The latest Impact Assessment on disability benefit changes, which was sneaked out under cover of the elections, makes the bold claim that slashing disability benefits is good for the health of disabled people.
Around a fifth of disabled people are set to lose vital benefits when Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is replaced with the Personal Independence Payment as early as next year. This is all just fine though according to the DWP. The latest document, which is an update of the Impact Assessment published last year, states that:
“Income and health are related, with those on low incomes having higher rates of disease, ill health and mortality than those on high incomes. However, evidence is limited as to whether a change in income has an effect on health.”
When the first version of the Impact Assessment was published this claim was sourced to this study (PDF) which actually says that changes to income have at most a small impact on health, in the short term, based on some people in New Zealand. It poses the question of whether lower income leads to poor health or whether poor health in fact leads to lower income. Once again the DWP is distorting research to suit their own agenda.
This reference has disappeared from the latest version of the Impact Assessment. In true DWP style, last year’s impact assessment appears to have been ‘disappeared’ with the latest update replacing it on the exact same web address: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/dla-reform-wr2011-ia.pdf
You can read last year’s version of the document via google.
The DWP recently rewrote a document on workfare in a crude attempt to cover up for Chris Grayling’s lies. This time round it looks more like cock up than conspiracy. The DWP don’t seem to be very good with computers. Thank fuck they’re not about to be placed in charge of the most complex and largest Government IT database ever designed in human history.
The latest version of the impact assessment carries on with the theme of life-saving benefit cuts claiming: “It is possible that the policy could have positive impacts on health if it leads to more disabled people moving into work.”
There is no evidence that cutting DLA, available to people in and out of work alike, will mean more disabled people enter the workforce. The opposite is almost certainly true. In a recent survey 56% of disabled people in work said they would have to stop or reduce work if they lost DLA (PDF).
Once again the DWP are making ludicrous claims without any evidence to back them up. This is increasingly typical of the bullshitting bastards in charge of the department, such as compulsive liar Chris Grayling and his delusional puppet master Iain Duncan Smith.
The Government can’t win the argument on Welfare Reform and are resorting to ever more deceptions, exaggerations and cover ups instead. It is clearly just fucking bullshit that stripping a benefit aimed at helping working disabled people pay for the costs of their disability will help them find work. Just as it is bullshit that any sick or disabled people are likely to find work through the collapsing Work Programme. It is equally bullshit that young people are helped into work by workfare schemes, or that fraudulent training providers like A4e are doing anything more than ripping off the tax payer. The DWP and the truth have long since departed. Their flimsy attempts at justifying savage policies, already driving people to suicide, are little more than pathetic.
The Department of Work and Pensions is no longer fit for purpose, unless that purpose is solely the destruction of people’s lives in revenge for them being disabled or unemployed. It is little wonder so many people suspect this to be the case.
the void 
Love the poster and so true, the plain truth is no political party is doing anything about it because none of them care or want to stop it..
even within the perceptual bubble of westminster politics, the attack on welfare is a new low … so many have been sold on the idea of privatisation creates efficiency, an outright lie and just PR for misappropriation of public funds for private company profit !
Utterly unbelievable! I have been trying to fill in yet more forms to claim a paltry amount to live on after working for 40 years and find myself under attack. This week has brought me out in shingles, filling the form in has crippled my hands and the acid from the stress has irritated my diverticulitis. Oh yes, it really helps!!!
Fiona
Yes I just went through this process of the forms and hardly had any sleep since waiting for the return of the dreaded envelope with my fate and yes I too feel like I have had all my money I paid into the government coffers stolen over the years to now be labelled a scrounger.
I am sorry your health has taken a turn for the worse because of it and do not believe for one minute they do not know the strain and stress we go through as we navigate the unfair, unjust process.
Fiona and bbest,
I worked for more than 30 years, and am also waiting for that dreaded envelope. Since I received the ESA50 form, my mental health has deteriorated, and the stress of it all has made my physical health worse.
If I’m put in the WRAG, after working in HR, I will be asking my employers to do a risk assessment on me, and asking them if their insurance will cover when I cause injury to myself and/or others.
This whole thing stinks, just as the nazi’s and their actions did.
TTD
I am sorry to hear of your health troubles and hope your ESA journey is not too stressful for you, I also assume you have done enough research around how to get the best representation to help you through it?
you said
after working in HR, I will be asking my employers to do a risk assessment on me, and asking them if their insurance will cover when I cause injury to myself and/or others.
Is that what needs asking in these situations because in the past all the companies I have worked for have been shit scared of being taken to court by employees over many matters yet today no one seems to be talking about it? Do they think the government covers them or something because I doubt that very much as it appears once the DWP farm you out to a provider that’s it?
I know of a person who was pushed out of the support group with several health issues and was forced to attend a WRAG provider who made things so difficult for him his health deteriorated so he wrote them a letter along the lines of the advice his GP and specialists had provided about his conditions and working effects on them and then at the bottom of the letter stated any activity forced upon him which was against his GP advice regrading his health conditions would be dealt with by legal representation and what do you know they left him right alone.
As you were in HR you must be aware of the steps companies have to take to cover their arses in these matters so could you apply it to ensure you don’t get shafted by DWP, providers and the companies they might send you to?
I would be really interested to know your thoughts because this is a time bomb area waiting to go off.
bbest
The main problem here, seems to be that no one knows if responsibility stays with the DWP or passes on to the employer. If it stays with the DWP I doubt we have much of a chance. However, I would still ask the employer those questions, whatever the situation is. Planting the seed of doubt, might just do the job.
Did the person you know, sign a Contract of Employment? If he/she did, then the Employment Laws will all come into force, and you can find them easily enough on the internet.
Something that I wonder about is, what if the employers find that the person is too ill to do the job? What happens then? Do we get re-assigned? Or do we have to go through the whole process again?
TTD
I am not sure but what I do know is that where some people have stuck up for themselves in this situation they have backed off presumably because they are unsure where the law lies exactly…..
I do not know if they have signed a contract in that position or if just by sitting in the providers office signifies acceptance because I am unsure of the law surrounding the matter.
Whenever I hear the crap this government puts out through its muppets at the DWP I keep, for some strange reason, of the televangelists who ask people to hold their hands to the TV screen, send money, stop taking their medication, send money, lose the crutches, send money and on and on.
Very few people get to say ‘hey, it killed me!’ for the simple reason that they are DEAD! The only way to stop this rubbish is by bringing out the truth that these lies kill people. No ifs or buts, they just kill whether by illness or because the effects of illness make life unbearable. Being old I remember when monks protested the war in Vietnam by setting themselves alight in front of the US Embassy. I wonder now if it is going to take that level of protest to bring home what these cuts are doing.
rogr you said
I remember when monks protested the war in Vietnam by setting themselves alight in front of the US Embassy. I wonder now if it is going to take that level of protest to bring home what these cuts are doing.
I am so Disillusioned you know if some poor sod was driven to that I doubt the government would care never mind admit that they played any part in it..
So taking away my DLA- that keeps me in work- will improve my Multiple Sclerosis? Maybe all that time I’ll have to rest at home when I’m forced to stop working, because I won’t qualify for PIP, will make my progressive, degenerative neurological condition better. I’d better tell my neurologist the good news. (insert eye-rolling face here)
So taking away my DLA- that keeps able to eat the foods I am able to make, to get help, and to be able to have a small life – will improve my Multiple Sclerosis######??? Is it going to fix my fatigue or to stop my bladder from taking me over? I also now won’t qualify for PIP, so this will also will make my progressive, degenerative neurological condition no better. This govt are just plain evil. I am ashamed to be British when this is how the weakest are now treated.
If I lose DLA I won’t be able to run my car – I currently receive lower rate mobility. Without a car I won’t be able to go out of my home unless someone else drives me, as I can’t walk far without pain. This means I won’t be able to go to my part time job, as it is a 19 mile drive away from my home, or a bus, a walk that’s too far, a tram, another bus and another walk too far. I would have to apply for benefits that would be more than my current level of DLA, never mind the loss to the state of my tax and to businesses of my spending power.
I would lose all independence if I lose DLA, it’s just crazy.
“Benefit Cuts Are Good For Your Health Claim Tories!”
Yes and drinking cyanide is good for your health and going to prison is a relaxing, refreshing, enjoyable holiday destination.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of these maniacs lies. According to psychologists a feature of sociopathy is that sociopaths believe reality to be whatever they declare it to be and believe their own lies.
“Among non-sociopathic human beings, for something to be deemed valid it has to be substantiated with facts. Nothing is valid simply because someone says it. I asked a psychotherapy client to look at a chair which was situated about six feet away near a wall. I then asked her to describe the chair. She did, in rather complete detail, except for the legs. THE CHAIR SHE DESCRIBED HAD NO LEGS! I pointed this out, and asked how the chair could be suspended in air, with no legs to support it. She said: “I put it there.” I asked: “If you look away, will it fall to the floor?” She said: “No. If I look away, the chair is no longer there.” I asked: “If you look away … and it turns out the chair is still there?” She ignored the question. Sociopaths treat the world as if it were their own private holodeck. They “declare” things into being. Everything is a hologram. They program the holograms. They interact with them in any way they choose. They have them under total control. When they decide to cancel a hologram, it vanishes.”
You see what you have just described about the chair I cannot possibly understand and yet it appears similar people are running the bloody country no the whole world……..so when they take their eyes of us they just expect us to go away because that’s what they really want to happen and think it will lol
If this is how they want it, I say let’s go to fucking war with the cunts.
My lower rate care DLA was disallowed after a WCA 14 months ago. It’s taken that long to get it back. When PIP comes in, I’ll lose it – there are many people who only qualify for that £19.55 a week, and they won’t qualify for standard-rate PIP. Those who don’t get Support Group ESA will find DLA gets stopped – it’s happened to lots of people already, and if they get WRAG they will have nothing after a year. Zilch, nada, zero. Unless they do 30 hours a week stacking shelves in Tesco, and even then, they’ll be grafting for a NI contribution only. The very system that says they can’t work puts them to, er, work. And the spoonies with work won’t be able to do it any more, they’ll have to claim ESA, and they’ll have to go to…..work.
Love the quote, Johnny – they say there’s more illness and disability in people with low income, then they say income doesn’t affect health…d’oh.
The document is an exercise in obfuscation and justification. The new descriptors are almost impossible to satisfy unless you are in a Persistent Vegetative State – at which point they just might concede that you can’t pick up your ventilator and tootle off to Poundland.
It’s worth noting that there is no credence given to the Spartacus Report (aka Responsible Reform) and all the talk in the document is about working age disabled people – what is going to be sneaked in for sick children and pensioners, I wonder?
ephemerid you said
Those who don’t get Support Group ESA will find DLA gets stopped – it’s happened to lots of people already
Agreed and a couple of people I know had their DLA stopped after problems with the ESA process but their MP’s got it reinstated on their behalf because DLA is not supposed to be effected by ESA decisions and appeals as yet……..
you said
The new descriptors are almost impossible to satisfy unless you are in a Persistent Vegetative State – at which point they just might concede that you can’t pick up your ventilator and tootle off to Poundland
Again agreed however I want to know who is going to take responsibility if shit happens in the workplace from the ill person being forced into that position and anyone else who may get hurt in the process? especially when all medical reports agree the person actually is too ill to be working in that way?
The last time I was in Tesco – and I will step foot in that place again – the girl on the checkout could barely lift the groceries of the belt. The grimace in her face with every twist and turn and the tears welling in her eyes were heart-wrenching.
Ex Tesco Shooper
no doubt if the management had seen her she would have got the boot for being less than perfect unless she was free labour of course.
Sadly the government can win the argument on welfare reform.
Not morally, of course, but through bullying (which is IDS’ modus operandi these days), lying, and manipulation. This is what we need to combat.
bbest – this is what I’ve been asking for a long time. Is the employer liable if you are hurt, and are you covered by their insurance if you’re not an employee? If the provider put you there, are they liable? Or is it the DWP if you were sent there mandatorily? Who is responsible for “reasonable adjustment” under the DDA – the emploeyr, the provider, or the DWP?
It can’t be legal for a government department which has stated, if you’re in Wrag, that you are not capable of work but only capable of work-related activity, to mandate you to work indefinitely; it can’t be legal to have sick people wandering around doing work with no public or personal liability insurance. Do the employers, providers, or DWP offer lifting and handling training if you get sent shelf-stacking? Do they take into account whether your illness or disability involves musculo-skeletal problems? Do any of them offer COSSH training for people doing cleaning? Who checks of they’ve got asthma or other allergies for instance?
I think something dreadful is going to happen at some point. Either a claimant collapses or gets injured, or a workfare claimant does something that causes a danger for others – either way, it’s going to take a disaster before anyone will realise just how dangerous this is.
EPHEMERID
A lot of discussion appears to suggest the final responsibility rests with DWP as ATOS only advise DWP through their tests and the DWP can do final checks with GP’s specialists if they so wish to make that final decision.
I suspect the same as you with regards WRAG that there is going to have to be a bad accident for a court ruling to set a legal president over the matter. I have tried studying H&S rules and regs and would say if a sick person with diminished responsibility for work has an accident and with possible others there must be a case but again it may take a court case to set the Barr.
I found the following website which stands for families against corporate killers who try and highlight the people who have been killed through H&S negligence.
http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/fack/
we wont be able to take them to court they removed legal aid for this purpose !
Fucking vile Tory fascist cuntdogs.
For Responsible Reform (aka the Spartacus Report), I analysed the research the Government use to claim that DLA stops people working. It really doesn’t make that claim – it shows there is a correlation between DLA receipt and worklessness, neyond that accounted for by level of disability (however they measured that), but doesn’t draw strong conclusions about why, and makes many suggestions the authors seem to see as better supported than DLA preventing a return to work – the main ones that do relate to that being misunderstanding the benefit, or the seemingly-justified fear that returning to work will make them think they’ve gotten better and reduce the benefit. There are other factors not related to this, though, including that many new DLA claimants are on a “trajectory out of work”.
The greatest factor, to my mind, would surely be the health issues endured by the people on DLA/benefits/whatever.
Sam – I appreciate what you say, and there are reasons beyond the nature of the disability that causes worklessness in people who have health problems. Discrimination for a start, and the unwillingness of many employers to offer work which involves making reasonable adjustments to the work place. The trouble is, there are a lot of people claiming DLA who are also very ill, and if the same/similar descriptors are used for PIP as for ESA (and it looks as though they will be) some people who get DLA now will lose it – beyond the 20% or more the government is determined to cut. The mobility descriptors are a case in point – if you can “mobilise” 30M in your chair or on crutches or whatever, you may not qualify for the component, with no consideration as to how you get into the chair, how you manage gradients, etc. and that’s why people are so worried. I have just had lower-rate care restored , and the grounds were that I cannot cook a main meal for myself from scratch, as I need help with chopping, pots etc. No consideration was given to the help I need with hygiene, and because I can wash the front of my torso with the hand that works, I’m OK – even though I need help to shower, wash my hair, and deal with occasional incontinence. No mobility component because I am able to walk – not far, and with both pain and dyspnoea, and a fall at least once a fortnight, but I can actually walk. There’s a lot I can’t do without help any more, but the decision makers rationale does not reflect this – the descriptors are what matters. My illnesses and the (minor) disabilities that go with them will not get better – with PIP I am likely to lose my DLA as it’s the lowest award; I am concerned that people who have much more functional disability than I have will lose out too, and if they get an award under the new system it will be less than they get now. Whilst I agree there is a correlation between DLA and worklessness, it’s not simple – there are parts of the country where the DLA count is very high due to unemployment; this is particularly true in some parts of the north and here in Wales, where the industry has gone and a lot of people were “parked” on benefits. I’m not saying that those people don’t deserve their benefits either – there is a lot of long-term illness in those areas too. But simply removing IB and DLA by using the bio-psych model to cut spending is categorically wrong, and there will be thousands of people with no means of support, no jobs to go to, and no advice available to them from the legal system. I am also very concerned at the descriptors for mental illness – there are people coming off IB and converted to ESA who will lose their benefits. Those who get DLA will lose that too – unless you get Support for ESA the DLA is often stopped automatically. Happened to me. How can you prove that other people are frightened of you, or that you have seriously contemplated suicide? We know that the DWP do not consider medical evidence properly, even since Harrington, and what they look at is the Atos report. You could have an Armenian midwife assessing Parkinsons and a Greek physio assessing florid schizophrenia – but as long as you can wash the front of your torso with one hand, no dice.
The LCWRA descriptors for ESA are very like the new ones for PIP, and the conditions for both are draconian. And on top of all that, the wait will be 6 months instead of 3 – it seems to me that if you get a spinal injury which paralyses you on 1st.May, that’s when you can’t walk from, not 6 months later; and by then, you’ll have a wheelchair, so you can “mobilise” can’t you?
And when only 6% of employers would consider taking an ex-IB claimant, and people whose DLA gets cut and prevents them from working, the correlation between worklessness and DLA will become more obvious. It’s a complex issue, but it’s very clear to me that this has been a serious mistake by Purnell (who introduced the WCA, Atos, and allowed Unum to dictate policy) and an ideological open goal for IDS and the Tories to score. They fully intend to make it impossible to claim, to make the disabled invisible, to make the sick work, and to pay their pals billions to get the job done. The claim that this is fair and will target cash to people who need it most is an outright lie.
It’s absolutely disgraceful.
EPHEMERID
Well said and I am so sorry they have given you such a bad time under such difficult circumstances, it’s truly disgraceful but no matter how much we say it and know it does not make it any better for people does it…
You can see how the bullshit all weaves together; take this from yahoo, part of the media (man-in-the-middle) corporate/government agenda You can live on £1 a day
It may come as a surprise to the working people, but I have been living on less than a pound a day (food budget) for the last five years (supermarket value is not that bad, and there are pound shops), long term unemployment tends to force one into such measures if one is to pay the bills …. people go on about benefit fraud, but do not consider just how meager the benefit level is … ten years ago pensions and unemployment benefit were at similar levels … pension is now twice the value of unemployment benefit … this is not to say pensioners aren’t deserving , merely that the unemployed have been forgotten for years, and only now, with the media interest, is anybody realising what the state has been doing to the unemployed for years, starving them into work schemes, minimum wage, and zero hour contracts
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