MPs launch inquiry into DWP’s failure to prevent deaths of thousands of disabled people

Don’t get your hopes up – this is only an inquiry by the House of Commons’ Work and Pensions Committee. The DWP will probably ignore anything it says.

But after a decade, it’s a start:

According to John Pring, over at Disability News Service:

The Commons work and pensions committee will investigate if DWP has a duty to safeguard “vulnerable people”, and if it does not, whether it should.

It is set to take evidence from coroners who have heard inquests into the deaths of claimants, lawyers who have taken legal cases against DWP, and the families of claimants who have died.

It is set to be the first serious public investigation into safeguarding at DWP since reports of deaths first began emerging in the early years of the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission promised to carry out an inquiry into links between DWP’s work capability assessment and the deaths of claimants, but it was heavily criticised after it dropped those plans.

Ministers have repeatedly refused to commission any kind of inquiry, or ignored calls to set one up, despite years of evidence that DWP’s actions have led to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.

This Site – Vox Political – played a huge role in publicising the deaths. I was the campaigner who got the unexplained deaths of 2,400 people onto the front pages of the national daily newspapers in August 2015.

Nothing was done about those deaths, of course.

And while I applaud Labour’s Debbie Abrahams and even Nigel Mills of the Tory Party for managing to secure even this limited inquiry, I won’t hold my breath waiting for anything useful to come of it.

The best chance, I think, is if as many family members of deceased disability benefit claimants contact the Work and Pensions Committee and demand to be heard as possible.

If you are one such person, please do so by following the link above.

Pro-Israel pressure group influenced Unite union boss to cancel screening of Jeremy Corbyn film and book talk in its buildings

This is very awkward for Unite and its general secretary Sharon Graham in particular.

It seems the union has bowed to pressure from the false “charity” calling itself the Campaign Against Antisemitism to ban showings of Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie and appearances by author Asa Winstanley to discuss his book, Weaponising Antisemitism.

On what grounds?

The claim in the CAA’s tweet – that the film is about “antisemitism-denial” – is false. We know that because lawyers for the Glastonbury Festival examined it and pronounced it safe to screen. The festival’s organisers still pulled it from their schedules – apparently because the CAA pressurised one of their sponsors to pressure them.

One has to question what this organisation does. Considering the way accusations of anti-Semitism have been weaponised beyond the point at which merely being accused is enough to harm anybody for life, This Writer is considered that Unite and its leaders may have been told to cancel the event or be smeared as anti-Semites themselves.

I wonder whether the facts of the matter will ever be known.

I certainly think the organisers of the Bristol event should be told. And then they should tell the rest of us, so we can judge for ourselves what kind of organisation the CAA is and whether it deserves to retain its charity status, considering the way its behaviour seems to be geared towards restricting free speech for political purposes.

Consider the content of the following tweet and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a reason to disagree:

Keir Starmer’s Shadow Chancellor is a liar: if she can’t tell the truth about Ken Loach’s expulsion from Labour, how can we trust her on the economy?

The reason Mr Loach was expelled from the Labour Party has never been divulged – even to Mr Loach himself, if This Writer recalls correctly. That’s probably because there wasn’t any reason for it at all.

On the other hand, Reeves famously reverse Nancy Astor, who really was an anti-Semite. James Foster is referring to that in his tweet.

So she’s a hypocrite as well as a liar.

British Gas profits to hit record levels after Ofgem raised the energy price cap

Both Labour and the Tories think this price-gouging by a privatised national utility firm is absolutely fine when millions of UK citizens are struggling to pay their gas bills.

Do you think it is?

The UK’s richest people are £438 billion richer than 10 years ago. Now you know where all your money went

The Tories’ greatest achievement: making you think you have to wait longer for a GP appointment because there’s no money for the NHS

Remember: the NHS in England is struggling due to lack of funding since 2010, and the richest people in the UK are £438 billion richer due to Conservative government policies over the last 10 years.

Do you think there might possibly be a connection?

As privatised rail firms cut ticket offices in the UK, the government give £680m for electric railway in Turkey

This is privatisation for you. Most of the money from the UK’s privatised rail system goes out of the country in profits for its foreign owners. And now the Tory government is using even more of our money to build a railway abroad:

There’s very little investment in UK rail, of course. And the public – that’s you and me – is subsidising this failure massively.

At last people are starting to speak out against UK politicians’ failures

Read this:

I draw your attention to it because both Jeremy Corbyn have been driven out of Keir Starmer’s political party (although admittedly, Mr Corbyn is still a member, he is not allowed to be in the Parliamentary Labour Party).

They have found their voices and are speaking out against the injustices they see – from both the Conservatives and their own former political homes.

So the question is: how long are you going to hang your head below the parapet? Just until it’s too late?

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