher’s father used to regularly molest other teenage girls who worked in his shop:

“He’d say nothing and go, but then he would come back again. He used to chase other girls round the counter.“

Looks like abusing helpless people was a bit of a family trait in the Roberts family.

Number of Sick And Disabled Claimants Facing Sanctions Triples In Just Six Months

Originally posted on the void:

The number of sick or disabled people who have had there benefit sanctioned for not taking part in ‘work related activity’ has almost tripled compared to just six months ago the latest figures show.

7.507 claimants on Employment Support Allowance (ESA), had their benefits sanctioned in March 2014, up from 4,698 the previous month and 2,369 In Sepetember 2013.  This has taken the total number of ESA claims sanctioned to over 100,000 since the regime was disgracefully introduced by Labour.

These clamaints are in the Work Related Acivity Group (WRAG) of ESA, meaning they have been judged unable to work at present but may possibly be well enough for employment in the future.  They include people with serious and life-threatening conditions including cancer.  Astonishingly this group are still sent on the Work Programme, where they may face compulsory ‘back to work’ training or even workfare.  Should they fail to attend…

View original 340 more words

Why we should be concerned about the return of Victorian diseases

Official figures showing a rise in diseases linked to poverty, such as gout, TB, measles, malnutrition and whooping cough are a barometer of failure and neglect

According to a recent Health and Social Care Information Centre report, we are seeing a return of diseases common in the Victorian era.

The report highlights five conditions: gout, tuberculosis, measles, malnutrition and whooping cough. It has a longer listing of rarer conditions, which also conjure the image of bygone pestilence and depravity – scurvy, mumps, rickets, scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria and typhoid.

In a time of global public health disasters of biblical proportions, in west Africa and the Middle East, it appears an indulgence perhaps to be concerned about these conditions. We may be tempted to dismiss the report as a novelty. But that would be wrong: a civilized nation with an advanced economy and health system should see some conditions as markers for the failure of its public health policies or services. But which markers?

The NHS has "never events" as quality of care markers. Never events are serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents. They include wrong site surgery, wrong route chemotherapy administration and suicide during psychiatric admission. The time has perhaps come for us to develop never events in public health.

In the HSCIC report, gout is the strongest contender for a returning Victorian disease – it may well be linked to an ageing population, epidemic obesity and excess alcohol consumption; 70% of cases are in the over 60s. There were 86,870 hospital admissions where gout was coded, an increase of 78% on the same period in 2009-10 (48,720). There were 13.5 gout admissions per 100,000 population in the 10% most deprived areas, 8.3 gout admissions per 100,000 population in the 10% least deprived areas, in 2013-14. Formerly the disease of kings, gout is now very clearly associated with deprivation.

Read more...

Delusional IDS claims we are all "better off" but figures disagree

Iain Duncan Smith yesterday sparked fury by claiming people are “better off” under cruel Tory reforms that hit the poor and vulnerable when the figures say otherwise

Duncan disorderly: IDS is way off the mark

With workers facing falling wages, benefits for the disabled slashed and OAPs stranded at home starved of basic care, life is hardly a bed of roses for millions of struggling Brits.

But hatchet man Iain Duncan Smith yesterday sparked fury by claiming people are “better off” under cruel Tory reforms that hit the poor and vulnerable.

The deluded Works and Pensions ­Secretary’s own department revealed the number of ­disabled or sick people suffering harsh benefits ­sanctions has soared by a shocking 700% in a year.

And Age UK warned almost a million elderly people are going without help because of cuts to the care system.

IDS Reality Check
700% - Rise in disabled people hit by Tory benefit sanctions
870k - Elderly people denied basic help because of council cuts
-0.2% - Average fall in pay while homes hit by inflation rising 1.9%

A separate report yesterday showed average pay, including bonuses, dropped 0.2% in the year to June – as inflation rose to 1.9%. And homelessness charity Shelter revealed almost 600 ­households a day are at risk of losing their home as the cost of living crisis deepens.

But Mr Duncan Smith stunned those struggling to pay bills, feed families and keep a roof over their heads by going on radio and bragging: “The Government’s plan to build a fairer society is working.

“Lowering the tax threshold means what you earn you keep more of. Freezing council tax means that, actually, people in income terms are better off.”

Opposition MPs, unions and social campaigners laid into him over the astonishing boast. Shadow Treasury Secretary Chris Leslie said: “This is no time for ­complacent and out-of-touch claims from ministers.”

Mr Duncan Smith used a rise in employment figures to launch his gloating claim that things have improved. But he failed to mention the Tories have also cut tax credits and hiked VAT, hitting millions of people in the pocket.

And the Bank of England yesterday slashed its forecast for wage growth in 2014 from 2.5% to a below-inflation 1.25% on the back of the fall in pay figures.

Read more...

Disabled Man attacked by G4S Security at Newcastle Jobcentre

The culprit!



A sick & disabled man attends Newcastle JCP to use the phones to make an enquiry when he was attacked by G4S guard for using his mobile when they refused his request. How is that acceptable?  The JCP’s are now removing telephones which is another obstruction claimants now face, not every person has a mobile or a landline. It is now policy that you are intimidated BY G4S security to turn off your mobiles after many used them to film maladministration of JCP staff. So how are they supposed to get the information they require, when JCP staff are too busy to deal with a basic inquiry?  They are supposed to be there to assist claimants with their enquiries and help them seek work. This should outrage most people and this man should apologise to the complainant and the claimant should be compensated. At the time of writing this blog a…

View original 164 more words

Starving children have asked for school holiday meals from food bank

ALMOST 90 kids turned up at Glasgow food bank because parents were unable to provide meals for them.

HUNGRY children have been given emergency food packages during the school summer holidays, it was revealed yesterday. Nearly 90 youngsters on free school meals turned up at Glasgow’s Greater Maryhill Food Bank over a seven-day window at the start of August. And food bank co-ordinator Julie Webster, 38, confirmed the unit had seen a spike in the number of people asking for help over the holiday period.

She said: “The schools are off and the only nutritional meal some children get is a free meal at school. We’ve had families come in and say they can’t provide lunch for their children. It’s heartbreaking. It was a big shock for me. It’s hardest when you see the children – they are the future generation. It must be one of the hardest things in life to come into a food bank and ask for help but I’m dragging people in off the street.”

The scale of food poverty was revealed as Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon visited Maryhill to kickstart a £518,000 Emergency Food Fund. Research by the Trussell Trust revealed the number of people using food banks in Scotland has soared by 400 per cent over the past 12 months.

In that period, 71,428 people were handed emergency parcels – including more than 22,000 children.

The Scottish Government’s EEF initiative will split a pot of cash to projects which dish out aid across 17 local authority areas. Sturgeon said: “There’s a direct correlation between the increase in demand for food banks and the welfare cuts Westminster are introducing. As a Scottish Government, we want to mitigate the impact of these cuts.

Read more...

8 sick and disabled people who received appalling treatment from the government

http://dwpunspun.org.uk/item/disabled-people-appalling-treatment

£518,000 Allocated To Tackling ‘Unacceptable’ Food Poverty Crisis In Scotland

The Scottish Government has announced that it is to allocate £518,000 to tackling the growing food poverty crisis in Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s ‘Emergency Food Fund’ (EFF) will support charities and other community based organisations in alleviating food poverty across the country, as well as tackling its underlying causes. According to the Scottish Government the funding will be used to increase food provision, promote healthy eating and provide benefits advice to Scottish households affected by UK Government’s welfare cuts.

Figures from the UK’s largest food bank charity, Trussell Trust, show a 400% increase in the number of Scottish people requiring emergency food aid in the last financial year (2013/14). Between April 2013 and March 2014 more than 71,400 food parcels were given to struggling Scots (see regional breakdown), including over 22,000 children.  This figure only represents the number of people helped by Trussell Trust food banks, and does not include other charities or community led initiatives.


Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, blamed the startling rise on “welfare reform, benefit delays, benefit sanctions and falling incomes”. She added that “one million people in Scotland are now living in relative poverty”. Ms Sturgeon also expressed concerns that further UK Government cuts to Scotland’s welfare budget could see up to 100,000 Scottish children living in poverty by 2020.

The EEF is part of a wider £1 million investment in food aid, half of which has already been allocated to FairShare; a UK charity who help distribute surplus food from supermarkets, and other retail businesses, to charities supporting local communities.

Ms Nicola Sturgeon said:

“The amount of people experiencing food poverty in Scotland is simply not acceptable. Worryingly the Trussell Trust has seen a 400 per cent increase in people using food banks between April 2013 and March 2014 which includes more than 22,000 children using these services.

“Welfare reform, benefit delays, benefit sanctions and falling incomes are all having a detrimental impact on the people of Scotland.

She added: “Most people recognise that the increase in food bank use is directly linked to welfare reform and benefit cuts, and this fund is another example of what we are doing to mitigate the harmful effects of Westminster’s welfare cuts. However, the impact is still being felt by the most vulnerable in our society.

“One million people in Scotland are now living in relative poverty after housing costs, including more than 200,000 children.

Read more...

IDS’s delusional world of welfare reform - Polly Toynbee

He’s the misery man, turning to tricks and magical thinking when the flaws in his benefits plans are revealed

'Iain Duncan Smith's motives and state of mind hardly matter to the millions ­affected by his ­evidence-free, faith-based policy-making.' Illustration: Daniel Pudles

Politicians may deal in terminological inexactitudes, but I can’t think of many black-is-white, war-is-peace practitioners as downright deceptive as Iain Duncan Smith. Originally, the question was whether to put it down to simple stupidity, as he didn’t understand that the numbers he promised were impossible. Yesterday, poring over his big speech on welfare reform, a few of the more polite experts spoke of his “magical thinking”. But his motives and state of mind hardly matter to the millions affected by his evidence-free, faith-based policy-making.

His speech was a paean of self-praise. To read it, no minister has done such good for so many. This was a sublime response to a battery of critics who include Treasury briefers, the National Audit Office on the failure of his work programme, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority for his abuse of figures, and the Major Projects Authority awarding his universal credit an amber/red warning.

The man does have indefatigable self-confidence: “We are fixing society,” he says. The Times, Sun, Mail and Telegraph happily swallowed it whole, rather than explore the thickets of his benefit system. His great claim is that his reforms have been the key driver in getting people back to work.

Let’s start with where he’s right: this recession has been unlike any other, as employment fell by far less and now grows by far more than economists can explain. Fraser Nelson, the Spectator editor, eagerly backed the view that IDS’s big stick has been the “game-changer”.

But Jonathan Portes, head of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, formerly Treasury and a Department for Work and Pensions economist, makes mincemeat of the claim. Comparing numbers with charts over time, he concludes: “The idea that those on JSA are getting a job more quickly than before the recession, let alone that welfare reform has anything to do with it, has no support in the data.” When it comes to the sick on employment and support allowance, numbers fell steadily from 2004, rose a bit in the recession and were starting to fall on trend. But now they’re rising again. Why? Portes says it’s “the result of the administrative chaos surrounding the Atos contract for the work capability assessment”.

Duncan Smith takes credit for one of Labour’s successes: Labour raised the number of single mothers into work from 46% to 58%. He says it’s higher than ever now, which is true – but only up by 2 percentage points in his time. He hurls accusations at Labour’s welfare bill: welfare expert Declan Gaffney says Labour cut the bill and kept it stable as a proportion of GDP – until the crash. It peaked in 2012 on IDS’s watch.

His universal credit was due this April to cover a million people: so far it covers just 16,000 easy households with no children, writing off £130m in failed IT. But you would never guess when IDS says it “completes the cultural shift”. Rolling many benefits into one doesn’t magically simplify them: the online form, 50 pages long, still needs to record every changing detail of every member of the household in real time.

Better incentives? Donald Hirsch, economist for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, finds that on universal credit, families who work full-time can easily end up with less than if they worked part-time. Worse, it traps mothers at home: if one partner works, the second gains virtually nothing by taking a job. Nor does Duncan Smith say that 65p is cut from every extra pound earned. Raising income tax thresholds for the low-paid hardly applies to those on universal credit: most of the gain is lost as their benefit is cut back.

There are traps, hazards both moral and practical, in any benefit system. These deserve debate – but IDS prefers falsifications of reality. The bedroom tax, he says, is imperative. He doesn’t say that only 4% or 5% of people have moved as a result, the rest taking a huge hit, sending them to loan sharks and food banks. Nor does he tell of the doubling, by next year, of the number of working people drawing housing benefit, due to soaring rents and falling pay.

Take the disaster of his 20% cut and transfer of disability living allowance into personal independence payments (PIPs). Forced to delay existing cases to after the election, that’s a nasty gift of 3.6 million assessments for his successor. But worse, people applying now are held in a long backlog, often very sick.
Macmillan Cancer Support, campaigning hard about waits of over six months for be

nefits rulings, mentions one typical case: a 25-year-old father with advanced cancer waiting for PIP has almost no money. His wife has had to work while he cares for their baby. Without his PIP, he waits for carer’s allowance, severe disability premium, escape from the bedroom tax, bus pass, taxi cards to get to hospital and heating grant. Latest figures show only 24% of claims have been processed; the rest wait, and some claimants die waiting.

“There is a lot of misleading talk about sanctions,” Duncan Smith says. Indeed there is, by him. Any benefit system has to prevent fraud or idleness, but he must know how his Jobcentre Plus offices have become sanction factories, his staff under unbearable pressure to cut people off. Research by Inclusion finds an unprecedented gap between the number of unemployed and those drawing JSA – invisible people living on thin air.

Last week the Guardian reported the tragic death of a diabetic former soldier, sanctioned into starvation. Go to any food bank and you’ll find heartbreaking cases. Every week, my inbox tells of people struck off unjustly – the latest, Jim, was sent on a course by the jobcentre then struck off for not signing on, as if he could be in two places at once. Tricks abound as staff are forced to hit targets called “spinning plates”. With George Osborne taking another £12bn cuts after 2015, it’s possible Duncan Smith doesn’t know the abominations he oversees.

Guardian

Govt should face corporate manslaughter charge after suicide verdict on Stephanie Bottrill

Victim of government persecution: A coroner has agreed that government pressure drove Stephanie Bottrill to suicide.

It’s official – stress and pressure caused by the Bedroom Tax pushed grandmother Stephanie Bottrill into taking her own life.

Zafar Siddique, coroner for Birmingham and Solihull, said he was “satisfied she intended to take her own life” after hearing evidence that Mrs Bottrill had blamed the government’s Bedroom Tax policy for pushing her to suicide in a note she left at her Meriden Drive, Kingshurst, home before walking across the M6 motorway into a collision with a lorry early on May 4, 2013.

The coroner also heard evidence from Dr Bindu Nair, who saw the former postal worker the day before her death after Mrs Bottrill’s daughter-in-law, concerned for her safety, made an appointment.

Dr Nair said Mrs Bottrill had “expressed unhappiness at being pushed by the housing department to make a decision, in half an hour, in reference to being made to move into a smaller property”.

He added that Ms Bottrill was “happy to move but it was the way in which she was forced to make a decision” which had caused her “considerable anxiety and stress”.

Unmentioned in the report is the fact that Mrs Bottrill was found to be exempt from the Bedroom Tax (also called the State Under-Occupation Charge) under the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (Consequential Provisions) Regulations 2006, because she had been living at her address since before January 1996.

The implications for the government are enormous.

A British court has accepted that a government policy pushed a UK citizen into ending her life.

Organisations including government departments are guilty of corporate manslaughter if the way in which their activities are managed or organised causes a person’s death, and amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased.

An organisation is guilty of an offence if the way in which its activities are managed or organised by its senior management is a substantial element in the breach.

The pressure placed on Mrs Bottrill, according to the evidence of her own doctor, caused “considerable anxiety and stress” that contributed to her decision to commit suicide.

It seems clear that the Department for Work and Pensions – as the organisation responsible for both the Bedroom Tax and the pressure placed on Mrs Bottrill by housing officers – must now face criminal charges under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.

Read more...

One Last Push! Sign and Share The Petition Calling For An Inquiry Into The Sanctions That Killed David Clapson

Reblogged from The Void:




This petition calling for an inquiry into the benefit sanctions which killed David Clapson has hit almost 75,000 signatures in just over a week.

Mr Clapson had his benefits stopped after missing a meeting with the Jobcentre.  This left him unable to chill the insulin he needed to manage his diabetes and without any money for food or electricity.  Shortly after his benefits were sanctioned he was found dead without any food in his stomach.

His sister launched the petition last week calling an inquiry into benefit  sanctions and the terrible damage they inflict.  Tens of thousands of people have signed already.  The Government will do everything they can to ignore it, but behinds the scenes this will not go unnoticed.

Benefit sanctions are the teeth of welfare reform, and are designed as a form of punishment for being on benefits.  If you don’t jump through every hoop set up by the deranged Iain Duncan Smith – in the exact way he has decided you should – then you will have all forms of meeting your basic needs stopped.  Depending on your circumstances you might become homeless, ill, or even die.  It doesn’t even have to be your fault.  The system is as haphazard as it is vicious, and thousands have been wrongly sanctioned for the most trivial and vindictive of reasons.

There are signs that, as the public discover what the DWP are doing to people, the mood is starting to change.  A recent poll  by Ipsos Mori found that more people are concerned about poverty and inequality in the UK since they began collecting figures in 1998 (h/t @patrickjbutler).  If this petition can hit 100,000 signatures then it will be further proof that people are finally saying enough is enough to the war on the poor that has been waged so brutally by both this, and the last government.

One last push can make that happen, so please share, tweet, blog and post the petition everywhere: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-hold-an-inquiry-into-benefit-sanctions-that-killed-my-brother

A national scandal: 4 million people face chaos in this country and are ignored by the media

This is an unreported national scandal….

It is only the mainstream media’s failure to bring this state of chaos to the public’s attention which prevents it from being plastered all over the front page of every single national newspaper.

If this was people stuck in NHS waiting lists, awaiting their passports, unable to travel by train, stranded abroad,struggling to get money out of cash points, marooned in the channel tunnel, affected by adverse weather conditions or by striking public service workers the national newspapers would ensure it was in print for all to see.  

Yet here in the UK we have a crisis of unprecedented proportions as thousands upon thousands wait month upon month to get the benefits to which they are entitled to and hardly a word appears in any of the big hitting papers. The British public are being deceived into believing that government’s welfare reforms are achieving the desired results with no unnecessary human suffering.

The mainstream media has a duty to report the mayhem which exists within the chaotic Department for Work & Pensions and must expose this mass maladministration of thousand of benefit claims.  What makes this all the more deplorable is the victims are by and large thousands of sick and disabled people who desperately need the right amount of cash to live on.  

1 million delayed assessments/decisions, 1.7 million appeals & 1.3 million put through the sanction regime is a collective 4 million exposed to some degree of benefit decision related chaos.  How can 4 million people locked in government backed chaos not be a national chaos?  we could say:

1 million delayed assessments/decisions, 1.7 million appeals and 1.3 million put through the arbitrary sanction regime is a collective 4 million people plunged into chaos by DWP incompetence and IDS arrogance. Why is it not a national scandal and why are the media not talking about the huge waste of money and the terrible human costs of the Welfare reform?

Chaotic Department for Work & Pensions fails to process people’s claims, leaving tens of thousands of claimants destitute & impoverished for months on end…..

On the 23rd June 2014, the then disability minister Mike Penning admitted in Parliament that the number of claimants awaiting an assessment for Employment & Support Allowance had stood stood at a staggering 766,000.
 
 
On the 5th June 2014 the DWP quietly produced statistics relating to the government’s new Personal Independence Payment statistics which showed that from April 2013 to March 2014 out of 349,000 new claims made, just 83,900 had reached the stage where a formal decision had been made on the applicant’s claim – a backlog of 265,100 claims where the claimant hasn’t received one single penny of the benefit for which they have applied. 

Between the two benefits, Employment & Support Allowance and Personal Independence Payments, an eye watering 1,031,100 claimants have yet to receive the legal decision which determines their claim.  It leaves claimants in absolute turmoil and completely unable to access the help they need.

Problems aren’t limited to ESA & PIP assessment chaos

This one million claimants does not include those who have had a decision, but are in embroiled in thousands of disputes with the DWP & Local Authorities over long drawn out battles which need independent determination by one of Her Majesties’ Courts & Service’s Tribunals.  

Since April 2010 no less than 1,698,321 benefit appeals have been lodged with Tribunals, of which 939,100

relate to the Employment & Support Allowance. Nearly 1.7 million benefit appeals is just part of this much bigger chaos. 

In March 2014, 78,347 benefit appeal cases remained outstanding.  In 2012/13 the number of benefit appeals received by formal tribunals was 507,131 against 465,497 cases which had been dealt with.  By 2013/14, whilst the number of appeals had fallen to 401,197 against 545,843 disposals, the fact remains that thousands are still trapped in a chronic backlog of appeal cases which saw 77,931 adjournments and a further 44,021 postponements, collectively accounting for some 22% of all benefit cases.  It’s mayhem on a scale which has spiralled out of control.  The DWP’s answer is to implement restrictive measures to access Tribunals with the introduction of its new ‘mandatory internal review’ procedure; a procedure which has come under fire for causing even further delays with thousands in limbo awaiting decisions.  

One MP in particular stands out, Sheila Gilmore is to be commended for her non stop persistence in calling for government to publish the figures relating to thousands of disputed decisions which are subject to the DWP’s internal review procedure.  Sheila Gilmore MP (with a little help from ilegal) has pressed this issue time and time again.  Following several complaints to the UK Statistics Authority and calling the government to account at several debates which she has called, she got the then disability minister to admit how he would “love the data to be published now, but it is not ready. As soon as it is ready, I will publish it.” - seemingly we will need to wait until the end of the year to see whether Government keeps its word.

Meanwhile, thousands of sick and disabled people await the right decision for months on end, often having to rely on food banks to survive.

On top of the one million awaiting assessments, who knows how many more thousands are stuck in a cruel and heartless system, having to wait week after week for the DWP to resolve their disputes?  - my guess is many thousands await decisions; it’s in the nature of the chaotic epidemic which has broken out in the DWP.  

The chronically stretched Department is quite obviously under resourced to deal with reforms of this magnitude.  The Public and Commercial Services Union are saying, in the wake of staffing cuts within the Department, that the DWP“needs more staff, not less.” 
 
On top of all this, the DWP have been applying sanctions on a level never seen before.  As refute report: “Under the new sanctions regime, introduced on the 22nd October 2012, a total of 1.35 million sanction decisions have been made up to June 2013, of which, 580,000 were adverse decisions”.

Local Councils in meltdown 

What few people outside of the benefits system appreciate is how all of these delayed assessments, appeals and sanctions impact upon cash starved Local Authorities...

Read more...

IDS reckons cutting welfare for cancer patients is “creating jobs”

Originally posted on Pride's Purge:

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

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith is claiming that his welfare reforms are creating jobs.

Quite how cutting welfare payments to terminally ill cancer sufferers – for example – is supposed to create jobs, he doesn’t quite explain:

Deadly delay for cancer patients as thousands are waiting months to get benefits

Perhaps he’s referring to an uptick in jobs being created in the greetings card, flower delivery and undertaking sectors?

And to be fair to Duncan Smith, dying probably is quite a good way to get you off the unemployment figures.
Sometimes I think trying to satirise this government is getting to be almost impossible.

They satirise themselves so much better than I ever could.

.

Related articles by Tom Pride:

UK today: 40% of cancer patients can’t afford to heat their home properly

Dad deported from UK for having cancer

View original 108 more words

Woman overdosed in 'cry for help' after benefits stopped for six months due to backlog

Annette Francis took her own life while being potentially owed hundreds of pounds in welfare payments when she died

 
Tragic: Annette Francis died after losing her disability benefits

A woman overdosed in a 'cry for help' after a Government backlog saw her deprived of benefits for six months, an inquest heard.

Annette Francis, 30, struggled to survive on the bread line and was potentially owed hundreds of pounds in welfare payments when she died.

She filed for disability living allowance (DLA) last September only to be told by the Department for Work and Pensions that benefit had been overhauled and was now called PIP - Personal Independence Payment.
Promises were made to pay Annette, but the money never arrived.

Eleanor, who suffered from depression and had a personality disorder, took the overdose while publishing on Facebook about how miserable she was, in a 'cry for help', a coroner ruled.

Her aunt, Ann Sorotos, 61, said: “Annette was really struggling. She was asking the job centre what the hold up was, but they kept talking of a backlog.

“I hate this Government and what they are doing to this country. I hate they’ve done to my niece. They are partly to blame.


“We don’t want this to happen to other people. Let’s hope Annette is the last person to die in this situation.

“People with mental health issues should be made a priority by the Department for Work and Pensions. They can’t cope with daily life let alone pages after page of forms.

“Annette was begging for help. There needs to be better communication from this Government to help people in need. Not just one letter and then telling us there’s a backlog.

“That’s not good enough.”

Read more...

MPs ‘Lying’ About Benefit Sanction Targets, Says Whistleblower

Dear Sir/Madam,

Following the recent/continuous denials from Central Government about there never having been targets imposed in Jobcentre Plus offices for Advisers and sanctions, I wish to strongly disagree with the official line.

I have spent over twenty years working in the Civil Service and for the last two years (contracted staff), I was working as an Adviser based in North Shields office. I worked for eighteen months as a New Deal Adviser and for the remaining six months I was (for the vast majority of the time) carrying out interviews for (again mostly) where there was a doubt on a customer’s job seeking records. This is classed as ASE or Actively Seeking Employment and could lead to an initial loss of benefit of two weeks (JSA is paid two weeks in arrears).


What I can confirm is that every Wednesday morning, the office would not open until 10am as we would have an open office meeting and during this various topics were covered: changes to policy/procedures etc, and also raised was the District League Table.

This was a table that listed all of the offices in the District (Wallsend/Blyth/Whitley Bay/North Shields amongst others) and has usually headed up by S Smith the most senior manager in the office.

We were originally informed that we had to reach a target of 1 sanction a week and once it was realised that this could be reached by lunchtime on the Monday, this was increased to four a week.

This was submitted sanctions – not those sanctions that actually took effect after a decision maker had made their judgement. So the stupidity was that you could suspend a customers benefit at your desk (with them in front of you), submit the paperwork to the Decision Maker, who could then either decide to implement the sanction to decide that there was no case to answer.

The end result was that Advisers were suspending benefit on the flimsiest of reasons – simply to hit targets...

Read more...

'No one should die penniless and alone': the victims of Britain's harsh welfare sanctions

David Clapson was found dead last year after his benefits were stopped on the grounds that he wasn't taking the search for work seriously. He had an empty stomach, and just £3.44 to his name. Now thousands of other claimants are being left in similarly dire straits by tough new welfare sanctions

David Clapson when he was in the army … he was found dead last year, after his benefits were stopped. 

We know that David Clapson was actively searching for work when he died because a pile of CVs he had just printed out was found a few metres from his body. The last time he spoke to his sister, a few days before he died, he told her he was waiting to hear back about an application he had made to the supermarket chain Lidl.

But officials at the Jobcentre believed he was not taking his search for work seriously enough, and early last July, they sanctioned him – cutting off his benefit payments entirely, as a punishment for his failure to attend two appointments.

Read more...

Malnutrition up by 71 per cent since Cameron took office

He must be so proud.

According to Russia Today, malnutrition in the UK has increased by 71 per cent since the Coalition came into office in May 2010.

This cannot be a natural progression and must be attributed to the policies of the Conservative Party, aided and abetted by their little yellow friends, the so-called Liberal Democrats.

The gist is that people don’t have enough to eat as cuts become more severe and living costs escalate.
Nearly 6,700 people were diagnosed with malnutrition in the last financial year, with Greater Manchester seeing the greatest increase.

Scarlet Fever has more than doubled and Cholera is up no less than 450 per cent.

Read more...

Former DWP staff go rogue to help benefit claimants who feel they have been wrongly penalised

Website set up to offer advice inundated with messages from people claiming their benefits were unfairly cut

Three disgruntled former civil servants have been inundated with pleas for help after they set up a website offering emergency advice to welfare claimants who believe their benefits have been wrongly docked.

The three women behind the initiative, who all worked for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), allege that many Jobcentre staff are instructed to veto a set proportion of claims. The allegation is strongly denied by the department. The women, who are based in the North-east of England and have not made their names public, launched the website in June without any fanfare.

In the last few days it has gone viral and the women have been bombarded by claimants accusing the DWP of unfairly cutting their benefits.

On one day last week the website, jobseekersanctionadvice.com, received 200 messages, half from people protesting against being wrongly penalised. The website organisers, who have called on support from five other people with DWP experience, worked until after midnight to clear the backlog.

One of the organisers, “Jean”, said she had become disillusioned by the treatment meted out to some claimants during her final years at a Jobcentre, alleging that staff were pressurised to sanction needy people for the smallest mistake in their claim.

“I decided one Sunday to resign and I never went back. I had loved the job until the last three years but then I could see the way things were going. I got tired of fighting the system,” she said. “I became active on forums offering advice to people, the more I became involved, the more outraged I became.”

With two like-minded ex-colleagues, she decided to set up the website to offer free advice to claimants.

Read more...

Minister caught misleading government’s benefits advisors

A work and pensions minister has been caught giving misleading information to the government’s own benefits advice body about the possibility of assessing the overall impact on disabled people of its sweeping welfare cuts and reforms.

Lord Freud, minister for welfare reform, is just the latest in a line of Conservative ministers to be embarrassed by the coalition’s increasingly frantic attempts to defend its refusal to carry out a cumulative impact assessment (CIA).

In a letter to the social security advisory committee (SSAC), Lord Freud insisted that it was not possible to carry out a CIA for disabled people, and claimed that this was a view “shared by the authoritative Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)”.

Ministers have repeatedly made this claim. But earlier this month, the IFS published research which included a CIA looking at the impact of 35 benefit and tax changes on disabled people in Wales.

The IFS insisted that such cumulative assessments were possible, and told Disability News Service (DNS) that it was unclear where the government’s view about the IFS position on CIAs had come from.

Read more...

Benefit Reform “Shambles” Pushing Disabled People To Suicide, Says Whistleblower

Sick and disabled claimants are experiencing severe distress and some are even close to suicide due to botched disability benefit reform, an insider has revealed.

Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Britain’s sick and disabled, but the assessment process which should take no longer than 26 weeks is sometimes taking twice as long.

The insider, or should we say whistleblower, is a call centre worker for the private contractor Capita, who together with the disgraced private healthcare firm Atos are responsible for assessing PIP claimants on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).


The two companies are set to make £540 million from the new benefit in the next five years. Atos will receive the larger share of around £400 million, despite heavy criticism and a poor record in delivering ‘fit for work’ tests for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), while Capita will make roughly £140 million.

PIP can be claimed by sick and disabled people regardless of their employment status.

Under the new disability benefit PIP, claimants are required to attend face-to-face assessments to determine their eligibility and the level of benefit they will receive. The whistleblower claims that mismanagement, IT problems and staff shortages are to blame for a backlog of 145,000 cases.

While waiting to be assessed for PIP, many sick and disabled people are often left penniless and unable to pay their rent, because their DLA has been stopped, the whistleblower said.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, the whistleblower said:

“I’ve had people on the phone crying their eyes out and saying they are going to commit suicide...

Read more...

WW1: The hidden story of soldier’s mutinies, strikes and riots

In 1919, Britain came close to a workers’ and soldiers’ uprising. But it’s not a story the official WW1 commemoration wants to highlight



The official 100th anniversary commemorations of World War One (WW1) mostly record a honourable, noble cause fought by happy, loyal, patriotic soldiers. But the truth is somewhat more complex and varied.

The 1914-18 British Army was notorious for its frequent appalling mistreatment of working class lower ranks by arrogant, out-of-touch upper class officers who often exploited ordinary soldiers as their personal servants and, under fire, as expendable military ordnance.

Blind obedience, spit and polish and square-bashing drill were the order of the day. They comprised an excessive proportion of basic training – to the relative neglect of weapon proficiency and tactical exercises.

For the average soldier, food was poor, accommodation insanitary, uniforms and weapons often sub-standard, wages low, recreation restricted, punishments brutal and the post-war demobilisation was delayed without good reason.

These abuses provoked numerous uprisings by fed-up foot soldiers.

In the closing months of the war, and on into 1919, there were widespread military mutinies, strikes and riots. Significant sections of the British armed forces were awash with rebellion and revolutionary fervour.

Read more...

Police warn that ‘relentless’ bedroom tax is turning people into criminals

Now even the police, normally silent supporters of the government, are saying what we’ve all been saying for some time.

Police warn that relentless bedroom tax is pushing people into the arms of loans sharks

The government’s controversial bedroom tax has come under fire once again, with concerns expressed by police chiefs that its victims are being forced to turn to crime and unscrupulous loan sharks.

Cleveland and Durham’s Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) believe the under-occupancy policy is piling financial pressures on families across the region, and have highlighted that, according to the government’s own figures, 59% of tenants struck by the ‘spare room subsidy’ have been unable to meet their basic housing costs.

Barry Coppinger, Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland, said: “[The] Bedroom tax leaves many in severe hardship and I’m concerned that some families will turn to volatile loan sharks as a short-term solution. The pressure increases when they can’t pay what they owe the unlicensed moneylender, particularly if a threat of violence is looming over them.

“Deep and relentless welfare reforms have a knock-on effect on other crimes, particularly shoplifting, as families turn to the black-market to buy food and other items they can’t afford in the shops. I would reiterate the importance of seeking trusted financial advice, accessing credit unions and asking to be referred to a food bank. Food bank locations in Cleveland are on the information section of my website.”

Durham’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Ron Hogg, added: “We predicted that this tax would cause massive problems for some of the most vulnerable in our society. With more welfare reform yet to be implemented the situation will only get worse.

Read more...

Confirmed - The FULL Impact of Cuts Disabled People Face

Reblogged from Diary of a Benefit Scrounger:

Since the coalition came to power, sick and disabled people have claimed we are being fundamentally harmed by the coalition welfare reforms. Not scroungers or skivers, but  people living with long term serious illnesses like me, or who live with physical disabilities. Adults AND children. Young and old. People with terminal conditions, people with kidney or heart failure, people waiting for transplants and even people in comas. None have been spared. The government repeatedly assure you they have. 

The government have of course denied that they are putting an unreasonable share of austerity cuts on us. Repeatedly and often aggressively. This is how they respond to the UN of all people :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681313/The-Brazil-Nut-strikes-IDS-anger-former-Marxist-Raquel-Rolnik-attacks-benefit-cuts.html

Since 2011, almost every main voice involved in the services and systems that support sick and disabled people have argued that we must know how all of the changes TOGETHER have affected us so particularly. 

Everything we rely on has been cut severely - in some cases by up to 40%. Disability benefits, sickness benefits, social care services, housing support, legal aid for tribunals, respite care, the independent living fund, council tax relief, higher education funding, everything. 

It is very possible that if you were affected by one of the changes, you were affected by several or even all of them. 

Whilst the government paid lip service to assessing what impact their reforms would have on sick and disabled people, they only did so one by one. They always claimed it was impossible to assess them all together and specifically, how they would affect disabled people when combined. 

It has been a long and dishonest journey. As with so many things, the government have done everything in their power to keep the figures from the public. 

They said that it wasn't possible despite a petition gathering over 100,000 signatures calling for what they called a "cumulative impact assessment" or CIA. 

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154 (Scroll down for gov response)

The government treated the debate it generated in parliament - a debate sick and disabled people themselves worked so hard for - like a Punch and Judy show of partisan nonsense. You can watch it for yourself if you click on the following link :

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/backbench-business-committee/news/mps-debate-welfare-reform-e-petition/

They said it wasn't "robust" when both the very well respected Dr Simon Duffy from the Centre for Welfare Rerform and the equally well respected think tank Demos produced models they believed were viable. 

And finally, just 2 days ago, Lord Freud, the failed millionaire ex-banker who re-designed our entire welfare system in just 3 weeks, wrote an official response to the SSAC, the government's own Social Security Advisory Committee, who also called for a CIA relating to disability, confirming yet again, that he believed it was impossible to assess all of the changes sick and disabled people have faced and claiming that the IFS, the all powerful Institute for Fiscal Studies, agreed with him. 

This was yet another lie from Freud - there is no other word for it. As the IFS have confirmed 

“We can’t find anything we have written down saying we can’t do a CIA....We do think it is possible to do a CIA of tax and benefit changes for the disabled population as a whole."

http://disabilitynewsservice.com/2014/07/ministers-humiliated-over-cumulative-impact-assessment/

As it happens, they did one themselves for Wales

http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/18405/2/120228reformsummaryen.pdf

Today, at the request of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, (EHRC) NIESR, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research have produced a definitive CIA and it is shocking equalityhumanrights.com/commission-welcomes-report-financial-policy-making-and-modelling-cumulative-equality-impacts …

"Figure 4.9 shows that households with disabled children lose out by more in cash terms than households with disabled adults, with households with disabled children and adults losing out by more than either group – around £1,500 per household per year on average. 

 "Households with no disabled adults or disabled children in the 7th and 8th deciles [wealthier households] actually gain slightly from the reform package, whereas households with disabled adults or children (or both) lose out. At the bottom of the distribution, households with no disabled people, or with disabled adults, do not lose as much on average as households with disabled children, or both disabled adults and children. In percentage terms the distributional effects are fairly regressive across all four groups, with households with disabled adults and children doing worst of all up to the top decile."

As one of the authors, Jonathan Portes says in an article for the Guardian today 

"Modelling the cumulative impact is feasible and practicable – at least by gender, age, disability and ethnicity. Our model isn’t perfect and could be improved, but it can be done.....Families that have a disabled adult or child lose perhaps five times as much proportionally as better-off able-bodied families."

There is now absolutely no doubt at all that sick and disabled people have been hit over and over again by a barrage of cuts and the more vulnerable the family; the more disabled people within it; the more they have lost. 

The DWP, Iain Duncan-Smith, Lord Freud and many right wing media outlets have kept this information from the public through every possible means. They will probably do so again today. 

But over 100,000 people signed the WOW petition. 

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154 

Think tanks and charities and many journalists know that this is hugely significant. And as ever, we can and will make our own news. 

PLEASE, CROSS POST THIS IF YOU HAVE A BLOG, WRITE ABOUT IT IF YOU HAVE A COLUMN, FIND A SLOT FOR IT IF YOU ARE A PRESENTER, TWEET IT OR SHARE IT IF YOU ARE A SOCIAL MEDIA USER, SEND IT TO EVERYONE AND ANYONE YOU THINK MIGHT CARE OR WHO COULD HELP YOU GET IT TO A WIDER AUDIENCE. 

YOU CAN USE THE BUTTONS BELOW THIS ARTICLE TO SHARE IT TOO. 

We now know that this government have harmed the very people they promised us they would protect. They have harmed the very people that voters never wanted to be harmed. They have lied about the harm being done at every stage and have actively tried to keep it from both parliament and the media. 

If ever a story needed to be seen and understood, it is this. If you never bothered to click on the links in an article for more information before, click on these. It is a shameful and repellant story and those responsible have no place whatsoever within 100 miles of Westminster. 

Woman arrested for posting photo of George Osborne at prostitute’s flat

Originally posted on Pride's Purge:

(not satire – it’s the corrupt UK today!)

A woman was arrested today after posting a photograph on Twitter of chancellor George Osborne at her flat when she worked as a madame at an escort agency.

Natalie Rowe posted this photo on Twitter just two days ago:




Then today Natalie was arrested by the police for “abusive behaviour”:




Natalie’s home was also searched last year by police after she tried to publish her memoirs in which she mentions Osborne took cocaine and used her services as a dominatrix called Miss Whiplash:

Cops raid home of ex-vice madam about to tell all on wild parties involving top Tories

Is any more proof needed that our police are being used to protect politicians’ reputations rather than catching criminals?

.

Please share. Don’t let our politicians get away with this. Thanks:

View original

Is This What They Mean By #disabilityconfident? Disabled Staff Twice As Likely To Get Sacked From The DWP

Originally posted on the void:

One of the ways the DWP has tried to cover up the vicious attacks on disabled people has been the gushing and cringe-making Disability Confident campaign.

This has mostly involved endlessly tweeting the hashtag #disabilityconfident and organising corporate events where large employers and Ministers all meet up to tell each other how wonderful they are being to disabled people.  Then they can all go back to sending disabled people on workfare safe in the knowledge that the campaign they invented has told them that’s okay.

You might expect however that the DWP’s own treatment of their disabled staff would be exemplary.  This is after all the branch of government which also includes the Office for Disability Issues.  The shocking truth, as revealed in their own research, is that disabled employees at the DWP are twice as likely to get sacked as non-disabled staff and just half as likely to get…

View original 376 more words

Case Of David Clapson Sparks Calls For National Inquiry

The case of a diabetic former soldier from Stevenage, who died after his benefits were sanctioned, has led to calls for a national review.

Last week, the Advertiser told the story of David Clapson, who could not afford electricity to keep his insulin cool after his jobseeker’s allowance of approximately £70 a week was suspended on June 28 last year.

Just three weeks later – on July 20 – he died aged 59 at his home in Hillside from fatal diabetic keto-acidosis, which the NHS calls “a dangerous complication of diabetes caused by a lack of insulin.”

Talking to the Advertiser, leader of Stevenage Council Cllr Sharon Taylor said the case was “the most tragic story I have heard in 18 years of being a councillor.”

Read more...

Benefit sanctions are not fair and are not helping people into work

Hierarchy of human needs – Abraham Maslow

If we  cannot fulfil our most basic survival needs, we cannot be motivated or “incentivised” to do anything else.

Article from The Guardian by Darren Head

“I was ill with hunger, went to prison for stealing food and became homeless”

In collecting evidence for his review of the failings of the benefits sanctions process, welfare expert Matthew Oakley could have spoken to me. Since 2011, I’ve been sanctioned many times. I received a long benefits sanction due to a mix-up about Work Programme courses I should have attended as a condition of receiving out-of-work benefits. Life became hell. Once my food had run out, I had no money to buy more. I was sent back on the Work Programme but without funds to feed myself. The hunger was unbearable. I did not have the energy to turn up. This led to another sanction.

The sanctions became a vicious cycle as I became too ill to do anything. When I did get a job interview, I looked like a zombie as I had lost so much weight. I could not focus properly and lacked energy. Support from friends and family fell away as they assumed I was addicted to drugs. I was just hungry. I tried contacting my local MP but he did not seem interested. I felt alone and trapped. With nobody to turn to, and feeling like it was my only option, I pocketed a sandwich from a supermarket. I was arrested and fined £80. I had no way of paying and spent a week in prison for non payment. I lost my flat as I was £1,000 in rent arrears and I had piles of outstanding bills.

Read more...