What does it mean when one million people are found fit to work?

DWP says almost one million sick found fit to work reports The Huffington Post:

A third (32%) of all new claimants for employment and support allowance (ESA) were assessed as being fit to work and capable of employment between October 2008 and March 2013 - totalling 980,400 people, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said.

We've now had five years of reporting the numbers of people turned down for ESA as some kind of success story; they're getting disabled people back into work. A third of those who claimed ESA are being found fit to work. Welfare Reform is justified!

Those turned down for Employment and Support Allowance are not necessarily making false claims. They may be fit to work but have not understood the rules, or they may be unable to work but have struggled to fill in the form in such a way that conveys this. Some of those turned down may have had a good case for appeal (40% of appeals are successful), but couldn't face the ordeal. The fact that this complex and mixed group number a million people (or strictly speaking, a million claims) seems unremarkable.

The criteria for Employment and Support Allowance are much stricter than those of Incapacity Benefit, the process takes many more months, with many people either dying, getting better or giving up before a decision is made and some claimants' benefit is stopped after the first year if they have savings or a working partner. Despite this, there were still 2.49 million people on ESA and other incapacity-type benefits in 2013, against the 2.6 million on incapacity benefits in 2008.

Reform to this benefit, at massive cost to government, a very great deal of  personal stress, heartache and hardship for disabled people and their families, as well as a media-driven regression in social attitudes towards disabled people, has only succeeded in reducing the numbers on this kind of benefit by 110,000 people or a little over 4%.

This is what has been achieved since October 2008; there are a little over four percent fewer people on ESA and related benefits than before. It is unclear whether or not the incapacity bill - either in terms of benefits or the cost of assessing for and administering benefits -  has been reduced. A stable 40% of appeals against ESA decisions are successful. Fraud levels (around 0.3%  for incapacity benefits) remain stable.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of those found "fit to work" will have simply moved onto other kinds of benefits such as Job Seeker's Allowance. Disabled people who are fit to work remain unlikely to actually get work, largely due to discrimination.

A Testing Journey

I have my Work Capability Assessment (WCA) on Sunday.

Yes, you read that right: A Sunday. And, yes, 2 days before Christmas. I presume Atos are working weekends in order to claim overtime expenses from the DWP.

I've read news reports about people getting all precious and going to the press saying "why would they want to assess me? Look at me... I'm clearly not fit for work." Erm... that's the point of the assessment: To look at you.

But there was something in the envelope that made my jaw drop in disbelief: A suggested journey plan.

"What's wrong with that? Surely that's Atos being helpful in giving you directions to their centre..."

They told me to take a route that's not wheelchair accessible.

First of all they tell me to walk 16 minutes to Kings Cross tube station. I'm not going to get pedantic about that; I talk of going for "a walk" despite being a wheelchair user. They tell me to take the Circle Line to Edgware Road and then walk another 9 minutes to the testing centre.

Edgware Road has no wheelchair access. In fact the closest wheelchair accessible tube station is Kings Cross.

You have to remember this isn't just a random travel leaflet shoved in with the letter; this is a tailor made journey plan for someone coming from my address to the testing centre at that specific date and time.

Atos haven't seen me in 4.5 years. It's possible that some of my health problems may have changed. But one thing that has not, and will never get any better is my lifelong mobility impairment.

Atos and the DWP know I'm a wheelchair user because of an incurable impairment. My impairment's incurableness is the reason I have an indefinite DLA award.

Further proof that Atos believe in miracles.

Atos sponsors Olympics and Paralympics

At the end of last week @hossylass and I were both asked to write a short piece about Atos to go into this satirical paper about the Olympic/Paralympic sponsors. Our submissions were then not included. So I'm posting them on WtB instead. Mine can be found here. Hossy in fact wrote 2 pieces as she was unsure what they wanted, these are them:

Dear Customer,

You have been carefully selected by your Government database to be one of the first to benefit from our latest opportunity to turn your life around.

Remember how we managed, in one simple assessment, to free you from the burden that is state dependency, and to simultaneously reduce your sickness or disability from “severe” to “marginal” or in some cases cure you altogether?

Well now there is more good news. We have been carefully chosen to take you on a new journey of discovery, to help you to be even less dependent on the state.

This journey will consist of an interview with someone who has an understanding of disability (having completed our extensive 3 hour course), and will be a wonderful opportunity for you to experience different cultural opinions to disability, to learn how to decipher strong accents from many nations, and to allow you to describe your disability in a much reduced manner.

No more shall you be compelled to explain at depth your condition and its affects on your everyday life – we have removed that burden too, and all that will be asked of you is Yes or No answers.

I am confident that you will embrace this opportunity – it will almost certainly be life changing!

Atos Healthcare

---

Atos sponsors Olympics and Paralympics

Atos are proud to sponsor the 2012 London Olypmic Games, and the UK Government are thrilled that Atos are committing with such generosity.

A spokesperson for the DWP said: “In all our dealings with Atos we have found them very receptive to opportunities, sponsoring the Olympics is another way that the Government can cement our relationship. It is also a clear sign that Atos care about not just healthy people, but also those who need to become healthy. Sport is clearly the way forward to good health, as is work.

It is this commitment to ensuring that people are termed healthy that has convinced us that Atos Healthcare are genuinely the best people not just to sponsor the Olympics and Paralympics, but also to manage assessments that increase the number of people who are fit for work, whilst decreasing their personal costs, something I am sure all sick and disabled people want.”

Meanwhile a spokesperson for Atos said: “We are very much looking forward to watching the Olympians, and are grateful for the opportunity to do so. When the Paralympics start, we will be watching equally as closely, if not more so. It is a marvellous opportunity for us to analyse and assess performance, it should be quite enlightening and educational, and may give us increased opportunity to help people to become less dependent on the state. We may be recording some of the competitors for training and fact verification, in order to reinforce our views.”

When questioned on their knowledge of the Paralympic grading system of disability, and disability in general, Atos admitted to being “not quite up to speed” but are “willing to learn”. This is indeed positive news, given that Atos are currently being accused of not having complete understanding of disability, and the vast amounts of proof available that these accusations are founded in fact.

Atos found "fit for work"

At the end of last week @hossylass and I were both asked to write a short piece about Atos to go into this satirical paper about the Olympic/Paralympic sponsors. Our submissions were then not included. So I'm posting them here instead. This first post is my submission, while Hossy's is here:

Atos found "fit for work"

French IT company Atos were last week found "fit for work" when they were awarded the contract by the ConDems to assess disabled people for the new benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP). This is despite them being completely incapable when it comes to assessing people for the existing benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Atos's conclusions in ESA decisions are frequently challenged and appeals found in favour of the disabled person.

If a disabled person was as lacking in ability as Atos then even Atos would probably find them incapable of functioning in the workplace. Despite Atos not being able to correctly decide if they can wipe their own bums without help from a tribunal panel, they will now be tasked with not only finding out if disabled people are fit for work, but also whether or not disabled people are entitled to help in the bum wiping area. And you need that wipe to be damn effective now: The government have redefined the verb “to bathe” and if you need help when it comes to washing you're now only allowed to wash your hands, face, underarms and torso. So when wiping your butt you need to get it spotless because you're not allowed to clean it in the bath.

Atos operate from the idea everyone's a faker until proved otherwise. The same mindset that has excluded all athletes with learning difficulties from the Paralmypics since the Spanish learning disabled basketball team were found to be mostly comprised of frauds in Sydney in 2000. Genuine athletes with learning difficulties make their return this year after having been excluded for 12 years because of a tiny number of fakers. Disability benefit fraud is less than 0.5% but Atos are torturing all disabled people. Kinda makes it seem like Atos are the perfect sponsor.

#ATOS Contracts: Sick Joke, Or Rewarding Incompetence?

It seems the reward for all the heartache and suffering that ATOS have inflicted on disabled people over the past few years, the bonus for getting one assessment in six so wrong it is overturned in front of a judge, for wasting £50m/year of taxpayer’s money in those appeal tribunals, is the right to inflict precisely the same kind of abuse on millions of disabled recipients of Disability Living Allowance as the government axes that successful benefit in order to exclude 20 to 25% of current recipients.

In the same week that ATOS has been pilloried by back to back Dispatches and Panorama documentaries that revealed staff who consider their job toxic, who spend their time looking for ways to not think about the consequences on the patients they swore an oath to protect, while celebrating that they are never called before the tribunals who have to put right their failure, and who seemingly find nothing wrong with asking a suicidal patient why they haven’t succeeded yet (not to mention the absolute triumph of finding a sectioned, catatonic man fit for work), the government has seen fit to reward their execution of the WCA contract with the majority of the contracts to conduct the DLA to PIP migration. The other contracts have gone to Capita, an outsourcing company, because clearly managing office cleaning is everything you need to know to conduct complex medical assessments of disability (or maybe it was their work as bailiffs which drew Grayling’s eye). The terrifying thing is it could have been even worse, G4S were competing for the PIP contracts until they reduced Olympic security to a farce.

You have to wonder what IDS was thinking when he signed off on this. Was he rewarding incompetence, or rewarding ATOS for their demonstrated ability to ignore facts, humanity, ethical obligations and even sheer common sense in pursuit of the mandated cuts?

Guest post: Personal Independence Payment – The Next Great Welfare Train Crash

This is a guest post from @johnnyvoid and originally appeared here.

Brutality combined with incompetence are becoming the hallmark of the current Tory administration and the plans to abolish Disability Living Allowance (DLA) are riddled with both. The Government is driving ahead with their plans to replace DLA with the new Personal Independent Payment (PIP). The aim of this is to strip benefits from a fifth of disabled people.

This will be achieved by using an independent medical assessment as the key part of the decision making process when considering a claim for the new benefit. That assessment will be carried out by a private company.

We already have an effective model of how the new scheme might operate. The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is a short computer test carried out by French IT firm Atos which is used to determine eligibility for the out of work sickness and disability benefit Employment Support Allowance. For everyone other the Government and Atos themselves, it has been an unmitigated disaster. The constant assessment and re-assessment regime has driven an increasing number of people to take their own lives. A recent Daily Mirror investigation found that 32 people a week die after being declared ‘fit for work’ by Atos. Around 40% of appeals against Atos’ decisions are successful and the appeals system is in meltdown due to the number of cases being brought.

Despite some tampering around the edges due to a recent review of the process, there are no plans to abolish or significantly reform the WCA. This should serve as a stark warning to people facing the new PIP testing regime. The Government are happy with Atos the way things are. Lots of people are losing their benefits. That was always all they wanted.

The stated agenda of PIP is to remove benefits from 20% of disabled people. All other mealy mouthed attempts at reform are secondary to this. It will be down to the private sector to carry out this cull. In many ways the PIP process will be identical to the WCA. It may yet even be Atos who carry out the assessments.

This will not only prove traumatic for the people forced to undergo demeaning health tests, but will bring devastating social costs. The Government’s plan that “entitlement will depend on the person’s circumstances and the impact of their health condition or disability on their everyday lives” is vague and open to all kinds of interpretation.

How it will be measured in practice is anyone’s guess. Given it’s the private sector who will be carrying out the bulk of the work the answer is likely to be the cheapest way possible. It will be difficult to imagine how, for example, being in full time work can be ignored by any assessment. Under the WCA claimants who have admitted to watching Eastenders have had it used against them as evidence of being ‘fit to work’. It is therefore very likely that having a job will come to be seen as a disqualifying criteria for claiming PIP, if not formally but as a reality of people’s experiences. This may not be the Government’s intention, but in practice it seems unavoidable.

Atos, as well as human rights abusers G4s and private sector sharks Serco, are some of the companies believed to be bidding for the PIP contract. They should be warned it is a thoroughly poisoned chalice. Atos have already seen their reputation destroyed by the WCA, with the name of their company becoming a dirty word. This will seem trivial should they take on the PIP Assessments.

DLA is a non means tested benefit designed to help people meet the additional costs of disability or ill health. In many ways it should be seen as an adjunct to the NHS rather than a benefit comparable to those paid to people unable to work. DLA is used for things like additional transportation costs, specialist equipment or personal care. For many working disabled people these things are essential to help them remain in work. As Disability Rights UK have recently pointed out (PDF), the removal of DLA from over half a million people may drive many into unemployment.

People currently claiming DLA include doctors, lawyers, journalists and MPs. Whilst those claiming out of work benefits are by their very nature economically disempowered (in that they don’t have jobs and are forced into the poverty of the benefits system) many DLA claimants are highly skilled professionals. We could face the unedifying spectacle of Doctors having their health and disability needs assessed by the two bit NHS rejects at Atos. Disabled legal professionals may yet be forced into the appeals system and are likely to prove ferocious. Any company which takes on the PIP contract will face unprecedented resistance at grass roots level, from people in some cases far more qualified than their own assessors. It will be doctors, lawyers and journalists lining up alongside benefit claimants to take action against the companies concerned.

Imagine becoming public enemy number for not just the three million plus DLA claimants, but their friends, families and carers. People with many more skills and resources to fight than those on out of work benefits. Every mistake, appeal or careless remark by an assessor will be scrutinised. Assessment centres and other business sites could find themselves thronged with disabled protesters. An avalanche of legal challenges seems almost inevitable.

It is possible that on the ground a two tier process will develop. Disabled doctors and lawyers may be informally waved through the process in the hope they won’t make too much fuss. Can we honestly believe that David Blunkett or a Paralympian Gold Medal winner will face the same kind of scrutiny as an out of work disabled single mum living on a Council Estate?

The alternative is that the PIP assessment will become an unofficial ‘means test’. Those in work, or able to lead more active lives, may find themselves punished as any sign of independence is used against them. However the upcoming farce plays out it will prove catastrophic not just for disabled people themselves but for the wider credibility of the system.

As we have seen under the WCA regime, there will be more suicides, more appeals and more people having conditions made worse by the stress of endless testing. The Government says that only in very few cases will PIP be awarded for life. This will mean for example, that people who may have lost a limb will be forced back to continual re-assessments, presumably to check it hasn’t sneakily grown back.

Despite lurid headlines DLA is not an easy benefit to qualify for. A wealth of medical information is required, from GPs, consultants and other health professionals. As with the WCA, this is likely to become secondary to the short assessments carried out by private companies. As more disabled people are forced into poverty it will be down to Local Authorities and the NHS to pick up the slack. Just like so much of this Government’s Welfare Reform, it may yet cost more money to go down this road than simply leaving things as they are.

The Government are currently consulting on the changes and you can make your feelings heard here. If past consultations are anything to go by then don’t expect them to listen. The over privileged tory toffs have made their intentions well and truly clear. Don’t think that this scum will shed any tears for those driven into poverty or even suicide by these changes. As Maria Miller, the Minister for Disabled People has already said, the cost of disabled people is simply ‘unsustainable’. That tells us everything we need to know about this Government’s attitudes towards sickness and disability.

Join the growing protests against Welfare Reform including action called in Central London by Disabled People Against Cuts on the 18th April (tomorrow!).

Press Release: Welfare Campaigners to Hold Xmas Party Outside Atos HQ

From Benefit Claimants Fight Back:

Friday 16th December – 2pm
Triton Square, London NW1

Disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters will be holding a Real Victorian Party and Picnic in Triton Square, home of disability assessment company Atos, this Friday 16th December from 2pm.

The event is part of a month of action targetting Atos and the government over the brutal benefit cuts and Work Capability Assessment regime currently in place for sick and disabled claimants. As well as speeches in which people will speak of their experiences at the hands of Atos, a minutes silence will be held for all of those who have died as a consequence of Atos assessments.

Several claimants have tragically committed suicide due to the stress of the assessment process whilst thousands of others are now caught up in lengthy and distressing appeals. Some people judged fit for work have died of their illness whilst awaiting an appeal against Atos' decisions. People with terminal illnesses, severe mental health conditions and debilitating conditions have all been judged fit for work by Atos' scant assessment regime which ignores the opinions of GPs and specialist consultants in favour of a brief computer based interview.

It was announced last week that even patients undergoing chemotherapy will be expected to attend assessments at which they may be judged 'fit for work' by Atos. This could lead to cancer patients being referred to mandatory work activity, 30 hours a week unpaid work, just to keep the meagre levels of benefit available on Job Seekers Allowance.

Events will also be taking place outside Atos offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh on the same day, whilst a rolling mass phone complaint to Atos is also being held in the run up to Christmas.

For full details of all events please visit: http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com

ENDS


This event is part of a month of festive action against Atos and the benefits cuts which has also seen a protest against Atos' position as IT Partner for the Paralypic Games outside the Paralympic Goalball Test Event, a demonstration called by Boycott Workfare outside a lecture at the LSE given by Iain Duncan Smith and a Downing Street protest about soaring unemployment held by the Right To Work Campaign.

To join the Rolling Festive Phone In to Atos contact +44 (0)20 7830 4444 or +44 (0)800 783 3040 (Freephone) and make a complaint about the companies treatment of sick and disabled people. For more details visit: http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/a-rolling-festive-phone-in-to-atos-healthcare/

Around 40% of appeals against Atos' decisions are successful, rising to 70% when people have representation. A recent investigation found that the benefits appeal system is already on the brink of collapse. Recent figures suggest that Atos have only carried out 56,000 assessments against a target of 11,000 assessments a week from April 2011: http://www.ersa.org.uk/hub/details/571

This form of disability assessment is shortly to be extended to around 3 million claimants on Disability Living Allowance.

We Were Only Following Orders

The letters to the Guardian reacting to its latest article discussing problems within the administration of the Work Capability Assessment by ATOS Origin have drawn an interesting, if rather odious, response. (see the entry by 'Prospect National Secretary' at http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/27/disability-unfair-atos-testing).

The powerful article by John Harris can be read here and is a reaction to the new report by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions (see here), but steps beyond the report to look at a string of examples of malpractice, and wonder how all this can be happen while the general population remain blissfully unaware.

And now we see a response from Geraldine O'Connell, National Secretary of Prospect, the 'union' for ATOS Health Care Professionals (the doctors, nurses and physios who administer the test). Does she join in the horror at what is happening? I'll let you make your own minds up:

John Harris's article makes compelling and disturbing reading. But there are always two sides to a story.

Having introduced herself she goes on to explain:

Recent media interest on the experiences of claimants during the migration of incapacity benefit to employment support allowance has left heath care workers feeling bruised and demoralised

I'm sorry? Several disabled people are dead, dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands have been reduced to contemplating suicide, tens of thousands more have been forced through the stress of appeals (and left without the benefits they depend on for months, even years), the Tribunal Service is creaking under the strain of dealing with all of the foul-ups created by ATOS Origin HCPs (at a cost to the country of £50m), while thousands upon thousands of disabled people (including me) have been treated with utter contempt by her members, and she wants us to feel sorry for them? What kind of twisted mirror-world does she inhabit to think that her members are the sinned against?

She goes on to state:

Prospect fully supports the absolute requirement for all claimants to be treated with dignity and respect.

But gives no indication of how she proposes to ensure that is the case, because it certainly isn't the way her members are behaving now.

Then follows the big justification:

The criteria for qualification for benefit are determined through government policy and not by Atos.

Or in other words 'we were only following orders', and that's a defence that works really well, isn't it?

And for her grand exit she goes for the Big Lie:

health care professionals do not make any decisions on claims themselves

Yet Professor Malcolm Harrington made clear in his review of the WCA, as Geraldine O'Connell must be well aware, that the DWP 'decison makers' are institutionally incapable of overriding the ATOS HCPs due to an overdose of Doctor As God syndrome, meaning that every conclusion by an HCP is in near certainty a decision on a claim.

I'd like to congratulate Geraldine O'Connell on her letter, I didn't think that it was possible for my opinion of ATOS HCPs to sink lower, but her breathtaking arrogance in trying to claim that her members are the sinned against means that she has achieved it. If she really wants the sympathy of the public, then isn't it time the members of her organisation remember the oath they swore to do no harm, and the basic humanity that demands that they ensure that every WCA assessment takes place in such a way that the claimant understands what is being scored by every question asked of them, how their answers will be interpreted, that sits, and listens, and asks about things like repeatability and limitations they might not have thought to mention, and beyond all else, treats the person on the other side of their monitor screen as fully their equal, and a person in need of, and fully entitled to, their help. Anything less is a failure in their duty of care, and a violation of their oath.

And perhaps when her members have done that, then they will be worthy to ask the forgiveness of the disabled people they have abused.

WtB Podcast - 1. Protest Against Atos Origin

Lisa's note: WtB has a podcast! I'm so very excited. I have to say a huge, huge, huge thanks to Goldfish for all her hard work this week making this audio file into a podcast by doing all the research as to how one actually sets up a podcast. She typed up the transcript that's beneath the jump too. I also have to say thanks to the people that spoke to me on Monday. We'd have no audio file if it weren't for them.

You can find our podcast in iTunes here. The feedburner feed is here.

Picnic and Party Against Atos - part 2: Reminder

A reminder that Benefit Claimants Fight Back's next protest against Atos is tomorrow:

As part of the National Week of Action Against Atos Origin, beginning on Monday 9th May, a second Party and Picnic against Atos will take place on the 9th May from 2pm at their Head Office in Triton square, near Euston.

Bring music, drums, banners, placards, food to share and brighten up the faceless corporate wasteland that is home to poverty pimps Atos Origin Ltd.

Musicians, poets, orators, ranters, shouters, all benefit claimants and supporters welcome. Please help spread the word, invite your friends and let's make this the biggest stand against poverty pimps Atos Origin so far.

Triton Square is on the North side of Euston Road, a minute or so from Warren Street tube and less than five minutes from Euston/Euston Square or Great Portland Street tube stations.

The Facebook event page is here. For more details of other events happening around the country during Claimants Fight Back's week of action against Atos have a look here.

I went to the last protest in Triton Square. It's actually a great and accessible place for a protest. There’s shelter if it rains or is too sunny, there’s things to sit on and there’s a couple of cafés a few yards away for acquiring refreshments and using their loos.

Guardian journalist John Domokos will be there. He is very keen to attend and record a Work Capability Assessment test and a tribunal so would like to meet people who have one pending. He's also interested in speaking to people who've been through them already.

Hope to see you tomorrow!

The GMC, ATOS and Duty of Care

It's a little late, but I've just come across something to give ATOS's hired guns a moment to pause while counting their thirty pieces of silver.

When Doctor Margaret McCartney questioned in the BMJ whether doctors could work for ATOS and remain true to their professional ethics and responsibilities, another doctor (worryingly a tribunal member) suggested in comments that ATOS quacks were not subject to their normal duty of care as the nature of their work is not a doctor-patient interaction. This is particularly alarming as it is an interpretation of professionalism that isn't true of other professions (or English law), as an engineer I have a legal duty of care greater than that of the man in the street any time I work as an an engineer in any way, shape or form. The GMC Standards and Fitness to Practise Directorate have now issued guidance that the argument made in the comment is not correct, that ATOS assessments are a doctor-patient interaction and that doctors have to make the interests of their patients their first concern at all times. Interestingly they also find it necessary to remind doctors that "Being open and honest and acting with integrity is also an essential part of medical professionalism."

Now this ruling doesn't extend to physios or nurses as the GMC is not their professional body, however they are subject to the same legal duty of care requirements as any other professional and it would clearly be untenable for their professional bodies to try and argue that their members are not subject to a duty of care in circumstances where the GMC has ruled that its members are and where all three professions are theoretically considered fit to practise. Equally Dr McCartney has pointed out in her blog that the professional standards for both nurses and physios contain identical requirements to place the care of the patient first at all times.

#BADD2011 Integrity, Honesty, Objectivity, Impartiality

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day, when bloggers around the world get together to blog against the disablism that makes life so unnecessarily difficult for disabled people. Sadly, this year those of us in the UK are operating in a target-rich environment, able to turn our focus on not just individuals and the odd organisation, but media en masse, the Civil Service, politicians, and, most notably, our Prime Minister, David Cameron.

That Cameron’s government is hostile to disabled people is no great revelation, we have been subject to a string of bigoted press releases from the Department of Work and Pensions under his henchman, Chris Grayling, ever since they got into power. The structure of the press releases: data without context, damning headlines that are all too easily shown to be false; even their timing, the last two immediately before four-day weekends to prevent any organised response or reasoned debate, all too readily betray the deliberate intent to smear disabled benefit claimants, and all disabled people alongside them, as feckless scroungers, swinging the lead to avoid working a single real day in their lives. That the Tory Rags should run so eagerly with the ‘story’ isn’t surprising, after all their core readership of Little-Englanders aren’t happy without a minority to hate, but lately even the BBC seems to be falling for the government line. There are scores of analyses out there of the data and the twisted way that the press releases are put together, several of us here on WTB have taken them apart, so have other disabled campaigners, charities, advocacy groups and so on. A journalist wouldn’t even have to exert themselves, the story of the government distorting facts to demonise a minority will put itself together all too readily, but no, Auntie Beeb is reduced to recycling disablist government propaganda, hateful, twisted headlines and all. When did the BBC forget how to do basic research?

Now to a (minute!) degree we can excuse this kind of behaviour from Cameron and Grayling, they’re modern politicians, what the Romans might have considered infames, persons of low moral character, just like pimps and those who ran stables of gladiators, who can’t be expected to aspire to the same standards of behaviour as decent, respectable folk. But Cameron and Grayling aren’t putting out the press releases from the DWP on their own, they are helped in their bigotry by full-time Civil Servants who put together the data, the misleading interpretations, and the twisted headlines for them; who carefully see to it that the Press Releases don’t include the context necessary to understand what the figures really mean and the failures in government policy that they reveal. Civil Servants aren’t supposed to lower themselves to the standards of their ministers, the Civil Service code binds them to a standard of behaviour and restricts their ability to engage in party political behaviour on behalf of their minister, or others, or themselves. That code is summed up in four words: Integrity, Honesty, Objectivity, Impartiality.

The truth is that the disablist press releases began before the Con-Dem government came into power, and that DWP policy has actually remained consistent across two different governments; pushing ESA as the solution to all ills and painting those on IB as deliberate fraudsters outwitting the system with fake disabilities. The reality of ESA’s failure, its harsh descriptors that deliberately and calculatedly fail to account for the reality of many disabilities - to the point that even some the ‘health care practitioners’ who have sold their professional integrity for 30 pieces of silver have complained it is almost impossible for them to score people with cancer or MS as anything other than fit to work, the parody of fairness that is the ATOS-operated WCA, the ludicrous surreality of the access-all-areas ‘imaginary wheelchair’, all are carefully whitewashed out of the picture presented in DWP press-releases. So we have to conclude that there is a cadre of DWP personnel who aren’t just working on these press-releases because they have been told to, but who have actively bought into the ESA and WCA ‘reforms’ and are working to drive them on, no matter who they have to mislead and no matter how many facts they have to twist to do that. And yet these are Civil Servants, subject to the Civil Service Code. Do their actions display Integrity? Well, no, because they’re displaying deliberate deceit. Honesty? No, deliberate falsehoods don’t really count as honest. Objectivity? No, the truth about ESA is there to be seen, but they are busy sweeping that under their subjective carpet, eyes blinded by their own particular interpretation of what is best for the country (and disabled benefit claimants be damned). Impartiality? Well, they are following the same path under two different governments, but that path isn’t one a reasonable person would consider impartial, in fact they might consider it to be very partial indeed. So there we have it, not for DWP civil servants Integrity, Honesty, Objectivity, Impartiality, but Deceit, Falsehood, Subjectivity and Partiality.

No, it’s not good enough and someone needs to sweep out this nest of vipers from the core of disability policy. But, and it’s an awfully big, elephant in the corner kind of but, the Prime Minister, Chris Grayling, the DWP and the media couldn’t get away with this kind of behaviour if they knew that they were operating in a society hostile to disablism. Yet there they go, stabbing us in the back at every chance, actively convincing people that we are legitimate targets for their bigotry. What does that say about our society? What does it say about what is wrong with our society?

Abandoned Claims

Originally posted at This Is My Blog in response to a Daily Mail article. Unfortunately, today, the Telegraph and the BBC got in on the act...

Woke up this morning to see that a certain right-wing rag has surpassed itself in the propaganda it chooses to spout about ESA.

I'm not going to link to it because it will only upset me and every reader.

The headline asserted that 75% of those who claim ESA are found "fit to work".

This was then broken down that 75% of those who claim ESA were either found "fit to work" or abandoned their claims before testing was complete. It proposed that the abandonment of a claim meant that the claimant was clearly "trying it on".

Legitimate reasons why an ESA claim may be started and then abandoned:

• The claimant dies.


• The claimant gets better, be it a miracle or a new treatment or being bumped up the waiting list for surgery or getting private treatment.


• The claimant, having lost their job, is offered support and a place to stay by their parents or their children. They decide to abandon their claim and re-start it once their move is complete.


• The claimant looks at the highly personal questions on the form and says "you know what, I'll never be this desperate for money, prostitution is less demeaning."


• The claimant wins an insurance or compensation payout that enables them to survive without benefits.


• Due to their condition, the claimant is unable to understand the importance of filling in the form or unable to remember that the form needs doing.


• Due to their condition, the claimant is unable to fill out the forms - perhaps they have a brain injury or learning disability and cannot read and/or write, perhaps they have issues with their hands and cannot physically hold a pen, perhaps they have a mental health condition that causes panic attacks every time they approach the form.


• Due to their condition, the claimant is unable to access support to fill in the forms - for instance they are unable to go out, they do not yet have formal Social Services support, and their CAB is overstretched with permanently engaged phone lines (I have personal experience of urgently needing to get to the CAB but having to wait until support is available).


• The claimant completed the form, but due to their condition, they are unable to travel to and from the medical examination centre alone, and they are unable to secure help and/or funding to allow them to attend. Because their level of impairment does not exist until ATOS say it does, this is not a valid excuse for non-attendance. (I had this issue with my DLA a few years ago).


• The claimant is sitting at home with the heating off, desperately waiting to hear back from the DWP about their claim, which the DWP has lost.

If it was any other publication (I hesitate to use the term "newspaper") I would be shocked and appalled by the deliberate lies and misinformation being used to attack disabled people. Unfortunately, I'm getting used to it, and so is everyone else, and all these little drops of poison are being allowed to drip on into the public consciousness unchallenged.

A useful comment was also added to the original post, by a commenter called Nemonie:

There is also the fact that if you are on JSA and become ill or need surgery, break your leg etc. So that you are considered not able to look for work they will tell you to open a claim for ESA until you are better, which may only be a few weeks. You can also apply for ESA if you work and get ill but don't get statutory sick pay or have run out of statutory sick pay. Again in this case you may only need to claim for a short time.

Picnic and Party Against Atos - part 2

Benefit Claimants Fight Back have announced the details for their next protest against Atos:

As part of the National Week of Action Against Atos Origin, beginning on Monday 9th May, a second Party and Picnic against Atos will take place on the 9th May from 2pm at their Head Office in Triton square, near Euston.

Bring music, drums, banners, placards, food to share and brighten up the faceless corporate wasteland that is home to poverty pimps Atos Origin Ltd.

Musicians, poets, orators, ranters, shouters, all benefit claimants and supporters welcome. Please help spread the word, invite your friends and let's make this the biggest stand against poverty pimps Atos Origin so far.

Triton Square is on the North side of Euston Road, a minute or so from Warren Street tube and less than five minutes from Euston/Euston Square or Great Portland Street tube stations.

The Facebook event page is here. For more details of other events happening around the country Claimants Fight Back have details here.

I went to the last protest in Triton Square. It's actually a great and accessible place for a protest. There’s shelter if it rains or is too sunny, there’s things to sit on and there’s a couple of cafés a few yards away for acquiring refreshments and using their loos.

Hope to see you there.

Amateur Atos Assessors

Please note that this post isn't meant to be a dig at any of the individual people I've had this conversation with, it's a comment on the social situation when everybody feels the conversation is appropriate. So if you know me IRL and have had this conversation with me: I'm not being mean about you personally; I promise.

I've had a bit of a weird weekend. Quite impressively my health held up for 3 consecutive days; usually a sure fire way to guarantee to be ill on any particular day is to make plans to do something. I've had a lovely time, I've hung out with old friends, met some excellent new people, and consumed more cream cakes than I can count.

The weird bit about the weekend was the number of people that called me "intelligent". It's a little bit weird because I'm really not that smart. I think I just talk a lot and with that many words coming out some of them are bound to be a bit clever; and people remember the smart stuff and not "I just spilt orange juice down my own back." (A tip for the hypermobiles: Just because you're flexible enough to pick up the glass of orange juice on the shelf behind you without turning round to look at it doesn't mean it's a good idea.)

The other weird thing about being repeatedly called "intelligent" this weekend is that in daily life I constantly have it implied that I'm not at all. I'm not talking about that common stereotype that people with physical impairments must also have a cognitive impairment, I'm talking about something much more specific than that: I'm talking about the people that keep suggesting ideas for how I might be able to manage to work, as if I'm so stupid that I haven't thought through even the most glaringly obvious of options.

As I've mentioned before, I used to be a stand-up comic. Three and a half years ago - figuring my health problems were only temporary and that shortly down the line there'd be some treatment for me - I made the decision to quit before I pissed off every promoter in the country. On average I'm too ill to function around 2 days every fortnight, which would result in me having to cancel a hell of a lot of gigs at the last minute. It doesn't matter if you have a legitimate medical reason for dropping out; if you put a promoter in a tight spot by leaving them with a gap in their bill they're going to deem you "unreliable" and never book you again. And they'll probably bad mouth you to every promoter they meet.

So figuring my health was just a temporary glitch I made the decision to quit before I alienated all promoters, with the hopes that when I got better I'd be able to return and have people willing to book me. Except I haven't got better so if I were to return now I'd very swiftly find myself unbookable.

But people seem to think I'm an idiot who hasn't thought about (and doesn't think daily about) this and they come out with lines like "but surely you could just book a few gigs here and there?" (I refer you to my statement in my opening paragraph about how making plans is basically an illness guarantor.)

I also get people who seem to think that quitting stand up was a crisis of confidence, or at least that's what I derive from the statement "you should go back to it! You're really funny!"

The next question again assumes I'm stupid; the next question is always, always, "well why don't you write?"

"Because editors expect you to be able to meet deadlines..."

"Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought of that."

So do these people really, honestly, think that I'm smart enough to write but too stupid for the idea of writing for a living to have occurred to me? Or is there something else going on? I think it's the latter.

The current government and media campaign to demonise those claiming benefits seems to have turned everyone into an amateur Atos assessor. The "they're all fakers" propaganda is so pervasive that even people who'd like to think of themselves as left of centre (and, you know, not a cunt) feel qualified to make judgements on a person's fitness to manage to work because they're constantly being told that everyone can manage some kind of work if they really try.

These are people who (I hope!) don't deliberately and consciously think "Lisa's not really ill, she's just lazy," but because of the daily news stories and government briefings about how we're all skivers find themselves thinking it subconsciously. And this rhetoric is so dominant that a couple of months ago I was having a conversation with one of the most leftie and politically aware people in the country who said "now, Incapacity Benefit. That's the one with the huge fraud problem, right?" Despite the fact that the official fraud rate for IB is around 1% (see page 8 of this DWP report). That's just how ubiquitous the bullshit is.

Having to deal with actual Atos assessors is stressful and worrying enough without our friends and acquaintances thinking that they have the right to judge our fitness for work and make assessments about the kind of work we could be doing. Just because you read in the Daily Mail that we're all fakers doesn't mean it's true...

The WCA: Sick Joke, or National Disgrace?

The migration from Incapacity Benefit to ESA is now underway, a migration the Con-Dems and the rabid press trumpet as a step towards getting all those indolent fraudsters on disability benefits into work. If only anything of that was true. The truth is a system that has been deliberately designed to fail a significant proportion of clearly disabled people and assessment criteria that have already been identified as unacceptable by the independent assessor. Then that system, with its built-in failures, is handed over to the contractor ATOS Origin to operate, and they set out to deliberately overstress it in order to process as many people as possible, in as little time as possible, and at as low a cost as possible, all in the name of the Great God Profit; no matter the inadequacy of the process delivered, no matter the huge percentage of claims overturned at appeal, no matter a failure rate that would be unacceptable in any other industry. And then there are the medics who conduct their inadequate assessments, happily claiming they don’t need to meet their normal standards of care, because they aren’t acting as doctors or whatever – um, isn’t that the very reason ATOS crossed your palm with 30 pieces of silver?

I'm that rare bird, the ESA claimant who actually passed the WCA without needing to appeal, in theory I have no axe to grind from having an application refused. However the process fell so far short of an acceptable level of competence that I have to stand my ground alongside those unjustly failed by the system.

I became unemployed just after ESA and the WCA were introduced, but initially elected to claim JSA, in large part because of the stories already coming out about the way the WCA system was failing disabled people. With an Employment Tribunal claim to manage I just didn’t have the energy available to fight for ESA if necessary. But ESA wasn’t that easy to avoid and it rapidly became clear (contrary to Professor Harrington’s complacent assurances in his review of the WCA) that JCP were utterly incapable of dealing with someone who was either disabled or highly qualified, and god help you if you were both. In fact the only way they could deal with me was by ignoring both qualifications and disability. That sad tale I’ve already described, but the end result was a complaint to ministerial level, abject apologies from JCP, and a request that I transfer onto ESA.

As an ESA claimant I was first expected to fill in the 28 page ESA50 form. The unavailability of an electronic version of this form from 2008 until the new version rolled out a few days ago speaks to an utter institutional contempt within DWP for disabled people and their needs. The paper form is not simply inaccessible to people with visual impairments, but also to anyone, like me, who is unable to write comfortably or legibly as a result of their disability. Equally the space provided in the form is utterly inadequate for anyone, again like me, who needs to discuss several decades of experience of a complex disability. And while someone could potentially fill it in for me, there are details of how my disability affects me that I’m not even comfortable discussing with my specialists, never mind anyone else.

My first WCA assessment was scheduled for May 6^th, 2010 at the local ATOS Assessment Centre, and what an ill-omened day that turned out to be! The building is located in the centre of town and has no on-site disabled parking, so is utterly unfit for purpose before you even get to the door. There is a public disabled car park some 150m away, but that regularly requires a wait of over 30 minutes to find a space in it and like many disabled people I cannot walk even 50m without experiencing significant pain. The next nearest disabled parking is 350m away. If you can manage to get to the building, then access at the door is via intercom, so how someone deaf and/or without speech is supposed to manage is a mystery. The DDA and the Equality Act both require service providers to make provisions based on the likely needs of their clientele, so a building whose entire clientele is disabled should make a significantly greater degree of access provision than most, yet ATOS continue to operate centres, and even open new ones, that fail to meet even the most basic standards of accessibility.

I had informed ATOS in advance via the ESA50 form that I would require adjustable seating because of the difficulty in sitting that results from my disability, which is in fact the core of my problems regarding working, so pretty much fundamental to the whole assessment process. None had been provided. The tattily-dressed individual who checked my ID led me into a waiting room filled with cheap, non-adjustable seating completely inappropriate to the needs of a client population containing a high proportion of people with musculo-skeletal and pain and fatigue based disorders. Within seconds of trying the seating I had realised that I was completely unable to sit on it in any comfort, only by rolling sideways onto my hip was I able to tolerate it at all. By the time I was called through, something over 10 minutes later (despite apparently being the only client in the building), I was in considerable distress, which only deepened when I reached the examination room and found that the seating there was actually worse. It was at this point that I discovered the tattily-dressed individual was actually the doctor who was supposed to assess me, not the caretaker as I had first assumed. I pointed out that I had told ATOS I needed an adjustable seat and his reaction was ‘Oh, you’ll just have to book another appointment’. He then admitted that this was not the first time this problem had occurred, that they had asked for adjustable seating to be supplied and that they had been told by their regional management to ‘make do with what you have’. In my opinion this is a clear indication of an active contempt by ATOS management for both their client population and for the reasonable adjustment provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act and now the Equality Act.

I returned home having wasted my time and experienced major amounts of pain as a result. This pain then served to trigger a massive flare-up in my condition and I spent the following week on the floor of my bathroom as I was wracked by one muscle-spasm after another, not knowing even what day it was. I eventually managed to get to my GP, who doubled the strength of my opiate painkillers, which brought the flare-up under control, but at the cost of my wandering around in a daze for several months with no energy or volition. The loss of control in this kind of flare-up is extremely distressing both physically and mentally and I was completely unable to deal with mail during this period, simply the thought of a letter from ATOS or DWP being sufficient to send my pain levels sky-rocketing. Ultimately it took me six months to completely catch up with my mail, at which point I discovered a letter from ATOS dated a week after my initial WCA date and calling me for another WCA a few days later, which needless to say I had not attended, being barely conscious at the time.

So, knowing that I had a major problem with their centre environment, having failed to provide a requested reasonable adjustment, and having visibly caused me considerable distress, ATOS didn’t even think it was worth ringing me to ensure that my appointment was rearranged for a convenient time and to assure me that the needed reasonable adjustment would be there this time. Their response was actually worse than this, but it would be several months before I realised quite how bad.

In late-August I received a letter from DWP stating that my ESA payments had been stopped, from the week before my initial appointment, owing to my failure to attend the WCA. I called the office the letter had originated with and the person I spoke to was perhaps the only DWP employee ever to have impressed me with competence and common sense. She immediately accepted my inability to attend a WCA I was not aware of and noted that ATOS had made no mention of their failure to provide a required reasonable adjustment, but had simply stated that I had not completed the initial WCA. When ATOS set out to deliberately portray their own error as a failing by the victim of that error, and a failing with fiscal consequences, then there is no way to interpret their actions as anything less than actively and deliberately dishonest.

Thanks to an unusual outbreak of common sense at DWP, my claim was eventually reinstated and a further WCA was arranged for mid-October, again at the local assessment centre. This time I was met at the door with an adjustable chair. Unfortunately I could not even raise the seat of the chair to an appropriate level and at five feet eight I am not exactly tall, nor did the seat angle adjust, the only hope I have of a usable position if the seat isn’t high enough. Again I was reduced to rolling sideways onto my hip. This time the delay was not 10 minutes, it was something over 45 minutes. By the time I was called through (with the receptionist bringing the useless adjustable seat through after me) I was physically shaking. It was a different doctor to my first appointment, but again he was scruffily dressed in a tatty anorak. It is impossible to conclude that this reflects anything other than a profound lack of respect for their clientele on the part of ATOS medical staff.

My pain-management consultant has told me that is almost impossible to get doctors who are not specialists in pain-management to comprehend just how disabling pain is, and I was therefore concerned about how much of a background the assessor had in chronic-pain based disabilities, unfortunately his manner instantly convinced me that any question would be interpreted negatively and I did not feel able to make my point. As the session started I rapidly became aware that I was in so much pain that I was not answering effectively and was making a case for myself that was not as strong as it should have been. It also became rapidly apparent that the doctor was profoundly irritated by my refusal to give yes or no answers. He may have found it irritating, but any understanding of my condition required that he listen to the details and I would not be swayed on this, though undoubtedly many people who are less able to express themselves will have been browbeaten into less than complete answers by his manner. It was also extremely apparent that he was reading from a computer-based script, his eyes fixed on the screen, and less than pleased with answers that did not fit the format its questions mandated. As a result of this there was an almost complete refusal to make eye contact, destroying any sense that he was truly engaging with me.

More disturbingly, he chose to take umbrage at certain of my points. I do not expect automatic complete agreement, but I do not expect to be told that I am wrong to have tried to search out information on the assessment process, particularly when his subsequent conduct proved the correctness of that information, nor do I expect to be criticised for the way I have described the effects of my disability on my walking, particularly when later events demonstrated that I was being absolutely accurate.

Some 20-odd minutes into the assessment I reached my limits on my pain tolerance, either I had to stand, or vomit. I spent the rest of the assessment balanced on one leg and crutches and it was only at this point, a cynic would say at the point he started to fear being found negligent in my treatment, that the doctor finally broke script and started to treat me as an individual. He asked several times whether I was able to continue, but by that point I just wanted the WCA over with, I certainly wasn’t about to put myself through the process for a third time. He completed the physical part of the assessment, but even then he criticised me for being unable to bend my leg so he could tap my knee with his hammer. Locking my leg extended is something my disability does when my pain levels are extremely high, I have no conscious control of it and I don’t expect anyone, certainly not a doctor acting in a medical capacity, to criticise me for it.

WCA thankfully over, I made it back to my car on one leg, and, even though it is a bare 5 minutes from the assessment centre to my house, my pain levels were so high, never mind the opiate painkillers, never mind the TENS machine, that I had to give serious thought to pulling over on the way home. I spent the rest of the day in bed, the first hour physically shaking.

In late-November I finally received the notification that I had been placed into the Work Related Activities Group, which is where I believe I should be, together with back-payment of all the ESA payments I had been due since May, but the process had taken 10 months and caused me a considerable amount of pain and physical distress, actually worsening my disability. The treatment I received has convinced me that ATOS have a complete and utter contempt for the needs of their clients that adds up to institutional disability discrimination and that their medical assessors are happily compliant in this. Sadly DWP is little better, my experience has been that the system only works when you complain.

I have a skill set that should make me an asset, I am making every effort I can to maximise my potential for employment, but to date the organs of state that are supposed to support me in this actually seem to be working against me. And at the start of the 2012 financial year, no matter that my disability is worsening, no matter the efforts I am making to find work, the 12 month limitation of eligibility for contributions-based ESA will kick in and cut my benefits to nothing.

So that’s my experience of WCA and ATOS, contempt for disabled people that amounts to deliberate abuse. They damned near turned me into one of those statistics for withdrawn or failed claims that Nick Clegg loves to claim are evidence of fraudulent intent, rather than what they really are, evidence of a system that is failing those who need it most. I got through the system because I’m too bloody-minded to give in when people erect barriers in front of me and because I’m too articulate and persistent to easily dismiss; but many people aren’t as bloody-minded, aren’t as articulate, aren’t as persistent and the system will be far more of a nightmare for them than it was for me. The system should assess you fairly whoever you are, at the moment it isn’t even doing that for the people it passes. The phrase ‘a national disgrace’ is often over-used, but it was never more appropriate than when describing ATOS and the WCA.

And lest we forget, this isn’t simply Con-Dem policy, but a policy that began under Labour and which Ed Milliband continues to support.

Beryl's story: Collapsed lung? You still can't have ESA

Beryl is a woman in her 50s, who has worked all her life and feels she’s always done an honest life’s work. She works as a piano tuner – a very physical job, but one she loves and had every intention of continuing until retirement. That is, until she fell ill, in May 2010. At that point, she hoped that the system would provide for her...

Beryl went to A&E in May 2010 barely able to breathe and was told she had dry pleurisy and a collapsed lung. She struggled for every step, fighting to put one foot in front of the other, as she could barely get enough oxygen into her body. Yet when she applied for ESA and attended a medical in this state, she was passed fit for work. The Atos doctor did not even notice that Beryl was presenting with a collapsed lung.

Not being awarded a benefit to which she was entitled, while clearly unable to work, put Beryl into a difficult situation. From having been able to afford what she needed, Beryl had to adjust, juggling household money in order to keep her business afloat, paying bills for things such as a Yellow Pages advert taken out in good faith, but with several months yet to pay.

“It’s not the money,” she told me, “it’s that they don’t believe you. Every time you speak to people on the phone they say ‘I’m sorry to bother you, I can hear that you’re ill’ but the powers that be have decided that I’m fit to work.”

Beryl appealed. She wrote to her MP, and sent a bundle of supporting evidence to the Job Centre, including letters from her GP and her consultant stating that she could barely walk or breathe, and that it would be at least a year before Beryl could hope to have recovered, if indeed she would recover at all. The appeal was heard in December 2010. However, they did not consider any of the new evidence – it was a mere rubberstamp exercise, to confirm the original decision. Although Beryl was too weak to leave the house, now relying on neighbours to bring food and help her to manage, the Job Centre decided she was fit and able to return to work.

Fortunately, Beryl was awarded Disability Living Allowance and a Blue Badge which has helped her to some extent; she won these on the same evidence presented for her ESA application. She has also applied for a tribunal for her ESA, which means that she has to be paid until the tribunal is heard, but she will still have to go through the stress of a hearing to prove entitlement, something Beryl is dreading.

The MP has written asking the Department of Work and Pensions to investigate, and for a copy of their files, but has had no reply.

Beryl is still very unwell. Although she now has a diagnosis, there are no guarantees as to what level her health can be restored – she may be disabled for the rest of her life, and will certainly remain seriously ill for the near future. However, she is still being chased by the Job Centre, because as far as they’re concerned there’s nothing wrong with her.

A lovely lady works all her life, builds up a successful business, pays her taxes – and then the system lets her down when she needs it most. Ten months from when she fell ill Beryl still hasn’t been awarded ESA, but as she can barely manage to make a cup of tea she certainly couldn’t return to work. This is the system we trust to support us when we need it most. The system, quite frankly, is screwed.


[This article was also posted at FlashSays.com]

I'm angry

Cross posted at Rage Against the Coalition

I'm angry a lot these days. Or more accurately, I vacillate between anger and despair.

The coalition are making a big noise about welfare 'scroungers'. The thieves are costing the taxpayers billions they say. Headlines about 'scrounger' scream at us from atop the Daily Mail almost every day.They want to make claiming harder to weed out those who are undeserving.
Benefit fraud costs £1.5 billion. Tax fraud costs £15 billion.
So why aren't they targeting the tax cheats? They are costing us more. Yet the government is making hundreds of HMRC staff redundant. They should be taking on more and training them properly.

The Atos system used to 'weed out' the cheats is not fit for purpose. This has been demonstrated time and time again. It finds huge amounts of people fit for work, yet 70% of those who appeal have the decision overturned. This is an enormous waste of money. And it hurts those it's supposed to help. Not to mention the staff aren't trained and they earn more for each person they find fit for work.

They are abolishing Disability Living Allowance. Sure, they're replacing it with the personal Independent Payment but this is nothing but an excuse to chop the amount of people eligible for it. DLA fraud is estimated at less than 1% of the total. Everyone else is legally entitled to it. But they have said we're 'unsustainable'. Do they have any idea how insulting it is to be told that?

They are privatising our NHS, all in the name of 'patient choice'. Apparently GP's are the most trusted people in the medical profession. Aside from the fact that I know several GP's who are terrible and made me feel like I was wasting their time, if they want GP's and patients to have more say why don't they put some of them on the boards of the PCT's, instead of spending £3 billion on abolishing them?
And for that matter, if GPs are the most trusted people in the medical system why doesn't the government allow them to decide if people are fit for work? When it comes to benefits, GPs aren't trusted. The government instead chooses to spend over £500 million on employing Atos, whose track record for mistakes is appalling, resulting in even more money being spent on re-assessments and appeals.

But worse, they are opening the market to private healthcare providers. We all know this is nothing more than paving the way for privatisation. I'm still blinking in disbelief at this. Healthcare should never be linked to profit, it's a basic human right. These reforms will end up with us having a system like America's. And no-one in their right mind can say that works well.

They have raised uni tuition fees to the point where many students will be put off going. Who wants to saddle themselves with £30k of debt before they've even bought a book or paid their rent? Nick Clegg would have us believe that a large number of students will end up paying nothing back. If this is the case then that's their argument for fee raising to pay off the deficit gone out the window.
Of course many of those poor kids won't be attending uni anyway since EMA, the money that enabled them to go to college or stay in the sixth form, has been abolished. A cost saving exercise that hits the poorest children without affecting the richer ones.
Kids who are determined to go to college despite no EMA can turn to the library to borrow their books. But wait, they want to close libraries. Again another cut that will affect the poor much more than the rich. One that will hit the young harder.


Tories apparently value traditions - unless there's money to be made it seems. Why else would they be in favour of selling off the nations forests? Forests that have belonged to the nation since the 1500's? They say they will favour charities or community groups but these organisations as a rule do not have the funds to buy them. They'll end up in private hands or worse, go to the timber companies.

It's like an attack on all fronts. How are we supposed to deal with all of this? And how can we not be angry about it?

Euthanasia Kits. Joke or Tragic Truth?

What Do They Know? is a fascinating website. You can submit Freedom of Information requests through it, and view the requests submitted by others, as well as the responses from the various public sector organisations. So you can do a search for, say, work capability assessment and see all the requests and responses made through the site, or search for your local area, or hospital, or a government department.

But when someone sent me a link to this FOI request to the DWP about euthanasia options for those who are removed off DLA / ESA I assumed it was going to be a joke. It turned out, in fact, to be horribly, chillingly apt.

The request by Stuart Wyatt begins,

With your department aiming to remove the benefits from 25% of DLA
claimants, and deem 91% of ESA claimants as fit for work, please
could you inform me what provisions have been made for those
disabled and sick people to choose a quick and painless death in
preference to slow and painful death by starvation, neglect or
homelessness.

and goes on to ask whether ATOS will therefore be providing suicide kits.

The same man has made a video of telephone calls to ATOS asking for the same information.



It would be funny if it wasn't so damn true.

Back to the Freedomof Information request, the DWP have to reply by the 21st February, so do check for their response.

National Protest Against Benefit Cuts - Party and Picnic in Triton Square

Please note that I/WtB do not endorse any of the sentiments expressed in these photographs. I'm merely reporting images I saw at the protest.

Here's a selection of placards I snapped during yesterday's protest:

















It was actually a really nice spot for a protest: There were places to sit, somewhere to shelter if it had rained (which thankfully it didn't) and a Starbucks and a Pret A Manger only a few yards away. I think Starbucks did a roaring trade in selling hot drinks to cold cripples. Lots of people brought communal food and cake and it was all very lovely. We even had support from trade unions and UCL occupiers, which was refreshing after the lack of solidarity we saw last time. I think in part we have to thank Laurie Penny's call for support for that.

I've read lots of rumours that we were Kettled Crips (pardon the pun, couldn't resist). I have no idea what happened after the protest moved to Marylebone, but we weren't kettled in Triton Sq. I was rather confused reading all these tweets claiming we were detained considering I'd just nipped out to get a cuppa and come back. Whilst inside Starbucks I saw several other protesters who, like me, had just nipped out of the protest area to get a hot drink.

Yes, there were fences around us to keep a footpath free of protesters for people needing to walk past. But we weren't "detained" at any point. If we wanted to leave police let us out of the eastern end of the protest area. Admittedly they weren't letting us out of the western end, which was outside Atos's door, but the fact that they were letting us out of the eastern end means that we were not detained.

As I arrived I did hear one police officer say to the two standing near him "look out, here comes a wheelchair." (As if I was rolling menacingly towards them...) I don't think he meant for me to hear that, I don't think he realised the acoustics of the corridor between 2 buildings which carried his voice. Once I was close enough for them to intentionally speak to me they were perfectly polite and friendly. I think at one point there were just as many police as protesters present and they were never threatening and were perfectly friendly to everyone I saw engage with them. The only time my safety was in jeopardy yesterday was when I was pushing back to my car after the protest and one of my front wheels caught on a sticky uppy paving slab and I nearly landed on my face. So thanks for that, Camden Council.