Philippa Day: Capita paid her family an out-of-court settlement after a court heard her mental illness had been “exacerbated” by the way her benefits were processed.
The Department for Work and Pensions is riddled with incompetence with a wrong benefits decision being overturned every single minute of every working day, according to new analysis.
Readers of This Site may find nothing surprising in the revelation from disability charity Scope about assessment results for Personal Independent Payment.
It’s doubtful that it is incompetence, of course. There is a wealth of information that the DWP deliberately approves wrong decisions by benefits assessors from outsourcing firms like Capita.
Capita, of course, has just agreed to pay off the family of a disabled, mentally-ill woman who died of a drugs overdose after being messed about by the company and the DWP over a period of months.
So why does the DWP – and its outsourced assessment firms – get away with it? Simple: they have cleverly managed to avoid a court making a decision that they are guilty of an offence due to their activities.
Most recently, Capita made an out-of-court settlement to avoid a judgement on the death of Philippa Day.
According to Disability Rights UK,
Thousands have to fight every month to get the main disability benefit Personal Independence Payment.
Scope has demanded urgent action from Government after publishing the analysis which shows that on average, more than 12,000 Disabled people are successfully overturning wrong Personal Independence Payment (PIP) decisions every month.
Disabled people can appeal if their PIP claim has been turned down or if they are awarded less financial support than they had expected.
Scope found that between July 2019 and June 2021, on average there have been 12,579 successful appeals (including mandatory reconsiderations and tribunals) every month – equivalent to 600 every day. Since July 2019 and June 2021, there have been a total of 301,899 successful appeals. 70% of PIP tribunals are successful.
Figures also show the Government spent £120 million fighting disability benefit claims for PIP and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) between 2017 and 2019.
Scope has launched a new petition calling on the government to make sure disabled people get the right benefit decision, first time.
The petition calls for disabled people to have the right to request an appropriate assessor who properly understands a claimant’s condition.
Will it get anywhere? Doubtful.
Therese Coffey – and all the Tory ministers before her, going back to 2010 and Iain Duncan Smith – enjoy killing off vulnerable people too much.
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Is this the new fashion for the Department for Work and Pensions and its privately-hired assessors: pay off the families of people who have died and sweep their cases under the carpet?
Philippa Day is the second deceased benefit claimant this week whose case is being ended with a payment by one of the organisations involved in pushing her to her death.
This time, benefit assessor Capita is paying up in an out-of-court settlement after Ms Day’s family started a lawsuit. In the other case, the DWP itself paid more than £16,000 to family members of another claimant after being ordered to do so by an Independent Case Examiner (ICE).
Coroner Gordon Clows delivered a damning indictment of Capita and the DWP at the inquest into Ms Day’s death in January this year.
He said her mental illness had been “exacerbated” by the way her benefits were processed: “Were it not for this problem, it is not likely that she would have [taken the act which ended her life].”
And he said a lot more. See This Site’s previous article – here – for all the damning details.
Now Capita is paying an undisclosed amount – out of court – meaning there will be no UK court verdict against the organisation or the Department for Work and Pensions to show that they drove a vulnerable woman to her death.
Do you think that is fair? I don’t.
Nor, it seems does solicitor Merry Varney, who acted for the Day family on behalf of law firm Leigh Day.
“Until the DWP changes its attitude, people like Philippa and her family remain at risk of gross human rights violations and ‘benefit related deaths’ are just another example of preventable deaths of people with disabilities occurring without any proper investigation or scrutiny.”
Somebody needs to take a court case through to the end. Otherwise the DWP and its assessment firms will keep dodging responsibility for the thousands of deaths they are causing.
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There are many kinds of torture – not just physical but also psychological.
This Writer has to ask whether the Department for Work and Pensions used psychological torture on a disabled benefit claimant by its own failures to carry out its duties properly.
DWP officers had left the claimant to be supported by an elderly, disabled parent – his appointee – who also needed daily carers and meals delivered.
Departmental guidance states that they should have found another appointee – but they did not do so. Why not?
Instead, the claimant’s ESA and PIP were repeatedly stopped due to failure to attend assessments, because letters were sometimes sent to the claimant’s address and sometimes to his parent’s.
The benefits were restarted after interventions – but the DWP has apparently lost the evidence showing why the claims had been restarted.
There are supposed to be safeguarding procedures to protect vulnerable benefit claimants but – as we discovered after the death of Jodey Whiting – nothing has been done to encourage officers to follow them.
In this case, the DWP repeatedly failed to follow its own safeguarding procedures, despite the fact that officers knew the claimant was vulnerable.
In addition to physical health problems, this claimant had severe depression. At one point, a sibling contacted the DWP to say that the claimant’s GP had sent them for psychiatric assessment due to a deterioration in their mental health.
The sibling explained that they had been to the claimant’s house and found unopened post and said they weren’t fit for a PIP assessment, but another such interview was arranged – by letter.
The result was predictable: the claimant didn’t answer the door and their PIP was stopped. The same also happened in relation to their ESA claim.
The claimant died – underweight, “unkempt and dirty” – after having been denied ESA for three months and PIP for three weeks.
His parent had been providing cash for food, even though that person had their own care package, meals prepared and carers attending daily.
The claimant’s sibling complained to the DWP and the government department made a payment of ESA arrears and £3,000 of backdated PIP.
Unsatisfied, the sibling took the matter to the Independent Case Examiner, who ruled that a further payment of £10,700 in PIP be paid to the claimant’s estate and a consolatory payment of £2,500 to the family.
And a fat lot of good it dead the deceased man!
But think how much the DWP saved; one-off payments totalling £16,200 – which included arrears, remember – is much less than might have been handed out if the claimant had remained alive.
So I have to ask: did DWP officers deliberately push this claimant to death?
They knew he suffered from severe depression but chose to mess him around.
Brown envelope phobia is a known phenomenon in which depressed people avoid opening letters from the DWP – so they sent him letters that they knew he would never read.
They deliberately failed to find a new appointee, and sent important notifications to the claimant’s former appointee – knowing that he would not be able to read them.
Another known behaviour of depressed benefit claimants is aversion to confrontations with DWP-appointed benefits assessors; they believe (justifiably, as many documented cases show) that they’ll be cheated out of payments.
But these DWP officers still sent an assessor to this claimant’s address anyway. Is it really credible for them to say they did not expect what happened?
Or were they deliberately inflicting psychological torture on a man with severe – mark that: severe – mental health problems?
To This Writer, the evidence is clear: the problem at the DWP is systemic – people there are encouraged to ignore their duty of care to claimants.
But with the Court of Appeal refusing to allow another inquest in the case of Jodey Whiting, it seems impossible to bring the evidence needed to prove it into the light of day.
Is the whole of the UK’s benefit and legal system rigged to push vulnerable people to their deaths and then hide the facts, simply because they happen to be sick and/or have a disability?
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The ballot box: come on, Wales – let’s have a chance to tell Boris Johnson to get stuffed!
Welsh people are showing surprising loyalty to the United Kingdom after being progressively abused by Tory governments since 2010.
They are lagging behind Northern Ireland and Scotland, where polls show a majority of people in both countries want referenda on whether to quit the union.
In Northern Ireland, 68 per cent of people are demanding the right to choose whether to stay in the UK or join the Republic of Ireland.
Scotland will get its referendum if Nicola Sturgeon has her way.
Only Wales is dragging its feet over the chance to show national displeasure with Boris Johnson’s travesty of leadership – widely believed to be the worst government in UK history.
The latest poll in Wales shows just 28 per cent of people wanting independence.
It makes you wonder where people here get their news.
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It’s a sad consequence of having to fight a court case that I don’t have as much time for some of the subjects that made This Site’s name – such as the persecution of benefit claimants by the DWP.
This particular issue is one on which I have personal experience, though – as, I dare say, has anybody who has had to deal with DWP letters.
My case differs from that outlined by Disability News Service, though – in that the DWP contacted Mrs Mike to tell her that her PIP review was due, and could she return the form within a month of the date of the letter?
The letter arrived no less than 10 days after the date on it. That left three weeks to get the review done.
It is not enough time. Not only do PIP claimants have to navigate the form, which is worded in an open way but which is marked according to very specific requirements, but they must also seek corroborating evidence from carers, community helpers and healthcare professionals.
All of this takes considerable time.
As her carer, I knew that we needed to seek expert help in writing the form, so I contacted Citizens Advice and was immediately told that I would have an appointment to talk to someone in a few days’ time – and that I should seek an extension on the deadline at once.
I can’t say that conditions are the same across the UK – I live in Wales – but once I managed to get through to DWP (there was an inevitable wait of more than an hour) the department could not have been happier to extend the deadline.
I think I was given a couple of extra weeks.
I therefore advise everybody to do this – especially if receiving a letter with a deadline that appears to have been delayed in the post. It makes the argument between DWP and the Royal Mail irrelevant.
And I needed the extra time. Mrs Mike has a condition that can only get worse, but it wasn’t until I spoke to somebody else about it that I realised the extent to which her condition had degenerated.
Help I had provided as a favour when she was feeling particularly bad had become a habit – meaning that he condition has worsened – and the very shape of our days had changed as these accumulated.
The changes had been so gradual that I had not taken them into account – but they mean a great deal when dealing with the DWP.
I therefore advise everybody going through a benefit review to seek expert help from Citizens Advice or an organisation that is similarly qualified.
Finally there was the question of corroborating evidence. I provided a letter, as Mrs Mike’s carer, describing the obstacles she faces getting through the day, and the ways I have to help her.
We sought letters from community organisations and some professionals but received no interest in return.
And we contacted Mrs Mike’s doctor, too. This seemed likely to be problematic. “Oh, you’ll get no help there,” people said. “Doctors have been discouraged and disincentivised by the DWP! If you do get a letter, they’ll charge you a fat wad of cash!”
Not a bit of it was true.
We received a letter in due course, containing a printout of Mrs Mike’s medical history and a medical opinion that was adamantly in favour of her receiving the highest degree of benefit available to her.
Finally, when it was time to post the completed form, I took it to the post office and paid extra to ensure that the DWP would have to sign for it, to confirm receipt.]
This is very important. I know from personal experience and the experience of others that the DWP finds it easy to claim non-receipt – as it did in the case of the claimant in the DNS story.
This cannot happen if you have evidence that somebody signed for it. It bypasses any concerns about whether delays were caused by the Royal Mail or the DWP because it provides proof of delivery within the time stated.
The decision took about a month to come back. It confirmed Mrs Mike’s benefit would continue at the highest rates possible.
So that is my advice for anybody going through the benefit review process:
Seek expert advice on filling out the form because they must provide specific information that the DWP must see before it awards any points.
Contact the DWP and ask for an extension on the deadline if its letter arrived late.
Seek evidence from anybody who has experience of the claimant’s disability. The worst that can happen is they decline to provide it. Don’t be put off asking your doctor.
When you post the form back, make sure the DWP has to sign for it to confirm that it has been received.
These are measures that work.
They deprive the DWP of any excuse to blame another organisation for delays in processing a claim.
And they ensure that your benefit payments are disrupted by any nonsense if the DWP claims that you haven’t returned your form.
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If you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right?
In that case, what is the Department of Work and Pensions afraid of?
Since February 2012 (as far as we can be sure), it has been carrying out secret reviews into the reasons benefit claimants died – but has destroyed records of all such reviews carried out before 2016.
Why? What did they find that the DWP needed to hide?
Freedom of Information requests show that 49 reviews took place between February 2012 and autumn 2014 (all records of them have been destroyed) – and nine reviews took place between August 2014 and April 2016 (but these overlap with other periods where we know the numbers).
The reason this is cause for serious concern is that the DWP’s policies and practices have been linked to the deaths of benefit claimants – particularly those claiming Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) who suffered mental distress – ever since the Tories took over control of that department in 2010 (if not before).
At the time of writing it is only a day since This Site published an article highlighting the fact that more than 300 terminally-ill people have been dying every month after being denied fast-track access to benefits by the DWP.
The department has been rejecting around 100 claims per month.
The concern – as I pointed out yesterday – is that the Department for Work and Pensions intentionally harms people claiming benefits by depriving them of their payments in order to hasten their deaths.
Is that what was revealed in the now-destroyed reviews of the reasons claimants died?
Is that why the DWP shredded them?
If so, then it seems this department’s bosses – and their political leaders from 2010 onwards – have good reason to be afraid. But when will they be brought to justice?
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Once again the Department for Work and Pensions has been caught lying about the support it provides to people who are terminally ill.
This Site reported, many years ago, on the scandal when it was discovered that – despite having a policy to put people likely to die within six months on a fast track for benefits – many benefit claims were refused, leaving these people to die in appalling conditions.
So then-Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd announced in 2019 that there would be a “fresh and honest” re-evaluation of the way these benefits were awarded.
It is now two years later, and two charities – the Marie Curie Trust and the Motor Neurone Disease Association – have drawn public attention to official data showing that the DWP is rejecting benefit claims by more than 100 terminally-ill people, every month.
Worse still, the official figures also show that an average of 315 people are dying every month*, never having been able to secure the fast-track benefits that are supposed to help them pass away with dignity.
This is damning:
They say there are “serious concerns” over the government’s “six-month rule” – under which people must prove they have six months or less to live to access fast-track benefits support.
They said there were red flags in the DWP’s ability to recognise when a claimant was approaching the end of life.
I think that is very… charitable.. of them.
It is far more likely that the DWP is simply ignoring the facts in order to avoid paying out the benefit money – knowing that these people will soon be dead; they can’t complain or appeal and expect justice before their condition kills them.
This in turn suggests that nothing at all has changed and that Amber Rudd’s “fresh and honest” review was nothing of the sort.
Here’s some evidence in support of that conclusion:
The charities say that the findings of the review are “being withheld”.
So, after 11 years of Tory control (and it wasn’t much better under neoliberal New Labour) we can say with confidence:
The Department for Work and Pensions intentionally harms people claiming benefits by depriving them of their payments in order to hasten their deaths.
No wonder we all hate having anything to do with that vicious, poisonous arm of the Tory government.
No wonder millions of people suffer anxiety attacks whenever they see an envelop marked “DWP” in their letterbox.
No wonder I said, years ago, that the DWP is not fit for purpose and should be scrapped.
But I’ll tell you why it wasn’t:
In killing thousands of people every year, the DWP is doing exactly what Boris Johnson and his Tories want.
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Mark Drakeford: Wales’ First Minister has described the Tory government in Westminster as “utterly shambolic”.
Has any UK-based government won six successive terms? That’s what Labour just achieved in Wales.
It shows the advantage that sitting governments can use, when they actually deliver on their promises and do their best to help the population.
The mainstream media have been unforgivably quiet about it. Perhaps the London-based hacks think Wales doesn’t matter. They certainly pay more attention to Scotland, where the SNP has won only its fourth successive term.
@BBCNews “SNP wins an historic 4th term”. How about “Welsh Labour wins an historic 6th term in Senedd”? 🤷🏻♀️
That could all change very soon, with both devolved governments likely to support independence referenda if proposals are put before them.
I know Nicola Sturgeon has vowed to make it happen. The surprise here is that Mark Drakeford has said he will support an independence referendum in Wales, if there is a majority in the Senedd for holding one.
Mark Drakeford tells BBC News unequivocally that if there was a majority in Senedd for a Welsh independence referendum, he would support holding one. Says the Scotland policy is a matter for Scottish Labour but I think the wry smile on his face made his position fairly clear…
The contrast with Labour’s performance in England could not be more extreme – as social media commenters have merrily pointed out:
The fact Labour socialists performed brilliantly and Labour centrists performed abysmally fully vindicates everyone who said a breakaway socialist party could succeed. Just imagine what might have been if Corbyn and others had made that step.
Wales chose decent, proud socialists over all the noise from UKIP, Abolish the Welsh Assembly and the forces of the right.
Why? Because there weren’t a bunch of self-serving Centrists around to sabotage it. There’s a lesson there.
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈 (@TheMendozaWoman) May 8, 2021
The lesson was very clearly put by Simon de Jever: “Drakeford is a left wing Corbyn supporting leader. Starmer is a Corbyn bashing centrist. Drakeford has had a spectacular win even in Brexit areas and Starmer has reduced the Labour vote to 29%.”
And Andrew Feinstein added: “Makes you think Starmer’s purge of the left and massive shift to the right might have been a mistake!”
Ya think?
The victory creates huge problems for Keir Starmer because his failure will be measured against Drakeford’s success. Some are already laying bets that Drakeford’s suspension from the Labour Party is already in the mail.
But if Drakeford is serious about permitting an independence referendum, it could create a monumental problem for Boris Johnson.
He can’t refuse permission for such a poll on the basis that we’ve had one recently (as in Scotland) because we haven’t.
He can’t rely on Wales rejecting independence because he knows his government has been so appallingly useless that many Welsh people may consider going it alone to be preferable – even if it means a few lean years in the immediate future. We’ll have hardship under the Tories indefinitely.
And it means he could be in line for a double dose of shame as the prime minister who presided over the end of the United Kingdom.
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Meanwhile, in England and Wales: it’s not quite this bad but the death toll suggests it might as well be.
It’s easy to understand why the Scottish National Party is so popular north of the border – it actually fulfils its promises.
For example: it is replacing the hated Tory Personal Independence Payment for people living with disabilities.
The new Adult Disability Payment will be phased in next year, providing financial support to cover the extra costs faced by people with disabilities.
The SNP-run Scottish government has announced that the benefit will take a new approach, to ensure dignity, fairness and respect.
According to the Daily Record:
Social Security Scotland will make decisions about entitlement for ADP using the applicant’s account of their circumstances and existing supporting information, where possible.
The number of face-to-face assessments will be significantly reduced and will only be necessary when it is the only practicable way to make a decision.
Most consultations will be carried out over the phone, but can be face-to-face in a GP surgery or even at home – whatever works best for the person applying.
And claimants will no longer be asked to carry out tasks to demonstrate how their disability, long-term illness or mental health condition affects them as part of the application process.
This promises to be a huge improvement. Also helpful will be the provision of supporting material which may include a social care needs assessment, a report from a Community Psychiatric Nurse, and information from a carer.
As a carer myself, This Writer would have loved to be able to submit information to support Mrs Mike’s PIP (and ESA) claims.
But anything can seem good before it has actually been tested.
I would like to hear from claimants of the new benefit, once it starts coming in. Let’s hope they say good things about it.
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Long-term readers of This Site will remember Mo Stewart, the researcher into the harm being caused to claimants of sickness and disability benefits by successive Conservative governments’ determination to convert the social security system to a for-profit insurance scheme.
After the 2019 general election, she became concerned that the huge new influx of Conservative MPs – along with those from other political parties – were ignorant of the harm that government policies had caused.
So she wrote a briefing paper specifically addressing the issue and sent it to all of them.
Labour’s John McDonnell has apparently offered to arrange a debate on the subject, if possible.
Whether or not that happens, Mo has provided me with a copy of the document so we all have a record of what these MPs should know – and so they won’t be able to plead ignorance.
And here it is:
Social Policy Abused: The Creation Of Preventable Harm
Executive Summary
The Preventable Harm Project (the Project) ran for ten years and closed in November 2019, with the evidence identified within the Project findings widely promoted during 2019/20. The Project identified the bipartisan political ambition to eventually remove the UK welfare state, to be replaced by private income replacement health insurance. In order to remove the welfare state, it was first necessary to remove the psychological security provided by the welfare state. This was achieved by the adoption of a flawed disability assessment model, and the manipulation of the general public aided by the tabloid press, that successfully demonised claimants of disability benefit(s). Large numbers of suicides linked to the adoption of the Work Capability Assessment are overlooked by the Department for Work and Pensions, and successive Rule 43 ‘prevention of future deaths’ Coroners’ reports, highlighting the link between the Work Capability Assessment and suicides, have also been disregarded. The Work Capability Assessment was fatally flawed by design and should be abolished, and the departmental intimidation of disability benefit claimants should be outlawed.
Introduction: The Creation of Preventable Harm
1. Introduced in 2008 to restrict access to the new Employment and Support Allowance long-term out-of-work disability benefit, the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is a ‘non-medical functional assessment’ that disregards all clinical opinion. Since 2010, the WCA has been linked to the deaths of thousands of chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants who applied for state financial support when unable to work, yet were deemed to be ‘fit for work’ by the fatally flawed WCA.
2. Twelve years since the adoption of the WCA there is an identified and growing mental health crisis within the UK linked to claimants of disability benefit(s), and a disturbing increase in suicides directly linked to the WCA, as identified by published academic research but dismissed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
“The worst thing, I find, is realising that I am forced into looking for a life that I want but have no chance of having. I seriously feel I may kill myself because being sick, having next to no money, no life, no future, no cure, constant pain and constant disapproval defeats me.”
An extract from the ‘Fulfilling Potential? ESA and the fate of the Work-Related Activity Group’ project, conducted by Catherine Hale and published by MIND and the Centre for Welfare Reform.
3. In both 2006 and 2007 the government’s own expert medical panel warned the administration not to adopt the WCA, advising that it was ‘not fit for purpose’ due to the predictable negative impact on public mental health. The expert panel’s clinical opinion was disregarded by the DWP. The removal of clinical opinion from disability assessment using the WCA guaranteed that many of those in greatest need were destined to die, as the state removed the financial and the psychological security of a guaranteed income when unfit to work.
4. There have been two official Rule 43 ‘prevention of future deaths’ Coroners’ reports linking the WCA to suicides, with other Coroners expressing concern at inquests due to the identified enforced suffering of the deceased by the DWP. Coroners’ official Rule 43 reports and identified concerns are disregarded by the DWP, whose social policy reforms since 2010 created preventable harm to those in greatest need linked to intimidation. The constant threat of sanctions, which removes all disability benefit income, leaves the chronically ill and disabled community in need of state financial support living in fear of the DWP.
5. Regardless of the Jobcentre being advised that a claimant is unable to attend an interview due to ill health, disabled claimants are routinely met with an ‘institutional reluctance’ to meet their needs, as identified in Coroner’s reports. Jobcentre staff’s decisions to sanction a claimant can cause death by starvation, in C21st UK, when all income is removed for a period of weeks or months. No-one is held to account when some of those in greatest need are starved to death by the state.
6. The WCA is used to limit access to all state disability funding including the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Universal Credit and the War Pensions for older working-age disabled veterans, which is a military medical pension not an out-of-work benefit.
7. The WCA is regularly and inappropriately referred to as a ‘medical assessment’ by the DWP, MPs, academics, policy advisers and journalists. The WCA is not a medical assessment and is totally unrelated to clinical opinion. The adoption of the WCA is identified as being attributed to psychocoercion by successive administrations, to remove what once was the psychological security of the welfare state for anyone who is unfit to work.
8. Identified in 2008 by the American Association of Justice as being the second worst insurance company in America, the corporate insurance giant Unum (Provident) Insurance have been advisers to the UK government since 1992, and were appointed as the official UK government consultants for ‘welfare claims management’ from 1994. Concerned by the increase in various conditions that could not be confirmed by blood tests or x-rays, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, Unum Insurance adopted a biopsychosocial (BPS) model of disability assessment, which disregards all clinical opinion.
9. Unum advised the UK government as to how to adopt a similar BPS assessment model in the UK, and funded an assessment centre at Cardiff University for this purpose. The DWP adopted the discredited Waddell-Aylward BPS model of assessment for the WCA, which disregards diagnosis, prognosis, past medical history and prescribed medicines. The human consequences of using the WCA is that many of those in greatest need would die, with many driven to suicide with a common perception that anyone claiming to be unfit to work, and in need of state financial support, will be persecuted by the DWP. The Waddell-Aylward BPS model of assessment failed all academic scrutiny.
Policy recommendations
• Since 2009 every clinical authority in the UK have demanded that the WCA should be abolished. This includes the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Nurses and the British Psychological Society. Introduced by the private health insurance industry, disregarding clinical opinion was always dangerous. The WCA is fatally flawed and should be abolished without further delay, to be replaced with a disability assessment that considers clinical opinion, with many assessments being paper-based, so that the chronically ill and disabled community are no longer intimidated by the DWP.
Research findings
• In order to remove the past psychological security provided by the welfare state it was necessary to discredit vast numbers of disability benefit claimants, aided by the tabloid press, which helped to manipulate the British public.
• Social policies were adopted with a fiscal priority whilst disregarding health and wellbeing, which policymakers failed to take into account when recommending policies which were harmful.
• Since 2010 the social policy reforms, and the additional austerity measures, were destined to have a catastrophic and often fatal consequence for many of those in greatest need. Thousands of chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants have died when ‘killed by the state,’ with a 2014 NHS Digital Adult Psychiatry Morbidity Survey report that identified that almost 50 percent of ESA disability benefit claimants had attempted suicide at some point.
• Prosecuted disability hate crimes, including murder, increased by 213 percent between 2010-2016, during the coalition government’s term in office.
• The relationship between physical health and mental health is well documented. The numbers of benefit claimants who have perished due to social policies since 2010 will never be known.
• Published in September 2016 ‘Cash Not Care: the planned demolition of the UK welfare state’ provides the results of the first six years of independent disability studies research for the Preventable Harm Project. The book is now recommended reading for various social policy, health and legal courses at universities in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
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