Chris Grayling - How do you Sleep at Night?

Here's Mr Grayling telling you that assessments used to determine whether or not someone is "fit for work" or not are "Not money driven," http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13695783 somehow, ignoring the "target" of saving £1 billion from the sickness benefits bill.

However, Here's Mr Grayling during a recent DWP committee meeting telling you that the decision to stop all contributory ESA benefits entirely after one year, whether the person is then fully recovered or fit for work or not was entirely based on cost cutting. When asked if after one year these vulnerable sick or disabled people would have found work or even be fit for work he replied it

"is not about recovery times. It is not about a decision that 12 months is an appropriate time for recovery. These are people who have other means of financial support, so what we have sought to do in difficult times financially, and by taking tough decisions,...is hold the line on this difficult issue and do not accept the right hon. Gentleman’s amendments. We do not believe that financially we can do so. [Full transcript here : http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmpublic/welfare/110503/am/110503s01.htm ]

How much is this financial support that people have to fall back on? Well, the means test is set at just £7500 per year. Any working partner who earns more than this will become totally financially responsible for a sick or disabled partner!

Next, here's Mr Grayling telling you that he's 

"bemused" over being criticised for saying people should not be judged as "scroungers" ... He said he had advised "a number of media outlets" about the need for careful language but said some stories the department considered insignificant had shot to the top of the tabloid news agenda.
"Sometimes stories run in a way that completely bemuse me," he said.. [Full article here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13695440]

However, here's FullFact.org, the independent media checking site, and the four pages of misleading headlines that have been questioned and upheld on their site. http://fullfact.org/search/node/Incapacity%20Benefit

All of the stories quote the DWP's own press releases and most refer to "government sources" using the most colourful language. As a result, the Press Complaints Commission has demanded retractions from the Telegraph, the Sun, The Mail and the Express. Mr Grayling has twice been reported to the Cabinet Office for breaking the ministerial code on politicised press releases. Last month, the minister for disabilities herself, Maria Miller, made misleading claims that more alcoholics claimed higher rate DLA than those who were blind. She was wrong. Or she lied.

So, you know, I just thought I'd link to some actual fact thingies. I know they get in the way Mr Grayling, but we can't have you all "bemused" now can we? We can't have a government minister who has no idea of the effect of his own press releases. We can't have a minister who happily admits that the very worst of his policies are purely financial and totally unresearched, whilst trying to persuade us that others are caring, compassionate and all for our own good now can we?

This shouldn't be legal let alone ignored.

Benefit Claimants - Saints or Sinners?

The force of nature that is Dr Eoin Clarke over at the Green Benches has produced this enlightening research on unclaimed benefits. What a shame it is that no-one in politics is prepared to so the kind of hard work to dispel obnoxious myths that Dr Clarke is turning out daily on his unique blog. 

Whilst Eoin concentrates on those benefits that can be quantified, sickness and disability benefits are a much greyer area. We can't say how many people do not claim DLA, ESA, Carer's Allowance or any other benefits designed to make our lives more equitable. 

We can, however look at the system as it stands. The government would like us to believe that sickness and disability benefits are an easy option. That there are few controls or checks and that claimants can look forward to a life of ease once a claim is successful. 

This is absolute nonsense. 

Initially, a claimant must fill in forms that run into 40 or 50 pages, detailing every last effect of their conditions in terms that often lead to despair and depression. The descriptors are now so tight that unless you have an advocate or know the terms to use, you will be unlikely to qualify no matter how bad your disability or symptoms. 

Once the form is completed, it must be sent off and a long wait ensues. How do people survive in the meantime? 

Next, a claimant will be called for an assessment. The assessment is degrading, impersonal and inadequate. Claimants are bullied, judged and patronised, leaving them feeling worthless and guilty, whatever their genuine need. Around 40% of claims are abandoned during this stage. The government would like us to believe that this is because claimants were "trying it on". I think the most pro-reforming reader would accept that a system this harsh is bound to deter genuine claimants and lead to people in genuine need giving up. 

Once the claim is processed, it is very likely to be turned down. 40% of claims then go to tribunal with up to 80% being upheld with advocacy. This however is not the end. Within weeks of a successful appeal, another brown envelope falls through the door and the whole process begins again. 

Anecdotally, I don't claim DLA though I do qualify. It is too dispiriting, too badly designed and made me feel like a fraud when I did claim it. My husband refuses to claim Carer's Allowance or other benefits as he wants to support his family through work. 

Any politician with any integrity would challenge this system. They would be concerned that those in genuine need are not getting the help they need and deserve. They would make plans to increase take up, not reduce it and combine these with policies to actually help those sick and disabled people into work who would like help. Work Programmes are an abysmal failure, because politicians have focused solely on the stick with no thought at all for the carrot. There are no flexible working schemes that could actually fit around our disabilities, educational alternatives are rarely offered at the point of claim, entrepreneurs are not supported, co-operatives have not been developed - we are simply expected to fit into an existing work system that does not want us and cannot or will not accommodate us. 


Over to Eoin.....

Stop Bashing Benefit Claimants when £66 billion goes unclaimed per parliament

The graph above shows the amount of unclaimed yearly benefits in billions of pounds. The total unclaimed for the current year is £13,25billion.  The graph above is based upon my own calculations. I took the top end 'take up' rates recently published by the DWP of each of these five benefits. I then calculated those who did not 'take-up' the benefit by the average yearly entitlement of each benefit. For example only 86% [top end] took up Housing Benefit. The average HB weekly payment is £84.50.  So you multiply the c.744,844 non claimants by £84.50 times 52. That gives you c.£3.45bn in unclaimed Housing Benefit Payments per year. The same exercise was repeated for all five benefits. Sources: A host of DWP statistical bulletins and cross tabulations as well as ONS data]

Back you or Sack You? Oh Dave, we will.

So today, the seller of snake oils, wee Davie-boy Cameron will swoop in and save the NHS.

This is fantastically good news for lefties whichever way you look at it.

"David Cameron will today invite the public to vote against him at the next general election if he fails to keep his promises to protect the National Health Service." (sorry, but snigger - who told him to say that?)

He will offer five personal guarantees: "that the Government will not endanger universal coverage; will not break up or hinder efficient and integrated care; will keep waiting times low; will increase spending on the NHS; and will not "sell-off" the NHS to create a US-style private system, but will ensure competition benefits patients."


The elusive Mr Healey, like a rabbit out of a trap, points out that Mr Cameron is already breaking all five of his "guarantees"


Study after study shows that it's very unlikely that spending will in fact increase in real terms, though he may just manage that one by a whisker. Waiting times are as likely to "stay low" now that targets have been scrapped as I am to find a miracle cure - possible, but history proves unlikely. 


Of course, they are all very woolly. He doesn't really say anything at all. Kind of "The NHS will be safe with us" in full sentences. 


Come 2015, he'll hope the spinners can drag the pledges to fit reality. But, as I've pointed out over and over,this is not like any other issue. He can't stand up today, full of pledgery and hope the public give him leeway when an election lumbers into view.


So that's why it's such good news for lefties - especially as with his usual strategy blind spot he tells us to vote him out if he fails. 


Either he does what he says, keeps waiting lists low, doesn't privatise, keeps funding up etc and we're all delighted. The most important policy area will be safeguarded and Cameron will find no amount of fudgery will get him off the hook. 


OR he fails miserably and the public take him at his word, kick him out and never trust the Tories with the NHS again. 


Either way, it's an extraordinary gamble to take. 


For instance, "The government will not endanger universal coverage". Whatever he means by this, I think the public will take this to mean no postcode lottery. He may find it difficult to remind them that it meant "a national services free at the point of use" 


When he says he will "not "sell-off" the NHS to create a US-style private system, but will ensure competition benefits patients." Just how much "competition" will the public allow him? They still hear privatisation instead of the word competition. As they should.


So I'm sorry if I seem to write about this as a kind of amused bystander, sorry if I'm a little flippant, but after all the policies I think so disgusting, all the economic horror stories, all the damage his government is about to inflict, it's the NHS - the one thing he should never have gone near - that looks as though it will finish him off. 


Now it all comes down to pledgery V fudgery and Cameron's record on the second is rather better than the first. 




   

Sick or Disabled.

Back in 2008, the then Minister for Disabilities, Jonathan Shaw, came to our humble CLP to give a talk about the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA)

After he spoke for over 30 minutes I was appalled and frightened. Not once, in that speech did he mention - or even seem to be aware of the fact - that many people like me were unable to work because of long term health conditions.

He spoke about "modifying the workplace" to accommodate disability. He spoke about the blind and the deaf and those in wheelchairs. He referred constantly to the new soundbite that "Virtually everyone should be on an active pathway into work."

Absolutely nothing he said acknowledged the fact that there are hundreds of conditions that may exclude one from the workplace indefinitely whether they result from a disability or an illness.

At the end of his rather shocking presentation, questions were invited from the sparsely populated Labour Hall and I sat with my hand eagerly stretching skywards like a child in primary school desperate for the loo.

Finally, I was called, the last question of the evening and I asked him "What about those that are ill? What if the workplace can't be "modified" for us? What if we have no chance of recovery and, in fact, will only become more ill?"

He blinked at me. Then he stumbled a bit. Then he blinked again. It was clear that either the thought had never crossed his mind, or it was a question he didn't wish to answer. That was the day I became a "Welfare Warrior"

I lobbied Mr Shaw for months. He never replied.

At Labour Conference that year, I lobbied endlessly and in the end, successfully, to sit with Mr Shaw for half an hour and discuss the issue more fully. He was distracted, uncomfortable and evasive. He had absolutely no answers to my questions and made it clear that he did not want to be there.

Despite following up, he never replied to my correspondence.

Over the months, and then years that followed, not one person in the Labour Party replied to my questions or engaged with my fears. ESA was rolled out and the disaster I predicted unfolded before my eyes.

Now, three and a half years later, it is the coalition ignoring me and they have taken a failing and distressing system and turned it into a living nightmare.

Just as I could see from Mr Shaw's little speech, under ESA, it was those with variable, lifelong condition who were no longer considered "sustainable" and today, we reach a point, where literally millions of us are about to be abandoned entirely within our welfare system.

I have never written an article that doesn't refer to the "sick or disabled." Never, have I allowed those politicians to forget that there are millions of people like me who's lives have been ravaged, destroyed and torn apart by terrible ill health. Every single day, I have bored, annoyed, flustered and irritated those determined to ignore me.

It is a little difficult to maintain. It's an awkward phrase, it ruins my flow! "Sick and disabled" "sick and disabled" "sick or disabled" over and over I play Pavlov's dogs with our psyche to make it clear that one can be rendered less able in a million different ways.

Some disabled people don't like the implications of the phrase. Many disabled people are perfectly well apart from their disabilities, just as many people are horribly unwell but don't think of themselves as "disabled".

In order to bring us together, I never differentiate. In a physical sense, our problems and experiences are very different, but in the fight I want to win, they are one and the same. I want a society that treats us with dignity and respects our abilities. I want the welfare system to reflect that whether you are disabled physically or rendered disabled by ill heatlh.

Before I started to blog, I felt entirely excluded from the discussion. There was no official voice speaking for people like me - not that I'd discovered. I was ill, and our welfare system had never even hinted that that illness was not clearly a barrier to traditional work. Suddenly it was not just questioned, but rejected. Suddenly, a life threatening condition leading to endless surgery was no protection against poverty and relying totally on the goodwill of others for survival.

Well, today something interesting happened.

It wasn't a great day. Politicians were unusually depressing and an article I wrote for Left Foot Forward attracted some pretty disappointing and personal feedback in the comments thread.

A Tory friend on Twitter told me to "man up" which actually gave me the most comfort, because he was right. If I choose to oppose this, I will attract the very people I need to convince, and that is a good thing.

But as I read back through the comments, trying to find common ground or a way to break through the animosity, I realised something amazing.

Nearly every single comment referred to "the sick and disabled".

I quickly checked a few media articles and news stories and with a thrill the size of Alaska, realised that every single one now refers to "the sick and/or disabled". Peeking through my fingers, I made one last check. Yep, the politicians themselves now refer to the sick and /or disabled more often than not.

Millions of people who were previously never considered have now crept into the language of the debate and will now colour the opinions of those deciding their fates.

I'm just one voice and many others have been telling the same story and fighting the same fight - many for much longer than me. But I think this is a milestone. An enormously important step away from an often one dimensional discussion about welfare provision and "ability".

Every time you read the words "sick and disabled" I hope you'll smile. It means our numbers doubled, our movement grew and we found our similarities to unite against the real dangers we all face.

Maybe, just maybe it was one step towards making politicians think differently without even realising they had.

A small triumph perhaps, but I hope, in time, a powerful one.

Economics for Sickies 6

A few years ago, a multi-millionaire friend of my husband gave us a great lecture on leveraging. We had set up a business, but had no appetite to borrow further to expand, happy to grow slowly and sustainably.

He however, had been buying property in London and the South East as though it were going out of fashion (turns out it was...) and his debt vastly outweighed his assets.

He maintained that "debt equals wealth" and we butted horns for quite some time over what I saw as ridiculous double-think. I, the leftie, argued that no, debt equals interest payments, insecurity and...well...debt. He, the Thatcher-loving rightie (he has a picture of them together on his piano) argued that debt was hunky dory and could only lead to growth.

He and his buddies in the city borrowed and leveraged and borrowed some more until the whole house of cards teetered and fell.

We sold our house, paid off our debt, battened down the hatches and hoped to ride out the enormous storm we could see looming on the horizon.

Why would I tell you this little tale? Because it is a microcosm of society today.

The wealthy, the city, the banks and the entrepreneurs borrowed and leveraged, twisted and obscured, creating clever logarithms and computer programmes to convince themselves - and us - that it could, and would go on forever.

In a desperate bid to keep up, ordinary people borrowed too. They wanted a slice of this economic revolution, so they re-mortgaged and took out loans and maxed-up credit cards.

But even before the crash, "ordinary" people started to see that it couldn't last. They stopped spending, they stopped borrowing, they started to save and pay off debt. OK, maybe just a few at first, but once the credit crunch struck, it became a flood. And that is recession in a nutshell.

That is why governments must step in to prop things up in tough times. Because families, rightly, won't and can't.

But this is a straw man argument now. Things have gone too far. Osborne knows it, the banks know it, the city knows it and the global economy knows it. Osborne insists that eye-watering austerity and paying down debt will help, Labour argue that stimulus and growth will help, but actually, will any of it help at all now?

For decades we neglected our economy, we stacked it high and sold it cheap, we sacrificed quality to chase every financial bubble that appeared and we borrowed and borrowed and leveraged and obscured until no-one knew what anything was worth at all and there's a very good chance that in fact, it was worth nothing.

So, the naturally debt averse lefties are now the one's getting the blame for spending and leveraging, whilst the corporate righties have the astonishing cheek to claim we all need to be frugal. That the debt they courted was unsustainable, that the leveraging they adored had nothing to do with getting us into this mess. That the "light touch regulation" they called for less of was the real fault.

But under every right winger is a deeply held belief that it can go on forever, that capitalism will provide all the answers. There is an absolute confidence in the private sector to have the answers to the very problems they caused. There is total certainty that free markets and less regulation will get us out of this.

Isn't it all just amazingly incoherent? If you give it even a moment's thought, it seems fairly clear that they literally have no idea what to do. None of them. They are so totally thrown by the collapse of their house of cards, they can only use arguments they always used, only come up with suggestions they always thought would work.

Growth??? We'll be lucky to avoid a further crash that makes 2008 look like a street party. This is a global problem - everyone was at it. There is no money and there is no top hat from which we can magically pull a growth-rabbit. What will happen to personal debt when interest rates rise? Which businesses exactly are going to find export markets strong enough to pull us forward, feeding the capitalist growth monster in sufficient platters to fill him? How exactly are we going to "re-balance" our economy if those in charge have no appetite - comprehension even - of what that will actually take?

And who are the geniuses who will pull us out of this mess? Who are the new thinkers, the innovators, the dazzling brains who can see of all this and have answers? Osborne? Berlusconi? Sarkozy? Geithner? Lagarde? A few ex-bankers and gigolos so married to the current system that they can't see an inch beyond it?

Well, I have a horrible feeling, that like the last days of Rome, they are venal, corrupt, lazy, ignorant, selfish and incapable.

I have a feeling we need to show them a different way. the days of mind-numbing faith that these ridiculous political clowns have a clue what they're doing may be limited. We need to create excellence, pay down our debt, strengthen our families and communities and build businesses that actually make things we all need. We need to innovate for the future, create new technologies and sustainable energy sources. We need to square up to powerful lobbies that have made all of this impossible for generations. I have this horrible feeling they're not going to have the vision to actually make any of these things easier and I'm more and more convinced that people need to wake up to the long, hard slog ahead.

Working our way through this together, might be the only way forward and the more we listen to those in charge, the worse things might be about to get.

Spoonie Revenge Party - Friday Fun

Those of you who read http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2011/05/spoonie-revenge-party.html
will know that we had enormous fun imagining David Cameron, George Osborne, Maria Miller, Iain Duncan-Smith, James Purnell, Frank Field and Chris Grayling having to live the way they expect us to.

Their "punishment" for unfettered sickie-bashing is to be a year of living our lives. What would you do? How could you make sure that they taste just a little of what you go through daily? Davie-boy would have to go without the botox and trips to Ibiza, obviously. No more skiing holidays to Klosters or champagne receptions for Little-Lord-Osborne. Dry toast until someone can come and prepare a meal for you? 1 light-bulb only after 7pm?

Today we're running a twitter festival using the hashtag #spoonierevengeparty. We need some fun! We need to feel a little empowered and nothing does it better than swapping roles for a day - even imagining these privileged fools having to experience our lives is ludicrous in itself!!

So tweet! Have fun? How would you make sure their year on benefits is authentic?

Let's make the #spoonierevengeparty enormously successful, side-splittingly funny and if we can get it trending, all the better!!

ESA assessments pushing mentally ill to suicide.

Isn't it an awful thing when you know all about something terrible, but at the same time you know you're at least a year or two ahead of general opinion?

Regular readers will know my endless horror at the system of "assessment" in place to now determine whether or not someone is "Fit for Work".

Run by ATOS, a private company charged with making impersonal decisions, the system uses a computerised, tick box questionnaire of just 15 questions that take no account of variable conditions, no account of consultant or GP based evidence and no account of pain or most symptoms.

Today, the Chief Executives of the most prominent mental health charities in the country have published an open letter in the Guardian, begging the government to halt the deeply flawed scheme because it is costing lives. They are not advising or asking, they are begging.

They rightly point out that "invisible" illnesses are woefully let down in the current system and this includes not just those with mental health problems, but also those with long term variable illnesses such as MS, heart disease, cancer or bowel disease.

In a recent survey, Mind found that an enormous 95% of respondents don't think that they will be believed at assessment. Evidence abounds of mentally ill people being found "fit for work" simply because they manage to turn up at the assessment centre dressed and washed.

But the most shocking, disgusting shameful part of the accompanying article comes at the end. In a quote from the government, we are assured that

"In consultation with charities including Mind, Professor Harrington is now looking at the way mental health is assessed in the work capability assessment and we look forward to receiving his recommendations later this year."


How dare they carry on with this until these problems are resolved? How dare they continue to roll out a programme that is costing lives and will claim many more? Why is my blog constantly repeating these points to a society willing to turn away? 


Some days I write and I think "Am I the one who's wrong? Am I the one over-reacting?" and there's a kind of comfort to that. When the Chief Executives of the nation's charities are reduced to begging in even stronger terms than I have dared to use, I feel a little desperate. 


It's not just me and http://thebrokenofbritain.blogspot.com/ and the blogosphere and the Guardian shouting about this issue, it's Scope and Rethink and Mind and even the Professor who designed the system itself.

It must be stopped now, today. These problems must be solved before 1.8 million more people are put through this kind of harassment and driven to these levels of despair.

There is clear evidence that Work Capability Assessments for the sick and disabled are costing lives. Please help us to stop it.

** Write to your MP about this by clicking on this link http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ . It will only take two or three minutes, but the Welfare Reform Bill is on the verge of passing through parliament and into the Lords. We simply must stop this and the time-limiting of ESA before it does. The introduction of PIPs as a replacement for DLA must also be halted until further evidence is gathered. If you don't know what to say, feel free to use anything from my blog - Welfare reform that must not go Ahead is a good summary of the situation.

Beg them. Really plead with them to listen, before it's too late.