Tag Archives: work

DWP is fighting the release of secret reports on benefit claimants – again

If you’re wondering what happens to the money the government saves by cutting off the benefits that people need and deserve, it seems the DWP uses it to fend off legal demands for it to publish reports on the harmful consequences of doing so.

According to Disability News Service, the department has been ordered to publish two such reports and is likely to spend multiple thousands of pounds trying to keep them out of the public domain.

Why would it do that, if there was nothing questionable in their contents?

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Here’s DNS:

The first report was a written assessment of how the government’s decision to abolish the work capability assessment (WCA) would impact millions of disabled people and other groups protected under the Equality Act.

Under the plans, disabled people who cannot work will only be able to qualify for a new health element of universal credit if they also receive personal independence payment (PIP), disability living allowance, or, in Scotland, adult disability payment.

But this would also mean that it would be left to DWP’s over-worked work coaches – who will usually have no health-related qualifications – to decide if a disabled person should carry out work-related activity.

DNS had told the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that although the WCA has been “closely linked to the deaths of hundreds of disabled people”, the plans to scrap it could lead to further deaths of claimants.

The second report describes the impact of DWP errors on “vulnerable” benefit claimants, which it has admitted could have a “negative” impact on its reputation.

The report contains “worst case scenario” information that DWP has calculated about the impact of its errors on claimants, which it appears keen to keep hidden from the public, and probably includes estimates of how many claimants have been harmed by its errors.

DWP has argued that this information was only intended to be considered by its serious case panel and that “some of the information, if presented in its current format, could have a negative reputational impact on DWP”.

Between 2013 and 2015, I spent two years campaigning for information on the number of people who died after being denied Employment and Support Allowance to be released.

The Information Commissioner’s Office eventually ruled that the data must be published – but the DWP said it only had information on deaths within two weeks of a decision.

This still showed 2,400 people had died over a period between 2011 and 2014 – after the DWP had decided that they were perfectly healthy and did not deserve the benefit they were claiming.

Why did they die, then?

It seems the currently-disputed reports are on similar lines – discussing the harm that may happen to patients if the government goes through with current plans, based on the experience of what has happened in the past.

That is why it is so important for them to be published; they may contain information on harm the DWP knows it has caused.

If DWP bosses know their policies and decisions have caused undue harm, why are they pushing ahead with them – or worsening them?

Source: DWP set to waste thousands fighting release of two secret reports – Disability News Service


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Asylum seekers on Bibby Stockholm are doing better work than Tory politicians

The barge: Bibby Stockholm seems to have become home to a group of people who are having a hugely positive effect volunteering to help homeless people in Portland and Weymouth. Perhaps asylum-seekers are better than Tory politicians have pretended?

Asylum-seekers who have been detained by the Tory government on the Bibby Stockholm barge are doing charity work in Portland and nearby Weymouth, it has been revealed.

They aren’t allowed to work for wages while they wait for the Tory-run Home Office to assess their asylum claims.

Instead, some of them are filling the huge amount of free time on their hands by volunteering for charities:

Azad [not his real name], an asylum seeker currently living on the Bibby Stockholm barge, is devoting his time to volunteering for homeless charities in Weymouth… and Portland, helping to cook and distribute food for those who are living on the streets during the coldest months of the year.

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Several of the asylum seekers living on the barge have now begun volunteering with local charities – and in particular, charities working with homeless people.

Some of the men on board the barge have experience in charity work, having worked for organisations in their home countries… Others have volunteered at charities in London or other parts of the country where they were housed before moving to the Bibby Stockholm.

The asylum seekers receive around £9 a week as an allowance to spend on food or leisure in Weymouth or Portland… Azad said he spends the majority of his weekly allowance on food to give to homeless people in Weymouth.

Compare this with the antics of the Tory MPs in Parliament, whose policies seem designed to make as many people homeless as possible – and who seem unlikely to spend any time working to ease the lives of those their policies have ruined.

Source: Portland barge: Asylum seekers helping homeless charities | Dorset Echo


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Striking doctors are being invited to work abroad and starve the NHS of talent

Pay restoriation is the goal: striking junior doctors on the picket lines on January 5.

Junior doctors are striking for pay restoration because they don’t want to be forced to move abroad in order to be able to make ends meet.

That is the revelation on the third day of their longest strike yet.

Doctors were on their picket lines from 7am today (January 5), pledging to keep up the pressure for the Tory government to restore their real-terms pay to its 2010 level – the same level that MP pay has always maintained:

If the government refuses to level up their pay, the alternative for many junior doctors is to emigrate to another country that provides a better rate of pay. Dr Andrew Meyerson lays out the facts here:

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More than 11,000 doctors left the UK for jobs in other countries in 2022, at a time when the UK already had fewer doctors per 1,000 patients than other OECD nations:

This means the Tory government’s intractability on pay is creating a serious staffing shortage in the NHS. This can only be seen as a deliberate choice to starve the NHS of talent.

And the situation is likely to get worse:

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak (foolishly) pledged to cut NHS waiting lists last year and is being challenged on how he proposes to achieve this in the face of the strike:

The only way This Writer can see that promise being fulfilled is if Sunak gives the work to private health firms – who employ NHS doctors and nurses at higher rates of pay.

This means the government would be paying private companies more money to provide the same service it could get for a much more cost-effective price on the NHS.

And all the while, the government would be continuing to starve people who work exclusively for the NHS of the pay they need to make ends meet.

Sunak is supposed to be clever with numbers. Why does he find it impossible to do the arithmetic here?


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Millions of benefits will be halted ‘if you refuse’ says Scrooge Stride. Refuse? To do what?

Persecution: the Tories are up to their usual tricks – claiming that benefit claimants are refusing to look for jobs.

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride is courting “Scrooge” comparisons by wheeling out an old Tory attack line against benefit claimants – at Christmas.

The line is that benefit claimants refuse to look for work:

The Department for Work and Pensions could stop your payments next year – if claimants refuse to look for work. Ahead of Christmas, a renewed warning from the DWP has been circulating with claimants tasked with more strident attempts to get into work next year.

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Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride warned: “These back-to-work reforms strike at the heart of the quid pro quo that defines the contract between the state and the individual. The government will provide you with the support you need to move into work but if you fail to keep your side of the bargain, if you refuse to engage or ignore available job opportunities, we will stop your job benefits.”

Experience suggests this may be a renewed attempt to force jobseekers into employment that pays less than they would receive on benefits – making a mockery of the claim that work is the best way out of poverty.

But who actually refuses to look for work? Very few people. If there is a glut of jobs that aren’t being filled, it’s probably because they simply aren’t worth taking.

Then again, the Tories have been making big speeches that employers should offer more pay to workers. If anything comes of that, they may see jobless figures falling.

But if they want to save money – or take money for the government – then they should be cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion rather than benefit fraud. And that is something the Tories will never do.

Source: DWP warns millions of benefits will be halted ‘if you refuse’


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After coroner’s warning over death of disabled man, benefits process to get HARDER

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign].

What are the courts going to do about this?

The excellent Disability News Service is reporting that a coroner has ordered Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride to take action that will prevent flaws in the Universal Credit system leading to further deaths after a disabled man became overwhelmed by the application process and committed suicide.

Instead, it seems Stride is determined to increase the death toll exponentially.

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Here’s the DNS story:

It states:

An inquest into the death of Kevin Gale earlier this month heard from his psychiatrist, who expressed significant concerns about the way mental health service-users were supported with their universal credit claims within DWP.

The inquest also heard from the trust’s nursing director, who told the coroner that they considered the issues identified by the psychiatrist to be “national” and said they were “debilitating for service users”.

Kevin Gale, who is believed to have worked previously as a window cleaner, took his own life on 4 March 2022.

Coroner Kirsty Gomersal sent a Prevention of Future Deaths report to Stride.

She pointed to the “number of and length” of the universal credit forms that had to be completed which “can be overwhelming for someone with a mental health illness”, and which are “perpetuated if the applicant cannot get help to complete the paperwork”, while also highlighting the “long telephone queues to speak to a DWP advisor”.

She added: “Having to travel long distances for appointments can be detrimental for those with a mental health illness.”

And what’s happening to the benefit system?

Here’s The Independent:

Jeremy Hunt has warned those who “coast” on benefits will lose handouts if they refuse to take a job as part of a new crackdown.

Claimants deemed fit to work, but who fail to take steps to find employment, will be cut off from accessing benefits such as free prescriptions and dental treatment, help from energy suppliers and cheaper mobile phone packages.

Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, said that schemes to help people back into the workforce would also be expanded as part of a new £2.5bn five-year long back-to-work plan.

Under the plan, claimants will be forced to accept a job or undertake work experience to improve their prospects. Those who fail to do so will be hit with an “immediate sanction”.

At the moment, claimants can face open-ended sanctions where they have their benefits stopped. Those under this sanction for more than six months will now have their claims closed, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said, which would also end their access to other benefits such as free prescriptions and legal aid.

Mr Stride said: “…We are expanding the voluntary support for people with health conditions and disabilities, including our flagship Universal Support programme.

“But our message is clear: if you are fit, if you refuse to work, if you are taking taxpayers for a ride – we will take your benefits away.”

Overall, the government says expanded help-to-work schemes will help more than 1 million people over the next five years.

Part of this package includes plans to add another 100,000 people to the Individual Placement and Support scheme, which aims to get those with severe mental illness quickly into paid employment.

Mandatory work trials will be rolled out, meaning that claimants will be forced to accept a job or do work experience to improve their prospects, and those who fail to do so will be hit with “immediate sanction”.

Reform of the “fit note” system will also be explored under the plans. In a trial in certain, fit notes, an alternative to sick notes which set out what work someone can do, will be handed out by the benefits system, not doctors.

So, after receiving an order from the courts to make it easier for people with severe mental health problems to claim disability benefits, Stride and Hunt have chosen to make it many orders of magnitude harder.

And we can all see them:

The last of the ‘X’ posts above makes an extremely good point.

If these changes are being made in order to allow the government to make tax cuts in advance of a general election, then the Tories will once again be pushing the most vulnerable people in society to their deaths, to make already-comfortable people a little better-off.

Are you disabled or suffering from a long-term sickness? Do you want to die to boost the bank account of someone who is already wealthy?

Are you a Tory voter? Do you have sick or disabled relatives and/or friends?

Which of them do you want to see die, so you get a tax cut that will induce you to vote Tory again?


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Top law firm invites Mel Stride to start pension mediation for 50s women | Westminster Confidential

David Hencke’s ever-informative Westminster Confidential site provides this update on the struggle to get restitution for women who have been harmed by changes to the pension system:

One of London’s top law firms has written to Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, inviting him to agree to mediation talks to end the long suffering impasse on awarding compensation to the now 3.5 million 50s born women who had to wait another six years before they got their pension.

[A] report into the issue was published at the end of November and concluded that there was direct discrimination … women who were born from 1950 to 1960 had been singled out to wait for their pension while everyone else was unaffected.

It has also to be taken into account that 9.8m men were given 5 years free auto credits to retire 5 years early, aged 60, whilst the state pension of 3.8m 1950’s women was twice deferred, by stealth, and they were then coerced back to work for up to another 6 years having been denied the promised similar auto credits awarded to men.

The report [was hand-delivered] to Rishi Sunak at Downing Street just before it was published. It was also delivered to Robert Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who is currently involved in a long inquiry into how much the women should be compensated after finding partial maladminstration.

It might be instructive to contrast this with another case of discrimination against women, that has been in the news recently; I refer to that of Birmingham City Council, which used a bonus scheme that unfairly benefited men more than women while it was run by a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition and then was under no overal control, between 2004 and 2010.

After a court battle, the council was ordered to pay £760 million to settle equal pay claims – and attempting to comply has caused the council to declare (effective) bankruptcy. Tory MPs have made a big fuss of the fact that a council that is now run by Labour has been financially embarrassed, even though it was their party that caused the problem.

The UK government cannot go bankrupt; it can always issue currency to cover any spending it has to make (although there should be a balancing tax take, to counter inflation).

But, so far, it has resisted calls to compensate women harmed by the state pension changes, even though those changes were clearly discriminatory against them.

Hypocrisy? What gives the Tory government the right to avoid a responsibility that the law has thrust onto a local authority – with the enthusiastic support of Tory MPs?

Source: Exclusive: Top law firm writes to Mel Stride inviting him to start mediation talks on restitution for 50swomen | Westminster Confidential


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Sick and disabled people are dying while trying to claim benefits; Tory press calls them ‘scroungers’ again

A cartoonist’s view of government sickness and disability assessments; ministers set the bar at an impossibly high level.

The Conservatives seem to have launched another attack on sickness and disability benefit claimants – labelling them as “scroungers” again, even though many are dying before they even receive state payments – due to the Kafka-esque assessment process.

Tory lickspittle Andrew Pierce has published a poison pen piece in the Daily Hate Mailaimed at whipping up division between claimants and the rest of the population.

It’s a classic Tory “divide and rule” tactic, that was deployed to devastating effect during the years of the Coalition government. It comes out whenever the government needs to distract people away from its own shortcomings.

So, for example, today you could be asking why the Conservatives ignored warnings that schools built with RAAC concrete were falling down – for 13 years – and only started doing something about it after collapses came to public attention. The Tory answer to that is: “Look at those skiving benefit scroungers!”

The reality isn’t remotely similar to Tory Boy Pierce’s claim.

The reality is that people claiming sickness and disability benefits often die before they receive a penny, because the system already works very hard to deprive them of it – as Labour MP Debbie Abrahams pointed out in a Westminster Hall debate earlier this week:

If a coroner writes a ‘Prevention of Future Death’ report, it means they believe a death could have been prevented but the circumstances in which the deceased had been placed – in this case, a benefit claim process that is so complicated and obstructive that it not only discourages claimants but depresses them and further harms their physical health – actually contributed to or caused their death.

Obviously, if we have a claim process that is actually harming or killing claimants, it should be impossible to suggest that they are lazy scroungers; a lazy scrounger would not put him- or herself through the trial of such a procedure because it would not be worth the hassle.

And the underlying reality is that prime minister Rishi Sunak and Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride want to make the Work Capability Assessment harsher, in order to force a million sick and disabled people back onto the jobs market.

They’re not doing this because those people are actually fit for work and shouldn’t be on benefits.

They’re doing it because more people looking for work means employers can pay less; if a job applicant wants more than employers are willing to pay – like an actual living wage – they can refuse the application on the grounds that they can always find someone else who will take the lower payment.

But you won’t see that fact in one of Tory Boy’s hate screeds.


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Court forces DWP to change scheme deducting cash from benefits to pay debts/bills

Putting a brave face on it: Mel Stride.

The Department for Work and Pensions is being forced to rethink a scheme to pay debts and bills directly out of a person’s benefits without discussing it with them first.

The Court of Appeal has confirmed that the current guidance on the Third Party Deduction (TPD) scheme issued by the DWP is unlawful because it says there is no point in finding out whether a claimant’s personal circumstances affect whether deductions should be made, since it only makes a difference in very few cases.

The court said this is very close to saying that the interests of the claimant are irrelevant, which is precisely the opposite of what the regulations demand.

The decision was in response to Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride’s appeal against the findings of a judicial review brought by benefit claimant Helen Timson.

The review found in her favour last September and the appeal was heard in April. Now the Appeal Court judges have ruled unanimously that the way the DWP operates the scheme is unfair.

Lord Justice Edis said:

The submission of the Secretary of State… comes down to the proposition that because only in very few cases can the personal circumstances of the claimant or their family make any difference, there is no point finding out what they are.

This is very close to saying that the interests of the claimant are irrelevant, which is precisely the opposite of what the regulations say.

The Secretary of State can only make a TPD direction after forming an opinion or being satisfied about the interests of the particular claimant and family under consideration.

The regulations therefore require that their interests are assessed in the light of all relevant information which must include anything they wish to say on the subject. After forming that judgment the Secretary of State may make a TPD direction.

He added:

In my judgment, the regulations, by framing the decision-making as they do, require a consideration of the interests of the individual claimant and their family.

Under the guidance, however, the decision-maker has the option of contacting them, or of investigating their benefit records, but the guidance allows a decision to be made where the claimant or their family has been given no opportunity to supply information beyond what the utility company puts in the spreadsheet.

This appears to me to be obviously unfair.’

This is an important victory for anybody who might be affected by deductions in the future – and the High Court judgment recorded that there were more than 250,000 deductions in respect of water, electricity and gas debts last year.

In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, it seems reasonable to expect the relevant utility firms to make increasing numbers of TPD requests in the foreseeable future.

This judgment means no deductions may be made without first discussing the extent of any hardship they are likely to cause with the claimant. This may lead to the request being turned down.

But it isn’t all good news: the judgment applies to deductions for utility charges from legacy benefit (non-Universal Credit) only. The DWP can make deductions from benefit for other things which don’t have the same statutory requirement to be in a person’s ‘interests’ (e.g. for council tax, fines, and child support) and so will not be caught by this judgment.

Source: Bindmans client success in Third Party Deductions Scheme appeal


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The Tyranny of Tickboxes – How the U.K. government is escalating its war on disability rights in 2023 | Black Triangle Campaign

Here’s an article that’s well worth reading – but This Site won’t re-publish much of it here because the information has already been covered by Vox Political elsewhere.

For now, let’s limit ourselves to this:

After years of the war on the poor,worsening mental health, increasing mass hunger and suicides, the UK government has announced a further round of attacks. Two measures stand out.

There will be more benefit sanctions, where benefits are stopped if people are deemed to have failed to look for work. This will add to the over 2 million food parcels a year currently needed. It will also push more vulnerable people into taking their own lives.

And the main test for Employment and Support Allowance will be abolished. If this had been done out of a belated recognition of the harm these tests have caused in the lives of millions of people, it would be a good step. It is not. Instead, the feared Work Capability Test will be replaced by something even worse: the kind of test currently used for another benefit – Personal Independence Payment or PIP.

It is notoriously difficult to pass the PIP test, and be awarded benefits, especially if your main disability is a mental health issue.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that 1 million people will be deprived of benefits because of the extension of the PIP test into assessments for ESA.

The scene is being set for all the harm already done by ‘Welfare Reform’ to be added to massively.  

We have beaten such changes before and it is entirely possible to do so again.

Expect a new wave of information detailing how that can happen – starting soon.

Source: The Tyranny of Tickboxes – How the U.K. government is escalating its war on disability rights in 2023 – Black Triangle Campaign


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The Livingstone Presumption is now available
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The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
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