Why do we think it’s okay for people with disabilities to be terrorised by Tory benefit assessors?
As seen on Twitter.
“When I looked at the report I had to double check it had my name on it. I have never seen so many lies in my life!”
That‘s just one comment on the assessment process for Personal Independence Payment, the so-called “benefit” the Conservative government claims it provides to people with disabilities.
In fact, it has always been more about denying that claimants have any disabilities at all and removing their cash so that they die slowly in despair – but the Tories can deny responsibility.
A response to the above comment reads: “Fantasy masquerading as fact again in a PIP assessment. How many more such cases are there going to be before the DWP does something about it?”
Many – because a change of government is required before we can expect a change of heard and we can’t expect that any time soon.
Even people who should reasonably expect to be safe from sanction are terrorised by the process.
“So. The dreaded PIP renewal has arrived. Why when he’s 20 and nothing has changed, do I get the awful knot in tummy? Knowing we will have to fight hard again,” wrote one carer.
Another wrote: “Got a brown envelope regarding … PIP today. Theres no issue, they’re extending it. Its fine. But the effect that brown envelope has on me is terrifying. Seeing it makes me physically sick, sweaty and my heart race I’m genuinely scared [of] my government.”
These good people have reason to be.
New figures from the Department for Work and Pensions have shown that, between April 2018 and the end of January this year, 1,700 people died within three months of their PIP claim being rejected by the government.
As I mentioned above, the Tories can deny responsibility for these deaths – as minister for disabled people Justin Tomlinson did when providing the figures in response to a question from Labour MP Jessica Morden.
He said: “There is no evidence in this data to suggest someone’s reason for claiming Personal Independence Payments was the cause of their death and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise.”
But it is reasonable to question whether these people would have died if they had not been deprived of the benefits they seem clearly to have needed, in order to live.
And these figures follow on from work carried out by This Writer – me – a few years ago in which I had to force the government of the day to admit 2,400 people had died between dates in 2011 and 2014, within just two weeks of having their claims for sickness benefits rejected.
It is a quiet cull.
The Tories have learned from the mistakes of the Nazis; they don’t send a van around to people’s houses to gas people with disabilities to death. They have realised they don’t have to.
The Tories know that it is much easier for them simply to deprive people with disabilities who claim benefits – the Nazis used to call them “useless eaters” and I’m sure some Tories do the same – of the means to survive.
This Site is filled with countless stories of the victims of this policy.
I could pick holes in Tomlinson’s words; of course it is not anybody’s reason for claiming a benefit that leads to their death after being denied it. The cause is the deprivation of the means to continue living.
But no individual case can prove this because the Tories would say it was anecdotal.
What is needed is a class action legal case in which it may be demonstrated that disabled people died who may not have done so, had they not been deprived of money.
There are plenty of examples now. All that is needed is someone to take it up as a cause. They could probably face a deluge of information if only they advertised for it.
I would do it myself but I seem to be spending too much time in courtrooms as it is. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Yes, Mike I think you have ‘enough on your plate’ at the moment! Your post about your recent court appearance was very interesting indeed, and I have everything crossed that you will be vindicated.
I have seen at first hand what the cruel DWP systems have done to my sister since 2011. At the end of 6 years she was even less fit to work than had they simply left her alone, compounding her original physical problems with mental health problems which I am convinced they caused.
‘The Brown Envelope’ syndrome mentioned above; the many lies in the so called ‘assessments’; having to go to a Court of Law as part of the appeal process – which she eventually won – where she was treated as a criminal. Luckily I had some welfare benefits advice experience, otherwise I shudder to think how she would have fared. Mercifully she now has a partner who is able to support her financially, but had this not happened her future would be bleak indeed. (She also faced a ‘double whammy’ as one of the women from the 50’s treated so disgracefully in the rise of retirement age scandal).
I think part of the problem in trying to start a legal campaign is that so many of the people affected must spend huge amounts of their time worrying, being stressed and exhausted with no energy left for anything else than sheer survival, or they are traumatised by the death of close ones – and I am in no doubt that the DWP is culpable for so many of these deaths.
Those that have the energy and resources but have not been personally touched by the issues, may find it difficult to appreciate what a very cruel and Kafkaesque world it is trying to claim disability benefits. It is indeed hard to comprehend how very bad it is! And of course what have passed for ‘governments’ since 2010 have carried out an excellent propaganda campaign with their divisive rhetoric…..
It often seemed to me, during IDS’s ‘reign of terror’, that the Tories would, if they thought they could get away with it, send to the gas chambers disabled people and anyone else they considered useless or inconvenient. I consider myself truly fortunate right now to be able-bodied and in good health.
The Nazis only got away with the crimes they commited because the German people did not stand up for oppressed it is time for the able bodied people of this country to stand up and fight on behalf of our oppressed.