Z2K blog posts 2 Nov-to-15 Nov 2016

Z2K is short for Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, an Information, Advice, Guidance & Advocacy charity helping economically vulnerable people, mostly in the City of Westminster where it is located. It was co-founded by Revd Paul Nicolson who has since founded Taxpayers Against Poverty.

1. Featured: http://z2k.org/2016/11/winter-fuel-appeal-2016/
2. http://z2k.org/2016/11/the-future-of-disability-benefit-appeals/
3. http://z2k.org/2016/11/london-councils-consult-on-further-council-tax-support-cuts/
4. http://z2k.org/2016/11/case-study-an-esa-application-and-a-catalogue-of-errors/

No more deaths from benefit cuts – Gill Thompson launches legal case for brother David Clapson

Guest blog post from WinVisible (Women with visible and invisible disabilities)

PRESS RELEASE . . . PRESS RELEASE . . . PRESS RELEASE . . .

No more deaths from benefit cuts – Gill Thompson launches legal case

for brother David Clapson 

No more deaths from benefit cuts — Gill thompson launches legal case for brother David Clapson

Gill Thompson’s legal case for her brother David, who was diabetic and died in 2013 after his Jobseekers Allowance was sanctioned, has just been launched. Gill's legal team wrote to the Hertfordshire Coroner setting out why there should be an investigation, including of breach of the right to life and of DWP procedure sanctioning claimants (see Leigh Day press release).  David’s death was put down to “natural causes” and there was no inquest.  Public support through CrowdJustice fundraising has enabled this challenge.

 

In October, at the people’s premiere of Ken Loach’s film “I, Daniel Blake” in Leicester Square, Gill joined other campaigners at an invited vigil against deaths from benefit cuts, on the red carpet.  Nichole Drury, another bereaved relative, spoke about her mother Moira Drury, who had a head injury from domestic violence, and developed cancer.  Moira was too ill to attend the benefit exam but her reasons were not accepted and she was cut off.  The stress of being without benefit for months, then a Council Tax demand for nearly £2,000 resulting from loss of benefit, hastened her death.  The banner of names of people who died from benefit cuts and sanctions was read out by Maggie Zolobajluk.  Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, longtime opponents of the Work Capability Assessment, gave their support at the vigil and spoke to people individually.   

 

Corbyn highlighted David’s plight in Parliament at Prime Minister’s Questions, telling Theresa May and ministers to go and see “I, Daniel Blake”.

 

Black Triangle welcomes Gill’s challenge, relevant to the refusal to hold an inquest into the death of Alan McArdle, who died of a heart attack in 2015 within an hour of being read a letter threatening to stop his Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).  Maximus had reported him to the DWP for missing back-to-work appointments, insisting on sanction when someone called to let them know he was in hospital.

 

Many claimants say WinVisible’s Benefit self-help rights sheet has helped them, including against sanctions. We won exemption from the face-to-face Work Capability Assessment (WCA) exam for many vulnerable women, and helped restore benefit to disabled women cut off for “failure to attend”. 

 

Despite words that people on ESA Support Group rate with chronic conditions will no longer be retested, on 1 November the government launched a “Work, health and disability: improving lives” green paper at disability charity Scope, which includes the proposal to make everyone subject to sanctions, including sick and disabled people in the Support Group who are currently protected. Disabled campaigners are determined to fight this new attack on claimants, and recently protested against national Mind, confronting CEO Paul Farmer against Mind sending their policy officer Tom Pollard to work for the DWP – tied to lucrative DWP contracts for the “work cure” for people with mental distress. 

 

Opposition inside Parliament is also growing.  MPs opposed to the ESA cut due in April 2017, are calling for a debate, including Green, Labour, SNP and Tory MPs, such as Stephen McPartland, MP for Stevenage where David Clapson lived.  McPartland’s correspondence with the DWP at Gill’s request, where the DWP replied they knew David was insulin-dependent, forms part of the legal challenge.

 

More info: Gill Thompson gill.a4u@outlook.com   WinVisible win@winvisible.org  020 7482 2496

Coroner: 'Fit-for-work' cert. cued suicide

Placard designed by Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Coroner's ground-breaking verdict: Suicide triggered by 'fit-for-work' test —
Disability News Service

Disability News Service reports:

Coroner's ground breaking verdict: Suicide was 'triggered' by 'fit for work' test

A coroner has demanded that the government takes action to prevent future deaths of disability benefit claimants, after concluding in a "ground breaking" inquest that a disabled man killed himself as a direct result of being found "fit for work."

Continue reading on Disability News Service website

Disability testing and General Election

Here is what Kate Belgrave says of Atos' successore on Work Capability Assessments for Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) entitlement: Not much sign of Maximus at Maximus assessment…(1)

With a 2015 UK General Election due on 7 May 2015, it's a chance for disabled people and their allies — as voters — to assess Conservative, Green Party, Labour, Liberal Democrat and United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) for voter accessiblity.(2) (3)

Which party of those is closest to meeting your descriptors of acceptable?

Notes

 (1) http://www.katebelgrave.com/2015/04/not-much-sign-of-maximus-at-maximus-assessment/
(2) Vote for Policies interactive website: https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/
(3) Vote Match 2015: http://www.votematch.org/

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DPAC manifesto for GE2015

Extract from Disabled People Against Cuts website

The UNCRPD [United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities] and our human and civil rights must be fully implemented, promoted and enforced.

Disabled people are affected by the cuts 9 times more than everybody else. The most severely disabled people are affected by the cuts 19 times more than everybody else. This discrimination against disabled people must end.

Disabled people are affected by the cuts 9 times more than everybody else. The most severely disabled people are affected by the cuts 19 times more than everybody else. This discrimination against disabled people must end.

Manifesto Pledges we are seeking from Parties

 .....

Welfare Support :  

There must be a publicly run welfare system and an end to paying private firms massive amounts of public money to carry out disability assessments badly. Instead that money should be invested into providing decent, liveable benefit levels.

An end to the Work Capability Assessment which is too flawed to amend.

An immediate end to benefit sanctions which have led to deaths and increasing poverty. Ensure that there is no conditionality of JSA or ESA WRAG on seeking treatments and no linkage with treatment and receipt of benefits.

Engagement with any back to work services must be optional for all claimants.

An end to replacing Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payments which even now is in complete chaos.

A total rethink on any move to Universal Credit and instead serious consideration to be given working with disabled people and DPOs to a move to a single system of welfare support based on the concept of a disabled person’s citizens income.

Policy recognition that there will always be disabled people who are unable or too ill to work. These individuals must be supported by a publically funded system....

More at
http://dpac.uk.net/2015/03/manifesto-asks/

Placard designs for Maximus Day of Action

Join the Day of Action against Maximus

Event Details

Placard designs below by Dude Swheatie of Kwug

DWP test disabled people to death

Atos cast-off join Maximus

Atos to Maximus - Zombie medics as usual working for DWP

Witch trials satyrising themselves — or the general paralysis and hypocrisy of the empty promise merchants?

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

The first I heard of disability benefit tests conducted for the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) as being modelled upon ancient 'sink and you're innocent, float and you are guilty of witchcraft' trials was actually in connetion with the 'Personal Capacity Assessment' in 2008.
(The Personal Capacity Assessmentwas the fore-runner of the Work Capacity Assessment for the newer 'Work Capability Assessment' that is central to the newer Employment & Support Allowance.)

In the wake of the launch of Labour's 2008 Welfare Reform Green Paper, a Community Care magazine blog piece, The Misery of Welfare Reform, highlighted the case of 'J' who had a history of depression and anti-depressants on the dole that the antics of the DWP had done nothing to help. And that J had subsequently been denied Incapacity Benefit when she applied for it, and her doctor — who had prescribed the anti-depressants — would not put a finger out to write even a sick note in support of J's case. J's doctor argued that whatever he wrote, the DWP would ignore it.

That The Misery of Welfare Reform blog piece as a whole is extremely well worth reading over six years later for the resonances with the Work Capability Assessment fiasco that has emerged since then and the subsequent phenomenon of doctors charging as much as £100 for a letter in support of a claimant's tribunal case. But for now, as a lead-in to the latest pattern that the KUWG's case workers have uncovered, I shall just quote the Community Care blog piece reference to witch trials:

"So the DWP has come up with a modern equivalent of the medieval witch trial (float and you're a witch, drown and your're not) — starve to death and you are mentally ill; buy food and you're fit for work."

— The Misery of Welfare Reform

 The latest development uncovered by Kwug's caseworkers has come to light through attempting to get Atos to issue appointments for Kilburn folk at assessment centres closer to their abodes than Richmond, Deptford or Dagenham. (Instead of,

• "The computer says, 'No',"
• "The computer says, 'Go miles out of your way'.")

There had been a mystery of why, after requesting assessment centre appointments closer to home than those far out places, the rearranged appointment came back with the same out of the way assessment centre addresses and even for 08:30 appointment times! And the Atos reply via the switchboard has come that if people in Kilburn want a Work Capability Assessment within the next few months — i.e, befor Maximus take over from Atos — the appointment has to be in one of those far-flung places.

So, it would seem that if the claimant manages somehow to get to an appointment in such a far flung place at a time as early as 08:30, they could be deemed ‘fit for work’; and if they make the attempt out of desperation to get there for that time and fail, they would be deemed to have failed to attend and thus would be denied ESA.

Whatever happened to Government assurances that the most vulnerable people would be protected in the face of welfare reforms intended to weed out ‘shirkers’?

Where does MPs' more-informed debate get us?

New post on Carer Watch's blog

Opposition Day Debate and disabled people

by Carerwatch

There was an Opposition Debate yesterday in the House of Commons – called by Labour on a motion to condemn the recent statement by Lord Freud about disabled people possibly working for less than the minimum wage. Lord Freud has since apologised and the motion was lost.

However for those of us who have been watching the debates on Welfare Reform since 2007 – it was chance to see how far in some ways we have come and how far in others  we haven’t moved forward at all.

For the first few years of welfare reform no one had a clue what it would be like in reality. All we had was Freud and James Purnell talking pure theory.

That has certainly changed. All MP's now have a deluge of disabled constituents coming in to their surgeries, and they have found out what it is about. So the debate is finally informed amongst MPs. Yet still they do nothing.

Fundamentally the big problem with Employment Support Allowance remains. Both Tory and Labour parties have not Read more of this post on the Carer Watch blog

carerwatch | 29 October 2014 at 11:33 | Tags: disability, employment support allowance, freud, work capability assessment | Categories: disability, Disabled, employment support allowance | URL: http://wp.me/pHmFD-15Q

Paradoxes of welfare reform under capitalism

By Swheatie of the KUWG — writing in a personal capacity*

An alternative to means-testing claimants?

Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) has broadcast a 'mass call out' for the sacking of Welfare Reform Minister Lord Freud. This follows a statement Lord Freud made at a recent Tory Party conference fringe event, when he told a Tory councillor that some disabled people are "not worth the minimum wage," and that he would "have to go away and think about" how to get away with paying "some disabled people could be paid as little as £2 an hour." (Independent article Lord Freud: Tory Minister apologises after saying disabled people are 'not worth' the minimum wage includes an actual voice recording of Lord Freud saying that.)

David Cameron later apologised for the former investment banker Lord Freud's remarks, saying that they were not a true reflection on the views of the Tory Party. A Yahoo search and my long term memory bring to mind and historical record Philip Davies MP (Tory) using disabled people's potential lower productivity as an argument against the use of minimum wage legislation:

A Tory MP has sparked anger by suggesting that disabled people should work for less than the minimum wage to increase their chances of being taken on by employers [see footnote].

Philip Davies told the Commons: "If an employer is looking at two candidates, one who has got disabilities and one who hasn't, and they have got to pay them both the same rate, I invite you to guess which one the employer is more likely to take on.

"Given that some of those people with a learning disability clearly, by definition, cannot be as productive in their work as somebody who has not got a disability of that nature, then it was inevitable that, given the employer was going to have to pay them both the same, they were going to take on the person who was going to be more productive, less of a risk.

"My view is that for some people the national minimum wage may be more of a hindrance than a help.

"If those people who consider it is being a hindrance to them, and in my view that's some of the most vulnerable people in society, if they feel that for a short period of time, taking a lower rate of pay to help them get on their first rung of the jobs ladder, if they judge that that is a good thing, I don't see why we should be standing in their way."

— Tory MP Philip Davies: "Disabled people could work for less pay."

And I note that under the original 'descriptors' for the 'Work Capability Assessment' through which I won a tribunal for Employment & Support Allowance eligibility in 2009, I scored 15 points — the full threshold amount! — for a descriptor regarding time taken to execute tasks. That factor had been a major bug bear and cause of friction between scapegoatist co-workers and me in my first waged job, as they complained that the amount of time I took to complete tasks was so slow that the section manager assigned tasks to them instead of me, and that I should be forced to take a wage cut to compensate them!

And note also that it was Labour DWP Secretary who signed off the authorisation for the 'harsher test' in 2010 before the General Election of that year to 'simplify' the 'Work Capability Assessment'. (Sheffield Forum: Even harsher new ESA Medical approved.) And so under such legislation, slower disabled workers are not protected against the potential financial abuse that they could be exposed to by being short-changed under quantitative 'piece rate' that epitomises capitalism's orientation toward only valuing people in an instrumental sense — as means of production.

What about an hourly rate that is laid out on the basis of valuing people in terms of their commitment to taking part?

Yet what does Lord Freud's talk of paying disabled people as little as £2 per hour and compensating them through Universal Credit say regarding the matter of juggling 'protecting the vulnerable' with the Tory mania for an 'overall benefit cap'?

So, maybe, yes Lord Freud should be sacked, but who is going to replace him and what will they espouse as the future for disabled people in a capitalist system under which people are only valued in terms of their quantity of output?

* The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group

Atos to pull out of Work Capability Assessments!

Thanks to Giselle Winstone of the KUWG for flagging this up:

Work Test Whistelblower: Atos Throws in the Towel

Giselle notes: "I only hope that the other 'Outsource service providers' will be thinking twice about bidding for the contract, have a look at this analysis"

High Court challenge vs WCA, Monday 21 October 2013

Photos from Lunchtime Vigil Against the Work Capability Assessment outside the High Court Today

Photos by Tracey Dunn
Camera loan and a little placard text sharpening by Swheatie in the final digital images

Swheatie of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group attended this vigil aimed at pointing out to the Department for Work and Pensions [sic] and passers by how rotten the Work Capability Assessment that successive UK governments have sold their souls to since 2008 actually is. (See previous blog entry below about the Mental Health Resistance Network's initial victory in the courts over this, that has led the DWP to try defend its own lack of mercy in the Hight Court over the issue.)

Liverpool-based journalist Tracey Dunn who works with Nerve Magazine was on hand with a few other journalists including Kate Belgrave who writes for the Guardian and New Statesman, and witnessed the demonstration from Mental Health Resistance Network, Crossroads Women's Centre, Croydon Disabled People Against the Cuts and 'a taxpayer' disgusted at the fact that taxpayers' money was not supporting the economically vulnerable but making Atos stinking rich — and megaphone vying with local pneumatic drills.  The main speaker was from the Mental Health Resistance Network, displaying a message related to Daid Cameron's solution to fuel poverty: "Hey, David Cameron, You can shove your inhumane and unjust policies and your jumpers where the sun does not shine!"

Access to justice?

And Tracey proved very helpful in operating Swheatie's camera after hearing why Swheatie was there.

As Swheatie and Crossroads Women's Centre's Didi were leaving, reinforcements arrived from People First and Disabled People Against the Cuts.

Post Script
Tracey Dunn's article on the vigil, including a video by Kate Belgrave, can now be seen at
Nerve Magazine - Atos Vigil at the Royal Courts of Justice

An Example of Work Capability Assessment Cheating by Atos and the DWP

Yesterday's Casework and Members' Wellbeing section of he KUWG business meeting heard how one of ours folk recovering from a cancer operation and living with asthma had been awarded only 6 eligibility points from her most recent Work Capability Assessment. (She has been retested a number of times in the sick game that could be called 'Atos Roulette'.)

The report that was used by a Department for Work and Pensions 'decision maker' in awarding 6 eligibility points (threshold 15 to qualify for Employment and Support Allowance) included Atos lies that she could raise her hands above her head, and followed such long delays in her getting the result, that after a recent cancer operation she was feeling totally worn down. The Atos 'Disability Analyst' had lied in saying that the person examined as a 'claimant not a patient' could raise her hands above her head. ('Computer services' company Atos with its contract to conduct assessments for the UK Government assumes that getting medical staff to think of people as 'claimants not patients' assumes that such mental gymnastics overwrites the Hippocartic Oath.)

One of our members had attended the WCA with the 6 pointer and can thus give testimony as to her true capacity to raise her hands above her head, but the rules or goalposts regarding appeal deadlines keep changing, so our Miss X who could not attend our meeting yesterday might be timed out of justice.Another member reported that at his first WCA he wanted the Atos staff member to focus on his mental health situation while he was crying his eyes out and found it bizarre that in a limited time appointment he was asked to raise his hands above his head. He had been awarded 0 eligibility points at his first WCA. When he attended with a knowledgeable friend he was able to get the 'Disability Analyst' to have a better focus, and was subsequently put into the Support Group of ESA claimants. But even when a claimant has a supportive friend, they have no control over the number of times or frequency with which they will be retested, or the targets that the DWP denies exist but numerous cases testify to. Contrary to ministerial statements, Atos Roulette is generally not life enhancing.

KUWG blames the DWP for the way that it awards Atos Healthcare bonuses of about £1,400 per claimant that they declare fit for work.

The meeting also decided to help the claimant concerned pay parking fees so that she can attend our meetings.

From our colleagues in Winvisible: Mon 21 Oct 12-2pm Defend legal victory against Work Capability Assessment

 

Monday 21 Oct  12-2pm

Vigil at the High Court, Strand WC2A 2LL

 

– called by the Mental Health Resistance Network -- to defend the legal victory that claimants won, that the Work Capability Assessment is discriminatory towards people with mental health problems – the DWP is appealing against this ruling.

 

WinVisible is supporting -- bring banners, placards and voices.

Sick, disabled and terminally-ill people are being found fit for work and cut off, mums and kids are being cut off and evicted.

All of us have a right to survive!

·         Case starts 10.30am in Court 72

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mental-Health-Resistance-Network/479666938752033