The ballot box: why does the government want to make voting a health hazard for people who are already sick and/or disabled?
Sick and disabled people and/or their carers may be endangered by the Tory government’s new “Voter ID” demands, which require them to take off their face masks and be (potentially) exposed to Covid-19.
Take a look at this tweeted question to the Electoral Commission, and the response it triggered:
Hello, if you wear a face covering for any reason, you will be asked to remove it so polling station staff can check your ID looks like you. If you have any questions you may wish to contact your Returning Officer. Find out more: https://t.co/kJmbB4eh0R
— Electoral Commission (@ElectoralCommUK) April 19, 2023
Representatives of sick and disabled people have responded strongly:
The Electoral Commission confirm that even extremely clinically vulnerable and disabled people will have to remove their face masks if voting in person. We will be asking them for their EEA and to issue guidance that ID checks are done outside for CV people. https://t.co/3q9O8xgw8Z
— Buckinghamshire Disability Service BuDS (@BuDs_UK) April 19, 2023
So clinically vulnerable people may ask for their identity to be checked in the open air. But they still have to take their masks off.
Some of them are going to be put off voting by this stricture – and that means the new “Voter ID” rules are disenfranchising UK citizens:
If this election was being used to pilot “Voter ID”, then it might be understandable, but it has been tested several times already and this sort of problem should have been cleared up. One can only surmise that the discrimination against the sick and disabled is intentional.
Is it worth demanding change from the Electoral Commission, or the government?
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Anybody who hands their personal information to a third party – a company, a club, a political party, the government or whoever – may see that data handed out to others or made public, with no way of seeking legal redress, according to the finding of a court case today.
And Labour members going through the party’s complaints procedure are still unlikely to get justice, even after the party promised to follow recommendations by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
These are the inevitable conclusions drawn from the verdict in This Writer’s court case, in which I accused the Labour Party of breach of contract.
I had said that Labour had failed to follow its own procedures for investigating complaints against party members after an allegation of anti-Semitism was made against me in 2017.
And I had said that a party official – or several – had leaked information, including lies, about me to the press while I was going through that process, in breach of the Data Protection Act.
Both of those claims were found to be accurate.
But in the hearing this afternoon, Deputy District Judge Whiteley said he could not uphold my case against Labour because the party’s Rule Book does not say that it must follow the procedures it has created to investigate complaints, or that it must adhere to the DPA.
That’s right. Unless an organisation’s rules specifically state that it will adhere to the Data Protection Act, then there are loopholes in the law – large enough to drive a lorry through – that mean your personal information can be passed on to anybody at all, regardless of your own wishes.
In this case, I had said somebody within the Labour Party had passed information that I had been accused of anti-Semitism to the Western Mail in 2017, and a Labour employee (I don’t know whether it was the same person) had passed false information about the allegations against me to The Sunday Times in February 2018. I said this breached the Data Protection Act because information about me had been passed on without my permission.
But Labour said that the party itself had not authorised the leak and that it had been unable to identify that anybody within its system had caused it. The party could not deny that the leak came from within Labour because the information had been generated as part of its complaint process and could only, therefore, have come from Labour.
The law states that an unincorporated association (which is how Labour is defined for legal purposes) is responsible for prohibited conduct carried out by its employees and agents against members and prospective members. Breaching the DPA would count as such.
But it also states that an association would not be legally responsible for the act of an employee that was not carried out in the course of their employment – and the court deemed that leaking information was not an act carried out in the course of their employment.
This means that any organisation that has your personal information may pass it on indescriminately – to anybody it likes, no matter what the Data Protection Act says or how avidly it states it adheres to that law, because anybody working there can follow the actions of Labour’s employee(s) and know they will get away with it.
So if you have provided your information to any third party at all, it is not safe.
Nor will it be safe until our lawmakers find a way to close this loophole in the law. They will not even consider doing so unless they are pressured into it. That will be your responsibility.
The judge also said that Labour had not breached its contract with me by failing to investigate the complaint against me according to its own procedures, because those procedures were not enshrined in the party’s Rule Book and therefore it had no obligation to follow them.
Labour leader Keir Starmer has announced that the party will follow the recommendations of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, whose report on anti-Semitism in the party contains a chapter on the failings of the process by which complaints are investigated.
The EHRC recommended that Labour should “publish a comprehensive policy and procedure, setting out how antisemitism complaints will be handled and how decisions on them will be made”.
It says the party should “develop and implement comprehensive internal guidance for all stages of the antisemitism complaints process”.
None of this means a damned thing because anybody challenging a failure by the party to follow its procedures will find that it has no obligation to do so; they are merely procedures, not rules.
Consider the way current complaints procedures have been flouted wholesale recently – not just over the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn but over complaints against allies of Starmer who have been accused of anti-Semitism – and against Starmer himself.
It seems clear that the Labour Party Rule Book is not worth the paper it is printed on – or the electricity required to put it on your screen.
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The Labour Party discriminated against people who had been accused of anti-Semitism in a majority of its investigations, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found.
The report states: “Overall, we identified concerns about fairness to the respondent in 42 of the 70 sample files.” That’s 60 per cent of the cases the EHRC investigated.
Part 6 of the report covers “Serious failings in the antisemitism complaints handling system” – and This Writer can confirm the validity of its findings because I suffered many (if not all) of them while Labour was investigating – if we can call it that – a complaint against me.
To me, these findings indicate not only that the accusations against me were false but that the process of investigation was perverted in order to generate a false finding against me.
The report states that “the Labour Party has failed to publish a clear and comprehensive complaints or disciplinary policy or procedure” – now, in 2020 – despite the fact that “this failing was identified by the Chakrabarti report in 2016”.
It continues: “The Labour Party’s Rule Book has a high-level section on disciplinary measures by the National Executive Committee (NEC), and a more detailed appendix of procedural guidelines in disciplinary cases before the National Constitutional Committee (NCC). However, it does not include any procedural guidelines or information on antisemitism complaint handling. For example, there is no information on the different procedural stages of an antisemitism complaint.”
This is what I found when building my court case against the party for breach of contract (I said it had broken its own rules in the investigation against me): to find the procedures that should have been followed at the time of my investigation (but weren’t) I had to go to a document published online by the Huffington Post, in a report on how they were to be changed.
The EHRC report goes on to discuss a “lack of clear and fair process for respondents”. It states: “In 2017, the NEC Organisational Committee identified principles for disciplinary processes. This included that anyone accused of a disciplinary breach should be made aware of the nature of that breach in a ‘timely fashion’, and that NEC guidance notes should be drafted to ‘advise any persons under investigation of their rights and responsibilities’.”
I can assure you that this did not happen to me. The letter of suspension I received from Sam Matthews did not mention any rights that I may have had in the matter, and the only reference to the nature of the breach was the fact that the Campaign Against Antisemitism had published an article accusing me of anti-Semitism. I was never told the nature of the actual charges against me during the course of the investigation that took place between May 2017 and January 2018. When I finally got to see them in July that year – in the run-up to my hearing before the National Constitutional Committee – none of the claims in the CAA article were mentioned at all.
The report then goes into specifics:
“Our analysis of the complaint sample showed that:
• Some letters of administrative suspension failed to identify the underlying
allegations, or did so in a vague manner.
I have already demonstrated that this was true in my case.
• The system for explaining allegations to respondents and giving them an
opportunity to respond was not always effective.
After I was advised that my party membership had been suspended in May 2017, I received no contact from the Labour Party until October that year, when I was invited to an interview with an investigating officer (IO) at Transport House in Cardiff. I was not given any advance information about the allegations he was going to discuss and in the interview itself he did not explain what the allegations were. I was expected to respond “off the cuff”, rather than being given an opportunity to prepare a detailed defence with reference to the appropriate material.
• Some complaint files did not hold the identity of the complainant.
• Respondents were not told the identity of the complainant even when there
was no obvious reason to withhold their identity.
I have never learned the identity of the person who complained about me – despite several requests. Labour’s attitude was that it was of no concern to me.
• Respondents were not generally given an expected timeline for the
investigation
After attending the interview in October 2017, I was left in limbo again until December, or January the following year, when I was told informally that my case would be heard by the NEC at its next meeting. I received no official communication from Labour about it.
The next section discusses “inconsistent application of administrative suspensions” and states:
In our complaint sample we saw that:
• Suspension or removing a suspension took place in response to external
pressures.
• There was political interference in suspension decisions (we explain this in
Chapter 5).
• The Labour Party almost never kept written reasons for a decision to
suspend or a decision to lift a suspension.
I cannot comment on this as I have no information on whether my suspension took place due to external pressures or as a result of political interference. I did submit a Subject Access Request to the Labour Party, to find out more about the process, but when I finally received a response two years and two months later, much of it was blacked out.
The next section is headed “poor record-keeping” and stated that “there were documents missing in 62 of our 70 sample files”. I have no idea if documents were missing from mine as Labour has withheld that information from me.
The next section is about a “lack of guidance to the NEC and NCC” but I’ll skip that because it leads directly to something I can discuss: “unclear decision-making by the NEC and NCC”.
“NEC and NCC panels make decisions on suspension and expulsion, among
other matters,” the report states. “Given the potential consequences for the person being accused, we would expect detailed notes of NEC and NCC meetings, and the reasons for their decisions, to be recorded. This is also essential to ensure confidence in the process and to allow monitoring of decisions.
“However, the Labour Party informed us that it does not keep detailed notes of NEC antisemitism panel meetings and the reasons for the panels’ decisions. This is particularly problematic now that the NEC has the power to expel members.”
I was never provided with reasons for the NEC’s initial decision to send me for indoctrination by the Jewish Labour Movement.
I was told about the discussion by a friendly NEC member – that my case was not on the agenda but was heard in “Any Other Business”, meaning no documentary information was provided to committee members; they were asked to listen to a verbal briefing and then come to a decision. My friendly NEC member did not, as I recall, provide any information on the reasons for their decision.
Note that I was not asked to attend and that, therefore, nothing in my defence was stated in the verbal report. I later saw a version of it (in the bundle of papers I received ahead of the NCC hearing) and it either misquoted me, twisted my words, or both. My understanding is that the only reason I wasn’t expelled on the spot was that several NEC members who were familiar with my work spoke up for me.
“We also note that an appeal to the NCC is on procedural grounds only, and question how someone can use this right properly without knowing the underlying reasoning from the NEC.”
This is curious. After I refused to go for JLM indoctrination, my case was automatically referred to the NCC. I was not informed that it was on procedural grounds; my understanding was that the panel would make its decision on the merits of the case against me and my defence against it. Indeed, I was told: “The NCC is only concerned with the procedures to be adopted after a charge is presented to it. It is entitled to act on the basis that the charge is properly brought before it and any complaints regarding the conduct of the investigation should be addresses to the General Secretary”.
The report continues [boldings mine]: “Our analysis of the complaint sample … shows that the NEC and [NCC] do not often give reasons for their decisions; where they are given, they are often not adequate to explain why an allegation is found proven. We found unclear evidence of decision-making by the NEC and NCC in 56 of our 70 sample files.”
This is clearly what happened in my case. I have seen no record of any reason given to find the case against me proven. I provided an excellent defence which was overlooked by the NEC and the NCC. Neither body provided even the slightest evidence in support of their decisions.
The next section refers to “inappropriate use of informal communications in the complaints process” and states that “The use of personal communications outside of the formal complaints process undermines confidence in the process, and affects its fairness and effectiveness.
“Because they do not form part of the complaint file process, including record-keeping, informal communications undermine scrutiny of the process.”
It goes on to discuss – and legitimise – theleaked Labour report which “referred to ‘thousands of messages exchanged on … an internal Party messaging service’ and 465,000 words in three WhatsApp groups”.
It notes that Labour did not provide these messages to the EHRC, claiming that ” it would be disproportionate and too onerous to provide this material to us”. I would have thought that would be a decision for the investigator, not the organisation being investigated.
In my own case, I am aware of only one instance of personal communication – and I found it in the files delivered to me after I made my Subject Access Request.
It refers to a complaint I made after Labour MPs Anna Turley and Wes Streeting referred to a Sunday Times report that I was an anti-Semite (using information leaked from the NEC meeting), and discusses the relevance of this matter to my NCC hearing which was still several months away at that time.
It states: “He will rightly say it is impossible to have a fair hearing if his case has been discussed publicly by senior party members, and we won’t be able to apply any sanction without it being subject” and the rest is blacked out. I subsequently received an email response saying that the matter was not a suitable subject for a complaint to the Labour Party and would be taken no further. This discouraged me from mentioning it at my NCC hearing or in the run-up to it. I now consider it to be clear evidence of an attempt to corruptly influence the outcome of that hearing.
The NCC hearing I attended was nothing more than a kangaroo court, as I have stated in previous articles. I was not allowed to conduct my case in the way I had expected, while the tribunal chair, at least, seemed to have made up her mind before the hearing began. When I received the decision notice it was that the charge against me was proved “on balance of probability” – which means nothing.
In summary: The EHRC report contains a wealth of information that the Labour Party did not only discriminate against Jewish people (and/or anybody else) complaining about anti-Semitism; it also discriminated strongly against the majority of people accused of the offence, and I am able to provide proof to support the EHRC claims.
Nobody in the mainstream media is mentioning this; neither is Labour leader Keir Starmer. They are concentrating on the claims that make Jeremy Corbyn look bad and he had nothing to do with any of the transgressions I mention above, apart from attendance at the NEC hearing.
As I mention above, I had to take a case to court in order to seek justice.
The verdict in that case is due on November 24.
What will Starmer say if it comes out in my favour?
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A disabled dad suffered unfair discrimination when he was made homeless because a landlord did not accept people who receive state benefits.
The ‘no benefits’ rule meant Stephen Tyler was banned from viewing properties advertised by a Birmingham estate agent, purely on the grounds of receiving housing benefit.
Mr Tyler, 29, had been involved in a road accident in 2016. He was made homeless because of the estate agent’s “no benefits” rule.
Birmingham County Court ruled that the estate agent had breached the Equality Act because the rule disproportionally affects disabled people, who are more likely to need some support with paying their rent.
Judge Mary Stacey ruled that: “There is no doubt that there was a blanket policy that no one in receipt of housing benefit would be considered for the three properties. It put the claimant and other disabled people at a particular disadvantage when compared to others.
“To be told simply, because of his benefit status, that he could not apply for three properties which were perfectly located for his children’s school, his GP and health needs, and extended family support, […] would be distressing.
But “no benefits” discrimination is still going on (sometimes it is called “no DSS”, in reference to the former government department responsible for benefits.
This case was brought with help from homelessness charity Shelter, which has vowed to keep campaigning until the discrimination is completely stamped out.
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Rishi Sunak: he keeps interfering with the market, despite his party’s claim that it’s better to leave it alone. Is it because Tories love to torture people with disabilities?
Rishi Sunak isn’t making any sense at all.
He says his plan for an online sales tax is intended to push people back onto the High Street, to physically go out and buy products in order to save businesses that are in danger after the lockdown forced us to stay indoors.
We’ve been buying products online while Covid-19 remains a threat.
And we’ll go back to the High Street, but only once we are convinced the danger is over.
So if High Street shops are in danger, it’ll be because we can’t trust Sunak and his fellow Tories on when that’s likely to be.
Not only that, but in considering such a tax, Sunak is saying the UK is hostile to the new commerce that the Internet represents – as net-based firms still pay business rates and all the other taxes associated with sales.
That’s not good for any country’s economy in this day and age.
It simply doesn’t make sense.
But, considering the Conservatives’ well-known passion for cruelty, there is one reason for bringing in an online sales tax that does make sense: they’ve found out it’s another way they can attack people with disabilities.
People whose health conditions mean they can’t get out of the house have to use the Net to get their stuff, and many shops don’t have access for people with disabilities anyway – despite disability access laws having been enacted many years ago.
People with disabilities don’t have much cash to enjoy, either. They’re either on benefits or in low-waged employment.
So the logical reason for imposing an online sales tax is to push disabled people further into poverty – or to deprive them of goods that they should have the same opportunity to enjoy as the rest of us.
Tories have form in this regard; “Eat out to help out” was another attack on people with disabilities, as you can’t benefit from a discount on restaurant meals if you can’t actually leave home.
Underlying it all is yet another big lie:
Tories have supported, on the face of it, neoliberal ideology since Margaret Thatcher became their leader in the mid-1970s – and that means they support a laissez-faire attitude to the market.
This means they believe the market will automatically adjust to prevailing conditions in order to keep going.
So the proper government policy is non-interference.
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This is a genuine landmark judgement against the Department for Work and Pensions, and a boost for anyone with a terminal illness who cannot predict when the end will come.
It is also a blow against the tastelessness with which the Tory-run government department carries out its affairs, without the slightest pang of sensitivity about demanding that someone identifies the moment of their own death.
(For a similarly tone-deaf attitude, consider the rule that says single mothers must provide details of their rape before receiving child benefit for a third child.)
But what struck This Writer most about the story was the number of people who were shocked to read it, after I published my piece about it last week.
Lorraine Cox is only the latest in a long line of people with terminal illnesses to have suffered prejudice from the DWP, yet it seems many readers were learning about it for the first time.
The ruling that people with terminal illnesses can only receive PIP if they are likely to die within six months has been in place for years – as has the list of such illnesses on which the DWP relies.
The government has used it to discriminate against thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people before Ms Cox won her case.
What about them? What about their family and/or carers if they have passed on.
Are they due for compensation after the DWP ignored their pleas for support in their/their relatives’/friends’ twilight days?
Will they be permitted to demand recompense and restitution from the Tory-run DWP? Or will they be ignored?
I hope these are all matters the judicial review will consider.
A woman who has motor neurone disease was unjustifiably denied fast-tracked disability benefits because it was not clear how long she would survive, the High Court has ruled.
In a landmark verdict, the judge ruled Lorraine Cox, 40, suffered a breach of her human rights.
While other people with life-limiting conditions had the immediate right to enhanced payments, she was refused.
This was “manifestly without reasonable justification”, said the judge.
In court on Wednesday, Mr Justice McAlinden ruled the difference in treatment for terminally-ill claimants who cannot reasonably meet the six-month life expectancy rule was discriminatory.
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Health Warning: Government! is now available in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times, is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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This is probably what the UN poverty rapporteur, Philip Alston, has been talking about recently.
He said the Tories spent 10 years insisting that austerity was vital when it only harmed the poor, but when the coronavirus put the country into lockdown they suddenly turned on the taps and had cash flowing like water.
But he said countries like the UK were still finding ways to harm the poorest – and this seems to be one of them:
Tory ministers raised Universal Credit by £20 a week in 2020/21 to help people cope with the costs of the virus. Tax Credits were due to rise too.
But the same rise was not applied to “legacy” benefits Jobseekers’ Allowance, Income Support and Employment Support Allowance.
Now a campaign by 100 organisations, including charities, argues this is discrimination against the disabled.
The most recent official figures last August show there were still 1.98million people on ESA, which is worth £74.35 a week for the sick and disabled.
Mrs Mike is on ESA. I think she’ll be writing to our MP about this in the very near future.
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People with serious health conditions and disabilities who are registered with a GP surgery in Wales had a nasty surprise in the post.
The surgery sent them a letter saying if they caught the coronavirus, the best thing for them to do would be to reject treatment and wait for death – and it asked them to sign a form confirming it.
Llynfi Surgery, in Llynfi Road, Maesteg, sent the letter to patients with serious health conditions such as incurable cancer, motor neurone disease, and untreatable heart and lung conditions, on March 27.
It comes as further confirmation that people with disabilities will suffer adverse discrimination in the coronavirus crisis – that government guidance is to abandon them.
The letter states that people with these conditions are “unlikely to be offered hospital admission” if they become unwell with coronavirus and “certainly will not be offered a ventilator bed”.
It continued: “We would therefore like to complete a DNACPR form for you which we can share with the OOH [out of hours] GP services and which will mean that in the event of a sudden deterioration in your condition because of a Covid-19 infection or disease progression the emergency services will not be called and resuscitation attempts to restart your heart or breathing will not be attempted.”
Going on, it suggested that the “best option” for patients is to stay at home to be cared for by their family with “ongoing support from ourselves and community nursing services”.
It listed “benefits” to signing the DNACPR form:
“Your GP and more importantly your friends and family will know not to call 999”;
“Scarce ambulance resources can be targeted to the young and fit who have chance of surviving the infection”, and;
“The risk of transmitting the virus to friends, family and emergency responders from CPR (even chest compression alone) is very high. By having a DNACPR form in place you protect your family and emergency responders from this additional risk”.
The final line reads: “We will not abandon you but we need to be frank and realistic about what the next few months holds for all of us.”
Wales Online reported on this scandalous correspondence, saying that the local health board had contacted patients who were upset by the letter, to apologise and “answer any concerns”.
And both the Welsh Assembly member and MP have issued a joint statement saying this was “not a standard letter” and the board is working with the surgery “to offer compassionate and sound advice in the very best traditions of our health service”.
You’ll notice that there isn’t a single line in these comments that contradicts the suggestions in the letter.
If anything, it seems the authorities have simply been embarrassed that it has stated the facts about government guidance on long-term sick and disabled patients who contract the coronavirus in a blunt way.
The affair seems to be confirmation that the government is indeed using the coronavirus to cull “useless eaters”, in line with the eugenics beliefs of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, and the Nazi-style persecution of people with long-term health issues that has been carried out by successive Conservative governments over the last decade.
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Not enough ventilators: it seems Boris Johnson really is using the fact that he deliberately chose not to stock up on these vital items of equipment as an excuse to ensure that disabled people die of coronavirus.
Yes – official guidance on medical care really does discriminate against people with disabilities.
This Writer has received criticism from commenters after a previous article. They claimed I was publishing nonsense.
Fortunately there’s plenty of evidence so let’s consider the guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
Here’s Disability News Service:
The guidance … says that all adult COVID-19 patients should be assessed for “frailty” when admitted to hospital, and that “comorbidities and underlying health conditions” should be taken into account.
[It] has heightened fears among activists that many disabled people will be refused life-saving treatment if they are admitted to hospital.
The guideline said that decisions to admit patients for “critical care” should be based on how likely they were to recover.
There you have it – with a link to the actual guideline itself.
And there’s a comment from a campaigner to support the evidence:
\Disabled actor and activist Liz Carr … said on Twitter that the guideline suggested she and many other disabled people would be “pretty much denied [the] same access to ventilation/critical care support as non-disabled people based on the fact we require some assistance in our daily life, because we’re disabled”.
She said this was “terrifying and discriminating”.
Other groups representing disabled people have voiced similar sentiments.
So the concern is real and people are in danger – from a government that has a history of persecuting those with disabilities.
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A ventilator: The NHS in the UK doesn’t have enough of these to cater for the number of people likely to need them. Will people with disabilities be passed over because of Tory prejudice?
Boris Johnson and his Tories like to copy what happens in the United States – and they already have a record for persecuting disabled people.
So what would you give for the chances of people with Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism or any of the other reasons for receiving Personal Independence Payment, knowing that the US is letting them die of coronavirus?
Read:
New guidance published Alabama officials says that ‘persons with severe mental retardation, advanced dementia or severe traumatic brain injury may be poor candidates for ventilator support.’
It goes on to say that ‘persons with severe or profound mental retardation, moderate to severe dementia, or catastrophic neurological complications such as persistent vegetative state are unlikely candidates for ventilator support.’
Similar guidance has been issued in Washington and Arizona, with medics in the latter state instructed to ‘allocate resources to patients whose need is greater or whose prognosis is more likely to result in a positive outcome with limited resources.’
Disability advocacy groups have now filed complaints against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for further clarification on the often vague guidance, and are seeking assurance that disabled people will not be discriminated against when it comes to receiving emergency care.
Too late – the discrimination is already happening.
In the United Kingdom, the NHS doesn’t have enough ventilators to go around so it is entirely logical to expect the Tories to ration them.
This Writer has a terrible feeling disabled people are already being passed over – or the orders may already be in place – in the UK.
I would appreciate any information from people who experience such prejudice.
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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