This Christmas, remember the hidden casualties of the Coalition years

Suffering: If fibromyalgia displayed visible signs, this is how a sufferer would look. Imagine how such a person would feel - physically and emotionally - if they were left alone this Christmas. Too much trouble for family; no fair-weather friends left; and a government that won't even investigate if they were found dead after the holidays.

Agony: If fibromyalgia displayed visible signs, this is how a sufferer would look. Imagine how such a person would feel – physically and emotionally – if they were left alone this Christmas. Too much trouble for family; no fair-weather friends left; and a government that won’t even investigate if they were found dead after the holidays.

Today I had a long chat with a Russia Today reporter, thanks to a recommendation from John McArdle of Black Triangle. It seems a foreign-owned news corporation is more interested in the plight of the UK’s most vulnerable than our home-grown media or – worse – our government.

She was asking about Vox Political‘s Freedom of Information requests, seeking information from the Department for Work and Pensions on the number of people who have died while going through the now-tortuous process of claiming Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), which includes the now-infamous work capability assessment (WCA).

As part of the dialogue she told me the government’s current line is that publicising the figures would not be instructive as they do not provide information on the causes of death and many of the deceased may have died because of their medical conditions, rather than due to government harassment or stress brought on by the assessment regime. This is, of course, nonsense.

The government cannot say that people in the Work-Related Activity Group have died because of their medical conditions without admitting that they should never have been put in that group in the first place. The WRAG is for people who are getting better, and who are expected to be healthy enough to seek employment within a year. If they die instead, then the work capability assessor (working for Atos, Maximus or whoever else) clearly missed an important point, or they, possibly together with the DWP decision-maker, disregarded it because regulations handed down from Conservative Party ministers told them to do so.

It is not quite as easy to accuse the government over people in the Support Group, because these have been judged to be in need of the maximum amount of help allowed by the law, due to the severity of their medical conditions. They are more likely to pass away. However, if fatality statistics had been published regularly and properly, it would have been possible to see whether the number of Support Group fatalities was increasing disproportionately; if it was, it follows that ministers should order an investigation into the causes of death. It does not follow that they only died because they had a medical condition. Was it worsened by the stress caused by the DWP’s regime of irregular re-assessments? What about the financial insecurity caused by benefit uprating caps? What about the personal insecurity caused by cuts in care services? With the figures hushed up, it is easy to ignore any such trends. Nobody knows about it, so why make a fuss? When politicians are in government, they have a vested interest in publicising only the information that makes them look good.

How does the government account for deaths in the assessment stage of ESA? These must be mushrooming due to well-publicised delays in processing claimants. Again, some may be due to claimants’ physical conditions but delays in assessment mean they have been deprived of the help they needed.

Then there are the suicides.

Some claimants take their own lives while on the benefit. This could be due to many reasons including the hopelessness of a situation where they foresee themselves being pushed off-benefit (this goes for people in both the WRAG and the Support Group because they are all under the threat of continual reassessment), or suffering more and more cuts to the amount received (in comparison with inflation) that their quality of life will suffer, or they’ll be kicked out of their homes, or they won’t be able to afford the necessities of their lives. The government does not record the number of people who do this and pays no attention to the verdicts of coroners performing inquests on them.

Then there are those who die after being refused the benefit. There is no information on these people at all because the government does not consider them to be its responsibility any more. They could die because of their medical condition; they could commit suicide – it won’t appear in government figures.

But, the possibility of suicide indicates a mental imbalance which should be picked up by the ‘medical experts’ conducting work capability assessments – right? In fact Dr Litchfield, the independent assessor, pointed this out in his recent evaluation of the WCAs’ performance – commenting on how numbers of people in the Support Group had increased due to fears for the safety of the claimants or those near them – and in fact this indicates a grudging nod towards progress. Somewhere, someone noticed that something was going wrong – but while the figures are kept hidden, we know that this is not nearly enough.

And now we are nearly at Christmas. Suicide season.

More people take their own lives under Conservative governments than Labour. And more people do so at Christmas than at any other time of year.

The festive season is great when you are in fine health, surrounded by a family and friends who love you, and are wealthy enough to enjoy the season to the full (we shan’t go into whether your family and friends are only around because you are wealthy enough because there’s no reason to assume any such selfishness and it is, after all, the season of goodwill).

It’s a different proposition when you don’t have your health, when benefit dependency means you can hardly keep yourself, let alone think about presents for other people, and when the lack of both of these have driven away what friends and family you might have – for whatever reasons.

Back in the summer a Twitter acquaintance with fibromyalgia remarked on how lucky Mrs Mike was to have a partner who had stuck with her, because the pressures of the condition lead to partners who are also carers walking out, leaving the sick or disabled (or both) person on their own. Put yourself in that position and ask how you would feel.

Taking all this into consideration, why do you think the death statistics for 2011 – the only year for which we have any figures at all, courtesy of an ‘ad hoc’ DWP release – run from January to November, rather than for the whole year?

Interesting, that.

There’s nothing to be done about the government’s attitude at the moment. Because of it, people are going to die this month and in January.

But there is a way to minimise the situation.

If you know someone who has a long-term sickness or disability and who is going to be on their own this Christmas, why not see what you can do to make it brighter?

It could be the difference between life and death.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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8 Comments

  1. Pension60 December 5, 2014 at 2:15 am - Reply

    The Tories will never admit and go ballistic if anyone suggests that people are being left in penniless starvation.

  2. Jeffery Davies December 5, 2014 at 6:52 am - Reply

    Yet we do tune into and listen to rt news
    yes also the alja one to they tell a truer
    picture of whots happening in Britain
    today has we now bbc channels four and five
    seem to be propaganda channels for the tories
    but the truth it seems us being hiden by our
    government jeff3

  3. Mike Fuller December 5, 2014 at 9:53 am - Reply

    I am in no doubt as to the moral “standing” of this government, but the following still comes as a surprise – barring current and Maggie’s contributions: “More people take their own lives under Conservative governments than Labour.”

    Do we have a source including time span?

    • Mike Sivier December 5, 2014 at 10:59 am - Reply

      I thought it was common knowledge!
      I first heard it when I came to Mid Wales to work for the Brecon & Radnor Express, and the chief reporter in Radnorshire told me it had been a popular suicide spot, especially over the previous few years (this was 1997) when there had been a Conservative government, and Tory governments always inspire more suicides.
      I did have a statistical source for this after I started writing the blog (because I wanted to make sure) and I’ll dig it out when I can.

      • Tim December 6, 2014 at 12:42 am - Reply

        I’m glad this has been asked already. I too thought it an astonishing claim to present with no hint of a source. And while I could believe it to be true, I would have preferred a more robust response than “I’ll dig it out when I can.”.

        • Mike Sivier December 6, 2014 at 1:00 am - Reply

          Try this: “During the 45 Tory years of the century, there were 238,431 suicides… ‘roughly 35,000 of these people would not have died had Conservative governments not been in government. This is one suicide for every day of the century, or more appropriately, two for every day that the Conservatives ruled.'”

          http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/sep/19/uk.conservatives

          That was from a simple web search that anybody could have done. You don’t need me to dig out figures that have been common knowledge for years.
          Oh – and suicides have been on the rise again since the Coalition came to office: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom

  4. Alice December 5, 2014 at 6:59 pm - Reply

    This is a very sad read, although well written it made me disheartened to see it put down so plainly. I am one of the victims of this government. I have ongoing mental health problems, I have since I was a young girl. A few years ago I lost my support worker when the council stopped the social care funding to the local NHS trust. They just completely wiped it out in one fell swoop. No arrangements for alternative support were put in place.

    A few months later I was discharged from the ‘recovery team’ altogether. They said initially that it was because they felt I wasn’t improving therefore there was nothing they could do for me (can you imagine someone with a broken leg getting discharged from care for their leg because the break wasn’t healing?!) When I probed further, I asked if it was because they were under pressure financially. My Occupational Therapist who was discharging me, said yes.

    Later I had to leave my job due to being really quite unwell. The ESA process was daunting to say the least. I was left months without word. Eventually the decision came through, and thankfully for now the decision is in my favour. Yet I am aware that every time the postman puts letters through my door, I could see one of those awful brown envelopes, the ones that make my heart sink. The reassessment letters.

    And next year I face reassessment for DLA. Or rather, PIP. Which, I have been told, is harder to get, especially if you have mental health problems. If I lost DLA/PIP I face losing my flat, which I got so I could move closer to my carer. I face moving further away from my support network.

    Really, I think do this government know how desolate it can feel? Knowing that you constantly have to apologise for your own existence? I imagine they just don’t care. Nothing touches them, where they are.

  5. Rebecca December 5, 2014 at 8:31 pm - Reply

    I have numerous disabilities and health problems; having been struck down with a rare neurological and circulatory disease whilst I was at University. I went from being totally independant and having my life and a good career ahead of me, to being totally dependant upon my parents and being in constant, chronic pain 24 hours a day.
    This was 21 years ago.

    I have had to fill in one of these forms, for ESA, this Summer as the benefit I was in receipt of is being phased out. I am yet to hear my fate, but I am fearful that I will lose the benefit that I do have and will be left with nothing, to add to the rest of my worries.

    Life for many of us is no fun whatsoever. I only leave the house for medical appointments, have not been on a holiday since before I became unwell, I have no partner or family of my own and will never have one now; the future in all respects is pretty terrifying.

    Whilst I myself appreciate there are people out there who do abuse the system and there are those who do claim more than they really do need, we could all claim more than we have done ( I was ashamed to have to and have only ever had a minimum amount up to this point, even though I could have claimed more and even had a car ) I feel that there are really much better and fairer ways than this to sort the wheat from the chaff !

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