Tag: DWP

Shaping future support: The health and disability Green Paper

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27 September 2021 — True Publica

Excerpt 

“What is constantly overlooked is the fact that the disabled community’s experience of this DWP “help and support” is via the politics of fear using the  WCA. The assessment is conducted by an unaccountable American corporate giant, with the fatally flawed WCA using a discredited BPS model which failed all academic scrutiny. Every clinical lead in the UK demanded that the WCA should be abolished, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of  General Practitioners, the British Medical Association, and the British  Psychological Society, who all identified the WCA as being unfit for purpose. They were all disregarded by the DWP, as is the growing mental health crisis directly linked to the fear of the next WCA, and the constant DWP threat of sanctions. To  date, the DWP have disregarded all published, independent academic research  which identifies the ongoing and inevitable public health crisis created by social  policies adopted since 2010.” (p7)
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British grandmother dies weighing just 42 pounds after her benefits are withdrawn

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29 July 2020 — WSWS

By Dennis Moore

The death of 61-year-old grandmother, Christine McCluskey, at the hands of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a criminal act.

Christine, from Dundee, Scotland, was an extremely ill and vulnerable woman who died weighing just 3 stone (42 pounds). Millions were shocked when they saw her emaciated body in national newspapers and on social media.

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Kleptotors and the DWP

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5th February 2020 — True Publica

Kleptotors and the DWP

By TruePublica Editor: You’ve just been unexpectedly transported to the alien nation of Kleptotors 186. The planet has substantial mineral wealth and food diversity and is populated with a sophisticated society arranged around the type of democratic principles we are used to back on Earth. Unfortunately, the wealth of the Kleptos has come about through corrupt leaders (see – dedicated Wikipedia page) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political powers. Sadly, this system involves the misappropriation of public funds at the expense of the wider population.

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People Keep Starving to Death in Tory Britain

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31 January 2020 — Novara Media

And they call it democracy

@harriepw

Errol Graham was just four and a half stone when his emaciated body was found by bailiffs. The 57 year old had starved to death in a flat with no electricity or gas supply.

The only food in his cupboards were two tins of fish, four years out of date. His benefits had been stopped by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) only months before. As a vulnerable claimant with a long history of severe mental illness, he should have been protected. Instead, he was left to die.

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Knight of Darkness – Iain Duncan Smith’s Directory Of Death

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2 January 2020 — True Publica

Knight of Darkness - Iain Duncan Smith’s Directory Of Death

Part of this headline is taken from an article that features in Welfare Weekly. That article is a roll-call of death caused by an ideology that, in part, ended up looking like a policy to deliberately kill the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. The headline is borderline when it comes to being libellous – but there’s a sickening reality to it and the architect of this reality is Iain Duncan Smith. Recently knighted in the New Years Honours List with nearly 200,000 signatures of objection already, IDS is a fanatical political extremist on the hard-right.

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DWP: The case for the prosecution

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9 January 2020 — True Publica

This time last year, The Independent published a story where Ministers were accused of ‘failing people at the most vulnerable point in their lives’ after it emerged that nine disability claimants die each day (270 per month) while waiting for decisions on disability support. The story also stated that figures at the time revealed that 17,070 disability claimants had died while waiting for decisions on their personal independence payment (PIP) claims since 2013. This was not a new story, only that the figures of deaths were updated. Two years earlier, on a different angle, other reports emerged that 90 people a month were dying after having been found fit for work by the DWP. And yet, after all this time, the statistics, investigations and reports nothing has changed.

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Police surveillance used to report disabled protesters to UK government for alleged benefit fraud By Dennis Moore

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23 September 2019 — WSWS

Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, spoke at a conference in Belfast last month to warn that innocent people are being caught up in a mass surveillance system enacted by the UK government to combat welfare “benefit fraud.”

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Penniless and vulnerable disabled – ‘most now waiting a year’ as lives disintegrate and thousands die

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17 September 2019 — True Publica

Penniless and vulnerable disabled - 'most now waiting a year' for help

By TruePublica: The vulnerable, penniless and disabled are the very people any civilised country would ensure had at least the basics to survive and be comfortable. But while MP’s are looking the other way, these very same people are denied a benefit called Personal Independence Payment (PIP). It’s designed to keep them afloat, but now wait an average of 69 days just for an internal review by the Department for Work and Pensions and then a further seven months while they fight a system designed to deny them any assistance. Three-quarters then win tribunals while their lives disintegrate.

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DWP’s £51m contract stops Citizens Advice speaking out against Universal Credit

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21 August 2019 — The Canary

New evidence shows that a £51m contract between the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Citizens Advice (CA) contains a gagging clause. As Universal Credit rolls out across the UK, this agreement means the UK’s leading advisory charity now can’t speak out or take “any actions” which might harm the DWP’s reputation.
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UK: Department of Work and Pensions “followed policy” denying benefits to dying Liverpool man By Dennis Moore

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26 June 2019 — WSWS

[This IS a truly sick and twisted society! WB]

Stephen Smith in hospital over the Christmas period. [Credit: Liverpool Echo]

An internal review by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) following the horrific death of Stephen Smith is an insult to a man who was forced to endure terrible hardship fighting for the welfare benefits to which he was entitled.

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DWP tells GPs not to support benefit claimants with sick notes By Sue Jones

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16 February 2019 — Welfare Weekly

“This callous and unjustified approach to social administration is destroying people’s lives”, writes Sue Jones.

Yesterday on Twitter, I posted one of my previous posts –Jobcentre tells GP to stop issuing sick notes to patient assessed as ‘fit for work’ and he died–in which I discuss a letter addressed to a GP regarding a seriously ill patient. It said:

“We have decided your patient is capable of work from and including January 10, 2016.

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The failed profit model that manages misery

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1 February 2019 — True Publica
The failed profit model for managing misery

By TruePublica: Welfare Weekly has another story to warm the heart of soulless neoliberals. “Civil servants working for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have been handed over £40 million in performance-related bonuses, despite serious problems with the rollout of universal credit and a startling increase in the number of successful disability benefit appeals.”

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Psychological tyranny prescribed by the DWP: preventable harm is government policy

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12 December 2018 — True Publica

GP’s opinion of people's sickness now rendered meaningless by heartless Gov't

Influenced by corporate America, the commonly labelled ‘welfare reforms’ began in July 2006 with the introduction of the Welfare Reform Bill by the New Labour government, and guaranteed that claimants of long-term out-of-work sickness and disability benefit were to be coerced and intimidated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) simply for committing the ‘crime’ of being too ill to work.

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UK’s most vulnerable subjected to welfare decisions by algorithm

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29 November 2018 — True Publica

Big Brother Watch wrote to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights (before his visit) to raise the alarm about the hidden use of automation and predictive analytics for decisions about benefits entitlements and social care, and the negative human rights impact on the UK’s poorest people. The submission follows them sending of over 1,000 Freedom of Information requests to authorities about their uses of AI, algorithms and big data in decision-making.

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Barbarian Britain: The letter The Guardian refused to publish

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31 October 2018 — True Publica

By TruePublica: Mo Stewart, an Independent disability studies researcher and fellow of the Centre for Welfare Reform, sent a letter to the Guardian newspaper last week to acknowledge the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), as used to resist funding the Employment and Support (ESA) long-term sickness and disability benefit to those in greatest need. Influenced by corporate America, the deplorable treatment by the DWP of chronically ill and disabled people, who live in fear of the WCA, is well documented and the Guardian had published letters in the past on the same subject yet failed to acknowledge this significant anniversary and failed to publish the letter. Co-signed by over 80 individuals made up of doctors, academics, charities, carers, campaigners, journalists and researchers along with other members of the public, it is cause for concern that the Guardian would fail to publish this most important of all letters.

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