Don't look there, look here!

The Thick of It was set in a fictional government department: Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, or DoSAC. But when I think about our real government, there's no other department I can imagine that would be quite as sitcom-worthy as the DWP.

There are certainly some very clever people in the department. Yesterday's death data was confusing to all who read it. Even very clever professional number crunchers couldn't really get to the bottom of it because the data was so badly presented. This was almost certainly deliberate: The DWP didn't answer what was asked of them, and dumped a load of data that would confuse people who tried to use the data to answer the simple question "how many people are dying after being found fit for work?"

Anyone can release some data while withholding the answer to a question, but the press and public will generally look at the data and find the answer for themselves. To release a bunch of data that's on-topic, but still means that very clever people can't get the answers they're looking for takes Bond-villain levels of evil genius. You have to wonder why someone who can so cleverly pretend to be transparent by releasing opaque data is working in a public sector job, and not using their evil genius skills to make themselves a billionaire.

But then there's the spokespeople who are so bad at sleight of hand that they remind you of a 4 year old trying to do a magic trick by saying "now, if you'll just look out of the window for a moment while I sort this.... OK, you can look back now."

The DWP spokesperson told the BBC for an article:

"The mortality rate for people who have died while claiming an out-of-work benefit has fallen over a 10-year period. This is in line with the mortality rate for the general working-age population.

"The government continues to support millions of people on benefits with an £80bn working-age welfare safety net in place."

None of the three sentences have anything to do with the question asked.

It was either a pathetic attempt at a misdirect ("never mind the terminally ill people we found fit for work. Look! Less people are dying whilst claiming benefits!") or they genuinely didn't understand the question and are akin to a GCSE English student rambling about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when the exam question asked them about Romeo and Juliet.

You can just imagine a Malcolm Tucker type figure in the DWP yesterday, can't you? "We're fucking fucked. The fucking Information Commissioner's Office have fucking ordered us to release this fucking data. I'll tell you what; we'll make it as confusing as fuck and then we'll distract the fucking press with the press release. What parts of the data look good? Less scroungers are dying than a decade ago? Well fucking put that in the fucking press release. It doesn't fucking matter that it's got fuck all to do with the sick cunts dropping dead after we've stopped their benefits. And throw in a fucking brag about how many billions we waste on the scroungers at the end of it."

Either that or their spokesperson is as lacking in smarts as Terri Coverley which is why they were recruited because they would just innocently talk about something completely off topic because they understood the data even less than the press and public.

Poverty Porn is all the rage right now. Not just Benefits Street on C4. Just this week on five they had a "benefits night" with such classy shows as Big Benefits Wedding and 12 years old and on Benefits. Pointing and laughing at poor people is the hot TV trend. But I wanna see inside the DWP. I want to see inside the department that comes out with such ridiculously off-topic press statements. I want to gawp with wonder at the thinking behind sending a spokesperson out to insult the public's intelligence by hoping we won't notice that what they've said is unrelated to the subject at hand. In The Thick of It DoSAC tried to obfuscate around their role in the death of the fictional Phil Tickell. Unfortunately the DWP are trying to downplay their role in potentially thousands of real human beings dying penniless. If it wasn't such a tragic situation, I could very much enjoy an evening watching a fly-on-the-wall show set in the DWP press office as they scramble to say to the press "don't look at that, look at this!"

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.

The Government Is Implicated In Creating Negative Attitudes To Disabled

This is a guest post by Sharon Brennan, originally posted here

 

It is the 40 years since the first Disability Act was enacted and to mark the occasion the BBC commissioned a survey into the public's attitude to disabled people. Interestingly 90% of people thought the Government should do more to help disabled people into work. I found this outlook really refreshing as I recently wrote a piece for the Guardian discussing the need for the Government to recognise that disabled employment must be a two way conversation: disabled people must be willing to work but employers must be willing to hire. Despite the Government refusing to discuss the fact that it is harder for disabled people to find work, it was great that the average person recognises it as a problem.

Where the BBC survey results were less positive, were in its findings that 40% of people think disabled people would "refuse work even when they have been found capable of doing it". This figure rose to over 50% amongst young respondents and those on low incomes.

Clearly there is a negative perception of disabled people in the UK, which can undoubtedly be attributed in part to right-wing media representation of the disabled. The Daily Mail is notorious for this. A recent front page screamed,  "75% of claimants are fit to work", and carried on: "Tough new benefits test weed out the workshy".

You expect this kind of thing from the Daily Mail. But what shocked me is that the 75% figure came from a press release from the Department of Work and Pensions. And the figure is wrong. So it amounts to blatant Government propaganda. 

The Government has reached its 75% figure by adding together 39% of people found fit to work and the 36% of people who have removed their claim during the assessment process. This 36% figure is problematic as there is much anecdotal evidence that those withdrawing their claims are those suffering from mental illness who find the process too frustrating and to have a negative impact upon their health condition. The truth is that the Government has no idea what happens to these 36% of people, as it doesn't track those who withdraw their claim. Which also means that the Government has no idea why they stop the process, although of course the Mail is quick to claim its because they were merely 'trying it on'.

But lets turn out attention to the number of successful appeals against ATOS's decision. When you follow the 'Notes to editors' link on the DWP very own press release it reveals a more in-depth report which shows that every month on average 40% of appeals against ATOS are upheld and they are awarded ESA. On average one third of claimants found 'fit to work' appealed against their decision and 40% were successful with their appeal. So if you do the math, once the whole process including appeals is complete, the DWP is wrong to say 39% are fit to work. In fact, 34% are found fit to work. So overall, at best 70% of ESA claimants are 'fit to work' although my guess this would be lower still if those 36% who dropped out of the process were given the right support to continue with their claim.

Let me remind you that the Government has access to this data, I've taken it directly from its own report. Yet although the release quotes Grayling saying he is "determined to get the medical test right" the successful appeals against the test are entirely omitted from his ESA headline statistics. 5% may be a small difference, but it is a difference none-the-less when you think that this current Government is so focused on transparency and providing accurate information to its citizens.

So it is clear that for some reason the Government has decided to spin the statistics associated with who is and isn't fit to work. It seems to suit their current agenda for the public to think that the majority of ESA claimants are 'scroungers'. Perhaps they realise they can only get the public to accept their massive welfare cuts if the public think the money is going to the undeserving. 

And this might explain why, in today's BBC survey, the number of people who think disabled people choose not to work rises amongst those people who are most struggling to get by in life or get a job. So the Government at least seems to be doing well at one thing: pitting one set of welfare cut losers against another.

The human cost of benefit cuts

I'd not heard of writer Paul Reekie until last month. But now, for me, he has come to represent the reason why Where's the Benefit? is needed and why these attacks on disabled people must stop.

The first time I'd heard of him was when I read this story in The Scotsman. The article contains this extract of a letter from Reekie's publisher Kevin Williamson to the Chancellor George Osborne:

"I thought I would let you know that Paul took his own life. He didn't leave a note but he laid out two letters on his table. One was notifying him that his housing benefit had been stopped. The other was notifying him that his incapacity benefit had been stopped.

"The reason I'm writing this letter is just so you know the human cost of attacking those on benefits."

"The letter will be binned and forgotten, but there will be loads more folk in Paul's shoes over the coming years trying to cope with unemployment, depression, house repossessions and stress."

Friends of Paul set up the Black Triangle - Anti-Defamation Campaign In Defence of Disabled Claimants on Facebook in memory of him. The 'info' page explains the name:

The Nazis forced people with mental and other disabilities to wear black triangles in the extermination camps during the Holocaust.

The generic classification they used was "Arbeitsscheu" - literally "Workshy".

Any loss of life is tragic. I hope that at least his death can serve as a wake up call to those attacking us that their actions do have very real consequences. Ultimately I would like to see Paul's death prevent any more disabled people being put in the economic position where they feel that death is their only option.

"Councils pay for prostitutes for the disabled" - The Telegraph

Taxpayers' money is being spent on prostitutes, lap dancing clubs and exotic holidays under schemes designed to give more independence to the disabled.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7945785/Councils-pay-for-prostitutes-for-the-disabled.html

While other papers are content with attacking claimants of DLA and Incapacity Benefit, it seems The Telegraph have set their sights on Personal Budgets; the new-ish scheme which offers disabled people a choice in how their assistance needs are met. I guess they'd prefer to see us get 15 mins of old-style Home Help 3 times a day and only being allowed to go to the toilet in those slots.

They say:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph can disclose...

Which means they didn't stumble upon a story about someone using their PB to pay for a Dutch prostitute, they actually went looking for any hint of PB scandal they could find. Because disabled people aren't under enough fire already...

Edited to add: Unsurprisingly the Daily Mail are also covering the story. (Thanks to @CrippledWriter for tweeting the link.)

It's interesting that these papers - the same ones that are so keen to see disabled people off Incapacity Benefit and getting jobs - are the ones decrying Personal Budgets. For a great many disabled people Personal Budgets are the only way they are able to work. Without being able to pay someone to come and get you up and dressed at a time of your choosing you can't go out to work, can you?

The Report

Radio 4's The Report this Thursday Aug 12th was about ATOS, IB, ESA and the Work Capability Assessment (WCA).

Something that caught my attention was this at the 9min 40sec mark:

If we roll back 30-odd years the number of people on incapacity-related benefits was quite small, less than three quarters of a million.

And then started banging on about how it was the recessions that drove people onto IB. The presenter never gave the name of the person who said this but in his preamble prior to it he hinted that the next person to speak would be something to do with the government. Genius. We're in a country being run by people who aren't intelligent enough to understand that we've seen major medical advances in the last 30 years so we will have a lot more people unable to work. People are surviving cancers they wouldn't have done 30 years ago, but are left too ill to work. We've got people surviving accidents that couldn't be survived 30 years ago but the survivors are left too impaired to work.

There are chunks of the show that are aware of the reality of the current harsh climate, like when they interview a few severely ill people who were deemed fit to work by the WCA. There are also a few quotes from ATOS employees repeated from the BBC Scotland investigation. But for the most part the programme supports the assumption held by our government and our tabloids that most people on IB are there because they're non-disabled/healthy but they've never worked and they don't know how to work. There's also a chunk explaining that ESA is widely appealed and a significant number of the appeals are successful, but it doesn't explore that these appeals are expensive to the taxpayer and it'd be cheaper overall if the need for so many appeals was cut by making the WCA more realistic. Incredibly disappointing from Radio 4.

The Sun hates YOU

TODAY The Sun is declaring war on feckless benefits claimants to slash the £5BILLION wasted in Britain's shambolic handouts culture.

That's the intro to this article in The Sun today.

They go on:

Hundreds of thousands of scroungers in the UK are robbing hard-working Sun readers of their cash.

They cannot be bothered to find a job or they claim to be sick when they are perfectly capable of work because they prefer to sit at home watching widescreen TVs - paid for by YOU.

Despite the fact that the government has a hotline for reporting benefit fraud, The Sun have felt the need to set up their own. If you're thinking of shopping someone you suspect is a benefit cheat it's worth noting that the government number is an 0800 one so the call is free. The Sun's number is an 020 7 one so if you live in London you'll get charged the local call rate, if you live elsewhere in the UK you'll be charged a national call rate. I figure if you're in the business of reporting people for benefit fraud because you think their TV is too big you're probably keen to know what the call costs.

The Sun point out that their campaign has some high-profile support:

Our campaign aims to crack down on fraud and has the backing of Prime Minister David Cameron, who explains below how he is committed to tackling our out-of-control welfare state.

I'm off to nail my curtains to the wall so I don't get seen typing this and reported to The Sun for being a scrounger who's wasting hardworking Sun readers' money on owning a crappy old computer.

Hat tip to @CrippledWriter for tweeting the link to the story.