Minister for state-sponsored genocide outlines latest plan to cull the benefit-claiming population

Last Updated: October 3, 2015By
Here comes the reaper: Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Here comes the reaper: Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

The Secretary of State for lying about benefit claimants’ health has been telling The Guardian about his latest scheme to push vulnerable people off of incapacity benefits.

According to Iain Duncan Smith, the discredited work capability assessment that governs whether a claimant can receive Employment and Support Allowance is “very binary”, as a person is either well enough to work full-time, or too unwell to work at all. Is it?

Of course not. The assessment has been criticised for being used to claim that people can work when they are too ill to do so, but nobody has complained that it has failed to explain the amount of work they can do; whether a person works part-time or full-time is of no concern to the WCA.

No, this is another attack on people who are currently found unfit for work. The Gentleman Ranker wants to tell the very sick that their receipt of benefit – and the amount they will get – should be conditional on the amount of work he tells them they can do.

There’s no sign of any medical evidence being accepted back into the assessment procedure so, again, there is no reason to believe there will be any rational basis for the decisions that will be made.

Here’s what he has to say about it:

Discussing his next planned wave of changes, Duncan Smith admitted the WCA, which has been condemned as demeaning by its critics, suffered from design faults and “perverse incentives”.

He said: “It is very binary. You still have to decide is somebody well enough to work full time or too sick to work at all. My point is that, when you get down to it, at the fundamental heart of it lies a single flaw, which is that it is an absolute.

“My sense was if you just looked at disability living allowance, that doesn’t reach the same absolute. The test is not about ‘can you work or can’t you work?’ It is looking at your condition and deciding on what level was your condition.”

He believes that once ESA is integrated into universal credit, probably in the second half of the parliament, it will be possible to provide a more personalised return-to-work plan and so see a reduction in the numbers claiming.

If this goes through, expect an exponential increase in the number of benefit-related deaths.

One wonders how the DWP will hush it up this time.

Source: EU has been hit by ‘out of control bulldozer’, says Iain Duncan Smith | Politics | The Guardian

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18 Comments

  1. Bill Kruse October 3, 2015 at 6:44 am - Reply

    It’s also nonsense as DLA’s being phased out and even in the Support Group one is allowed Permitted Work. Smith goes into more detail on this in another article he gave the Guardian, I’m guessing you haven’t seen that one yet. It’s remarkable :-)

  2. marcusdemowbray October 3, 2015 at 6:54 am - Reply

    Obsession can be an indicator of a diseased mind. Herr Jan Dummkopf-Schmitt obsessively tinkers with every detail of every regulation and every review, on a messianic mission to force out all beliefs but his own. No evidence or argument will sway him, he is constantly trying to change words, change policies and fiddle with the status quo.

    “Hands Off” management is always the best policy, let things work they way they do, and ONLY interfere if there is something genuinely wrong.

    Herr Dummkopf-Schmitt is a compulsive tinkerer, the worst sort of person to put into any position of management, power or leadership.

    The Army spotted this decades ago and recommended he look for different employment.

  3. SiobhanCCastilleja October 3, 2015 at 7:05 am - Reply

    ffsfsdf

    • Mike Sivier October 3, 2015 at 1:28 pm - Reply

      I’d love to know what this means, even though I know it would be unpublishable.

  4. AndyH October 3, 2015 at 10:40 am - Reply

    “My sense was if you just looked at disability living allowance, that doesn’t reach the same absolute. The test is not about ‘can you work or can’t you work?’ It is looking at your condition and deciding on what level was your condition.”

    1) Disability Living Allowance is not an out of work benefit – it’s an (A)llowance, intended to help with the higher cost of (L)iving caused by (D)isability.
    2) If DLA is so great, then why have you spent the last five years discrediting and abolishing it?
    3) Whichever DLA award you get – whether you get lower rate mobility only, or higher rate care and mobility, it’s conditional only on you being ill.
    4) The WCA is flawed because people are dying after being found for fit – a fact you have spent the last five years denying.

  5. AndyH October 3, 2015 at 11:27 am - Reply

    Does he seriously think UC will be implemented by the second half of this parliament?

  6. A-Brightfuture October 3, 2015 at 12:51 pm - Reply

    “He said: “It is very binary. You still have to decide is somebody well enough to work full time or too sick to work at all. My point is that, when you get down to it, at the fundamental heart of it lies a single flaw, which is that it is an absolute.”

    It seems that the WCA and ESA will be based on ” part time work not full time work”, depending on whether the claimant can press a button, or pick up a phone.
    So its going to be that you are either “a little bit sick” or a lot sick. Not whether you are sick.

    Its a bit like telling a woman who is 3 months pregnant that she is a little bit pregnant.
    Either you are having a baby………..or you’re not.

    It ties in nicely with the reduction in ESA benefit…..you are sick, but yes, but no, but yes.

    The fundamental flaw is IDS….and that is absolute.
    IDS the goalpost mover.

  7. Barrabus Zoot October 3, 2015 at 1:44 pm - Reply

    I read an article about the government having to keep the unemployed at 5 % to keep the inflation rate the same, after reading it I thought why on earth are they even bothering to crank on about the unemployed and persecute the sick for it seems the tally of unemployed and sick have an important role in tory f***ed up economic policies.

  8. john kettle October 3, 2015 at 6:25 pm - Reply

    Aren’t MP’s salaries binary – you get paid a set sum even if you don’t attend the HOC, and you can please yourself how much constituency work you do?
    Aren’t payments for HOL binary – sign in, sod off, get paid £300/day?
    Seems this tw*t only sees binary in his own terms.

  9. James October 4, 2015 at 9:33 am - Reply

    The terminally ill are supposed to “actively seek work” these days until “6 months away from death”. According to IDS if you’re 169 days away from the grave you have to look for a job and 168 days away from your appointment with the Grim Reaper and you don’t! How the heck could the best and most brilliant physician or diagnostician possibly be that accurate in their opinion about a terminally ill person’s life expectancy?

    What a bunch of goons.

  10. frances October 4, 2015 at 2:06 pm - Reply

    Pat’s Petition think there has to be a conversation about what ‘fit for work’ means. Eight years in to ESA and we haven’t had this conversation.

    We test for it but we don’t know what it is.

    This is a capitalist society with a lean, mean labour market.

    To the employer ‘fit for work’ means an employee who can compete with other contenders as someone who can produce the most work, the most reliably for the least money.

    A sick and/or disabled person may be able to do this with reasonable adjustments. So with support they are ‘fit for work’.

    So where does that leave other sick and disabled people who have conditions which mean that they may attend less regularly than a fit worker and some days not be as productive.

    They are not ‘fit for work’ in this capitalist labour market.

    They are ‘fit for work’ in a more benign environment where productivity is not the only concern. But that environment does not exist in the UK in 2015.

    So they are not ‘fit for work’.

  11. The Porcelain Doll October 4, 2015 at 10:56 pm - Reply

    Get the ****ing Tories out of parliament now!

  12. mrmarcpc October 5, 2015 at 2:37 pm - Reply

    I’m surprised he hasn’t ordered travelling gas chambers to be built and go around the country and start the culling that way, he might as well because he’s doing that in another way and will continue to until there’s nobody left!

    • Mike Sivier October 5, 2015 at 2:42 pm - Reply

      The intention is to thin the ‘stock’ by stealth.

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