A cartoonist’s view of government sickness and disability assessments; ministers set the bar at an impossibly high level.
The Conservatives seem to have launched another attack on sickness and disability benefit claimants – labelling them as “scroungers” again, even though many are dying before they even receive state payments – due to the Kafka-esque assessment process.
Tory lickspittle Andrew Pierce has published a poison pen piece in the Daily Hate Mail, aimed at whipping up division between claimants and the rest of the population.
It’s a classic Tory “divide and rule” tactic, that was deployed to devastating effect during the years of the Coalition government. It comes out whenever the government needs to distract people away from its own shortcomings.
So, for example, today you could be asking why the Conservatives ignored warnings that schools built with RAAC concrete were falling down – for 13 years – and only started doing something about it after collapses came to public attention. The Tory answer to that is: “Look at those skiving benefit scroungers!”
The reality isn’t remotely similar to Tory Boy Pierce’s claim.
The reality is that people claiming sickness and disability benefits often die before they receive a penny, because the system already works very hard to deprive them of it – as Labour MP Debbie Abrahams pointed out in a Westminster Hall debate earlier this week:
Earlier this week, in a #WestminsterHall debate on #HealthAssessments I emphasised the link between the difficulties that some claimants experience in their applications and the tragic deaths of claimants. This will be looked into in the #WPSC safeguarding inquiry this autumn. pic.twitter.com/8xFanlXNZi
If a coroner writes a ‘Prevention of Future Death’ report, it means they believe a death could have been prevented but the circumstances in which the deceased had been placed – in this case, a benefit claim process that is so complicated and obstructive that it not only discourages claimants but depresses them and further harms their physical health – actually contributed to or caused their death.
Obviously, if we have a claim process that is actually harming or killing claimants, it should be impossible to suggest that they are lazy scroungers; a lazy scrounger would not put him- or herself through the trial of such a procedure because it would not be worth the hassle.
And the underlying reality is that prime minister Rishi Sunak and Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride want to make the Work Capability Assessment harsher, in order to force a million sick and disabled people back onto the jobs market.
They’re not doing this because those people are actually fit for work and shouldn’t be on benefits.
They’re doing it because more people looking for work means employers can pay less; if a job applicant wants more than employers are willing to pay – like an actual living wage – they can refuse the application on the grounds that they can always find someone else who will take the lower payment.
But you won’t see that fact in one of Tory Boy’s hate screeds.
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The new Tory way to tell whether a sick or disabled person can work: it’s quite an old cartoon by now – but it still works because it is more or less accurate.
That was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it?
Remember when Jeremy Hunt announced a plan to scrap Work Capability Assessments for sickness benefits in his first spring budget earlier this year?
Well, it seems the Tories have changed their collective mind because Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has launched a consultation on proposed changes to the work capability assessment – the test aimed at establishing how a disability or illness limits a claimant’s ability to work.
Updating the categories associated with mobility and social interaction
Reflecting flexible and home working – and minimising the risk of these issues causing problems for workers
Providing “tailored support” for those found capable of work preparation activity in light of the proposed changes
The consultation is expected to run for eight weeks, and the Government hopes the reforms will come into force by 2025 – which will be after the next general election.
The BBC fails to include a link to the government consultation
Reading between the lines, it seems Stride wants to change the guidelines so that people who are too ill to work will be deemed to be perfectly capable of doing so – possibly by working from home.
The BBC report features a dissenting view from James Taylor, executive director of strategy at disability equality charity Scope, said if people are forced to look for work when they are unwell this could make them even “more ill”.
“If they don’t meet strict conditions, they’ll have their benefits stopped. In the grips of a cost-of-living crisis this could be catastrophic,” he added.
Yeah – we’ve witnessed such catastrophic situations before under Tory governments since 2010. Thousands of people died when they should not have had to.
Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, who has worked to help sick and disabled people in danger due to government policies, highlighted the problems with the Tory approach in Parliament:
Today’s announcement on the #WCA consultation will cause fear & anxiety for many #disabledpeople who after 13 years of draconian cuts will see this as yet another stick.
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Targeted: this poster appeared in 2019 so the number of sick and disabled people who have died is likely to be far higher – especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. Papers like the Telegraph seem to be trying to make that number skyrocket.
What’s going on at the Daily Telegraph? First we find that the paper has been spreading falsehoods that the boss of a supermarket chain that keeps its groceries as cheap as possible and pays its workers more than most has blamed the minimum wage for inflation (he hasn’t); now this:
“It raises the question, just how much of our hard won salaries are spent on the benefits of those who do not work?”
It raises the question, just how much of a role does the media play in fuelling disability hate crimes? And what do early eugenic arguments look like? pic.twitter.com/btRfVRkU0j
And the website to which Samuel Miller links, here, pulls no punches – claiming the tool to calculate “how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state” is “straight out of the Nazi handbook”:
British Newspaper Attacks Disability Benefits With 'Calculator' Straight Out of the Nazi Handbook | The Mary Sue https://t.co/yAVBD2auyP
The Telegraph article states: “Of the 5.2 million people claiming out-of-work benefits, roughly 3.7 million have been granted indefinite exemptions from finding a job, following a surge in claims of mental health issues and joint pain during the pandemic, it emerged last week.”
The Mary Sue piece responds [boldings mine]: “As a propaganda piece, it’s not subtle. “Roughly 3.7 million have been granted indefinite exemptions from finding a job” is a funny way of saying that 3.7 million disabled people, who cannot work due to their disabilities, have been awarded up to £515.40 a month (maybe going all the way up to £782.35 if they’re severely disabled) in order to keep them from starving to death on the streets.
“Putting this number down to “a surge in claims of mental health issues and joint pain during the pandemic” is derisive and clearly intended to diminish the reader’s perception of what are, in fact, disabling conditions to live with that, yes, actually were caused by the pandemic—either a result of infection with the virus itself or the psychological impacts of lockdown, mass death, and the other sociological effects of a global pandemic.”
The Torygraph continues: “On top of this, the controversial decision to maintain the state pension triple lock is estimated to cost taxpayers £1,000 each over the next four years, according to calculations by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a think tank.
“It raises the question, just how much of our hard-won salaries are spent on the benefits of those who do not work? With the calculator below, Telegraph Money can now reveal how much of your salary goes towards bankrolling the welfare state.”
In fact, none of our salaries are spent on benefits. The system doesn’t work that way. The government of the day sets its spending levels and then taxes us enough to keep that spending from pushing inflation too high (not accounting for interference from external influences like foreign wars and Brexit).
But let’s not allow trifles like the facts to get in the way of the Torygraph‘s argument.
Back to Mary Sue: “Note the emphasis on “do not work” and how it conflates the people who cannot work due to age or disability with the fantasy figure of the refusenik, who lounges around at home, wilfully choosing not to work, all on the government’s tab. It should be clear by now that the purpose of this article is to raise outrage against both the welfare system itself and the most vulnerable people who are dependent on it, but still, there’s more.”
The Torygraph states: “Despite Rishi Sunak’s insistence that he is a “low tax conservative” who wants to “bring people’s taxes down”, his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has implemented a combination of frozen thresholds, removed investment incentives, and increased corporation tax – all while keeping welfare spending close to £300bn a year.
“At the same time, welfare spending was the single biggest component of public sector expenditure in the financial year 2021-22, at £298.7bn out of a total of £952.3bn. For the typical taxpayer, this amounts to close to a third of their annual tax bill of £6,500 paid directly towards benefits.
“Using the latest public spending data, our analysis shows someone with the average UK salary of £33,000 sees £2,000 a year spent on welfare.”
Mary Sue responds: “The authors of the piece, Alex Clark and Tom Haynes, go on to object to the marginal and long overdue increase of corporation tax (even though the U.K. still has the joint highest uncapped headline rate of tax relief among G7 countries), the freeze on higher rate tax thresholds (meaning the wealthiest aren’t getting a tax cut), and the fact that this didn’t coincide with a lowering of government welfare spending, as if the former requires the latter as a form of penance.
“They seem outraged that most public sector spending goes toward the welfare state, with around a third of the average individual’s tax bill going toward it—this despite acknowledging that the percentage of public spending that goes toward welfare benefits has actually gone down while overall spending has gone up.”
The Torygraph: “Many high earners are now paying relatively more towards the welfare state because of the lowering of the 45p tax threshold in 2023-24, which now stands at £125,000, down from £150,000 before. Telegraph analysis shows 6pc of the average salary goes towards paying for benefits, compared to 13pc of a high earner’s salary.
“Someone earning £150,000, five times the average salary, contributes close to £19,000 towards the welfare state – more than nine times the contribution of someone on the average salary.”
Mary Sue: “But of course, the greatest outrage in this piece is reserved for the very wealthiest, who, due to earning significantly more than people in lower tax brackets, accordingly pay more tax and therefore contribute more to the welfare system. Leaning heavily on the fact that the highest tax bracket’s threshold was lowered from £150,000 pa to £125,140 this year, requiring the people in that gap to pay a whole 5% more on anything they earn above that limit, Clark and Haynes bemoan that a larger percentage of their tax bill goes towards maintaining the welfare system than lower earners. Someone earning five times the average U.K. salary pays up to nine times the amount towards the welfare system, we are told, as if this isn’t the entire point of staggered tax rates and how the system is supposed to work.”
Mary Sue then makes a hugely important point [boldings mine, again]: “It’s incredibly difficult to successfully apply for disability benefits of any kind in the U.K. According to a recent government study, the release of which is suspiciously close this particular Telegraph article’s publication, “the health assessment system for deciding if someone can claim disability benefits is grueling and often incorrect.” 90% of PIP (the most common benefit) claimants are denied on their first attempt with 89% of them denied again on their second round.
“While 3.7 million people considered too disabled to work may seem like a lot, when the total number of disabled people across the country is taken into consideration, 12.1 million, it suddenly seems a lot more reasonable. There aren’t too many people in receipt of benefits, or capable of working but given a pass not to—it’s the exact opposite, and the amount of money disabled people are awarded by the government is, in most cases, barely enough to live on.”
“Labelling them as “useless eaters,” people who required care and support while being unable to contribute to the state, the Nazis distributed a flurry of propaganda focused on presenting disabled people as a financial burden to everyone else—a burden that prevented “good Germans,” who worked and paid taxes, from being able to access the resources they needed. This propaganda was so ubiquitous that it even made its way into children’s maths books.
“How many steps is a calculator—designed to let you know exactly how much enabling disabled people’s continued survival costs you personally—removed from this? How far off is an article dedicated to decrying the expense of disabled lives as an undue burden, especially on the upper classes?”
Charitably, the author of the Mary Sue article doesn’t believe those who wrote the Torygraph piece were deliberately trying to stir up hatred: “it seems very likely that the authors have bought into the British right wing cultural obsessions of benefit frauds and disability fakers, a group of people that are vanishingly rare but which conservatives see as boogeymen around every corner. I’m sure they believe all those people now experiencing joint pain and mental health problems, as a result of a mass disabling event which caused those specific medical problems on a large scale, are just lying to get out of having to work.
“It’s a very convenient thing to believe if you want to pay lower taxes and are resentful of having to share even a fraction of your wealth with people less fortunate than yourself. It ties in very nicely with all the other conservative ideals that The Telegraph and its readers stand for, and that’s why it’s so dangerous: That’s exactly how and why it worked so well the last time.
“Painting a group of people as too expensive to keep alive is literally the first step to genocide, and given the political environment, in which hate speech against a number of groups as well as legislation targeting them has become normalized, in both the press and parliament, its very concerning that The Telegraph felt comfortable publishing an article that so openly expresses these sentiments.
“I wonder how many people’s disability benefits the coronation could have paid for instead. Funny how papers like The Telegraph didn’t have an issue with taxpayers funding that.”
In fact, some of us would suggest that the genocide has been happening, quietly, for more than a decade – since before the Conservatives came back into office in 2010, in fact.
Back in 2015, after This Writer (that’s me) forced the government to honour a Freedom of Information request I had submitted, we all learned that 2,400 people had died between dates in 2011 and 2014 – within two weeks of being denied the sickness benefit ESA on grounds of being “fit for work”.
Nobody knows how many have died over a longer period after being found “fit for work” because the Department for Work and Pensions has never bothered to check. But the newspapers have been full of stories telling how people have died of starvation, of ill-health due to their disabilities, or simply committed suicide in despair because of the cruelty of the system.
Changes to the way ESA is assessed – removing the admittedly-hated “Work Capability Assessment” in favour of the even-worse Personal Independence Payment assessment – are expected to deprive a million people of the benefits they need to survive.
And benefit sanctions – which have been proved to be useless in getting people with long-term illnesses and disabilities back to work – are to be stepped up, pushing more vulnerable people towards taking their own lives.
As This Writer has stated many times over more than a decade in which I’ve been writing about it, this is genocide by proxy. The government creates conditions that force sick and disabled people to die, and then claims to be totally innocent of causing the deaths.
And it is at a time when these changes are being introduced that bosses of a national, right-wing, newspaper decide to publish an article demonising the sick and disabled (together with other benefit claimants and pensioners).
Going back to Mary Sue‘s “Nazi” motif, everybody know by now (don’t they?) that before World War II the Daily Mail actually supported Hitler’s regime in its articles.
Now it seems to be the Telegraph that has taken up the baton of the fascists.
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Here’s an article that’s well worth reading – but This Site won’t re-publish much of it here because the information has already been covered by Vox Political elsewhere.
For now, let’s limit ourselves to this:
After years of the war on the poor,worsening mental health, increasing mass hunger and suicides, the UK government has announced a further round of attacks. Two measures stand out.
There will be more benefit sanctions, where benefits are stopped if people are deemed to have failed to look for work. This will add to the over 2 million food parcels a year currently needed. It will also push more vulnerable people into taking their own lives.
And the main test for Employment and Support Allowance will be abolished. If this had been done out of a belated recognition of the harm these tests have caused in the lives of millions of people, it would be a good step. It is not. Instead, the feared Work Capability Test will be replaced by something even worse: the kind of test currently used for another benefit – Personal Independence Payment or PIP.
It is notoriously difficult to pass the PIP test, and be awarded benefits, especially if your main disability is a mental health issue.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that 1 million people will be deprived of benefits because of the extension of the PIP test into assessments for ESA.
The scene is being set for all the harm already done by ‘Welfare Reform’ to be added to massively.
We have beaten such changes before and it is entirely possible to do so again.
Expect a new wave of information detailing how that can happen – starting soon.
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Well done to the mainstream media for finally reporting on the case of Errol Graham, nearly five years after he starved to death, having lost his benefits due to a Department for Work and Pensions decision.
And no – that comment is not meant well.
With a little more media attention, it seems likely that the DWP would not have been able to hide information from the Nottingham City Adult Safeguarding Board, whose review of the case, published this week, may now have to be revised.
Disability News Service, which broke the story in 2020, has provided documents that seem to have been withheld by the DWP, and says the Safeguarding Board is now reviewing them alongside its own actions.
The Department for Work and Pensions ignored its own safeguarding advice to deprive Errol Graham of his benefits.
Left with no income, Mr Graham starved to death.
He had been receiving incapacity benefit, and then ESA, for many years as a result of enduring mental distress that had led to him being sectioned.
The DWP stopped Mr Graham’s Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) entitlement – and backdated that decision to the previous month – after making two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended a face-to-face Work Capability Assessment (WCA) on August 31, 2017.
He had not been asked to fill in an ESA50 questionnaire, though. Why not?
The government department managed to stop an ESA payment that had been due to be credited to his bank account on October 17, the same day it made the second unsuccessful safeguarding visit.
Its own rules state that it should have made both safeguarding visits before stopping the benefits of a vulnerable claimant.
Not only that, but the DWP had needed – but failed – to seek further medical evidence from Mr Graham’s GP, in order to make an informed decision about him.
In fact, it seems this would not have made much difference as Mr Graham’s GP had not seen him since 2013, or recalled him for vital blood tests or issued prescriptions since 2015, despite medical conditions including significant, long-term mental distress and hypothyroidism.
Because he had lost his entitlement to ESA, Mr Graham’s housing benefit was also stopped.
When bailiffs knocked down his front door to evict him on June 20, 2018, they found a dead body that weighed just four and a half stone. The only food in the flat was a couple of out-of-date tins of fish.
Mr Graham was 57 years old.
On an ESA form years before, he had told the DWP he could not cope with “unexpected changes”, adding: “Upsets my life completely. Feel under threat and upset…”
He said: “Cannot deal with social situations. Keep myself to myself. Do not engage with strangers. Have no social life. Feel anxiety and panic in new situations.”
So without warning, the DWP flung him into exactly the kind of new – and harrowing – situation that he would be unable to handle.
Now it seems that
An independent safeguarding review into the “shocking and disturbing” events leading to Graham’s tragic and lonely death concluded that multiple failings by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), his GP practice, and social landlord meant that chances to save him were missed.
Describing Graham as a “man in acute mental distress who had shut himself away from the world”, Nottingham City Adult Safeguarding Board said decisions taken by all three agencies had exacerbated his problems towards the end of his life rather than supporting him.
Strange, that. How many years has it been since the DWP and the Tory government in general started insisting that their decisions always support benefit claimants?
That clearly seems to have been untrue. Agreed?
The review said DWP and Nottingham City Homes had failed to understand why Graham did not respond to their letters, texts and home visits, and so did not grasp the extent of his vulnerability when they left him without money, food and on the verge of homelessness.
Although both agencies had followed their own procedures correctly when they took critical decisions to deny Graham of vital services, the review makes clear such procedures were based on “partial information and misconceptions” about why Graham had refused to engage with them.
How did they follow their own procedures correctly? My understanding is that the failed to follow their own safeguarding advice. It was known that he was a vulnerable claimant so, after he failed to attend an appointment, why did the DWP stop his benefit – and backdate the stoppage – before it had carried out the two safeguarding visits it was required to do?
Why hadn’t the DWP sought further medical evidence about him, as required?
It was known that he could not cope with “unexpected changes”, as he had made it clear in an ESA form years before.
Oh… but the DWP never provided that information to the Safeguarding Board. Isn’t that outright dishonesty?
The Safeguarding Board said
A key lesson from Graham’s death was that his refusal to engage with support services did not negate his vulnerability and was not an excuse for inaction on the part of service providers. “Indeed, non-engagement may be a sign of increased vulnerability,” it concluded.
But that wasn’t the problem – in fact, it was the opposite of it. The problem was the refusal of the DWP – and others – to engage with Errol Graham.
In response to the report’s publication earlier this week, the DWP said it acknowledged that the government department had improved its processes since Mr Graham’s death.
But that was based on false information, because the DWP had not been honest with the Safeguarding Board. In fact, one might say it had refused to engage properly.
I wonder how the DWP will respond if the report is changed and a much more negative verdict is returned.
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Smug: Jeremy Hunt’s decision to end the Work Capability Assessment could endanger the lives and well-being of many thousands of sick and disabled people. It isn’t even likely to get more of them into jobs.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s announcement – that the Work Capability Assessment for people claiming long-term sickness benefits is ending – provoked a strong knee-jerk reaction from many of us.
It is good that this tick-box assessment that has led to many thousands of wrong decisions (including in the case of the now-legendary Mrs Mike) is to fall out of use.
But we’re now starting to look at the underlying consequences – and some of them are not good, as a letter to The Guardian has stated:
The WCA has features that it is important to retain. One is the right of appeal to an independent tribunal. By contrast, there is no judicial oversight of decisions about work-related requirements made by work coaches; the new proposals leave claimants at the mercy of Department for Work and Pensions officials with no medical training.
Another is the regulation whereby someone who does not otherwise satisfy the criteria can be exempted from work if there is a substantial risk that working would harm their health. There is no equivalent provision in the rules for personal independence payment (Pip), the disability benefit that would serve as the passport to the health-related top-up.
The government’s proposals leave many questions unaddressed: about people too ill to work who don’t meet the criteria for Pip; people on contributory benefit, rather than universal credit; people with short-term conditions, not covered by Pip. Confusions and omissions abound. I can think of better uses for white paper.
In addition, I am told that the ESA regulations of 2008 included sections 29 and 35, which allowed GPs to deem a patient ‘unfit for work’. That is no longer included in the government’s new proposal.
Put it all together and we see that decisions on whether a person should be seeking work or not are to be removed from anybody with specialist understanding of the issues and denied judicial oversight.
People who may be endangered by being forced to seek, or go to, work will have their future decided by unqualified civil servants and will have no opportunity to seek reconsideration.
This is not an improvement. It is an escalation of the danger to the UK’s most vulnerable people.
Expect many deaths – and when they happen, blame Hunt.
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The role of the Department for Work and Pensions in the death of former Employment and Support Allowance claimant Jodey Whiting is to be examined after the Court of Appeal approved a second inquest.
The decision follows representations by solicitors Leigh Day, and I’ll let them explain:
Jodey’s mother, Joy Dove, has been fighting for five years to have a second inquest into Jodey’s death to examine the role of the DWP.
The Court ruled that it is desirable in the interests of justice for a new inquest to be held to investigate how Jodey came by her death in light of new evidence Joy obtained after the first inquest into Jodey’s death.
The Court found that it was not only desirable for Joy and her family to have an inquest into Jodey’s death at which they could invite a Coroner to make findings about the role of the DWP’s failings in Jodey’s death, but also that the public at large has a “legitimate interest” in this investigation being carried out.
On the specific facts of the case, the Court of Appeal rejected the argument that the DWP owed Jodey a legal obligation to protect her life (within the meaning of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights) under the Human Rights Act.
Jodey took her own life aged 42 on February 21, 2017. She had multiple physical and mental illnesses which left her housebound and entirely reliant on welfare benefits. She died a fortnight after her benefits were terminated because she did not attend a Work Capability Assessment. At the time of the assessment, Jodey was housebound with pneumonia, had been in hospital, and had found out that she had a cyst on the brain.
Since Jodey’s death, her mother, Joy Dove, has fought tirelessly for a second inquest into her death so that the role of the DWP can be examined. The first inquest into Jodey’s death lasted only 37 minutes and the coroner refused to consider the role of the DWP.
In the years since the first inquest, new evidence has come to light, including an investigation into the handling of Jodey’s benefits by the DWP and a report from an independent consultant psychiatrist, who concluded that it is likely Jodey’s mental state would have been substantially affected by the DWP’s failings.
The Court of Appeal judgment notes that it is accepted by the DWP that its failings in Jodey’s case “were extensive, both before and after it stopped her benefits with effect from 7 February 2017.” It went on to explain that the Court’s ruling that the DWP did not owe Jodey a legal obligation under Article 2 is “not to ignore the multiple failings on the part of the Department. The Department accepts that individuals within the Department failed to follow the relevant systems and policies at crucial points.”
The judgment explains that the new evidence which was crucial to the decision to order a new inquest was Dr Turner’s evidence that “Jodey would have experienced shock and distress at the withdrawal of her welfare benefits and that the effect would have been heightened by her current difficulties, her isolation and her pain”. It explains that a new inquest is desirable because it is appropriate for a coroner consider, based on Dr Turner’s evidence, whether it is appropriate to record “any link or connection between the withdrawal of the welfare benefits and her mental state in the period leading up to Jodey’s death”.
It is hoped that a date for the new inquest will be set soon and that the DWP will be made an Interested Person in the inquest. The family hope that the inquest will consider the failings of the DWP, as identified by the independent investigation, and the effects of these failings on Jodey’s mental state, including whether or not the failings more than minimally contributed to Jodey’s death.
Joy Dove said:
“I am so pleased and grateful to the Court of Appeal and I would like to thank the Court of Appeal judges that considered Jodey’s case. We buried Jodey just over six years ago and finally my family and I have the chance of getting justice for Jodey.
“Jodey is never going to be forgotten and her death was not in vain, she’s helping others and her legacy will live on. We have always believed that the DWP wrongly stopping Jodey’s benefits caused her death and the High Court’s refusal caused such disappointment not just for me and my family, but others too who have lost loved ones after DWP mistakes and who continue to fight for accountability from the DWP. This is a victory not just for us but for all those families and others still on the receiving end of awful treatment by the DWP. I hope the DWP learn from their tragic failings.”
“Today’s unanimous ruling from the court of appeal means finally Joy and her family have the opportunity for the role of shocking failings by the DWP in the death of much loved Jodey to be publicly investigated, and the Court of Appeal has rightly underlined the importance of this not just to Jodey’s family, but to the wider public.
“Inquests play a vital role in exposing unsafe practices and risks to future lives, and today’s Judgement, rejecting arguments made by the Coroner and overturning the decision of the High Court, makes it abundantly clear that Coroners can and indeed sometimes should be investigating more than the immediate cause of death regardless of whether the right to life is engaged.”
Joy is represented by Jeremy Hyam KC of 1 Crown Office Row and Jesse Nicholls of Matrix Chambers and her case is funded by legal aid.
Timeline
In late 2016 the DWP began to reassess Jodey’s entitlement to Employment Support Allowance (ESA). Jodey requested a home visit as she rarely left the house due to her health and she made clear in her reply that she had “suicidal thoughts a lot of the time and could not cope with work or looking for work”.
Despite this, the DWP decided that Jodey should attend a work capability assessment in January which Jodey did not attend and on 6 February 2017 the DWP decide to stop the fortnightly ESA payments which Jodey relied on from 17 February.
Jodey with the help of her family wrote to the DWP explaining the severity of her health conditions and asking them to reconsider their decision to terminate her ESA, but this did not happen until after her death.
Jodey also then received letters to inform her that her housing benefit and council tax benefit would be stopped because they were linked to her ESA.
Just three days after her last ESA payment, on the 21 February, Jodey took her own life.
On 24 May 2017 an inquest was held into Jodey’s death at Teesside Coroner’s Court.
Jodey’s family initially wrote to the Attourney General in January 2020 to seek his permission to apply to the High Court for a second inquest.
In June 2021 the DWP was given permission to have a limited role in making submissions to the court about the second inquest application.
In September 2021 the High Court ruled that that the new evidence that had come to light since the first inquest did not require a fresh inquest to be held in the interests of justice.
Joy sought permission to appeal that decision on 1 Oct 2021 but this was refused on 11 October 2021
An application to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal was submitted on 2 November 2021 and permission was granted on 5 October 2022
So: no date for the new inquest – yet. This Site will try to keep you informed.
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Uncannily accurate: The Conservative government’s genuine policy towards PIP claimants may as well have been as it appears in this cartoon from 2017. But what will replace the assessment system it satirises?
I should be pleased.
This Site has campaigned against the Work Capability Assessment for sickness and disability benefits, practically since I started publishing it at the end of 2011.
In my opinion, it has been misused, as a tool to force people who are too ill to work onto job-seeking benefits that carry sanctions if a claimant fails to carry out particular tasks – tasks which the long-term sick and disabled are often clearly incapable of doing.
In many cases, the results have been fatal. I know this because it took me two years to force the Department for Work and Pensions to release figures showing that 2,400 people died within a limited period (two weeks) after being found fit for work, between dates in 2011 and 2014.
That’s right – these people had been found fit to go to work by this hopelessly flawed tick-box assessment system, and then they had proven themselves to be nothing of the sort.
And the Tory government carried on as though nothing was wrong.
I also have personal experience of the system’s flaws. After my partner – Mrs Mike; remember her? – was wrongly put in the work-related activity group for Employment and Support Allowance, she appealed in the hope of being relocated to the support group.
Instead, whoever received her letter slapped a “Do Not Contact” tag on her file for no discernible reason and allowed her claim to end after 12 months, while she waited – in considerable confusion and distress – for a response that was never going to come.
Fortunately, I was around to kick up a stink and get the situation sorted out. But that just highlights the fact that many thousands of people don’t have that kind of help at hand.
And now, we’re told, the Work Capability Assessment is to be scrapped.
But we’re not being told what will replace it.
This Independent article has comments from a couple of organisations that have a stake in what happens:
Trades Union Congress general secretary Paul Novak [said:] “Scrapping the work capability assessment will be welcome if it means an end to assessments that cause anxiety instead of helping people achieve their aspirations,” he added, while urging greater investment in public services to get people off NHS waiting lists and reduce barriers to training.
James Taylor of the disability equality charity Scope said axing the assessment was “the minimum change needed to even begin improving a welfare system that regularly fails disabled people”, and stressed the need for “a more person-centred system” offering “specialist, tailored and flexible” support.
“Those that want to work should be supported. But for some, that’s not an option and disabled people shouldn’t be forced into unsuitable work,” he said. “There is a lot of work to do for the government to restore trust in our benefits system.”
Notice that they both mentioned ways of getting more people back into work; this is Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s aim with the changes to the benefit system.
And that’s why I fear for the future of sickness and disability benefits in the UK.
I think the odious Hunt is planning another push to put sick people into jobs they can’t do. If I’m right, his plan will fail on many levels.
Is Labour actually trolling people on long-term sickness and disability benefits?
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth has given a speech about “encouraging” people with medical conditions off state benefits and into work – at the Centre for Social Justice, the think tank founded by Iain Duncan Smith, the former WP secretary whose ‘reforms’ are believed to have killed off thousands of sick and disabled people.
He said Labour would abolish the requirement for claimants to re-take the hated Work Capability Assessment if they take a job that doesn’t work out for them and have to quit.
A Labour government would let them return to claiming benefits without reassessment if they do so within a year.
That’s all very well – but how much pressure would a Labour government pile on people claiming those benefits, to take jobs in the first place?
Notice there are no comments from anybody representing disabled people or those with long-term illnesses.
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Habitual cruelty: if you thought the Tories stopped persecuting people with long-term illnesses and disabilities during the Covid-19 crisis, think again.
The Department for Work and Pensions has had an easy time of it from the media over the past few years, partly because of the Covid-19 crisis.
And this is surprising because the DWP’s behaviour during that crisis has not covered it in glory.
As many thousands of working people suddenly found themselves claiming Universal Credit in order to make ends meet, they were granted a (temporary) £20-per-week uprating to keep them sweet and make them think UC is a fair benefit for people on low incomes.
People on so-called ‘legacy’ benefits like Employment and Support Allowance didn’t get the uprating.
Some of them grouped together to challenge the deliberate omission in the courts – which dismissed their case last year.
But they were back at the High Court on Wednesday (December 7, 2022) for an appeal. Here‘s The Canary:
If successful, the case could be worth up to £1,500 to every legacy benefit claimant. The court livestreamed the appeal, which you can watch by clicking through to YouTube here.
Claimants have been forced to take the DWP to courtnumeroustimes in recent years. Invariably, these cases have seen people fighting for their basic rights.
The Canary has witnessed first hand in recent years chronically ill and disabled people, and non-working social security claimants, having to fight the DWP – the government department charged with allegedly supporting their welfare. It’s perverse that they have to battle the department for their fundamental rights in the first place. However, this is indicative of a system where their treatment as second-class citizens is entrenched.
Meanwhile, members of the PCS Union who work at the DWP are striking from December 19-31 – because they want more pay. The irony is striking.
That being said, it would be wrong to suggest that working people should not be paid enough to make ends meet. If they don’t have that, they should be awarded it. That should go without saying but in a Tory-run UK we can’t count on it any more.
This Writer only wishes that those DWP employees would have the presence of mind to realise that it is hypocritical to complain about having too little to survive after having denied it to people with long-term illnesses and disabilities for so many years.
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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