Yes, BBC News, we know the benefits test is ‘flawed’. Why are you treating it as a surprise?
![Ann Forster [Image: BBC].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160526-Ann-Forster-WCA.jpg)
Ann Forster [Image: BBC].
It has been that long since people started saying the work capability assessment attached to ESA, and now PIP, was rubbish.
Yet Auntie seems surprised at the possibility.
Worse still, the claim that the Department for Work and Pensions fabricated its excuse for depriving Mrs Forster of her benefits – by saying she can stand and walk more than 200m – is also a very old chestnut.
DWP assessors have by lying about claimants in this way for years.
Finally, theres the comment from the DWP itself, saying it is reviewing Mrs Forster’s appeal.
If she gets her benefit back, the Department will claim this is because there was new information in her appeal that she had not previously submitted.
Technically, this will be correct.
But when the new information only demonstrates that the DWP assessor lied about her mobility, can there be any doubt that the system is flawed?
Reports like this are deeply disturbing.
They try to press the ‘reset’ button on the DWP’s lengthening history of lying about the way it treats claimants.
They try to present each case as if it were completely new and nothing of the sort had ever happened before.
In fact, thousands of people are dead as a result of this deadly scheme.
The DWP has even admitted its role in the deaths – although using weasel words to claim that it cannot be held to be “solely” responsible.
This Writer doesn’t care. Not “solely” responsible means partially responsible and in an organisation with a duty of care, that’s not good enough.
So where’s the outrage?
Where are the relatives demanding justice?
And where is the BBC report exposing the whole filthy scam?
A woman who had two kidney transplants says she has been the victim of a “flawed” government benefits test.
Ann Forster, 56, from Nottinghamshire, receives £220 a month in personal independence payments (PIPs) which helps provide transport.
The decision to cut her benefits was taken after a face-to-face home assessment declared her mobile, but she says she was never asked to walk.
After an assessment at her home in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, she was informed in a letter by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that she can stand and then move more than 200m (656ft).
But Mrs Forster’s husband Geoff said his wife did not walk any distance during the assessment.
During the half-hour visit from the DWP, she “didn’t even leave the room,” he said.
The government said Mrs Forster’s appeal is being reviewed.
Source: ‘Flawed’ benefits test criticised by double transplant patient – BBC News
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Because they’ve been suppressing it like their tory overlords have been telling them to do, now they’re growing a spine, too little too late Auntie!
The BBC has been complicit in the the Tories onslaught against the sick and disabled highlighted by their ever repeated mantra “for hardworking people” which by definition means it isn’t for anyone who is unable to work or has difficulties getting to work or whilst in work because clearly they do not meet the hardworking definition in the minds of the government.
it does need to be looked at and this is yet again another example of why and instead of the usual dwp drivel, start to become honest and admit that this assessment is like some of the assessor’s not fit for purpose, alternatively don’t admit it, keep going with your payment by results system, you also need another section for this soon, payments for wrongdoing when you get sued, then when your under oath and cant hide behind freedom of information act and we cant disclose the person qualifications for fear that it maybe made public and have to explain to a judge what is a sport’s physiotherapist doing carrying out a bi-polar assessment and five weeks training in how to ask if a person can carry a cup of coffee or walk to a shop wont rub in that kind of arena, so dwp and crabb, start to get your act together, before there more complaints and legal cases using misconduct in public office or breaches of sova or nolan principles or assessments carried out by people that are not qualified, try to justify that to a professional panel or are you going to carry on with the dwp theory that your untouchable and vunerable people don’t know how to fight back, in which case your wake up call is coming sooner and faster than you think.
We’ve just GOT to make sure that the DWP/Govt DON’T get away with this, and are fully held to account, as much as is practically possible, for everything bad that they’ve done.
No amount of the truth will be enough to make the BBC report it. This deeply biased organisation verges on hate crime.
And she walked 200 Meters in her home, one big house that.
A few more of these lying assessors need bringing to account. They are acting like double glazing salesment chasing their commissions and bonus payments. These are vulnerable people that they are dealing with. How are they allowed to just make up any old story that gives their masters the right to cut their benefits….unless of course their masters agree with the way they conduct themselves. Feckin’ disgrace.
I fear the only way that unbiased reporting will ever return will be with a new Labour government to make certain that it does.
The old Labour Government and the new Conservative Government both took my husband off his benefit whilst suffering from kidney failure. Absolutely no difference. Both benefits reinstated at tribunal. Don’t assume that one party will be better than another. All out to save money at the cost of disabled people. Could do with a high profile lawyer to fight these injustices.
The old Labour government (by which I think you mean New Labour under Tory Blair and Gordon Brown) was hugely different from the current Labour Party.
There are hangers-on from that mob of right-wing neoliberals but they are not in control.
Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking Labour and Tory are the same for one minute.
Come on BBC NEWS do your bloody job and start reporting all these going ons and all the deaths that the DWP, ATOS & MAXIMUS have all aided in the dispatchment of these poor souls within the last 8 years.
Don’t be silly, most of the BBC bosses are dyed in the wool Tories, the only way for them to report on benefit travesties is for the benefit system to be that of another country, like Germany!
The BBC has once again shown their inefficiency, complicity and cowardly behaviour during the tories time in power, they are so s**t scared of them, it’s pathetic, what a bunch of spineless wasters they are down there, no wonder people can’t stand them anymore!
And do everyone think taken their appeal cases to tribunal that it will mean success? it seems this Government is hell bent on destroying the sick and disabled and up till now have gotten away with it… it’s a disgrace even my friends severely disabled daughter has lost all her support after taken it to the courts something these flawed assessments and PIP need to be scrapped.