Suicide: If the Jeremy Kyle show had a duty of care to guests, what about the government’s duty to benefit claimants?

Steve Dymond: His death following an appearance on a TV show is more important to Conservatives than all the many thousands their benefit policies have triggered.

Tory double-standards have hit a new low.

It seems the Conservative government – including its leader – has expressed “deep concern” about the death of a guest on ITV’s Jeremy Kyle Show.

The concern is that the show’s producers did not adequately observe their own duty of care to guest Steve Dymond, who is believed to have taken his own life after being filmed for an edition of the programme.

It seems Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said the death was a “deeply concerning case”.

According to Sky News,

“Broadcasters and production companies have a responsibility for the mental health and well-being of participants and viewers of their programmes,” they said.

“We are clear they must have appropriate levels of support in place.”

Damian Collins, Conservative chairman of the commons digital, culture, media and sport committee, said TV companies

“have a duty to care to the people who take part in their programmes”, while Tory MP Simon Hart, who also sits on the committee, described the Jeremy Kyle Show as “car-crash TV which revels in people’s terrible misfortune and sometimes their vulnerabilities”.

And Charles Walker, vice-chair of the parliamentary group on combating suicide and self-harm, called on ITV to stop commissioning the show

Mr Walker demanded a crackdown on programmes that put people under a “huge amount of pressure and wait until they go pop”.

All of these criticisms are accurate. But I notice Mr Collins mentioned a “duty of care”…

What about the Conservative government’s duty of care to the many thousands of benefit claimants – particularly the sick and disabled – who have committed suicide because of the cruelty of the Tory system?

What about the people named by Debbie Abrahams in her evidence to the debate on 10 years of the work capability assessment?

What about the many others she didn’t mention?

What about the many, many others who weren’t considered to be benefit-related deaths because they did sometime after the arbitrary period following loss of benefit that the Department for Work and Pensions continues monitoring their condition?

The government has rejected a call for an independent inquiry into the deaths of many benefit claimants including Jodey Whiting, who died after the DWP breached its own safeguarding guidelines no less than five times.

The government has tried to hide the fact that concerns had been raised internally about the DWP’s safeguarding failures, rather than address them.

This means its position regarding the Kyle Show death is nothing short of homicidal hypocrisy.

And that has not been lost on the general public:

We’ve been here before, sadly.

The government won’t address its hypocrisy because the government consists of Conservatives and, for them, hypocrisy is a way of life.

The only way to stop the deaths is to end Conservative government and replace it with a responsible socialist administration.

But in the current pandemonium over Brexit, who would consider anything as radical as that?

Source: Jeremy Kyle Show death ‘deeply concerning’, Downing Street says | UK News | Sky News

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11 Comments

  1. nmac064 May 15, 2019 at 1:38 pm - Reply

    Without wishing to defend Kyle who, in my opinion, exploits vulnerable people, I believe Tories don’t consider rules of decent and humane behaviour apply to them – only to the rest of us.

  2. treb May 15, 2019 at 2:34 pm - Reply

    Every time I sign on I leave the Jobcentre feeling suicidal due to the unwarranted pressure placed upon me by the Dole Clerk aka Adviser aka ‘Work Coach’. I wake up during the night feeling stressed and anxiously re-living the experience. I really do wish that the Jobcentre would burn down or blown up or flattened by a falling asteroid. I’ll be glad when I can retire in another 10 yrs time and cannot wait to reach 67. Hope the next decade of my life passes as quickly as possible.

  3. Julia May 15, 2019 at 2:54 pm - Reply

    A nice juxtaposition with an article by the excellent Aditya Chakrabartty in The Guardian today – ‘Coming soon – the great Universal Credit Deception’ – regarding DWP plans to use the media to improve the image of UC.

    Quoting the DWP – “BBC2 has commissioned a documentary series, which is “looking to intelligently explore UC” by filming inside three jobcentres. “This is a fantastic opportunity for us – we’ve been involved in the process from the outset, and we continue working closely with the BBC to ensure a balanced and insightful piece of television.”

    Balanced and insightful? I am afraid those words don’t sit very well in the same sentence as BBC these days.

  4. Dan May 15, 2019 at 3:00 pm - Reply

    Typical Tory double standards.

  5. Tony Dean May 15, 2019 at 3:16 pm - Reply

    The DWP and DWP ministers lack of caring about the suicides they cause went well beyond offensive a very long time ago.

  6. Jeffrey Davies May 15, 2019 at 3:46 pm - Reply

    Wow double standards ouch aktion t4 rolling along much of a ado

  7. Nick May 15, 2019 at 5:00 pm - Reply

    there’s I big outcry mike with many mp’s on the digital and culture wonting to know what’s happened so the show in question will stay banned

  8. Audrey Pool May 15, 2019 at 6:07 pm - Reply

    Totally agree,the hypocrisy of the torys knows no bounds.The fake concern for one death whilst they are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths among society’s most vulnerable people is truly appalling.The Kyle show should have issued the famous DWP statement that” the causes of suicide are many and complex “,this stock response seems to work fine for them.The media faux outrage is equally disgusting as they ignore true journalism in favour of Tory propaganda on a daily basis.

    • John D. Ingleson May 16, 2019 at 11:45 am - Reply

      ‘Just what I was thinking, Audrey – remembering the DWP’s constant platitudes of faux concern, while Mike and others cried “People are dying!”
      Nevertheless, we got their (politicians’, judicial, civil servants’, and publishers’) addresses though, don’t we?

  9. Rik May 16, 2019 at 3:10 am - Reply

    J.K. is just a patronising b*****d of the first kind. . . just the usual lies on PMQ today (15th May) from our so-called Govt . . . the usual
    denial of kids living in poverty,more people in work,
    no tax for the low earning (usualy those on £15k)
    So where are the apologies for all the poor souls that have died as a direct result of austerity? ? Not One Word!!!

  10. Tony May 16, 2019 at 11:17 am - Reply

    Theresa May has no problem with killing millions in a nuclear war.

    By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn took a very different position:“I make it clear today I would not take a decision that kills millions of innocent people,” Corbyn told MPs. “I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to deal with international relations.”

    Well said, Jeremy!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/18/theresa-may-takes-aim-at-jeremy-corbyn-over-trident-renewal

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