Husband of Debbie Purdy told 'quit work' for benefits.
It's a ridiculous situation, it shouldn't happen, but it does. It's the final paragraph that really irritated me:
The Department for Work and Pensions said it did not comment on individual cases but that planned reforms of the welfare system would benefit people such as Ms Purdy.
In the first half of the sentence the DWP say "we don't comment on individual cases." This is then followed in the second half of the sentence by commenting on an individual case. My cat is more consistent than the average DWP employee and she frequently demands to be petted and then bites me when I touch her.
There's also the problem that the second half of the sentence is a complete lie. Yes, the government are resolving the problem that one can sometimes be better off on benefits than in work. But they're not resolving the problem by improving benefits for families like Purdy's: They're just making everybody poorer.
Many of the benefits to be capped, including housing benefit, are available to people in work on low incomes. By cutting back on these benefits you're making remaining in work harder not easier.
The article says that Purdy gets IB and DLA. DLA is being subjected to 20% cuts and many genuinely ill people are being found fit for work in the IB to ESA moves. Right there is another possibility that these reforms might leave Purdy worse off.
Whenever there's a benefit-related news story the DWP are always given a right-to-reply in which they invariably tell a pack of lies. So why is it that when the right wing press - which unfortunately has to include BBC News these days - run a story straight from the mouths of the DWP that disabled people don't get the same right?
my approach has been the legal side of benefits*
ReplyDeleteI have found Article22*
of the human rights act is useful!
Google it! and make sure everyone knows*
UK* is a signitory to it*