Here is another death to add to the DWP’s body count

Amy Nice.

Does anybody remember a song by The Police called Murder By Numbers? One of the verses went like this:

You can reach the top of your profession
If you become the leader of the land
For murder is the sport of the elected
You don’t need to lift a finger of your hand.

That certainly rings true in the case of Amy Nice, who took her own life because she feared that her Universal Credit would be sanctioned away from her because pen-pushers at the Department for Work and Pensions might think she wasn’t doing enough to find work.

This is a young woman with kidney disease and attendant severe depression and anxiety. She should have been classified as having a long-term illness – and eventually was, but too late to do any good. DWP assessors had pressurised her into an early grave.

Ms Nice’s terror of losing benefits was due to the ratcheting-up of the sanctions regime at the DWP. On Twitter today, I learned a little about how that had happened. It seems the Liberal Democrats had agreed to it while in coalition government with the Conservatives in 2014 – in return for agreement to place a 5p tax on plastic bags at shops. Here’s Polly Mackenzie:

The Liberal Democrats had no qualms about increasing the threat to the lives of benefit claimants; they wanted a boost for their environmental credentials in time for their party conference – and nobody had to know about their grotty little deal.

Well, now we do.

It is because of this deal that people like Ms Nice have been going to their deaths with a regularity that makes the government that has been in place since 2010 one of the worst-ever killers of its own citizens. Thousands have died.

But nobody in power will ever admit responsibility; they’ll say these people took their own lives. And the reasons for suicide are complicated.

Coroner James Newman doesn’t seem to think so. He made it perfectly clear that Ms Nice took her life because she was “under pressure from the Department for Work and Pensions” and accepted that this “would play massively on a young woman’s mind with a young child and history of physical and mental illness.”

Read the story for yourself:

“A struggling young mum took her own life after she feared losing her benefits under the Government’s Universal Credit scheme, an inquest heard.

“Amy Nice, 21, had been suffering from severe depression and anxiety following a diagnosis for kidney disease but had felt ‘pressurised’ to find work under new rules for claimants.

“On October 24 last year, after months of financial worry, Amy wrote a suicide note saying she ‘couldn’t see a way forward’, dropped off her young son at school then hanged herself in woodland near her home in the village of Coppull near Chorley, Lancashire.

“At an inquest into her death, a coroner ruled the tragedy as suicide saying the risk of losing benefits would ‘play massively on a young woman’s mind with a young child and history of illness’.

“Coroner James Newman said: “She was under pressure from the Department for Work and Pensions – a source of income she relied on. The pressure was to get back to work or be able to prove she was searching for work.

“”In a person with her mental history I could understand that would be difficult. There is pressure that she could run the risk of losing her benefits and I can see that financial matters would play massively on a young woman’s mind with a young child and history of physical and mental illness.””

To the DWP and its lower-than-vermin minister Esther McVey, this means nothing.

She’d probably say the Department’s cruel threat of sanctions had “assisted” Ms Nice into a place where she could be happier. I refer, of course, to the grave.

And they will never – ever – consciously accept responsibility, even though it is plain for all to see that this woman died under threat from the DWP, which was acting on the orders of the Conservative government.

The ever-increasing ranks of the deceased are a demand for justice.

When will they get it?


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6 thoughts on “Here is another death to add to the DWP’s body count

  1. aunty1960

    Persecutors of the Jews could say they did not kill them in the ghettos or Polish ghettos But they herded them and cut them off from all resources and support they died.

    Same with the sanctions, disability denial and denial of basic support and money for essentials and the terrible pressure and stress they put on everyone.

    And LIBDEMS PAH!

    On 14th July 2010 a few weeks after the election that brought in the Coalition I approached a local LibDem councillor who always demonstrated and boasted her credentials as a liberal social humanitarian etc etc (I always doubted)

    I raised the effect of the cuts on disabled and carers, they were already suffering and full time carers had all support taken off and they were locked with their charges 24/7 in their homes with no help and no respite. Damage was already been done and the harm clear

    SHE SAID, and waved me away and pushed her hand into my face

    “We don’t have to take notice of any disabled any more. We have been told you are nothing and we can ignore you.”

    I said discrimination disability rights and law still applied and existed

    She said the people had voted Conservative and LibDem in because they were voting against the disabled (cannot remember that on the ballot sheets)

    and quoted a statement, it sounded like a statement

    “THE DISABLED ARE THE SACRIFICE WE HAVE CHOSEN TO PAY FOR THE RIGHT TO BE PART OF COALITION POLITICS” and have some of the LibDem policies added ie the failed PR referendum.

    It was policy and agreement.

    Cannot stand Vince Cable sucking up and making out he is the old wizard man of the ethics like Gandolf. He is exactly as he is a ambitious opportunist who would say anything and do anything for position and power.

    1. Mike Sivier Post author

      It’s a shame you don’t have any evidence to prove that conversation took place. It would have been damning at the time, and damning now.

  2. Pref Anon

    I was almost one of those numbers and after a personal letter to Esther McVey Employment Minister at Caxton House, an apology then subsequent spiteful vindictiveness from the DWP over 4 years or so it was sorted out.
    The support from relatives was the only thing that stopped me but even now that I’m receiving the small financial support that I should have got all along, I still dread a brown envelope arriving and threatening my new-found stability.

  3. Jeffrey davies

    Aktion t4 at its best but for many it’s to late many will say it’s not true tell those who lost their lives yet on it goes torture for many who have to live with these evil people in power. Jeff3

  4. JohnDee

    Clicking on your link:

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/universal-credit-benefit-mum-suicide-14544736

    403 Forbidden
    nginx

    Search: site:www.manchestereveningnews “Amy Nice”

    No results. Try:
    site:www.manchestereveningnews Amy Nice

    Search: suicide Amy Nice:

    Struggling young mum took her own life after fearing she …
    On October 24 last year, after months of financial worry, Amy wrote a suicide note saying she ‘couldn’t see a way forward’, … Her mother, Joy Nice, …
    [Search domain http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk]
    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/universal-credit-benefit-mum-suicide-14544736

    Hmmm
    Pls advise

    1. Mike Sivier Post author

      I just clicked on the link as it appears in your comment here, and got straight through to the story.

Comments are closed.