Protest against threatened privatisation of children’s health services in Bristol
Posted: August 28, 2015 Filed under: NHS | Tags: cuts, NHS Leave a comment
Profit before patient care.
We went to Bristol to add our voices to the concerns about the NHS services in Bristol. We joined 38 Degrees Bristol, Protect our NHS Bristol, Unison SW & Unite in the Community (John, Pat & I are members of Unite Community Bristol ) on the Demo against the cuts & privatisation of the children’s (& others) services. We held a protest outside (and inside!) the offices of Bristol Clinical Commissioning Group, who are set to decide whether to hand children’s health services in Bristol and South Gloucestershire to a private company. Among the final two bidders are Virgin Care, who already run a large number of NHS services behind the NHS logo.
The Bristol Journalists, than focussing on the fact that our NHS is being privatised the journalist, chose to focus on the behaviour of the protesters (with exaggerated claims of protesters having “forced” their way into the building and talk of “non peaceful” demo!
) We didn’t force ourselves anywhere.
Update on DWP figures: The Department for Work and Pensions has admitted defeat.
Posted: August 27, 2015 Filed under: Not funny, welfare cuts | Tags: DWP Leave a commentThe Department for Work and Pensions has admitted defeat in its attempt to hide the number of people who have died while claiming incapacity benefits since November 2011 – and has announced that the number who died between January that year and February 2014 is a shocking 91,740.
- 7,540 deaths while claims were being assessed, bringing the known total to 9,740.
- 7,200 deaths in the work-related activity group, bringing the known total to 8,500.
- 32,530 deaths in the support group, bringing the known total to 39,630.
- And 3,320 deaths in which the claimant was not in receipt of any benefit payment and is therefore marked as “unknown”.
The serious questions must now be asked about the way incapacity benefits are being administered by the Department for Work and Pensions under Iain Duncan Smith.
The DWP has claimed that it does not hold any information on the reasons for death, so “no causal effect” with changes in claimants’ benefits and mortality can be assumed from their statistics.
Labour shadow minister for work and pensions Kate Green slapped him down, noting that ministers have been “trying to suppress these statistics for more than three years.”The department even went so far as to appeal a ruling by the Information Commissioner that it was acting unreasonably in refusing to release the information.
Iain Duncan Smith Is Still an Idiot – And Only We Can Stop Him
Posted: August 25, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: DWP, Other relevant blogs Leave a comment
Incapacity Benefit for new claimants will go, replaced by Employment and Support Allowance with the emphasis on what a person with a physical or mental health condition can do, rather than what they can’t.
Peter Hain, Labour Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, 2007
We need a system focussed on what a claimant can do and the support they’ll need – and not just on what they can’t do.
Iain Duncan Smith, Conservative Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, 2015
It’s just the same old shit, over and over again, whichever bunch of bastards is in charge. The above two comments were made almost a decade apart and in that period the number of people claiming out of work sickness benefits has barely changed. And why would it? In any society there will be some people who cannot work due to illness or disability and as the pension…
View original post 630 more words
“Numbers should be a light, not a crutch”
Posted: August 25, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
This is the phrase that The UK Statistics Authority uses to guide its mathematicians:
“Numbers should be a light, not a crutch”
On 25 Nov 2013 Ester Mcvey stated that “We would usually expect this (Mandatory Reconsideration) to take around 14 days
In the latest data provided by The Government claims that the average waiting time for an Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) has been reduced to an average of 13 calendar days
Most people would look at this and think well done DWP
A closer look paints an entirely different picture.
The graph below shows that :
The waiting time for 52% was within 14days
BUT
This means that 48% waited longer than 14days
INFACT
23% waited 15-30 days
AND
25% waited over 30days.
Since October 2013 there were 177,000 MR requests
SO IN FACT
92,040 requests were cleared within…
View original post 247 more words
Sanctions & the DWP appeal against revealing the number who have dies claiming.
Posted: August 19, 2015 Filed under: DWP | Tags: DWP, Sanctions Leave a commentThe DWP appealed to the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) on May 28, after the Information Commissioner ruled that it should honour a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by Vox Political writer Mike Sivier. The request demanded the exact number of deaths of people claiming Incapacity Benefit and Employment and Support Allowance between November 2011 and May 2014.
The Department, currently run by the Conservative Government, initially claimed that the information was due to be published at an unspecified date in the future – but it was later revealed that the facts would be fudged into ‘Age-Standardised Mortality Rates’, presenting the deaths as a ratio compared with the population as a whole. So the initial claim was a lie and the plan was not to provide the information at all.
According to the government, these fudged figures are being rushed into publication on August 27, so we will all be able to see whether they are any use, in good time before any hearing takes place.
The Information Tribunal has now set down the date on which it will hear evidence. This will happen on November 10, at a location in central London. Make a note of it in your diary if you are interested in attending.
A new development from the DWP, as part of the appeal, is an attempt to persuade the tribunal to use its ‘steps discretion’ if it rules against the government department.
The law allows the tribunal to dictate any steps necessary to honour a FoI request – and the DWP is asking for a ruling that, even if it is found to be breaking the law by refusing to publish the requested information, no steps should be taken to provide it.
The Conservative Government debases itself by falling to such depths. Not only that, but the attempt is likely to fail; the ‘steps discretion’ is only used in extraordinary circumstances and there are none in this case.
Furthermore, the tactic may become irrelevant if This Writer is successful in his bid for the Tribunal to strike out the case as an abuse of process. My claim is that the law is clearly against the DWP – it has a less-than-50-per-cent chance of success – so the appeal is a waste of the Tribunal’s time.
If the Tribunal agrees, then the DWP’s appeal will be cancelled and the Department will be ordered to provide the information immediately.
Bath Against Cuts 
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