Tag Archives: Disability Living Allowance

Tories launch court battle to strip severely disabled people of sorely-needed benefits

How can the Tories justify their determination to retain the discredited Universal Credit ‘benefit’ when the courts have ruled that it deliberately makes disabled people worse-off?

Not only that, but the courts also ruled that the Tory government lied to benefit claimants when they were told they wouldn’t lose money.

Judges ruled that the uneven rollout of Universal Credit makes the benefit system a postcode lottery, with people moving into areas with the new system likely to be seriously disadvantaged.

And – possibly worst of all – why are the Tories determined to waste public money appealing against those rulings in court when it is clear that, in legal terms, they don’t have a leg to stand on?

That is what the Tories are doing to two disabled men – known only as TP and AR.

They had been forced onto Universal Credit when they moved into a local authority area where the new system had been rolled out.

This meant they lost out on the Severe Disability Premium (SDP) and Enhanced Disability Premium (EDP), leaving them suddenly around £180 a month out-of-pocket, despite being repeatedly assured they would not be worse off.

A High Court judge found that this was unlawful because those that moved to a different local authority area were being treated differently to those who moved within their local authority area – the Tory government had created a postcode lottery.

Take note of this:

The judgment in this first case described a “striking” lack of evidence from the [then-] Secretary of State that she had understood or considered the far-reaching consequences for severely disabled people who moved into a different local authority and would be forced onto Universal Credit.

As a result of the case, the Tory government proposed that those who had already moved onto Universal Credit would receive transitional top-up payments – but at a rate of £80 per month rather than the £180 per month they had actually lost.

TP and AR again took the Tories to court, arguing that short-changing them was unlawful as they were being unjustifiably treated differently to those who had not moved onto to Universal Credit and would continue to receive the full amount of SDP and EDP. The High Court again found in their favour.

And now the Tory government is appealing against both decisions.

Rather than accept the self-evident facts that their flagship “benefit” system is deliberately depriving severely disabled people of the money they need simply to survive – and rectify the change…

The Tories are demanding that the courts rubber-stamp this act of governmental daylight robbery.

And they are currently campaigning to win a general election, with a claim that they will solve problems with Universal Credit, when in fact they are actively trying to make it worse.

These are all excellent reasons to vote Labour – that party will abolish Universal Credit once and for all.

Source: Court of Appeal to hear two Universal Credit claims

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Disabled mother wins two-year PIP benefit battle. What happens to those who can’t appeal?

Uncannily accurate: The Conservative government’s genuine policy towards PIP claimants may as well be as it appears in this cartoon from 2017.

How do people survive for up to two years while they are fighting the Conservative-run Department for Work and Pensions’s cruel decision to cancel their disability benefits?

That’s what This Writer wants to know.

Maureen Ringland was lucky enough to have friends who helped her out – and who will be paid back with appropriate portions of the £13,000 payout she has received.

This is a woman with severe autism, Reynaud’s Disease and Hypohidrosis – the last of which may cause hyperthermia, heatstroke and death. Her condition means she cannot cope with simple daily tasks.

But when she was tested for Personal Independence Payment in 2017, she was told her £83 per week daily care allowance and £58 per week mobility allowance was cancelled.

She had to go through the DWP’s immensely convoluted procedure for challenging adverse benefit decisions – first a request for a “mandatory reconsideration”, then an appeal before a tribunal.

It was two years before the government department relented, reinstated and backdated her PIP.

The DWP has claimed the decision was reversed because the family submitted new information.

But this is a transparent excuse; when anyone appeals against a disability benefit decision, they include as much information as possible. This may include medical details from their GP or a specialist doctor, for example, including the kind of details that they may not have believed was necessary when they submitted their original application.

When Mrs Mike was transferred from DLA to PIP last year, I recall we included everything but the kitchen sink (as the saying goes), with this in mind.

We may conclude that the DWP tried to cancel the money this grandmother needed to survive, in the belief that she would not be able to challenge the decision; either she would not be able to gather and provide the necessary information to mount a challenge, or her debts would mount to such a degree that she would have to abandon her claim.

That has not happened, it seems, because she has a capable husband and friends who were able to support her financially.

Few people can say the same.

In its own comments on the case, the DWP pointed out that only five per cent of PIP refusals have been overturned by a tribunal.

What the department’s spokespeople do not say is that those five per cent also total 65 per cent of appeals that have been made.

All in all, an extraordinary 70 per cent of social security appeals are successful.

But only 10 per cent of PIP decisions are appealed – and 56 per cent of new claims, together with 28 per cent of claims by people who have been transferred from Disability Living Allowance, are refused.

With 1,542,000 reassessed DLA claims and 2,649,000 new claims handled between its inception and March 2019 (the most up-to-date figures available to This Writer), and 175,000 in progress, that leaves 1,585,000 rejections uncontested.

What happens to those people?

Source: Disabled mum wins £13k payout after two-year benefits battle

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Labour will hold an inquiry into all the benefit-related deaths overseen by Tories. VOTE LABOUR

Bring out your dead: This is how it has felt under the Conservative (and Liberal Democrat) governments since 2010. The death toll has been colossal. It is long past time the authorities who inflicted an early death on vulnerable, sick and disabled people were brought to justice. Labour has announced an intention to do so.

At least 130,000 people have died as a result of victimisation by the Department for Work and Pensions – on the orders of the Conservative government (helped by the Liberal Democrats during the Coalition).

That is the bare minimum as the Conservatives no longer respond to Freedom of Information requests on the subject and those responses we have are incomplete.

I have been writing about the deaths incurred as a result of Tory/DWP benefit denial, practically since I started This Site nearly eight years ago.

I knew there was never any prospect of an inquiry under a Conservative government – and to be honest, I despaired of seeing Labour promise it until Jeremy Corbyn was installed as leader. Remember when Rachel Reeves was shadow Work and Pensions secretary? Dark days!

It must be obvious that I’m leading up to this:

“A Labour government would set up an independent inquiry into the deaths of disabled benefit claimants linked to the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its private sector contractors.”

The details are on the Disability News Service website and, by all means visit and read them.

But they don’t really matter.

Under Labour, we may finally find out the real death toll – although I warn you now, it will probably be horrifying.

Under Labour, we might just be able to see those responsible for this years-long atrocity brought to justice.

So if you don’t have any other reason to support Labour, do it for this.

The families and friends of the dead need this.

Vote Labour for justice.

Source: Election 2019: Labour pledges inquiry into seven years of DWP benefit deaths – Disability News Service

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How Tories have fun: Trying to starve and evict a disabled man

Christopher Brasil: The Conservative-run Department for Work and Pensions fabricated reasons to cut off his benefits and have him thrown out of his home, it seems.

This story tells you all you need to know about the benefit system under the Conservative government:

Rachael is right. The story of Christopher Brasil illustrates every cruelty that the Conservative government can inflict on you – and I mean you, because it could happen to anybody, given the fact that the trigger was an accident, and we can all be prey to them.

Check out the details, according to iNews:

Mr Brasil was a lorry driver for 30 years, until he fractured his hip after he was hit by bicycle four years ago. The incident left him relying on walking sticks, and diabetes caused his eyesight to deteriorate, so the DVLA revoked his heavy goods vehicle licence and his employers dismissed him on grounds of ill health.

Now, suffering from blurred vision, vertigo, poor hearing and epilepsy, he says he is “unemployable”.

But the Department for Work and Pensions disagreed.

After three years in which he claimed first Disability Living Allowance and then Employment and Support Allowance, the DWP started messing with Mr Brasil.

First, Job Centre advisors lost his sick note and stopped his payments for four weeks. He says he brought it to the office in January, when staff took it off him and said they faxed it to someone else. But then he was told he had not provided it; it was not recorded on their systems. They imposed a four-week sanction.

The lesson for all benefit claimants who need to hand in sick notes to prove benefit entitlement is: Get a receipt for them, signed by the staff member you are booked to see.

One month later, he was made to take a work capability assessment, told he was fit for work and ordered to claim Jobseekers’ Allowance.

He said the assessment report was “blatant lies.” It said he attended the assessment on his own, but he was with a social worker from a charity. In addition, they report said he did not use walking sticks and was fit and capable.

Then he was told Universal Credit was being rolled out in his area and he was switched to it. This meant he was forced to endure the standard five-week wait for the first payment – meaning Mr Brasil was left without payments for a total of two months.

That is when Mr Brasil, who lives alone and has no family, was forced to go to a soup kitchen and food bank. With his gas and electricity cut off, he had taken out a credit card and considered resorting to pay day loans.

Finally, after his Universal Credit claim began in September, Mr Brasil was told he was no longer entitled to housing benefit. He ran up rent arrears and was served with an eviction notice.

Who’s going to tell me all that is purely accidental?

I think this man was targeted. His sick note was deliberately mislaid; his work capability assessment was deliberately rigged.

The intention was to torment him. It didn’t matter whether he became homeless, starved, succumbed to his illnesses or became suicidal and tried (or succeeded) in killing himself as a result (see this article for information on how this can happen).

The comment the DWP provided is formulaic rubbish. I doubt if anybody checked the details of Mr Brasil’s case; they certainly would not have spoken about it or admitted any wrongdoing.

I wonder, though – what was the name of the Job Centre advisor who took Mr Brasil’s sick note in January? What did they do with that sick note? And can either of them be traced?

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Let’s find out the facts about people who have died under benefit sanction

“Dear DWP…

“I am writing to request information regarding people on benefit and under sanction. If the information is available, please indicate where I may find it. If the information is not currently available to the public, please consider this a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

“Is it possible to see month-by-month details (from May 2010 onwards, where applicable) of the number of people on Jobseekers’ Allowance, Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Incapacity Benefit (until it was discontinued), Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payment, satisfying the following criteria:

  • The total number of people on the individual benefits in each month?
  • The number who have died during each month?
  • The number under sanction during each month?
  • The number who died while under sanction during each month?

“I shall look forward to your response.”

I sent the above FoI request today (September 10), so we can probably expect the first evasion attempt in early October.

No doubt any answer will be accompanied by a claim that correlation between a sanction and a death does not imply causation.

Perhaps not, but any such correlation does imply that investigation is required to ascertain the exact cause.

So, depending on the reply, you can tell what my next step will be.


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Conservatives value BRIEFCASES more than human lives

The red boxes resemble the one carried by Chancellor Philip Hammond on Budget day [Image: Philip Coburn/Daily Mirror].


The state of this.

Conservative ministers have spent more than £400,000 having their ministerial red boxes chauffeur-driven around Whitehall, according to figures gained via a Freedom of Information request.

Meanwhile our news media remain full of stories of people dying because the Tories refused to pay the state benefits they are legally owed.

This Site reported the latest tragic story last week, when it was revealed that a woman had killed herself after the Department for Work and Pensions cancelled her autistic son’s Disability Living Allowance, forced him onto the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and then disallowed his claim.

In the 2016-17 financial year, the cost of chauffeur-driven boxes was more than £44,000 – enough to pay for how many people’s PIP entitlement? Seven? Eight?

Valerie Grant might still be alive if only ministers could be bothered to carry their luggage around with them.

Ministers have sparked fury by spending £400,000 having their briefcases chauffeured around Whitehall.

The “wasteful” journeys carried no passengers – just the red boxes ministers use to carry their paperwork.

The huge cost comes despite a Tory pledge to get rid of red boxes, which are filled with civil service briefing papers and documents.

Before becoming prime minister, David Cameron vowed in 2009 to end “politicians swanning around in chauffeur-driven cars like they’re the royal family”.

[But] the annual cost is rising.

In the six years since the then coalition Government promised a crackdown on wasteful spending, almost £400,000 has been spent on the practice.

The actual spending could be far higher than declared. The figures released by the Government only relate to bookings made directly to the Government Car Service (GCS).

Ministers also have access to 20 pool cars stationed around Westminster, and they could be used for red box movements.

Read more: Fury as Tory ministers spend £400,000 getting chauffeurs… for their briefcases


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Yes, Iain Duncan Smith – Vox Political HAS accused you of ‘outrageous action’. PROVE US WRONG

Iain Duncan Smith can’t prove us wrong. He deliberately refuses to collect the statistics that would confirm his claims – or ours.

Instead, he has claimed that This Blog (and presumably others) has accused him of “outrageous action”, without providing a scrap of evidence against the allegation.

This Writer is delighted that the Gentleman Ranker has tried to defend himself. I am currently working on a book covering this subject and his words may provide an excellent introduction.

The man we like to call RTU (Return To Unit – a Forces description of someone who trained to be an officer but was a washout) was responding to a request for information from Frank Field, chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee.

Mr Field had asked what data the DWP collects on the deaths of benefit claimants, in an attempt to find out whether there is any link between the work capability assessment (WCA) – carried out on claimants of Employment and Support Allowance and the Personal Independent Payment – and suicide, self-harm and mental ill-health.

The issue had been raised in research by Oxford University and Liverpool University entitled First Do No Harm.

This Blog reported on that document’s findings here – and you would be well-advised to refresh your memory of that article before you see the Secretary-in-a-State’s comments.

You should also read Vox Political‘s follow-up article in which a response from the Department for Work and Pensions – attempting to deny the research findings – is comprehensively disproved.

Iain Duncan Smith started writing his letter without a leg to stand on. Here it is – read it for yourself and see if you have any sympathy for his attitude.

Note that he admits the DWP has a “duty of care” to benefit claimants. It has taken years to get him to admit this and it will be very important if – for example – corporate manslaughter charges arise in the future.

Where he says the report’s authors admitted there was no evidence of a “causal link” between the WCA and suicide, he is of course being disingenuous. Iain Duncan Smith would not be satisfied with any evidence other than coroners’ findings that all 590 suicides mentioned by the report were attributed by the perpetrators to the work capability assessment. That was never going to happen.

But the report did examine other causes and eliminated them. While it states there is no direct evidence of a causal link between the WCA and suicide, the deaths certainly aren’t linked to any other cause.

Note also, Duncan Smith’s claim that the lack of a causal link was not reported in the media is not true.

The comment that there is no evidence the people with mental health problems underwent a WCA is covered in This Blog’s follow-up article, but for clarity I’ll repeat it here:

“Jonathan Portes of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) told This Writer that… the DWP’s response ‘reflects a basic misunderstanding of how you do this sort of analysis! Looking at WCA cases would be precisely wrong. You need to be able to control for selection – to do that here, [you] need to look at [the] whole population.

“’Let’s try [an] example. Does Coke make you fat? You can’t just look at people who drink coke & ask if they’re fatter, but if in areas where Coke [is]cheap, [and] people [are] on average fatter, *controlling for everything else*, that does tell you something.’

“So, in order to ensure that the correct cause is ascribed to any particular effect, those who carried out the study had to examine the health of the population as a whole, and eliminate elements that could relate to everybody, rather than just those who took the work capability assessment. They needed to rule out “unobserved confounding” – unseen elements contributing to the results.”

And that is precisely what they did.

Duncan Smith’s assertion that being sent back to work can “promote and protect health, and also reverse the harmful effects of long-term unemployment or prolonged sickness absence” is only accurate if the person doing the work is healthy enough for it – and, by definition, may not be applied to those whose mental ill-health has driven them to suicide.

Inaccurate WCA findings that claimants are “fit for work” or may be “fit for work” within a year of their assessment also mean that many ESA claimants will be sent back into the job market before they are healthy enough. In these cases, there can only be one result: Being sent back to work will make their health worse.

Of course it will; there is a reason they stopped working and claimed ESA in the first place. If that reason still applies, then sending them back to work can only have one result.

Anyone wanting to suggest that a large number of ESA claimants are committing fraud in order to avoid work should remind themselves of the facts: While a TUC survey has shown people think 27 per cent of the ‘welfare’ budget is claimed fraudulently, the government’s own figure is just 0.7 per cent. For ESA claimants it reduces even further, to 0.4 per cent. That’s one person out of 250, rather than roughly one in four – a big difference, especially when one considers the effect on their health of sending an ill person back to work prematurely, as Iain Duncan Smith appears to be advocating.

And then there is this:

160211IDSnote-outrageousaction

The handwriting is appalling so This Writer will try to translate: “NB: There are some out there in the media and social media who have used raw figures to accuse the govt of outrageous [sic] action. I would hope that the committee would not seek to follow suit. I note that having introduced the ESA and the WCA, the Labour Party now seeks to attack it as though they had nothing to do with it. Surely the committee should seek to recognise the good intent of those engaged in this difficult area.”

Those engaged in this area have no good intent whatsoever – let’s get that clear from the start. Their intentions are well-covered in previous articles on This Blog, which I will forward to Frank Field and his committee.

As for “some out there in the media and social media who… accuse the government of outrageous action” – I think he means me.

How nice to have official recognition and how clever of him to describe his own behaviour accurately.

Outrageous action? That’s exactly right.

Iain Duncan Smith’s department practises ‘chequebook euthanasia’ – WCA assessors use psychological ‘nudge’ techniques to push the mentally-ill towards suicide in order to reduce the “burden” on society caused by these “useless eaters”.

Even Frank Field – chairman of the work and pensions committee who contacted Iain Duncan Smith over the Oxford University and Liverpool University allegations – has raised concerns about this behaviour:

zTerminal

It is outrageous.

Even more outrageous is the fact that Iain Duncan Smith is trying to deny it.

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Latest benefit-related suicide – DWP excused as coroner claims errors were breach of procedure, not duty

151212DPACStephenSmith

Oh, so the DWP shouldn’t be blamed for causing Stephen Smith’s deaths because it breached procedure, rather than breaching its legal duty, did it?

What filthy rubbish, from a man who should know better.

Perhaps assistant coroner Nigel Parsley should read up on the DWP’s recent history of such ‘errors’ and see if, perhaps, he can discern a pattern there?

Possibly a target-related pattern?

How many of these deaths need to take place before people like Parsley accept that there is a purpose behind them?

Until he does, the only thing he has achieved with his mealy-mouthed apologism is providing Iain Duncan Smith an excuse for his appalling death count.

A 50-year-old man from Leiston with a history of anxiety took his own life after changes to his benefits left him unable to cope, an inquest heard yesterday.

Stephen Smith, of Seaward Avenue, took his own life on January 17 this year, following a long period of mental health problems.

Changes to the benefits system in June last year meant that Mr Smith was invited to submit a Personal Independent Payment (PIP) claim, as his disability allowance was about to expire.

But after the Department of Work and Pensions ruled that he was ineligible, Mr Smith and his partner Lucy Stewart, who was also on benefits relating to a learning disability, saw their weekly total cut by £137.55, and left the 50-year-old in depair over his financial situation.

However, a follow-up call from the DWP explaining its decision did not take place, prompting Mr Smith to send a formal letter to reconsider the assessment in November with the help of the Disability Advice Centre..

A second error at the DWP in December resulted in Mr Smith’s details being updated, before his appeal was mistakenly closed down before it had been labelled for reconsideration. The DWP in its statement said it admitted that errors had been made.

At the inquest in IP-City Centre Ipswich yesterday, Miss Stewart’s father David said the ensuing anxiety and reduced payments were the triggers for Mr Smith’s suicide.

Assistant coroner Nigel Parsley … recorded that Mr Smith had taken his own life.

Mr Parsley added that while the DWP had admitted to errors, they were mistakes in procedure and were not a breach of its legal duty.

Source: Leiston man, 50, died after being unable to cope with changes to benefits – News – East Anglian Daily Times

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Government knew about rise in mental illness long before this week’s study – but won’t talk about it

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign]

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign]


Yesterday (Wednesday), This Writer learned two new things about the new university study that has found 590 people committed suicide between 2010-13 after taking work capability assessments (actually, one was a reminder of something I’d forgotten):

The study found that, for every 10,000 people undergoing a work capability assessment for sickness or disability benefits in those years, 7,020 were prescribed anti-depressant drugs afterwards, 2,700 reported to their GPs with mental health issues, and six committed suicide.

The reminder came from a Vox Political commenter and was that the DWP already knew there had been a huge increase in the number of benefit claimants with mental health disorders.

According to the Express, of all places: “In 2010 just 221,000 with mental disorders were in receipt of out of work benefits. But official statistics show the figure leapt to 861,000 last year [2013] – a rise of 289 per cent.

“Those with conditions like bipolar disorder, severe depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia now account for 46 per cent of those paid Employment and Support Allowance.”

So the increase of 279,000 people with mental health problems, added to the 221,000 who were on benefit in 2010, gives us half a million people – easily within the 861,000 total for ESA alone.

So figures that were published by the DWP itself totally support the new study.

The second new thing was that the Conservative Government doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

Debbie Abrahams, shadow minister for the disabled, tried to ask an urgent question about the new study in the House of Commons on Tuesday (November 17) but was refused permission. So she made a point of order, asking the Speaker, John Bercow, how she could get the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, to make an early statement on the subject.

Again, she was rebuffed – Bercow told her to table a written question and “if she remains unhappy with the answers—or, as she sees it, the lack of answers—she can try again to deploy the mechanism of an urgent question”.

There might be a justification for not answering if the study had only revealed the extent of mental illnesses, which was known.

But there is the matter of the 590 suicides. Is the work capability assessment driving people to their deaths?

People killing themselves as a direct result of the work capability assessment – as the study indicates – is a serious issue, especially for a government that is still – increasingly desperately – clinging to claims that it is not possible to show that the WCA causes people to die, in any way.

And nobody at the DWP wants to talk about it.

Thomas More once stated: “The maxim is ‘Qui tacet consentit’: the maxim of the law is ‘Silence gives consent’. If therefore you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented.”

Let’s have that question again: Is the work capability assessment driving people to their deaths?

The DWP is silent.

Silence gives consent.

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590 suicides: DWP denial is wrong – or an attempt to hide the facts

[Image: www.disabledgo.com]

[Image: www.disabledgo.com]

Nobody should have been surprised by the Department for Work and Pensions’ response to the revelation that suicide and mental illness soared in roughly equal measure to the amount of work capability assessments taking place, between 2010 and 2013.

As predicted on This Blog yesterday evening, a spokesperson said: “The authors themselves caution that no conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.”

But this is interesting: “It is concerning that they provide no evidence that the people with mental health problems highlighted in the report even underwent a Work Capability Assessment.”

No, they didn’t – but there were several factors affecting this: Firstly, the availability of accurate information, and secondly, whether this was a study that needed to focus exclusively on benefit claimants.

Professor Louis Appleby, a government adviser on suicide and mental health, thinks it was. He tweeted: “True figure for suicide linked to WCA likely to be less than in today’s study: could work out exact number if DWP gave access to individual cases.”

But we don’t have access to individual cases. The DWP has made it abundantly clear that Conservative Government ministers have deliberately chosen not to record medical information such as the cause of a claimant’s death – and in any case (again by deliberate choice), no effort has been made to keep track of claimants whose benefit claim has been halted.

It would, therefore, be pointless to rely on information from the DWP!

But Jonathan Portes of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) told This Writer that, in any case, the DWP’s response “reflects a basic misunderstanding of how you do this sort of analysis! Looking at WCA cases would be precisely wrong. You need to be able to control for selection – to do that here, [you] need to look at [the] whole population.

“Let’s try [an] example. Does Coke make you fat? You can’t just look at people who drink coke & ask if they’re fatter, but if in areas where Coke [is]cheap, [and] people [are] on average fatter, *controlling for everything else*, that does tell you something.”

So, in order to ensure that the correct cause is ascribed to any particular effect, those who carried out the study had to examine the health of the population as a whole, and eliminate elements that could relate to everybody, rather than just those who took the work capability assessment. They needed to rule out “unobserved confounding” – unseen elements contributing to the results.

Is that what happened?

Here’s what the study’s authors had to say: “We found no significant association between the reassessment rate and trends in self-reported mental health problems and suicides in the over 65-year-old population, (ie, people over retirement age and therefore not subject to the WCA reassessment process).

“We also found no association with trends in heart conditions in the working age population, or trends in prescribing of cardiovascular drugs (ie, health conditions that would not plausibly be affected by the WCA reassessment process, in the short term at least).

“These test results suggest that the observed association between the reassessment process and mental health outcomes in the working-age population is not due to unobserved confounding.”

That comment would not have been possible if the study had focused on benefit claimants exclusively, and not the general population.

The study was subjected to further tests, though: “As our main analysis was based on aggregate data, it is possible that changes in composition of these populations could explain the results. To explore this further we analysed individual level data from the Labour Force Survey in a multilevel model, further controlling for a number of individual characteristics including age and sex, labour market status (employed, unemployed and inactive), number of physical chronic illnesses and level of education. This analysis gave very similar results as that based on aggregate data.

“In additional analysis we also controlled for differential trends by the level of rurality in each area and trends in initial assessments for out-of-work disability benefits and found these did not change our results.”

So – in the words of Mr Portes, “controlling for everything else” – the study produced the same increase in antidepressant prescribing, mental illness and suicide, indicating that the significance of these rises was that they coincided with the imposition of the work capability assessment on benefit claimants.

In This Writer’s opinion, the DWP comment was a rather desperate attempt at ass-covering. Ministers had believed they had eliminated any way of relating their flawed, tick-box assessment – which takes no account of medical conditions in establishing whether a person is fit for work, remember – with the deaths or suicides of claimants. Now they have discovered that they were mistaken.

Again we come back to the issue of freedom of information. All the way down the line, the facts about the effects of these tests have been deliberately hidden from the public by a government that is happy to remove our privacy and tell us, “If you’ve nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

What is the Conservative Government afraid we’ll discover?

Perhaps now is the time to demand a full inquiry into the practical results of the work capability assessment regime…

An inquiry to be followed by criminal prosecutions.

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