Tories announce more changes to sickness benefits, after promising to leave them alone
![Damian Green only looks like he is choking on his own words - more's the pity [Image: AFP].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/161031-Damian-Green-AFP.jpg)
Damian Green only looks like he is choking on his own words – more’s the pity [Image: AFP].
That’ll be another lie to add to the collection, then.
It’s possible they’ll try to wheedle their way around it by saying they’re not changing the amount of money payable to benefit claimants – but changing the conditions under which people receive the benefit will certainly have the same effect.
Fair enough, Scope has said disabled people need “expert, tailored employment support” – but has the Conservative government ever offered such a thing? No.
Damian Green’s comments echo those of former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, a man brave enough to go naked from the eyebrows upward, while leaving the effects of his policies shrouded in secrecy.
But the words still give his game away. He’s saying the sick should be put to work; why isn’t he saying they should be helped to find ways of earning their living? Perhaps you think that’s a quibble over semantics, but it isn’t – it could be the difference between finding a useful vocation and being forced to do something potentially fatal.
How many sick people will be forced into Workfare, if Mr Green has his way? Toiling full-time for their benefit while a nominated company takes all the profit? Worsening their health conditions instead of soothing them?
Mr Duncan Smith tried to take credit for the plan by saying he was working towards it when he resigned.
But then, he said it was intended to eliminate the “binary choice” between working and being on benefit, which is a lie.
He should know, better than anybody, that sickness benefit claimants have been able to take on “permitted work”.
It allows claimants to test their own capacity for doing some work and perhaps gain new skills, while earning up to £115.50 per week.
There’s a 15-hour-a-week, 52-week limit on the amount that can be done – unless a claimant is in the support group of ESA. People can do more than 15 hours per week on “supported permitted work”, and the 52-week limit is being removed from people in the WRAG from April 2017.
If the plan is to bring in genuine expert help for people doing this work, or considering it, then it might be worthwhile.
But I doubt it.
I note that Mr Duncan Smith tried to dismiss Employment Support Allowance as a Labour project that is “in real need of reform” – neglecting to admit that he spent nearly six years tinkering with it and only managed to reduce the death toll slightly.
ESA was indeed started by Labour – but it can more easily be identified with the Conservatives.
Like the Tories, it started bad and – like the Tories – it has grown worse.
A consultation on reforming the Work Capability Assessment will be announced on Monday.
Ministers want claimants to be assessed in a more “targeted and personalised” way to help more people find jobs.
The charity Scope, which had criticised the current assessment scheme, said it welcomed the planned changes.
It said disabled people needed “expert, tailored employment support”.
Both Employment Support Allowance, which is paid to more than two million people, and the assessment, were originally introduced by Labour and then expanded by the coalition government.
Mr Green said: “A disability or health condition should not dictate the path a person is able to take in life.
“No one wants a system where people are written off and forced to spend long periods of time on benefits when, actually, with the right support they could be getting back into work.
“The proposed changes… will focus on improving opportunities and raising aspirations while making sure those people who most need support from the government receive it.”
Former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who spearheaded the government’s welfare reforms for six years before resigning in March, said: “These proposals are directly taken from a full plan for reform that we at the DWP were close to completing before I resigned.
“The purpose was to get rid of the binary choice that you were fit for work or not fit for work. My plan covered all the areas announced today and went further in proposing some other positive changes.”
Source: Work capability assessment overhaul for disabled – BBC News
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Given the above, you might be interested in this FOI request I made https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/evidence_again_for_statement_in#comment-73965
Fair enough, Scope has said disabled people need “expert, tailored employment support scope hmm just another charity pimp working with gov yet were is this so called work who are the firms who take sick people on you bet no one going to take someone whose off sick when they want em just more s**te
The problem with permitted work is that if you do it you tend to get reassessed tout sweet and found fit for work. But it’s a decent scheme if allowed to work as it’s was intended.
The tories are open about it, they endlessly harp on about being for hard working people, in other words if you are not working yourself to death they are not interested, just like the germans in the early 1930’s got rid of those not fit and able.
It amounts to more death by Government.
‘Targeted and personal’ will mean more closely directed persecution against the individual, with no let up even for those in the Support Group.
These are the Conservatives, and what they enjoy is cruelty towards anyone weaker.
They have shrunk the economy, so that many able bodied can’t find enough, or properly paid enough, work for them to escape benefits, or manage when those benefits are removed; but still expect people that employers don’t want, and which even the WCA has found not capable of working, to be finding work whatever.
In Conservative world, everyone who suffers the consequences of their neoliberal economics must be punished for it, and those not capable of joining in must be punished even more, and then some more.
First fix the economy and halt austerity. Halt sellling everything belonging to the people of this country. Halt the slashing of the rights and wages of the workers.
The Caring Conservatives? Party of the Workers? Joke.
Not only this, but it would appear that PIP, the main disability allowance which is also just as deeply flawed, affects even more sick and disabled people is going to receive no attention whatsoever!
[ “My plan ] covered all the areas announced today and went further in proposing some other positive changes.” ……….Iain Duncan Smith,
Yes it was his plan, a plan that includes all the deaths, a plan that has destroyed lives and made a misery of the system. Hearing their bleating trying to deflect criticism, it would not be surprising if they now started building ‘shower blocks’; they have destroyed what if any goodwill remained with their evasion, every person who knows the truth can not help but hate these politicians, and the apologists that come after them. They are not to be trusted, in any sphere, not less the DWP who must be exposed and lampooned before the world to the shame of humanity.
It is too late now or any time in the future for change; what, are we supposed to be grateful, are we to say that’s OK then. Still, they do not even have the humility to say, hey, we made a mistake, we’re sorry and we will try and put things right, mealy mouthed excuses, while Iain Duncan Smith who has the temerity to boast it was his plan, to try and take credit for his deeds, he just still, does not get it.
Not in my name will this Government perpetrate it’s heinousness deeds against the sick, nor any other party that seems to think it’s ‘The right thing’. If Damian Green does not stand up for his own convictions, he too, along with the rest of the Tory storm-troopers, will be held to account on the day of judgment, and I don’t mean theologically.
Promising is the only way for the tories can get you of there back and it means nothing just look at the NHS
It means more harassment and more targets.
If anyone trusts and believes what the tories say then you’re as thick as the thickest porridge!
The worst thing is, they’ve specifically said they aim to get more mentally Ill people working.