Boris the bung: Johnson has been splurging cash on the very rich for the last three years. Now, when the rest of us are suffering in a cost-of-living crisis he created, he has little for us other than excuses.
Remember when only benefit claimants had to choose between “eating and heating” – buying food for their families or energy for their homes?
Those were happy days for the small-minded Little Britons who merrily voted Tory government after Tory government into power to continue ruining the economy and siphoning cash away from people who need it.
Now, more than 60 per cent of the UK’s population are in the same position as those benefit claimants – and suddenly it isn’t quite as amusing to fling the old “scrounger” accusations around any more, is it?
Many of the same people who supported government benefit cuts that drove claimants to suicide or simply starved them to death are now begging the same government to support them through the current cost-of-living crisis.
And some – not necessarily the same ones – are having suicidal thoughts themselves.
This Writer has a certain amount of sympathy for those who didn’t vote Tory and never supported the victimisation of the vulnerable.
Those who did are finding it isn’t so comfortable when the shoe’s on the other foot, I suppose. I wonder whether they will learn from the experience, to be a little less judgmental about other people, now they have suffered just a little of what the sick and disabled (for example) have endured for more than a decade?
Well, the experience won’t do them any good if they give in to their more grim thoughts, so it is right that everybody who is suffering mental ill-health as a result of the government’s failure in its most basic function – providing affordable food and energy to the population – should get treatment for it.
Sadly (again) we have a government that is not up to the task.
The Tories are using the crisis to provide another subsidy for the rich, with people who own multiple houses set to receive £400 for each of them, no matter whether they are occupied all the time or not.
Landlords will be under no obligation to pass the cash on to tenants who actually pay the bills.
And mental health services have long been neglected by successive Conservative governments.
Now they are scrabbling to catch up, providing £2.3 billion extra per year to treat two million more people – that’s just £1,150 each for around 1/20 of those who need help, according to the Sky News poll.
And they have called for evidence from the public about what should be in a 10-year plan for mental health, that will not make any difference to people who are in need now.
Thomas Jefferson (or was it Benjamin Franklin?) once famously said, “We get the government we deserve.”
I just hope people who are going through hardship now realise that their choice of Tory rule has inflicted the same – and worse – on others for many years.
The Department for Work and Pensions has announced that it will be checking 340,000 Personal Independence Payment claims to see if back-payments of £16,000 or more are owed – mostly to claimants with a mental health condition.
The initiative follows – extremely belatedly – a court decision from July 2019, finding that the DWP had not been awarding the correct number of points to some claimants who need prompting or social support to engage with other people face-to-face.
Amongst PIP claimants who may have missed out are:
People who have regular meetings with a mental health professional, without which they would not be able to manage face to face encounters;
People who need the input of particular friends or relatives with experience of supporting them in social situations – rather than just any well-meaning friend or relative – to help them manage face to face encounters.
The DWP is not planning to invite claimants for an assessment but may contact them for more information.
This means a brown envelope from the DWP will arrive, out of the blue, through the letterboxes of people who are likely to have a phobia about brown envelopes from government departments.
The most likely outcome from people who are contacted in this way is that the letters will be ignored.
So This Writer is happy to endorse the suggestion, by Benefits and Work, that anyone who believes they may be affected should contact the DWP proactively – get in touch with them without giving them time to get in touch with you.
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Ventilator: people with long-term illnesses, disabilities and learning disabilities are still being denied resuscitation by the NHS – and one nurse, at least, has denied the existence of this scandal.
I can’t let this pass.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on June 16, Peterborough’s Tory MP Paul Bristow asked an important question about “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) orders that have been made on NHS patients during the Covid-19 crisis.
Having reported on this scandal many times on This Site, I tweeted in response:
Ah! A question about Do Not Resuscitate orders – from a Tory. Does Johnson agree that these orders should have no place in NHS care?
He doesn't. The reason DNR orders are allowed is POLITICAL. There has been huge controversy about this, but it still happens. #PMQs#PoliticsLive
I was surprised and saddened when this provoked the following response from a Twitter user who identifies as a nurse (I won’t reproduce the tweet here because I do not wish to identify that person):
“Are you a healthcare professional?
“No.
“Then do not spread false theories about something you obviously know nothing about.”
I attempted to put my critic straight – as politely as possible, in the circumstances:
“I am a news reporter of nearly 30 years experience and have been covering this story from the start. I DO know the facts here. And I see that, since you provide no information to support your insult, you probably don’t. Go well.”
Sadly, this person would not take the (rather overt) hint and came back at me:
You have confirmed it.
It is a story.
I do not have the time, inclination or room on twitter to “provide you with information” only to say that I have 30 years experience as a nurse and have a postgraduate qualification in Professional Practice
Then this is a person who ought to have known better. The claim, “It is a story,” was an attempt to downplay the DNR deaths as fiction, and I wasn’t having that. Also the refusal to support a claim with factual information is a classic tactic by trolls who don’t have any facts to offer.
So I responded (again):
“And how does that better qualify you to comment on this? I’ve done the research so I know my facts. It isn’t fiction.”
And again this person came back at me:
Ok then would you attempt CPR on a five stone frail old woman? Am not going to carry on with this because I’m afraid you just don’t know what you’re on about
This is misleading, and a lie. Allow me to explain.
Mr Bristow’s question is available to read in Hansard, here. He said: “Last year, doctors and care settings issued an unprecedented number of “do not resuscitate” orders to patients with learning disabilities and mental illness. Many were unlawful and caused avoidable deaths.
“Despite urgent Care Quality Commission and NHS guidance, shockingly, this practice has continued. Last week, The Telegraph reported that Sonia Deleon died unresuscitated. Her family said she was given a DNR without them knowing, and with her learning disabilities and schizophrenia stated as reasons.
“Does the Prime Minister share my alarm about these cases, which should have no place in our care, and does he agree that they should be independently investigated?”
I won’t bother to repeat Boris Johnson’s response as he made no undertaking to prevent further abuses of DNR orders.
It was clear that the issue here was not the safety of attempting cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on a person who may suffer as much harm in that attempt as by the condition that had caused them to need reviving.
It was a political choice to deny health care to people dying with Covid-19, because they have learning (or other) disabilities. It seems to have been considered an opportunity to clear many thousands of so-called “useless eaters” from the UK’s benefit books.
Sonia Deleon’s story is a classic example; you can read about it here.
In brief, almost a year after it was revealed that a policy was in place to deny NHS Covid-19 care to people with long-term illnesses and disabilities – and NHS bosses then claimed to have warned hospitals, GPs and NHS managers not to make such orders on these people, Sonia Deleon was deliberately allowed to die because a DNR order on her had been made.
Hospital authorities claimed that it the order had been agreed with Ms Deleon’s family but they deny this strenuously.
Ms Deleon had learning disabilities and the circumstances of her death are not only a scandal in themselves but are a continuation of a national disgrace.
And I was criticised for highlighting this atrocity – by someone claiming to be a nurse.
I won’t take this matter further by seeking to identify the NHS trust for which this person works and requesting that they be reminded of the facts and properly disciplined for trying to mislead the public. I may change my mind if any further attempts at deception result from this article.
But I will take the opportunity to request that anybody who has relatives living with a long-term illness or disability, or a learning disability, should contact the NHS and ensure that orders equivalent to death sentences have not been applied to their loved ones without their knowledge.
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A study of Universal Credit has found that it increases mental illness in claimants while failing to get them into new employment.
The finding should cause huge concern among the two million people who are said to have signed up for the benefit after the Conservative government imposed its coronavirus-prompted lockdown, forcing them to sign onto the benefit when their incomes disappeared.
The study of able-bodied people (those with disabilities have already been shown to suffer adverse effects due to changes in their benefits) found a 6.57 per cent increase in psychological distress.
This led the study’s authors to estimate that an extra 63,674 people suffered psychological distress between 2013 and 2018, as a result of being put on Universal Credit.
They estimated that 21,760 might reach the diagnostic threshold for depression.
They believe that, although the effect sizes identified are moderate, the potential for psychological impact is substantial owing to the widespread national policy implementation.
Levels of distress remained constant for people who were not put on the new benefit.
The study revealed that there was no increase in the transition into employment amongst those on Universal Credit, compared with those who were not – despite this being the key rationale given for its introduction.
The Tory government has commissioned its own evaluation of Universal Credit – but this will focus on labour market outcomes and not assess the effect on health and wellbeing.
Won’t it be interesting to see whether this study finds an improvement in employment?
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The number of deaths in mental health hospitals has doubled since the same time last year because of the coronavirus. Why?
These are supposed to be very secure facilities.
The number of people visiting them should have fallen because of the lockdown.
And medical professionals should have had the equipment – and the knowledge – to prevent the virus from penetrating as far as the patients.
But out of 106 deaths between March 1 and May 1, 54 were from confirmed or suspected Covid-19 infections.
In the same period last year, 51 people died. So deaths have more than doubled and all but one of the excess deaths were due to the pandemic.
And if you think the problem is limited to mental health hospitals, ask yourself: why is NHS England refusing to admit the number of people with learning disabilities who have died?
The Care Quality Commission has reminded mental health hospital providers that they have a duty of care to vulnerable patients.
It has highlighted its fears over the spread of the virus in secure hospitals and units, and to patients who are under Mental Health Act restrictions in the community.
The CQC will review its information on the deaths to determine what may be driving the deaths and whether other action should be taken.
There are serious human rights questions to be answered:
Deborah Coles, from the charity Inquest, told The Independent: “The refusal to publish the data points to the historical longstanding failure to provide detailed information about deaths of people in the care of the state in mental health and learning disability settings.
“People in closed institutions are completely reliant on others for their care and treatment. At a time of no external scrutiny, because the CQC is not inspecting units and family visits are restricted, there is the ever-present risk of abuse and ill treatment. These organisations have clear human rights obligations and it is unacceptable that there is just no transparency about what is happening.”
She added: “The other key issue is the indirect impact of Covid-19 on therapeutic services, use of restraint, medication and seclusion and self-inflicted deaths. They need to publish more comprehensive data than numbers disaggregated by gender, race, age, provider. Such a dramatic increase in deaths is deeply concerning and we need to understand the context. Data is meaningless without analysis.”
This Writer wants to know if our health providers have a guilty conscience.
Have they deliberately overlooked their duties to ensure that people with mental illnesses and learning disabilities enjoy a decent standard of health?
Let’s be honest with ourselves – if people in authority are trying to hide something, it’s usually because they know they’re responsible.
Lastly: nobody in such a position knowingly fails in their duty of their own accord. Were they acting (or rather, not acting) on orders from the Tory government?
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Court: moving hearings to audio/video because of the coronavirus has made them useless for some people, due to their disabilities. (How many of your are going to criticise me over the fact that UK courts don’t use the gavel?)
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission has called for the government to collect information on the effect of video court hearings on people with mental illnesses and other conditions.
It is feared that people with conditions including learning disability, autism spectrum disorders and mental health conditions – who are significantly over-represented in the criminal justic system – are at a disadvantage when cases are conducted without them being present in court.
The Ministry of Justice has switched magistrates’ hearings to video sessions in response to the coronavirus lockdown, with 85 per cent of cases heard in England and Wales this month carried out using audio and video technology.
Defendants have complained that they did not have enough time to discuss their cases with lawyers, and that they could not hear or understand what was going on during their hearing.
The EHRC has said that everyone should be equal before the law, and this means nobody defending themselves before a court should be at a disadvantage because they are disabled.
Will the government pay attention? It seems unlikely.
Tories have victimised people with disabilities since the moment they got back into office in 2010 – imposing harsh restrictions on who could receive state benefits, and demonising people claiming those benefits as shirkers and scroungers.
They have already made it hard for people to take a benefit case through to a legal tribunal; but the majority of cases that then succeed suggest that it is only logical that they would want to make it harder for a disabled person to achieve a victory, in any court situation.
Perhaps my opinion is over-judgemental.
So we shall have to judge the government by what it does.
If we never hear about this issue again, we’ll have our answer – and it won’t be good.
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This should be seen as absolute proof that it has been a policy to deny coronavirus care to people with long-term illnesses and disabilities.
This Writer has noted some scepticism in the responses to yesterday’s article about the GP practice in Wales that wrote to people with ongoing medical conditions, telling them that equipment used to treat coronavirus is being rationed and they were not likely to be treated if they contracted the disease. Instead, the letter asked them to sign a form directing medical staff not to attempt to resuscitate them if they succumbed to the virus.
My own attitude to this is clear: as we have all paid into the National Health Service, throughout our lives, we all deserve the best possible care available from it. I asked: do politicians and royalty get preferential treatment? If so, why?
Also, just because a person has an underlying condition, that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to shrug off the virus, given the same help that is provided to everybody else.
Now the British Medical Association, the Care Provider Alliance, the Care Quality Commission and the Royal College of General Practitioners have released a joint statement, saying more or less the same.
Here’s the statement:
It reads [boldings mine]:
The importance of having a personalised care plan in place, especially for older people, people who are frail or have other serious conditions has never been more important than it is now during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Where a person has capacit, as defined by the Mental Capacity Act, this advance care plan should always be discussed with them directly. Where a person lacks the capacity to engage with this process then it is reasonable to produce such a plan following best interest guidelines with the involvement of family members or other appropriate individuals.
Such advance care plans may result in the consideration and completion of a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNAR) or ReSPECT form. It remains essential that these decisions are made on an individual basis. The General Practitioner continues to have a central role in the consideration, completion and signing of DNAR forms for people in community settings.
It is unacceptable for advance care plans, with or without DNAR form completion to be applied to groups of people of any description. These decisions must continue to be made on an individual basis according to need.
It’s saying that any policy requiring medical staff to write off any individual – of any age and condition – as untreatable without discussing their situation with them is wrong.
If the government has handed that down to healthcare providers as a requirement, then it is wrong.
If anybody has already died as a result of such a policy, then those responsible must be identified and must pay the appropriate penalty.
This is real. It is important. It could be deadly. Don’t let the Tories get away with it.
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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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Can you believe the Tory-run Department for Work and Pensions denied Personal Independence Payments to a woman for two years, even though she obviously deserved it?
Sara Pollard-Dambach nearly lost an unborn child because of the stress of being reassessed for PIP – after which the benefit was denied her again. She had a haemorrhage and thought she had miscarried.
Luckily a hospital scan showed a heartbeat.
She has been wheelchair-bound for two years, in extreme pain, after contracting severe conditions.
She fell and fractured her coccyx at a play area in March 2017. Later on in July of the same year she had a tooth abscess and, according to doctors’ notes, her inferior alveolar nerve was damaged and 10 months later she was diagnosed with osteomyelitis – a serious bone infection.
This infection invaded her jaw and started eating the bone there. It also went into her coccyx.
In May this year she had her coccyx removed while also suffering with a painful pilonidal sinus (a small hole or tunnel in the skin that fills with pus) around the top of her buttocks.
Her husband Oliver runs a restaurant, and she usually runs the social media aspect of it – but both he and daughter Chloe had to take care of Sara.
This meant a huge drop in income, and PIP would have done exactly what it is supposed to do – help cover the extra costs incurred by disability.
She applied for the benefit in October 2017 – and never received it.
And now, it seems, she never will. At least, not while there’s a Conservative government telling the DWP to pretend that disabled people are fit and healthy.
Sara has said that she will not be pursuing her claim for PIP – for the sake of her unborn child.
Now that she is slightly better, her husband is working at the restaurant and she is also back at work, so the need isn’t as great.
But she and her family were forced to resort to food banks after the DWP made its original decision, and the local community raised cash for them as well.
So we have a case in which a woman was forced to resort to food banks because the DWP would not acknowledge her condition.
And then she nearly lost her unborn child because of the stress of a reassessment that should never have been necessary.
Cases like Sara’s are happening all the time.
People have suffered much worse – up to and including their own death.
And there’s only one way to stop it.
Regime change. You can bring it about on Thursday, simply by voting the Conservatives out.
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The Royal College of Psychiatrists has tried to explain its reasons for failing to object to a pilot project in Cornwall in which Job Centre advisors – with no training – decide whether claimants need mental health care.
The department… is trying to cut doctors working on mental health out of the benefit system by claiming that rank-and-file Job Centre advisers are just as able to spot mental health problems – and recommend the best treatment.
They aren’t; they can’t. It’s just a cynical bid to stop people with mental health problems from claiming Employment and Support Allowance or Personal Independence Payment.
The Tory government’s press release stated: “The initiative means work coaches can continue to refer people with mental health conditions to specialist one to one support, without the need for a GP or clinical assessment.”
I responded:
“Without the need”? Translation: “Without the support of evidence from a qualified doctor who can bring their expertise to a benefit tribunal.”
The press release said: “The support is also designed to help people find their way back into the workplace when they’re ready.”
I responded:
Translation: “The intention is to ensure that people with mental illnesses must continue to seek employment, whether they are ready or not.”
Disability News Service is now reporting that the Royal College of Psychiatrists has responded to this insult against its practitioners – after being nudged to do so by no fewer than five disability groups.
RCP states, according to the article, that:
RCP’s social inclusion lead has “continued to raise concerns and provide expert advice about the impact of welfare reform on people with mental illness and those with learning disabilities”.
[It says] it is “clear that anyone undertaking a mental health assessment needs to be sufficiently qualified to do so and, as part of the assessment, should engage with clinicians involved in providing care to the person concerned”.
[It also says] RCP believes that a jobcentre would not be “a suitable therapeutic environment to assess and discuss an individual’s mental health”.
[It adds:] “Having to do so would likely increase the stress and pressure on people with a mental illness when seeking support, and the possibility of them seeing the receipt of benefits as being conditional on them agreeing to mental health treatment.
“In addition, there is a risk that being referred to the wrong type of treatment may reduce the likelihood of seeking help in the future, make their illness worse and increase the likelihood of experiencing a future crisis.”
The disability groups are not happy with this response – and rightly so.
Why the delay in responding? Were these psychiatrists hoping the issue would go away?
Is the RCP going to talk to the Department for Work and Pensions about its concerns? Or were its comments just a sop to the disabled people’s representatives?
And what about the people of Cornwall?
What have they experienced while the RCP stood by in silence?
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