It was supposed to be an aid to help disabled people live normal, productive lives – but the trouble with giving people schemes like Motability is they can all-too-easily be taken away.
And that is what the Conservative government has been doing. The latest figure from the Motability Scheme itself shows that 102,000 people have lost their entitlement to a specially-adapted vehicle.
The method the Tories are using to take away this vital lifeline is simple: transfer their benefit claim from Disability Living Allowance to Personal Independence Payment.
And I’ve been reporting it for years.
You see, the Tories toughened the eligibility regime for disability benefit when they introduced PIP and used it to replace DLA.
In 2015, I reported that they were stripping Motability cars from 200 people every week.
So, for example, a teenager called Olivia – who lost a leg to cancer – was told she was not disabled enough for a Motability car. The DWP said she could keep it until a certain date – then reneged on the agreement, leaving her with days to raise £4,900 to buy the vehicle.
As I stated at the time, that’s a tall order for a girl who’s still at sixth form.
By 2016, 14,000 disabled people had lost their cars, based on figures provided to the BBC by Motability. But then-minister for disabled people Justin Tomlinson claimed he did not have that figure when asked a direct question in Parliament.
Was he misleading Parliament?
Later in 2016, his successor Penny Mordaunt misled Parliament on the effect of PIP on Motability users. She claimed that, compared to DLA, “more people are entitled to use the Motability scheme”.
In fact, of customers who had been reassessed for PIP, 44 per cent had lost their entitlement.
By 2018, 75,000 disabled people had been forced to return their Motability cars by an uncaring Tory government – although then-Work and Pensions secretary Esther McVey was caught misleading Parliament about it by Lord Stirling, who co-founded Motability in 1977.
And now the total is 102,000 – and likely to go higher still before reassessments for PIP are concluded in March this year.
The loss of the vehicles means the Tories have denied these people the ability to travel to work and access leisure and other independent living opportunities.
It means they are likely to be condemned to a life staring at the four walls of their home – until the Tories find an excuse to cut off whatever remaining benefits are left to them.
And you’ll spit when you find out the reason used to take away the ability of these people to travel anywhere.
It was a change in the rules that means you lose the higher mobility rate if you can walk further than 20m. Under DLA, it was 50m.
That’s right – think about it.
The Tories took from 102,000 people the ability to travel anywhere, because those people were able to walk up to 30m further than they allowed.
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Esther McVey’s harsh verdict on women who were forced into sex work after the Tory government’s cruel Universal Credit left them struggling to survive should tell you everything you need to know about her.
The fact that she was parachuted into her current constituency – Tatton – after the people of Wirral West kicked her out in 2015 tells you everything you need to know about the Conservative government; Theresa May – and now Boris Johnson – considered her brand of heartlessness exactly what they wanted.
Words that she spoke as Work and Pensions secretary have come back to haunt her after they were included in a harrowing report detailing the lengths to which the Tories have forced people – mostly women – to go in order to feed themselves and find shelter.
I’m not going to go into the grisly details here. If you want to know, read the BBC’s report and/or the commentary in The Guardian.
The facts of what these women have had to do, after the Conservatives imposed a ‘benefit’ system that punishes people rather than helping them, is bad enough.
But the Tory response when confronted by these facts shows that they really are, as Aneurin Bevan described them, lower than vermin.
In its report on the scandal, the Commons Work and Pensions committee stated: “The former Secretary of State, Rt Hon Esther McVey MP, suggested that the Department’s Work Coaches (frontline Jobcentre staff) might tell ‘these ladies’ that there are ‘record’ numbers of job vacancies in the UK and ‘perhaps there are other jobs on offer’.”
It seems she does not consider such work to be as humiliating, demeaning and de-valuing as the rest of us. Speculate for yourself on whether her comments are borne of experience – although it seems far more likely that she was merely parading her own offensive ignorance.
It was after receiving this comment from Ms McVey that the committee launched a full inquiry into the scandal – and the official response from the Department for Work and Pensions was, again, abominable.
In a written submission described by the committee as “defensive, dismissive and trite”, the DWP described reports linking universal credit and survival sex as “anecdote” and said the benefits system could not be “robustly attributed as a sole cause” of the issue.
These Tory-employed civil servants were suggesting that women wanted to prostitute themselves, simply to survive.
Now, after being forced to face the evidence published by the committee, Department heads have reluctantly changed their tune – but only as far as saying there was a need for better understanding of the issue.
Where are the apologies – from both the DWP and Ms McVey? Do they not realise that their behaviour in this matter has been enormously offensive?
No. They don’t care. They won’t be looking for votes from Universal Credit claimants in any forthcoming election.
And after that? Perhaps there will be other jobs on offer.
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Ugh: She might have spent nearly £10,000 of OUR cash in an attempt to prettify herself but it was clearly money for old rope.
On the basis of this revelation, if Esther McVey drops out of the Tory leadership contest it won’t be because of any sexism on the party of her fellow MPs.
It will be because they are concerned about the drain on the national budget caused by her attempts to make herself look attractive.
Who would have thought she would want to spend so much public money trying to make herself seem pretty?
Still, the facts don’t lie: She claimed £8,750 on expenses, over two years, for the services of a photographer and public relations person.
The public will interpret this as an admission that she is more interested in her own image than in matters of importance to the nation.
That should be enough for her colleagues to stop her prime ministerial ambition in its tracks.
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Misspelt: Shouldn’t the line on the front of her pulpit say, “Opportunist”?
Esther McVey, the Tory MP whose behaviour at the Department for Work and Pensions led to her being branded “McVile”, has said she will campaign to become the next Conservative Party leader (and prime minister), after Theresa May finally gives up squatting in 10 Downing Street.
Ms McVey – currently the MP for Tatton, in Cheshire, after being ejected from the Wirral West seat in 2015 – told Talk Radio: “I’ve always said quite clearly that if I got enough support from colleagues then, yes, I would, and now people have come forward and I have that support.”
She may have support from fellow Conservative MPs but it seems unlikely she would ever have the support of the general public – if voters get a chance to scrutinise her record.
I’ve written articles about it. Let’s see what I wrote when she was appointed as Work and Pensions Secretary, in 2018:
As Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for People with Disabilities, she oversaw the dismantling of Remploy as a government-owned employer of disabled people, saying the factories should be “freed from government control” and funding could be better used if spent on helping disabled people into work through individual support. Experience in the years since then has proved this claim to be false. The disability employment gap is widening, with 114 disabled people leaving work for every 100 gaining jobs. And only last month, Chancellor Philip Hammond lied to the nation with a claim that lower productivity in the UK economy was due to disabled people.
In December 2012, Ms McVey boasted that, when Disability Living Allowance (DLA) was replaced by Personal Independence Payments (PiPs), more than 300,000 people would have their benefits cut or removed altogether. She thought it was a good thing.
In January 2013, she did not bother to turn up to a Parliamentary debate on private firm Atos’s handling of the hated Work Capability Assessment of people claiming Employment and Support Allowance, even though she was the minister responsible. She left it to Mark Hoban, then-Minister of State at the DWP, who answered only 10 questions out of dozens that were put to him. In August of that year, she sent Mr Hoban out to lie on her behalf again – on the same subject.
She misled Parliament and the public with regard to Disability Living Allowance, the benefit that was replaced by PIP.
In April 2013, she tried to justify the change from DLA to PIP by saying it was an “outdated benefit” for which “around 50 per cent of decisions are made on the basis of the claim form alone – without any additional corroborating medical evidence.” She also said 71 per cent of claimants were awarded the benefit for life, without checks. These were both lies.In fact, just 10 per cent of claims were based on the 40-page-long form. In 40 per cent of claims a GP’s report was required for a successful claim and in a further 45 per cent of cases further evidence was used, such as information from a social worker or healthcare professional. And six per cent of claimants were called in for a face-to-face assessment. And only 23 per cent of DLA awards were indefinite.
Along with Iain Duncan Smith and the other DWP ministers of the time, she supported the regime of sanctions imposed on those who refused to take part in what was then known as the Work Programme, despite having documentary proof, not only that they don’t work, but that they harm claimants’ families as well as the claimants themselves, and are known to cause suicide. With the others, she supported a change in the law after previous rules were found to be illegal. She procured the suicide of disabled and otherwise disadvantaged benefit claimants.
In October 2013, Ms McVey was rewarded for these lies with a promotion, replacing Mr Hoban as Minister for Employment.
In this job, she started as she meant to go on by praising a fall in the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, even though there had been no corresponding increase in employment. In fact, more people were said to be out of work. The drop in the claimant count could be attributed to several other factors: Sanctions, unpaid Workfare or work-related activity schemes, they may have been forced to apply for sickness or disability benefit, they may have been bullied off-benefit by DWP staff or private assessors employed by the Department, or they may have committed suicide. The DWP refuses to follow up on the fortunes of people it has pushed off-benefit, so we simply don’t know.
The following month, she announced that people on sickness benefits would be required to have regular meetings with the kind of “healthcare professionals” who had been pushing as many sick and disabled people as possible off-benefit, with a view to addressing the barriers that stop them getting into work. The implication was that, as their illnesses were not considered to be barriers to work, they weren’t ill at all but were faking it. Ms McVey described this as giving people “the support they need”. In fact, it was about depriving people of support.
Days later, she was back, praising the Bedroom Tax as a way to “tackle overcrowding and to make better use of our housing stock… We have seen our Housing Benefit bill exceed £24 billion – an increase of 50% in just 10 years – and this had to be brought under control”. There were just two problems with that – the Bedroom Tax doesn’t make better use of housing stock (in fact, it increases the likelihood of houses going empty as families are discouraged from moving in, knowing they’ll be forced out when the children leave) and was always likely to increase costs (people moving into private rented property would receive more benefit, and people who have been evicted because they can’t pay their bills after the Tax was imposed will be a burden on councils, who will have to put them up in more expensive B&B accommodation). Again, she was lying in order to make harming people acceptable to the public.
Mere days after that, Ms McVey was forced to admit that the DWP had been lying about the number of people awarded Employment and Support Allowance on their first attempt, by including those who had requested reconsideration after being denied the benefit.
In December that year, Ms McVey was found to have lied about benefit sanctions. She had said they affected only a small proportion of jobseekers – “The vast, vast majority of people don’t get sanctions” – but when the actual number of sanctions (553,000) was compared with the number of people on JSA (1,480,000) it became clear that this was not true.
It is well worth examining Ms McVey’s contribution to the food bank debate, mentioned in tweets by other commenters which I have quoted (above). This Writer published an article about it at the time, and here‘s what I wrote about what she said:
Esther McVey’s speech showed clearly why she should have remained on breakfast television, where comparatively few people had to put up with her. She accused the previous Labour government of a “whirl of living beyond our means” that “had to come to a stop” without ever pausing to admit that it was Tory-voting bankers who had been living beyond their means, who caused the crash, and who are still living beyond their means today, because her corporatist (thank you, Zac Goldsmith) Conservative government has protected them.
She accused Labour of trying to keep food banks as “its little secret”, forcing Labour’s Jim Cunningham to remind us all that food banks were set up by churches to help refugees who were waiting for their asylum status to be confirmed – not as a support system for British citizens, as they have become under the Coalition’s failed regime.
She said the Coalition government was brought in to “solve the mess that Labour got us in”, which is not true – it was born from a backroom deal between two of the most unscrupulous party leaders of recent times, in order to ensure they and their friends could get their noses into the money trough (oh yes, there’s plenty of money around – but this government is keeping it away from you).
She said the Coalition had got more people into work than ever before – without commenting on the fact that the jobs are part-time, zero-hours, self-employed contracts that benefit the employers but exploit the workers and in fact propel them towards poverty.
She lied to Parliament, claiming that children are three times more likely to be in poverty if they are in a workless household. In fact, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in-work poverty has now outstripped that suffered by those in workless and retired households; children are more likely to be in poverty if their parents have jobs.
She attacked Labour for allowing five million people to be on out-of-work benefits, with two million children in workless households – but under her government the number of households suffering in-work poverty has risen to eight million (by 2008 standards), while workless or retired households in poverty have risen to total 6.3 million.
She claimed that 60,000 people were likely to use a food bank this year– but Labour’s Paul Murphy pointed out that 60,000 people will use food banks this year in Wales alone. The actual figure for the whole of the UK is 500,000.
She said the government had brought in Universal Credit to ensure that three million people become better-off. There’s just one problem with that system – it doesn’t work.
She said the Coalition’s tax cuts had given people an extra £700 per year, without recognising that the real-terms drop in wages and rise in the cost of living means people will be £1,600 a year worse-off when the next general election takes place, tax cuts included. She said stopping fuel price increases meant families were £300 better-off, which is nonsense. Families cannot become better off because something has not happened; it’s like saying I’m better off because the roof of my house hasn’t fallen in and squashed me.
Then, on top of all that, she had the nerve to tell the country, “Rewriting history doesn’t work.” If that is the case, then hers was one of the most pointless speeches in the history of Parliament.
In January 2014, Ms McVey praised a large drop in unemployment claims, without commenting on the fact that there had been a huge leap in the number of people who were without a job but were not claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance. I wrote at the time that she had succeeded in making the benefit system the exact opposite of what it was intended to be – pushing people into poverty rather than providing a safety net against it; bullying people into destitution and asking us to celebrate. For those having trouble believing this claim, I provided examples to support it in my article:
“You apply for three jobs one week and three jobs the following Sunday and Monday. Because the job centre week starts on a Tuesday it treats this as applying for six jobs in one week and none the following week. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks for failing to apply for three jobs each week.”
“You have a job interview which overruns so you arrive at your job centre appointment nine minutes late. You get sanctioned for a month.”
“Your job centre advisor suggests a job. When you go online to apply it says the job has “expired” so you don’t apply. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks.”
“You are on a workfare placement and your job centre appointment comes round. The job centre tells you to sign on then go to your placement – which you do. The placement reports you for being late and you get sanctioned for 3 months.”
Ms McVey next appeared when she spoke in support of a cut in Discretionary Housing Payments, the cash provided for local councils to help people in financial trouble after falling foul of the Bedroom Tax and the so-called welfare cap. She said: “Capping benefits is returning fairness to the welfare system,” and this was another lie, as the cap was set too low. The government claimed an average family income was £26,000, but in fact it was slightly more than £31,000. The reason the cap was set at the lower figure was that, at the more appropriate amount, hardly anybody would have been affected; the system was fair before the Tories (and the Liberal Democrats, as this was in the time of the Coalition government) interfered.
On April 27, 2014, Ms McVey’s Wikipedia entry was edited by, as This Writer described it at the time, “somebody with a social conscience”, as follows:
For a short period earlier today, it seems the entry began: “Esther Louise McVey (born 24 October 1967) is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wirral West since 2010, and the Assistant Grim Reaper for Disabled People since 2012, second only to Iain Duncan Smith. She was previously a television presenter and businesswoman before deciding to branch out into professional lying and helping disabled people into the grave.” [Italics mine]
The edits have since been erased but at the time of writing, the entry starts: “Esther “no brains” McVey (born 24 October 1767)”.
Also embarrassing for the Employment Minister is the section on her Twitter faux pas during the memorial service on the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster (April 15 this year). It reads: “McVey was criticized by social media users for attacking the Wirral Labour Group in a tweet published at the time a memorial service for the Hillsborough Disaster was being held at Anfield Stadium. She later, in a radio interview with BBC Radio Merseyside, claimed to regret the mistiming of her communication. During this interview, a voice can clearly be heard whispering, ‘Say I didn’t send it’.”
That’s right – she also sent a political tweet during the Hillborough disaster memorial service on April 15, 2014 and then tried to deny having done so.
A later change to the Wikipedia entry stated: “Many opponents believe she is a very unpleasant woman with no understanding of the issues faced by disabled people and seems to be on a vendetta to annihilate them alongside Iain Duncan Smith and supported by the Conservative leading figures.”
Ms McVey launched Help to Work, a scheme that forced jobseekers to sign on every day, commit to six months of voluntary work, or sign up to a training scheme (the last two effectively removing them from the government’s unemployment figures without getting them a job) – or face having their Jobseeker’s Allowance docked for increasing lengths of time. Of course, voluntary work must be offered without coercion, and this aspect of the scheme meant that Ms McVey was forcing UK citizens into slavery.
In June 2014, Ms McVey was criticised for claiming £17,227 on her Parliamentary expenses, to rent a central London flat. Maximum housing benefit at the time was £250 per week – around £100 per week less than she was scrounging for her flat.
She changed the rules of Jobseeker’s Allowance to make it impossible for unemployed people to refuse zero-hour contract jobs, even though such work could make them worse-off than if they were on benefits.
She reneged on a promise to set up an independent investigation into the appropriateness of sanctions.
She lied to Parliament, claiming that the DWP’s business case for Universal Credit had been approved by the Treasury; it had not. It seems the Treasury had been signing off on annual budgets only.
Her own constituents launched a campaign to remove her from the government, around the same time the DWP was caught out releasing faked tweets.
The Court of Appeal ruled that Ms McVey’s decision to close the Independent Living Fund was unlawful, saying she did not receive a sufficient understanding of the true threat to independent living for ILF users posed by the proposal to close the fund.
In February 2015, Ms McVey appeared before the Commons Work and Pensions committee to give evidence on the effectiveness of benefit sanctions, but failed to demonstrate that there were any reasonable grounds to show that increasing sanction periods was effective, or what effect increasing the sanction periods would have on claimants. Then-chair of the committee, Dame Anne Begg, concluded of Ms McVey: “I take it from your failure to answer the question that you did not do any research.”
In July 2015, after having lost her Wirral West Parliamentary seat in that year’s general election, Ms McVey refused to say how many of the DWP’s 49 secret reviews into benefit-related deaths concluded that the deaths had been associated with the use of benefit sanctions. She said it was “wrong” of Labour’s Debbie Abrahams to “politicise” and “inflame” the issue. It was later revealed that 10 of the 49 people whose deaths had been investigated had been sanctioned – but the DWP did not say how many times each person’s benefit had been sanctioned off of them.
Put all of the above together and you can see that Ms McVey is what the police might call “a right little charmer” – in other words, the nastiest piece of work one could ever hope to meet.
She is a habitual liar, determined to push through policies that cause the maximum harm to citizens of the United Kingdom.
Her behaviour is a matter of public record.
So there you have it.
But go ahead, Tories. Vote Esther McVey into Downing Street. Here’s the reaction you’ll get from the public:
British politics has sunk to such a level that Esther McVey thinks she could be prime minister.
There's the bottom of the barrel, then there's a dark spillage and after that dark spillage has been cleaned up you find Esther McVey. She makes Grant Shapps look bright
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It turns out Esther McVey wasn’t involved with political campaigning organisation Loyal Scots Company after all.
Companies House has removed her name from that organisation’s listing, so we now have no reason to believe that she has been its secretary, as had been previously stated (by the Companies House listing).
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Esther McVey has become the second leading Tory to stab PM Theresa May in the back – with an offer to stand for the Conservative Party leadership.
The claim came just one day before Theresa May postponed (or maybe cancelled) the “meaningful vote” in Parliament on her Brexit agreement with the European Union, amid claims that she was heading for a crushing defeat.
The former Work and Pensions Secretary who quit, possibly to avoid answering difficult questions on the deaths of disabled benefit claimants, made her on the Sophy Ridge show on Sky News:
Asked if she could run for Tory leader, Esther McVey says: “If people asked me, of course I’d give it serious consideration.” #Ridge
The question arises ! Who on earth would ask you – given your track record ? I don't wish to be rude ; BUT Do you honestly believe the Country would elect a Government led by you ? https://t.co/9qaAYFUZbI
And it’s a good point. Ms McVey had an atrocious record of abominable behaviour toward the citizens of the UK, even before she came back into the government as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I have written about it before, and it is worth refreshing your memory:
As Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for People with Disabilities, she oversaw the dismantling of Remploy as a government-owned employer of disabled people, saying the factories should be “freed from government control” and funding could be better used if spent on helping disabled people into work through individual support. Experience in the years since then has proved this claim to be false. The disability employment gap is widening, with 114 disabled people leaving work for every 100 gaining jobs. And only last month, Chancellor Philip Hammond lied to the nation with a claim that lower productivity in the UK economy was due to disabled people.
In December 2012, Ms McVey boasted that, when Disability Living Allowance (DLA) was replaced by Personal Independence Payments (PiPs), more than 300,000 people would have their benefits cut or removed altogether. She thought it was a good thing.
In January 2013, she did not bother to turn up to a Parliamentary debate on private firm Atos’s handling of the hated Work Capability Assessment of people claiming Employment and Support Allowance, even though she was the minister responsible. She left it to Mark Hoban, then-Minister of State at the DWP, who answered only 10 questions out of dozens that were put to him. In August of that year, she sent Mr Hoban out to lie on her behalf again – on the same subject.
She misled Parliament and the public with regard to Disability Living Allowance, the benefit that was replaced by PIP.
In April 2013, she tried to justify the change from DLA to PIP by saying it was an “outdated benefit” for which “around 50 per cent of decisions are made on the basis of the claim form alone – without any additional corroborating medical evidence.” She also said 71 per cent of claimants were awarded the benefit for life, without checks. These were both lies.In fact, just 10 per cent of claims were based on the 40-page-long form. In 40 per cent of claims a GP’s report was required for a successful claim and in a further 45 per cent of cases further evidence was used, such as information from a social worker or healthcare professional. And six per cent of claimants were called in for a face-to-face assessment. And only 23 per cent of DLA awards were indefinite.
Along with Iain Duncan Smith and the other DWP ministers of the time, she supported the regime of sanctions imposed on those who refused to take part in what was then known as the Work Programme, despite having documentary proof, not only that they don’t work, but that they harm claimants’ families as well as the claimants themselves, and are known to cause suicide. With the others, she supported a change in the law after previous rules were found to be illegal. She procured the suicide of disabled and otherwise disadvantaged benefit claimants.
In October 2013, Ms McVey was rewarded for these lies with a promotion, replacing Mr Hoban as Minister for Employment.
In this job, she started as she meant to go on by praising a fall in the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, even though there had been no corresponding increase in employment. In fact, more people were said to be out of work. The drop in the claimant count could be attributed to several other factors: Sanctions, unpaid Workfare or work-related activity schemes, they may have been forced to apply for sickness or disability benefit, they may have been bullied off-benefit by DWP staff or private assessors employed by the Department, or they may have committed suicide. The DWP refuses to follow up on the fortunes of people it has pushed off-benefit, so we simply don’t know.
The following month, she announced that people on sickness benefits would be required to have regular meetings with the kind of “healthcare professionals” who had been pushing as many sick and disabled people as possible off-benefit, with a view to addressing the barriers that stop them getting into work. The implication was that, as their illnesses were not considered to be barriers to work, they weren’t ill at all but were faking it. Ms McVey described this as giving people “the support they need”. In fact, it was about depriving people of support.
Days later, she was back, praising the Bedroom Tax as a way to “tackle overcrowding and to make better use of our housing stock… We have seen our Housing Benefit bill exceed £24 billion – an increase of 50% in just 10 years – and this had to be brought under control”. There were just two problems with that – the Bedroom Tax doesn’t make better use of housing stock (in fact, it increases the likelihood of houses going empty as families are discouraged from moving in, knowing they’ll be forced out when the children leave) and was always likely to increase costs (people moving into private rented property would receive more benefit, and people who have been evicted because they can’t pay their bills after the Tax was imposed will be a burden on councils, who will have to put them up in more expensive B&B accommodation). Again, she was lying in order to make harming people acceptable to the public.
Mere days after that, Ms McVey was forced to admit that the DWP had been lying about the number of people awarded Employment and Support Allowance on their first attempt, by including those who had requested reconsideration after being denied the benefit.
In December that year, Ms McVey was found to have lied about benefit sanctions. She had said they affected only a small proportion of jobseekers – “The vast, vast majority of people don’t get sanctions” – but when the actual number of sanctions (553,000) was compared with the number of people on JSA (1,480,000) it became clear that this was not true.
She accused Labour of trying to keep food banks as “its little secret”, forcing Labour’s Jim Cunningham to remind us all that food banks were set up by churches to help refugees who were waiting for their asylum status to be confirmed – not as a support system for British citizens, as they have become under the Tories.
In January 2014, Ms McVey praised a large drop in unemployment claims, without commenting on the fact that there had been a huge leap in the number of people who were without a job but were not claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance. I wrote at the time that she had succeeded in making the benefit system the exact opposite of what it was intended to be – pushing people into poverty rather than providing a safety net against it; bullying people into destitution and asking us to celebrate.
Ms McVey next appeared when she spoke in support of a cut in Discretionary Housing Payments, the cash provided for local councils to help people in financial trouble after falling foul of the Bedroom Tax and the so-called welfare cap. She said: “Capping benefits is returning fairness to the welfare system,” and this was another lie, as the cap was set too low. The government claimed an average family income was £26,000, but in fact it was slightly more than £31,000. The reason the cap was set at the lower figure was that, at the more appropriate amount, hardly anybody would have been affected; the system was fair before the Tories (and the Liberal Democrats, as this was in the time of the Coalition government) interfered.
She also sent a political tweet during the Hillborough disaster memorial service on April 15, 2014 and then tried to deny having done so (“Say I didn’t send it”).
Ms McVey launched Help to Work, a scheme that forced jobseekers to sign on every day, commit to six months of voluntary work, or sign up to a training scheme (the last two effectively removing them from the government’s unemployment figures without getting them a job) – or face having their Jobseeker’s Allowance docked for increasing lengths of time. Of course, voluntary work must be offered without coercion, and this aspect of the scheme meant that Ms McVey was forcing UK citizens into slavery.
In June 2014, Ms McVey was criticised for claiming £17,227 on her Parliamentary expenses, to rent a central London flat. Maximum housing benefit at the time was £250 per week – around £100 per week less than she was scrounging for her flat.
She changed the rules of Jobseeker’s Allowance to make it impossible for unemployed people to refuse zero-hour contract jobs, even though such work could make them worse-off than if they were on benefits.
She reneged on a promise to set up an independent investigation into the appropriateness of sanctions.
She lied to Parliament, claiming that the DWP’s business case for Universal Credit had been approved by the Treasury; it had not. It seems the Treasury had been signing off on annual budgets only.
Her own constituents launched a campaign to remove her from the government, around the same time the DWP was caught out releasing faked tweets.
The Court of Appeal ruled that Ms McVey’s decision to close the Independent Living Fund was unlawful, saying she did not receive a sufficient understanding of the true threat to independent living for ILF users posed by the proposal to close the fund.
In February 2015, Ms McVey appeared before the Commons Work and Pensions committee to give evidence on the effectiveness of benefit sanctions, but failed to demonstrate that there were any reasonable grounds to show that increasing sanction periods was effective, or what effect increasing the sanction periods would have on claimants. Then-chair of the committee, Dame Anne Begg, concluded of Ms McVey: “I take it from your failure to answer the question that you did not do any research.”
In July 2015, after having lost her Wirral West Parliamentary seat in that year’s general election, Ms McVey refused to say how many of the DWP’s 49 secret reviews into benefit-related deaths concluded that the deaths had been associated with the use of benefit sanctions. She said it was “wrong” of Labour’s Debbie Abrahams to “politicise” and “inflame” the issue. It was later revealed that 10 of the 49 people whose deaths had been investigated had been sanctioned – but the DWP did not say how many times each person’s benefit had been sanctioned off of them.
You can read further details on these matters here.
Since returning to the government as Work and Pensions Secretary, we find no change in either attitude or behaviour:
She was caught lying to the Commons Work and Pensions Committee about the availability of statistics on appeals against Personal Independence Payment decisions.
She caused outrage when she claimed women who have a child as a result of rape would be helped by being forced to speak to a charity worker or health professional as a condition of receiving benefit, because it means they could receive ‘double support’.
She was humiliated in court when a judget said the DWP policy of denying financial support to carers who fall foul of the two-child limit on benefit entitlements is perverse and unlawful.
She used her Conservative Party Conference speech to peddle a ridiculous lie that her government had not cut benefits.
She was found to have been listed as a director of a dodgy Scottish campaigning company. Ms McVey denied this but, rather than contributing to a police investigation, she put a stop to inquiries and attacked the member of the public who had revealed the connection.
Yet now she thinks she has the credibility to be a new Conservative leader. The reaction has been predictable:
Tory Christmas pantomime begins and it will not end well, who needs to watch Scrooge when you have this lot vying for position, putting personal ambition ahead of the country's national interest. Tories not dishing out much festive cheer but a helping of miserable gruel 👎 https://t.co/UxixLXbWqf
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It is nearly four years to the day since I published evidence that private contractors carrying out the Work Capability Assessment for the Conservative government were asking ESA claimants why they had not killed themselves. But Labour MP Laura Pidcock has raised concerns that it is still happening.
It should be plain to everybody that one does not ask why a person who has confessed to suicidal thoughts has not acted on those thoughts.
But that is clearly what happened to Abi Fallows, as described in my December 2014 article. We know it did because she recorded it.
“‘At my last Atos ‘assessment’, when mentioning depression, the ‘assessor’ asked me why I hadn’t killed myself yet,’ she told astonished members of the Facebook group.
“She said the assessors’ attitude seemed to be that she couldn’t be depressed if she had not already killed herself.”
The resemblance between her words and those of Ms Pidcock – as quoted in this Canary article – is uncanny. The Labour MP stated: “Constituents have told us that they are concerned that some assessors are not specialist qualified mental health professionals. They tell us that they feel they are being judged as ‘not genuine’ – i.e. if you really were suicidal you would have killed yourself by now. This has caused great distress.”
So she tackled now-former Tory Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey, asking, in a written question, “what steps she has taken to ensure that (a) work capability assessment providers do not ask claimants with mental health problems why they had not carried out their suicidal ideas and (b) the conduct of assessments does not increase the risk of suicide and self harm among claimants with mental health problems.”
The response from minister of state Sarah Newton seems to suggest that no such steps have been taken. It explains: “All healthcare professionals (HCPs) carrying out WCA assessments were given face to face training on exploring self-harm and suicidal ideation in May 2018. The training which was quality assured by the Royal College of Psychiatrists was designed to enhance the skills of HCPs in sensitively exploring self-harm and suicidal ideation.”
Unfortunately, as Ms Pidcock herself complained, that does not answer the question. She did not want vague comments about training in sensitivity; she wanted to know that assessors had been banned from asking what is potentially an extremely harmful question.
And the Royal College of Psychiatrists has distanced itself from Ms Newton’s claim, saying its contribution could hardly be described as quality assurance: “The College’s role has been limited to assessing the written training material sent to them by the Centre for Health and Disability Assessment to ensure that it is factually correct.”
We don’t know what that material is. We don’t know what it says. And we don’t know what readers are intended to draw from it.
Ms Pidcock is quoted as saying: “The minister has not answered the specific question. MPs on the Work and Pensions Select Committee put it to Newton in December 2017 that this was a standard question on the assessment. Although some discussion of suicidal thoughts may be appropriate in order to safeguard vulnerable people, she has not answered whether this particularly direct question has been removed.”
We must, therefore, draw the only logical conclusion: The question is still part of the assessment and government assessors are still drawing the attention of people with mental health issues to suicide.
And the Conservative government is doing its best to hide these facts because the Conservative government wants to attract suicidal benefit claimants to suicide.
It gets them off the benefit books and the Tories know they can dodge the blame for it.
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Runner: Esther McVey got out of the DWP before she could be made to answer some very difficult questions.
Remember when Esther McVey quit the government last week, claiming it was because of Brexit, and I suggested she was running to avoid having to answer the criticisms of the Department for Work and Pensions raised by UN inspector Philip Alston?
It turned out that she had already exchanged words with the special rapporteur on poverty – but now it seems I was not wrong after all, as Ms McVey’s departure allowed her to avoid answering questions on a possible link between the hated Work Capability Assessment carried out by private contractors on behalf of the DWP and the deaths of benefit claimants.
This issue is whether the government showed key documents linking the deaths of claimants with the work capability assessment (WCA) to Dr Paul Litchfield, the independent expert hired to review the test in 2013 and 2014.
Dr Litchfield carried out the fourth and fifth reviews of the WCA but has refused to say if he was shown two letters written by coroners and a number of secret DWP “peer reviews”.
In the light of recent revelations, it seems reasonable to ask whether this is because he was asked to sign a ‘gagging order’ – a non-disclosure agreement requiring him not to say anything embarrassing or critical about the Conservative government or its minister.
Dr Litchfield published his two reviews in December 2013 and November 2014, but neither mentioned the documents, which all link the WCA with the deaths of claimants.
Disability News Serviceraised the issue in July, prompting Opposition spokespeople to send official letters demanding an explanation. Labour shadow minister for disabled people Marsha de Cordova’s was written on July 25, and Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Stephen Lloyd’s followed on August 2.
Neither had received a response by the time Ms McVey walked out, as DNS reported.
I think we can safely conclude that the four-month delay – so far – indicates Ms McVey intended never to respond. The disagreement over Brexit provided a handy excuse to do a runner.
Will Amber Rudd be more forthcoming?
The evidence of her time at the Home Office suggests the opposite.
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Professor Philip Alston: He came to his conclusions by listening to people affected by Conservative policies on the poor, sick and disabled. Tories implemented those policies by ignoring the very same people.
Let’s get this right: UN special rapporteur Professor Philip Alston is set to issue a preliminary statement on the connection between Conservative government policy and the increase in poverty, homelessness and benefit-related suicide, on November 16 – and Esther McVey resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary the day before.
She quit to get out of having to answer his charges, didn’t she?
I mean, it’s more believable than her claim that she couldn’t look her constituents in the eye and defend Theresa May’s Brexit deal, isn’t it?
But Esther – you were very comfortable looking at the victims of your extreme Tory austerity project in the eye – weren't you ?#PuzzledFacehttps://t.co/DXHGvR8OBU
If you’re wondering why Ms McVey would want to pretend to quit over Brexit, rather than defend her record and that of the other Tory Work and Pensions secretaries since 2010, consider what we know of Professor Alston’s findings:
He berated the Tory government for “outsourcing” the task of keeping people alive to food banks.
He has heard stories of “families facing homelessness, of people too scared to eat, of those on benefits contemplating suicide”.
And he said the effect of Universal Credit – hey, what’s Esther McVey’s position on Universal Credit?
So Esther McVey has now resigned too over the Government’s botched Brexit plan.
She should have resigned long ago over the way she has treated disabled people and people on Universal Credit.
… And he said the effect of Universal Credit on the poverty experienced by disabled people and other groups “would play an important part” in his report.
So what do you think?
Did Esther McVey resign because of Theresa May’s Brexit?
Or did she want to get out of being told off by the man from the UN?
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It should have been a moment of triumph – the announcement of an agreement with the 27 nations remaining in the EU over the manner of the UK’s departure from that bloc. Instead, Theresa May’s government is on the point of collapse.
Dominic Raab.
Dominic Raab – the man who, as Brexit Secretary, admitted he had no idea how important the Dover-Calais crossing was to the UK’s trade – resigned this morning (November 15), saying the deal agreed by Mrs May – not by him – could lead to the break-up of the UK as it offers Northern Ireland special treatment, and makes it impossible to negotiate trade deals with other countries as we will remain in a customs union with the EU indefinitely.
Esther McVey: She was probably glad to have an excuse to quit as Work and Pensions secretary.
Esther McVey has also quit, saying the deal does not offer the Brexit that the Conservative government had promised.
And condemnation of the deal in Parliament – when Mrs May tried to persuade MPs to support it – was almost universal.
Labour opposes it because it does not meet any of that party’s six tests.
Labour’s pro-Brexit rebels won’t support it because they see it as a capitulation to all of the EU’s demands.
The DUP can’t support it because of the way it addresses the Northern Ireland border issue – creating fears of a reunification vote with the Republic of Ireland.
The SNP won’t support it because the deal doesn’t mention Scotland once.
Tory Brexiters won’t support it because they say Mrs May lied about what the deal would do – she has betrayed them.
Jacob Rees-Mogg even voiced an intention to trigger a “no confidence” vote against Theresa May during the debate in the Commons – in harsh contrast to her own appeal for support.
And government resignations are still happening. Three MPs in minor positions have also resigned, including Suella Braverman, who had been vociferous in support of the Tory government’s Brexit policy. Northern Ireland office junior minister Shailesh Vara has also gone.
Mrs May is now in an impossible position.
Her deal with the EU has been agreed – she can’t go back on it.
But the Parliamentary numbers are against her. She cannot win the vote.
Her own leadership is at issue and she may face a challenge within days.
And her government’s ability to act in the national interest has been trashed. It may not last beyond the vote on the deal.
Mrs May, the Conservatives and the Brexit process are standing on the edge of a cliff. Is this the end – for all of them?
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