DWP will pay £150 million in arrears… but your prescription charges? No chance!!

Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey said that the poor could eat cake.  The last woman in a position of authority to make a comment like that got her head chopped off.  An act that I in no way endorse!

The British Department of Work and Pensions has given in to pressure from anti-poverty charities and will pay arrears owed to sick and disabled benefit claimants who were cheated out of thousands of pounds after what is described as “a series of bureaucratic errors.”

The under-payments, some of which date back to 2011, happened when claimants of contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance were not told they would be better off if they claimed income-based ESA.  This “mistake” resulted in at least 70,000 claimants missing out on up to £20,000 each.

Child Poverty Action Group challenged the under-payments in a judicial review, but the DWP has accepted that it was in the wrong and will not contest the review.  A CPAG lawyer welcomed the DWP’s change of heart but added it “shouldn’t be necessary to take a government department to court to achieve justice for people who have been failed by officials making errors.”

The decision quickly followed the publication of a report by cross-bench public accounts committee.  The report said there was a “culture of indifference” at the DWP, and criticised its failure to obtain legal advice when transferring claimants to ESA, failed to make basic checks and ignored evidence and complaints that the process was flawed.

Committee chair, Meg Hillier MP, welcomed the U-turn, saying she had been appalled by the DWP’s failure to correct its errors.

But the DWP still refuses to pay compensation to claimants who were wrongly denied related benefits such free prescriptions as a result of the “error”.  Big surprise!

 

Welfare Minister Esther McVey is a liar shock horror!

Esther McVey, Welfare Secretary – she needs to be careful or she might end up seeing how Universal Credit works from a claimant’s point of view!

Well what a surprise: a politician has told lies!

Sorry, all you honest politicians out there!  I really shouldn’t imply that all politicians are liars.  Of course that isn’t the case.  I know there must be politicians out there who have never told a lie, ever.  If you are one of these politicians, please leave me a message – in Comments below or the contact form here.

Anyway, Esther McVey appears to be a liar liar pants on fire.  And it isn’t some lone kook making the allegation – it is the National Audit Office (NAO): “an independent Parliamentary body in the United Kingdom which is responsible for auditing central government departments, government agencies and non-departmental public bodies” (from Wikipedia).  Would a Parliamentary body with such an important remit knowingly make accusations like this if those accusations were untrue?  Would a government minister tell lies to cover her own ass and that of a bumbling Tory government?  Hmmm…

Sir Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, wrote to McVey on the “misleading statements” (aka lies – why are civil servants and politicians so civil and polite when they are trying to kill each other?) because he had not been able to make an appointment to meet her face to face.  And this frustration has led to him making public the content of his letter – the first time that Morse has released personal correspondence with a minister, and is a reflection of the tension between the DWP and the NAO over McVey’s statements.

Okay, so what has McVey been lying about?  In June the NAO released a report about Universal Credit, the Conservative government’s flagship welfare “innovation”, which squeezes 6 other benefits into one, and is supposed to make it easier for unemployed people to get back into work.  It is paid monthly (while other benefits are normally paid fortnightly), and all claims and enquiries are handled online.

McVey claimed that the NAO report said Universal Credit is being rolled out too slowly, that it was working successfully in those areas where UC has been introduced, and that any criticism of UC was because the report had failed to take into account recent improvements in the payment of benefits.

Sir Amyas Morse said McVey has “misinterpreted” the report “to make it look as if the new welfare system is working well.”

Does the report say that Universal Credit is being rolled out too slowly?  Sir Amyas says No!!  In fact the report recommended that the DWP should ensure it was working properly before transferring any more people from previous benefits.

Did the report say that Universal Credit is working?  Sir Amyas says No!!  In fact the report says Universal Credit has not been proven to work.

Did the report fail to take into account recent improvements in welfare administration and payment timeliness?  Sir Amyas says No!!  He wrote to McVey:

Our report was fully agreed with senior officials in your department [on 8 June]. It is based on the most accurate and up to date information from your department … it is odd that by Friday 15 June you feel able to say that the NAO “did not take into account the impact of our recent changes.”

Although Morse didn’t say “You’re a liar,” that is clearly what was meant.  So, will McVey survive this assault on her credibility?  Of course she will.  For those who refuse to vote Conservative, McVey and her colleagues lost their credibility a long time ago, if they actually had any credibility to start with.  For those who are willing to vote for those awful people, McVey automatically is seen as the victim.

McVey apologised for her “misinterpretation” of the NAO report just hours after the release of Morse’s letter.

“The NAO report did not say that [it wanted Universal Credit to be rolled out more quickly] and I want to apologise to the House for inadvertently misleading you. What I wanted to say was that the NAO said there was no practical alternative,” she said.

She also told MPs she was “working on setting up a meeting with the NAO” about other matters, but that she stood by her claims that the auditors’ report did not take into account recent changes to universal credit. “The impact of these changes are still being felt and therefore, by definition, couldn’t have been fully taken into account by the NAO report,” she said.

So really her apology is meaningless as it makes no real difference.  Fundamentally she stands by her previous statements.

She is expected to face further parliamentary scrutiny over the debacle after Frank Field, chair of the work and pensions committee, asked the Speaker, John Bercow, for an urgent question as early as Thursday.  Field said to the Guardian: “The secretary of state needs to be questioned about the three mega-Trumpisms which the NAO says are untrue.”

Of course he wants her to go, as does every other opposition MP and some Tory colleagues.  But will that mean anything?   I suppose it comes down to this: does prime minister Theresa May need a blood sacrifice?  If she does, McVey is finished.  If not, this story will be forgotten soon enough.  At the end of the day, no one in power cares about benefit claimants.  The welfare minister least of all.

National Audit Office chief Sir Amyas Morse has called Esther McVey on her “misinterpretation” of the NAO report on Universal Credit

Iain Duncan Smith vs Reality

A recent comment of mine on Facebook has set myself a challenge: to show people in general what our glorious DWP destroyer, sorry I meant leader, Iain Duncan Smith is really like.  Peel away at his fabricated facade and the truth begins to be revealed.  And that truth is pretty nasty.

On Facebook, a user called Shawn Power shared a web page: “The IDS Files: Iain Duncan Smith vs Reality”.  I urge you to have a look – it places his lies against the truth – and there are a lot of lies.  Here are a few:

Long Description
Iain Duncan Smith	vs	Reality
While Tory Leader, Iain Duncan Smith’s biography on the Conservative Party website, his entry in Who’s Who, and various other places, stated that he went to the Universita di Perugia in Italy.		BBC Newsnight: This is not true: his office now admit that he went to the Universita per Stranieri, which is also in Perugia. Mr Duncan Smith’s office has now admitted to Newsnight that he didn’t get any qualifications in Perugia or even finish his exams. Source: BBC Newsnight
Again, while Tory Leader, the first line of Iain Duncan Smith’s biography, on the Conservative Party website, claimed he was “educated at Dunchurch College of Management”.		Mr Duncan Smith’s office has now confirmed to Newsnight that he did not get any qualifications there either, but that he completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to about a month in total. Source: BBC Newsnight
When IDS was Tory Party Leader, his Conservative Party Biography claimed he had been a Director at GEC Marconi.		This was not true, he was a junior marketing executive. Source: The Independent  [With thanks to The Klaxon for this one]
Debbie Abrahams MP: “Why does he [IDS] refuse to publish the details of the number of people who have died within six weeks of their claims for incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance, including those who have been found fit for work?” Iain Duncan Smith: “She knows very well that theDepartment does not collate numbers on people in that circumstance.” Work and Pensions Questions, House of Commons 22nd June 2015 Hansard		On August 28th 2015, just over one month after IDSclaimed they didn’t exist, the DWP released into the public domain the statistics on deaths of ESA claimants. Source: The Department For Work and Pensions
“Britain has the highest rate of jobless households in Europe.” Iain Duncan Smith, House of Commons Daily Telegraph		Britain did not have the highest number of jobless households in Europe. IDS later admitted the ‘error’ and has corrected the Commons Record Source: Fullfact.org
“The Centre for Social Justice estimates, the cost of family breakdown is £20-24 billion. And the Relationships Foundation puts the figure at nearer £40 billion. ……… The costs to society as a whole …. are very difficult to quantify – but research suggests they could be up to £100 billion.”Iain Duncan Smith Daily Mail		“…….. we can see no reason to accept the claim now in circulation that “broken homes” cost Britain £100 billion. …….the very CSJ report from which the lower estimate is extracted warns against certainty in this area: “it is impossible to quantify with any accuracy the cost of family breakdown to the Exchequer”. Source: FullFact.Org
“in 13 years of Labour rule, 70 per cent of the four million jobs created were taken by people from overseas” Iain Duncan Smith, reported in The Sun and the Daily Mail		“ there are no figures to back up any claimregarding the number of ‘jobs created’ that were taken by workers of any nationality.” Source: FullFact.Org
In a parliamentary debate, Iain Duncan Smith claimed that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that private sector rents had fallen by 5 per cent last year.		The private sector rent figures came from the website FindaProperty.com, not the Office for National Statistics as originally claimed in the House of Commons by Iain Duncan Smith. Source: Inside Housing
“What the EU is now trying to do is get us to provide benefits for those who come to this country with no intention to work and no other means of supporting themselves, with the sole purpose of accessing a more generous benefit system.” Iain Duncan Smith		Channel 4 FactCheck asked the government for estimates of how big the problem of benefit tourism actually is, and whether it had got better or worse since the introduction of “right to reside” in 2004. A DWP spokesman said the department had “no information available”. Source: Channel 4 FactCheck
“The public thinks that homelessness is about not having any reasonable accommodation to go to, that’s not what the definition is. The definition inside government and places like Shelter is that children have to share rooms… Nobody, and I can guarantee this, nobody will be made homeless in the sense of the public’s view of it – without a home to go to – as a result of this.” Iain Duncan Smith		Shelter’s chief executive Campbell Robb said: “The Secretary of State said that, according to Shelter, families where children share a bedroom would be defined as homeless. This is simply not true. Shelter uses the same definition of homelessness as the government, as set out in the Housing Act 1996, passed by the last Conservative government.” Source: Channel 4 FactCheck
“We are creating a new benefit, because the last benefit [Disability Living Allowance] grew by something like 30 per cent in the past few years. It’s been rising well ahead of any other gauge you might make about illness, sickness, disability or, for that matter, general trends in society.” “Something like 70 per cent [of DLA claimants] had lifetime awards, [which] meant that once they got it you never looked at them again.” Iain Duncan Smith,		While there has been a 30 per cent growth in the raw number of claimants, this is significantly lower once demographic changes are accounted for. Similarly, while it is true that over 70 per cent of DLA claimants are on indefinite awards, it isn’t necessarily true that these people are ‘never looked at again’.  Source: FullFact.Org
“On average, every week there are about half a million new jobs coming through at the Jobcentre” Iain Duncan Smith on LBC Radio		“After contacting the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), they could not verify what Mr Duncan-Smith may have said this morning. However, they did confirm: “On average Jobcentre Plus continues to add 10,000 jobs to its books every working day.” 10,000 jobs per working day is certainly not half a million per week.” Source:FullFact.Org
“These figures show the benefit cap is already a success and is actively encouraging people back to work.” Iain Duncan Smith		With the information Mr Duncan Smith has put before us, his figures don’t show the benefits cap is already successful at getting people back into work. A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “The Secretary of State believes that the benefits cap is having an effect.”  Source: Channel 4 FactCheck
“Of those who are looking for full-time jobs, 4/5 of them are finding them, so about 1/5 of those looking for full-time work are not finding full-time work and settling for part time work.” Iain Duncan Smith		“...there does not appear to be any data by which the Work and Pensions Secretary can substantiate his claim. ” Source:FullFact.Org
“Where you see the clustering of the large families is really down at the very lowest incomes, with those on significant numbers of welfare…and those at the very top level of incomes.” “We have paid rents on houses in London in some cases of over £100,000 to families are too large to house anywhere else.” Iain Duncan Smith		DWP figures show that some 160 claimants out of more than 3 million were getting the equivalent of £50,000 a year or more in 2010.That’s 0.0004 per cent of cases. The Daily Telegraph researched how many families were getting over £100,000 in 2010 and found only three, all in the London borough of Westminster. Source: Channel4 FactCheck
“Tax credit payments rose by some 58 per cent ahead of the 2005 general election, and in the two years prior to the 2010 election, spending increased by about 20 per cent.” Iain Duncan Smith. Daily Telegraph		[[HMRC] said that in 2003-04, £16.4bn was paid, and the following year £17.7bn. That’s an increase of 8%, not 58%. And in 2008-9, HMRC said, some £25.1bn was paid. In the following year, it was £27.3bn. Which means that in the two years prior to the 2010 general election, spending on tax credits increased by 8.8 per cent, not 20. Source: Channel 4 FactCheck
“It will come as no surprise therefore that fraudsters from around the world targeted this [tax credit] benefit for personal gain. “Iain Duncan Smith. Daily Telegraph		when we asked HMRC how many non-UK nationals were responsible for tax credit fraud, it said: “The tax credit system doesn’t record nationalities of claimants, so we don’t have those figures.” Source:Channel 4 FactCheck
A radical welfare reform programme designed to tackle entrenched poverty and end the curse of intergenerational worklessness is set out today by new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith. DWP Press Release: Reforms will tacklepoverty and get Britain working again and Department for Work and Pensions – European Social Fund in England		“Researchers in deprived neighbourhoods in Glasgow and Middlesbrough found that worklessness was not the result of a culture of worklessness, held in families and passed down the generations….. There was no evidence of ‘a culture of worklessness’ “Despite strenuous efforts, the researchers were unable to locate any such families. Even two generations of complete worklessness in the same family was a very rare phenomenon, which is consistent with recent quantitative surveys of this issue.” Source: Joseph Rowntree Foundation: Are ‘cultures of worklessness’ passed down the generations?
The Image at the top of this page was created by the awesome Mr Brian Hilton.Further reading: Work and Pensions Select Committee Report:  The role of incapacity benefit assessment in helping claimants into employment. Lies, damned lies and Iain Duncan Smith Full Fact asks watchdog to intervene over inaccurate incapacity benefit reporting Conservative chairman Grant Shapps rebuked over benefit error After Shapps’ bad data, the DWP is back in the spotlight IDS accepts need to tone down benefit fraud rhetoric David Cameron accused of “scaremongering” over health tourism How many parents are really paying child maintenance? Government statistics: Fixing the figures Disabled challenge minister over job support boast MPs set to quiz minister over ‘misleading’ benefit stats DWP lies to cover its tracks on mobility cuts Skivers v strivers: the argument that pollutes people’s minds Minister rebuked over immigration statistics Mythbuster: Tall tales about welfare reform Facts and fiction on welfare Scrounger stigma puts poor people off applying for essential benefits The welfare scrounger is exposed as myth by new report Is £600m really being paid in disability living allowance to people who don’t qualify? Exposed: the myth of a ‘culture of worklessness’ Are ‘cultures of worklessness’ passed down the generations? Mind the gap Benefit policy based on figures culled from web The coalition’s statistics: Stats, spats and spads Lies, Damn Lies, and Department for Work and Pensions Statistics

Sorry about the poor contrast between the text and background.  Go to the site to see it more clearly

If you live in Chingford and Woodford Green, I’d love to hear from you.  If you have had benefits or tax credits stopped or “sanctioned” I’d love to hear your story.  If you depend on Food Banks and charity because of this government’s policies I’d love to hear from you.  You can leave messages in the Comments section.  Or if you want anonymity you can use the Contact Form – link at the top of the page – and I will absolutely protect your anonymity.  IDS needs to meet the truth.  Please help me make that meeting happen soon.  Help me make sure that it hurts him.  We do not need a character like that in government.  In fact we don’t need a party like the Tories to be anywhere near the levers of power.  The longer they cling to office, the rich  will get richer, at the expense of the poor.  The rich get richer, the poor get poorer – you’ve heard that saying before.  But how about “The rich get richer, the poor get angrier“?  Let’s use that anger to get rid of IDS and all of his kind!

Too sick to work? Then starve! says DWP

That’s the message from Ian Duncan Smith, hater of the poor and vulnerable.  Him and his mates want to stop disabled and sick people from getting Employment Support Allowance.  He wants to put disabled and ill people to sign on and get JSA.  The stress the DWP put on unemployment could lead vulnerable people, like mentally-ill people, do do themselves harm, or even kill themselves!

There’s less than 24 hours to stop people who are too unwell to work being pushed into poverty. The government wants to cut a financial lifeline for ill and disabled people – called Employment Support Allowance (ESA). [1] Unless we act quickly to stop them, they could push these plans through tomorrow.

Tomorrow, the House of Lords will vote to either rubber stamp these plans, or send the government back to the drawing board.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson will carry an 80,000-strong petition into tomorrow’s vote, with the names of all of us who sign it. Don’t let the title and the double-barrelled name put you off, she’s one of the good guys (at the moment anyway) Please can you sign the petition now to pressure the Lords not to cut help for ill and disabled people?

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/sign-esa-petition

Any one of us or our loved ones could fall seriously ill during our lifetimes. This benefit is there for those of us who are unlucky – it helps pay for a taxi home from chemotherapy, or a childminder during a stay in hospital.

Please stand up for fairness and support for anyone who’s too ill to work. It only takes 2 minutes to sign the petition – please can you add your name now to help carry it over 100,000?

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/sign-esa-petition

Sick of crap mobile phone service?  Why not join GiffGaff, the network run by YOU?  Free SIMs available here.

Single mother murdered by the welfare state

There’s a nasty story in the Guardian about a single mother who killed herself and her child because she was destitute.  Christelle Pardo was a Frenchwoman who had recently graduated from the Metropolitan University in London. The reason she became destitiute is because of the Department of Work and Pensions’ convoluted rules.  But basically, she couldn’t get any benefits because she was pregnant.

This tragic tale clearly demonstrates that right-wing and nationalistic people and groups like Nick Griffin and the BNP are full of shit when they say immigrants and single mothers can live a life of luxury on British benefits.  Christelle was an immigrant and a single mother,  and she couldn’t get a penny in benefits.

There’s something seriously wrong with a welfare system that can leave a vulnerable single mother or mother-to-be destitute.  No doubt the government will say this case was an exception, that the system usually works wonderfully.  But even if that were true (and personal expereience makes me doubt it) the fact that one Christelle could fall through the cracks tells me that the system needs fixing.  Unfortunately that won’t happen.  The current Labour government wants to cut public spending, not increase it.  And if (when?) the Tories win the next election they will be even worse.  A civilised society should protect its most vulnerable members.  But when does that ever happen?  Where I live: never.

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