Jonathan Bartley.

The Green Party has written to work and pensions secretary Damian Green to demand an independent inquiry into benefit claimants whose deaths have been linked to the failings of his department.

The letter has been signed by the Green Party’s co-leader, Jonathan Bartley, its disability spokeswoman, Mags Lewis, and Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts.

It has also been signed by Jill Gant, the mother of Mark Wood, a disabled man who starved to death in 2013 after he was found “fit for work” through the work capability assessment (WCA) system, and lost his out-of-work disability benefits.

The party has compiled a dossier of this and 49 other deaths of benefit claimants where, it says in the letter, there is “good reason to believe their treatment at the hands of your department has been a factor in their deaths”.

Source: Green Party calls on government to launch benefit deaths inquiry

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