the coalition heedlessly charge onwards – In March 2010, The Guardian reported that Larry Newman was deemed fit to work. …. He died not long after.

Lest we forget – in March 2010 Labour was still in office. Labour invented most of the new rules and Labour gave the contract to the clowns who are doing the reassessments.

Tomorrow will see the publication of a report on the implementation of the policies

Which report is that because the Select Committee report came out last week and was (rightly) damning.It said among other things that

“It is widely accepted that the Work Capability Assessment [WCA], as introduced in 2008, was flawed. This has been borne out by the high number of appeals and the high success rate of appellants. It was also reflected in the amount of evidence from individuals which expressed grievances with the way they were treated during the process and the accuracy of the outcome.”

The Select Committee also condemned the repeated media portrayal of claimants as ‘?workshy’? and ‘?scrounge?rs’?. The report openly criticised the government for failure to “?take greater care in the language it uses when it engages with the media and in particular when it releases and comments on official statistics on the IB reassessm?ent.”? Some of what was said in evidence in the proceedings of the Select Committee is astounding, and worth reading.

One of the big fears, and it was a common theme through all the evidence we got, was the mechanistic nature, the computer-based nature. I think a lot of your clients feel they are in the Little Britain sketch, where it says, “The computer says no.” The computer says no and they cannot get past it. That was a very common thing

Lo and behold, but the very same day, a sulphurous press release emanated from the DWP, which directly resulted in venomous and wholly untrue headlines in the Mail and the Express. It’s hard to escape the feeling that the Government is wilfully propagating the lie that only one in 14 people claiming sickness benefits deserve to do so. 40% of claimants who appeal win. Those who have legal advice and/or representation are even more successful. Even the man who designed the WCA says it’s not fit for purpose. But no, journalists in national newspapers are prepared to peddle unthinkingly the old canard; if you’re too sick to work you must be lazy, because it fits their malicious and unfounded prejudice. Many charities have warned that the narrative being spun around welfare policy casts the disabled as cheats (with a consequent rise in hate crime), and 50 of them at the end of the week just gone condemned the Govt for its misleading use and presentation of statistics.
Indeed the chair of the Select Committee, Dame Anne Begg was so incensed by this dark act of propaganda (timed on the same day as the committee’s report, remember) that she wrote an open parliamentary letter to Chris Grayling, the minister ultimately responsible:“?By what I assume was a coincidence, the Department chose to release statistics on new Employment and Support Allowance claims yesterday. The coverage of the statistics in some newspapers, notably the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, was a particularly egregious example of the way they can be misused.”? Begg says that she trusts that Grayling will be “?contacting newspaper editors again to urge them to ensure that the reports they carry about ESA claims are factually correct and that they avoid pejorative terms such as “?shirkers”? and “?scrounge?rs”? which are irresponsible and inaccurate.”?.

“Kate Green, a Labour MP summed it up perfectly: ‘the delivery has been absolutely disastrous.'”
Indeed – but let us not forget that it was Labour that introduced the blooming thing. Labour invited Atos in, and the Tories are now running with them.

Labour invented most of the new rules and Labour gave the contract to the clowns who are doing the reassessments.

No one is denying that… though this govt has made those rules worse and demanded more people are told they are capable to work.

Flowerpower: “Lest we forget – in March 2010 Labour was still in office. Labour invented most of the new rules and Labour gave the contract to the clowns who are doing the reassessments.”

Good point, and is among the key reasons I’m not (and never will be, unless they change considerably) in the Labour Party. Not a great line of defence for the Tories on the issue of driving the disabled to suicide, though… “Hey, don’t go too hard on us guys – we’re only marginally more sociopathic and incompetent than the opposition!”

Flowerpower @ 1

Lest we forget – in March 2010 Labour was still in office. Labour invented most of the new rules and Labour gave the contract to the clowns who are doing the reassessments.

I can assure you that everyone knows that Labour were at the heart of this. However, you have the baton now and you have the power to hold up this shambles of Labour’s folly. You could wave this under Labour’s nose and point out that you have to put it right.

This is about funneling hunderds of milllions from the public purse to Atos, that’s all. It’s an excuse to plunder the public purse. This is why it’s ploughing relentlessly ahead, they’re making as much money as they can before they get rumbled and stopped. They’re onto a good thing because both major parties are complicit in this so prosecutions are unlikely..

BB

Go to Labour list read what our beloved Mr Harris thinks, he says a lot of the disabled and sick are able to work, end of story and he thin s Purnell was 100% right.

Being disabled my self to be honest I wanted to return to work but sadly over the years my employment agency and the job center hate it when I arrives and I’m told to go home nothing doing

But it’s mental health they are aiming at without doubt.

I’m classed as Paraplegic

Flowerpower’s comment does reassure me: it has got to the point where anyone with half a brain no longer tries to defend this scam but instead emphasises the political originators.

But let’s be more specific: the political originator is David Freud- the former Labour minister for welfare reform and now the Coalition minister for welfare reform. All three of the main parties sold us out to the nastiest kind of bankers, businessmen and economists.

It’s true that Labour started the plans, but it must be noted that, as Sunny has said, this government has made the situation worse. Additionally, this government is fully able to halt the plans now – and could have done so after being elected – and so I think they’re more to blame here than Labour.

@1 – Yes, and a lot of us hammered labour for it when the were in power. Now, it’s the Conservatives carrying on the policy. So they get the blame, and are being hammered for it.

It’s something which could have been changed a year ago, with the political will. They haven’t.

It’s robbing the poor to pay the rich and that’s in favour with politicians from all parties. Let’s not forget that with the benefits system gone there’ll be a chasm for private insurance to fill and the media will make a fortune from the advertising. That’s why they’re there, to make money, so don’t expect a great deal of help from them.

BB

MDA @ 9

Flowerpower’s comment does reassure me: it has got to the point where anyone with half a brain no longer tries to defend this scam but instead emphasises the political originators.

This is what I come up againt all the time with Tories.

Every week, I see some pretty horrendous statements written by Tories on both on bloggs and mainstream newspapers. Not just on this subject, but pretty much across the board. The ‘best’ we get from those on the Right is such statements are ‘not policy’ or ‘not helpful’ or whatever, but little in the way of condemnation. Even flowerpower’s position here is one about scoring cheap political points, rather than right a fucking obvious wrong.

I am told that the majority of Tories are actually ‘decent people’, but I rarely see any evidence for it. This Labour policy has been absorbed into Tory ideology with good reason. It was designed to appease some of the most despicable and small minded people in Europe.

We either have to accept that the vast majority of Tories are actually in favour of this or the vast majority of alleged decent Tories are too frightened to stand up to the sociopathic tendency among the rank and file voters.

Either way, it confirms my suspicions about the mentality of these people.

Either way, it confirms my suspicions about the mentality of these people.

Yes, but everything does that for you Jim.

@14 – Maybe because the behaviour exhibited is so uniformly, well, nasty.

I’m not seeing any sense not caused by public disgust with their plans.

Tim J @ 14

Yes, but everything does that for you Jim.

Nope, just the bad stuff, which is pretty much everything. Very few of your policies are not aimed squarely at hurting the poorest members of society.

You could, of course, condemn attacks on the mentally ill by Atos, but all I hear is crickets chirping and tumbleweed rustling by.

I wonder why that is?

It’s worth pointing out that the current WCA discriptors that was introduced on the 28th March this year (by the coalition) is where the main problems lay, yes Labour made a shambles of this but the condems deserve most the shame, for instance, in the manual dexterity section now you need to no hands at all to fail it (or pass it depending on your point of view)
http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/core.nsf/a/wr_esadescriptorslcwranew1

. . . their ideological compass acting as their only guide in the dark.

Just as well, because they certainly don’t have a moral compass.

Is it actually possible to read a compass in the dark?

@nige: I went through the system under the old descriptors and I can assure you that they were not remotely fit for purpose either. In fact the fatal problems with the WCA exist independently of the descriptors and are a fundamental part of the adversarial nature of the questioning. If someone asks me ‘Do you like watching TV?’ I do not expect to have to know that saying ‘yes’ will mean the ATOS quack assumes I can sit at a computer for periods of over 30 minutes and scores me zero points, not the 15 that represent automatic qualification for ESA (or at least they did then). If that is the consequence of the question I expect the doctor to tell me so, because the informed consent principles and requirement to put the patient’s interests first, as enshrined in his oath, never mind his legal duty of care, require nothing less. And yet I had to force my inability to sit on the HCP, even though it is at the heart of my disability, over his clear annoyance.

I sometime wonder if the outsourcing of the WCA is solely because a contractor cannot be charged with misfeasance in public office.

The descriptors old and new are entirely fit for purpose. Their purpose is to enable the transfer of hundreds of millions of pounds from the public purse to private coffers where it can be divvied up by the crooked businessmen and corrupt politicians who are behind this. Anything else is window-dressing and you should ignore those aspects. This doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with welfare reform, that’s just the excuse they use to do it! You’re all missing the point!

BB

@21

Where do you think the public purse comes from?

@22 – Direct company taxes makes up about 12.5% of the UK’s taxation, and other taxes about 3-3.5%. Roughly.

This relatively small contribution is quite irrelevant – it does not excuse bleeding the public purse for not-fit-for-purpose reasons, regardless how in bed you are with politicians. Your point?

Taxes, we pay taxes. We’re told we have to pay taxes to support those unable to support themselves, among other reasons. Yet here those taxes are being plundered quite clearly for private profit, nothing more.

BB

I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering what mealy mouthed nonsense that glib cretin Worstall has to say on this.

@David G
“I went through the system under the old descriptors and I can assure you that they were not remotely fit for purpose either.”

I can’t disagree with you on that but the ‘new’ descriptors make the ‘old’ discriptors a cakewalk.
I’ve been reading topics over at LibDemVoice and the posters there seem to be up in arms and are falling over themselves to blame Labour for the current situation, when you explain that it was the Coalition that ‘reformed’ the WCA and the discriptors back in March this year your either ignored or shouted down.
As I’ve said, it may of been Labour who knocked the disabled to the floor but it’s the Coalition that are kicking them when their down.

Frank Field will not doubt a hard-on reading this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2021507/Widow-awaiting-cancer-surgery-told-to-work-benefits-inspectors-following-Government-welfare-reforms.html

Someone tell me these Atos people and the Tories that run them are not sub human vermin, merely misguided?

Ok, let’s put this argument about the descriptors to bed. They were decided and approved by Yvette Cooper back in 2010, and were introduced as we know in March this year. So this is Labour’s scheme the Coalition are carrying on with. Here’s the link to reference about all this and this is what you wave in Cooper’s face when she tries to get all superior about how the Coalition are mistreating the disabled http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/blogs/2010/04/13/thousands-will-lose-benefits-as-harsher-medical-approved/ if this was wider known, I dare say she’d be out of politics.

BB

@23 & 24

My point is that the public purse comes from the private sector. Bill stated that the purpose was to transfer hundreds of millions of punds from the public purse to the private sector. The money was the private sector’s in the first place.

I did read Bill’s post as meaning that savings in benefit payments would go to the private sector – my point then being that it was the private sectors money in the first place. Having reread his post it is more likely he meant that the monies would go to comapnies administrating the scheme and politicians.

Fungus @ 29

Nope, not quite. The private sector would cease to exist if the public sector didn’t exist. This idea that somehow companies would still be making profits or even that they would be making even bigger profits if itweren’t for the public sector is just childish, simplistic crap.

We could be here all day regarding this so one example:

If the public sector was not educating people, who would the private sector employ to do the jobs that need an education and who would they sell those goods to if no-one was educated enough to be able earn wages?