Another Court Disaster For The DWP As Atos Assessments Ruled Unfair

The DWP have lost in the courts again after a tribunal today ruled that the Atos run Work Capability Assessment (WCA) disadvantages people with mental health problems.

This follows a string of legal decisions ruling against the DWP as they have attempted to rush through bungled and poorly thought through welfare reforms.

The tribunal hearing was brought after two claimants supported by the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) were successful in launching  a judicial review into the WCA – the notorious assessment process which has stripped vital benefits from hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled claimants.

According to MHRN: “The judgment is clear: to routinely fail to consider evidence put forward by their own health care practitioners (the DWP current practice) places people with Mental Health Problems at a significant disadvantage which means that the current practice has been – and remains – discriminatory.”

Showing their usual contempt for the courts, the DWP have said they will appeal the decision and the assessments will not stop.

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Benefit Bullshitting Exposed By Daily Mail’s Workshy Map

Yesterday’s Daily Mail Workshy map blows apart the benefit bullshitting of  the right wing press, despite their best efforts to smear hundred of thousands of sick and disabled people as criminals.

The map is based on recent figures detailing the outcomes of Incapacity Benefit re-assessments.  This is the crude computer based test carried out by IT firm Atos which has been used to strip vital benefits from hundreds of thousands of people.  This system has been justified by a relentless propaganda campaign which evoked myths of millions of scroungers, families where three generations have never had a job and whole areas of the UK ‘blighted’ by benefits culture.

In fact digging into the figures simply reveals that even in unemployment hotspots, the number of people who have been assessed as unable to work is tiny.  According to the Mail, 2,570 people in Leeds were found ‘fit for work’.  Leeds has a population of almost three quarters of a million people.  This means around one person in every three hundred was claiming a sickness or disability that they are no longer entitled to.  Even on a large housing estate this represents just a handful of people.  This number will rise as Incapacity Benefit re-assessments are not yet complete, but the figures suggest at the very most one person in 150 will eventually lose the benefit*.

And in truth most of those people are far from ‘fit for work’.  Employment Minister Mark Hoban recently revealed that 15% of ‘fit for work’ decisions are eventually judged to be incorrect – and that only includes those claimants with the tenacity, confidence, and health to successfully undertake an appeal.  Even those who do not have decisions over-turned at appeal may be anything but ‘fit for work’.  People with Multiple Sclerosis, cancer, Parkinson’s Disease and many other serious health conditions have all been judged able to work by Atos and the DWP.

The Daily Mail’s claim that all those found ‘fit for work’ are workshy is as contemptible in itself as it is dishonest. It is worth remembering that everybody who was previously claiming Incapacity Benefit had previously been signed off work by their own doctor and undergone a DWP medical.  Unless both GPs and the DWP’s own doctors have been lying on a massive scale, then none of these people could be considered to be in good health.

This is reflected in what little evidence is available (PDF) detailing what happens to those found ‘fit for work’, which shows that most people end up on the dole.  And it is this which shatters yet another myth about welfare reform – which is that this is about saving tax payers money.

Claimants thrown onto the dole lose around £30 a week and but this means a significant administration burden for already over-stretched Jobcentres.  This comes on top of the cost of the Atos assessments and the ever growing number of appeals – along with considerable hidden costs such as an increase on the burdens on GPs, hospital consultants and advice agencies.  This stress of these assessments alone has driven some claimants to suicide, whilst many more people have reported their health has deteriorated due to the system.

It is now a terrifying time in the UK to be both poor and in poor health.  It is not just those currently on benefits who will be affected, but anyone who falls ill or becomes disabled and has to leave their job.  And for what?  To make a fraction of a percentage of people lose around £30 a week because they are no longer quite as ill or disabled as this Government now insists they must be to qualify for health related benefits.  Rarely has such a nasty policy been carried out by any Government for such trivial ends.

*It is unclear how far through the assessment process different cities are.  As the assessments are just over half complete then the Daily Mail’s workshy map actually means nothing at all, except for demonstrating the revealing fact that no-one at the paper seems to know where Manchester is.

A ‘not fit for work’ map has been created by @Mylegalforum and published on DPAC’s website.

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Atos Join The Army – MOD Hand Out £25 Million Contract To Bungling IT Firm

Atos, the French IT firm behind the ruthless and bungled assessments for sickness and disability benefits have been handed a whopping £25 million contract by the MOD.

Atos will head up a team running communications and information technology strategies for the armed forces.  Taleban camp leaders in Afghanistan are believed to have relaxed the local Champagne ban on hearing the news.  Not satisfied with developing the bodged and brutal Work Capability Assessments – which has driven some sick and disabled benefit claimants to suicide – Atos now want to become involved with the war industry.  It seems like they can never have quite too much blood on their hands.

This is just one in a string of contracts the company now has with the UK Government, which also include running much of the new disability assessments for the Personal Independent Payment, countless contracts to provide Occupational Health to public sector workers and chillingly nuclear power station decommissioning.

These contracts have been awarded despite their woeful performance as providers of sickness benefit assessments which have seen over 1 in 7 (15%) of their ‘fit for work’ decisions proved wrong in the courts.  Despite this Government’s obsession with payment by results, it seems Atos are handed a never ending stream of tax payers cash no matter how much they get it wrong.

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Atos To Sponsor (or sponsored) Nursing Awards – Shame on the Nursing Times

Latest: Nursing Times have now confirmed themselves that Atos will not sponsor an award this year.  Still no apology as yet.

UPDATE 3/5/13:  According to @Soniapoulton EMAP, publishers of Nursing Times, claim Atos are ’100%’ not sponsoring any awards this year, and seem to have removed some of the references to Atos as sponsors on their website.  No apology has been forthcoming so far from the magazine about accepting money from the company last year when they did sponsor an award.

UPDATE: Confirmation is needed  urgently from the Nursing Times about whether this sponsorship refers to 2012 or 2013.  Atos definitely sponsored an award at the event in 2012 (how’d we miss that!).  Either way that doesn’t get them off the hook and pressure needs to be maintained to ensure Atos are not invited back and ensure that Nursing Times apologise.

In the week in which nurses at the annual Royal College of Nursing conference passed a resolution that disability assessments in the UK are discriminatory and unfit for purpose, widely read journal the Nursing Times seem to have accepted Atos Healthcare as a sponsor of their annual awards.

This shocking decision (spotted by @WNSnews) is a slap in the face for all those sick and disabled people who have been abused by the company who carry out the notorious Work Capability Assessment.  This is the short computer based test designed to find sick and disabled people ‘fit for work’ in order to justify slashing their benefits.

Figures released this week by the DWP show that huge numbers of people have been wrongly assessed by the company and plunged into desperate poverty as a result.  Despite this, the Nursing Times have decided they are only too happy to take money from the Atos, even giving them space on the award’s website to claim:  “The sensitivity of the Disability Assessment process calls for enormous skill in a non-traditional healthcare setting as well as a broad range of medical knowledge.  Atos is proud to sponsor the Nursing in the Community category of the Nursing Times Awards and we wish all entrants the best of luck.”

The awards ceremony will be held on the 3oth October this year at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.   If Atos are sponsors the event could draw fierce protests from benefit claimants and disabled people who have previously picketed the British Medical Journal’s annual recruitment fair over the presence of Atos Healthcare.

In the meantime Nursing Times are on twitter @NursingTimes whilst a separate account exists for the awards @NT_awards.  They can also be found on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/EMAP.NT

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Number of Claimants On New Sickness Benefit At All Time High Boasts Mark Hoban

It is a tribute to the hard campaigning carried out by disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters that the Government are now boasting that less people are being found ‘fit for work’ than at any point since the notorious Work Capability Assessment (WCA) began.

A revealing press release from the DWP makes the claim that the WCA is now ‘fairer’ stating that: “nearly three in ten people completing a Work Capability Assessment between June and August 2012 were awarded unconditional support through ESA. This compares to just one person in every ten completing an assessment three years ago.”

This refers to claimants placed in the Support Group part of Employment Support Allowance, in which there is no requirement to look for work.  It suggests that even the DWP admit that many of the initial assessments were ‘unfair’, despite internet con man Grant Shapps’ recent attempts to smear all those stripped of sickness benefits as fraudulent or fake.

The press release also contains  a timely acknowledgement that those placed in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG)  group – the majority of claimants now on sickness or disability benefits – are not ‘fit for work’ as has often been claimed.  According to the DWP:  “People who are placed in the work-related activity group (WRAG) for ESA are currently too ill to work, but with the right help will be able to move into work in the future”

Astonishingly people in this group can still be sent on workfare or face having their benefits stopped.  Grasping charities such as the Salvation Army have been only too happy to staff their charity shops with claimants who, in the opinion of their own doctors, Atos and even the DWP, are too ill to work.

And it is this that reveals the truth behind this apparent change of attitude,  which is little more than some cheap spin spewed out by skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban in a panic before the local elections.  As well as condemning sick and disabled people to unpaid labour, Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms are set to make a significant number of them homeless.  Despite minister’s lies that disabled people will not be affected by the bedroom tax or benefit cap, hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled claimants in the Work Related Activity Group will be hit by the changes.  Many will lose their homes.

The figures also contain details of appeals, and show that 37% of appeals against decisions made by Atos have been successful, a figure which has remained more or less stable since the introduction of the WCA.  This translates total to a shocking 15% of all ‘fit for work’ decisions in total.  And that just represents people who appealed.  The number of those wrongly stripped of benefits and now forced into the Jobseekers Allowance regime, or living on the charity of friends and family, will be far higher.

A couple of year’s ago this press release would have been littered with smears claiming to prove the number of ‘fit for work’ decisions shows how those on sickness or disability benefits are scroungers.  The new direction should not fool anyone.  It seems that the new DWP spin on the figures is intended to imply that the WCA they inherited -  shamefully introduced as it was by Labour – was terribly unfair, but now they’ve fixed it.  The persistent high rate of successful appeals reveals they have done little more than change the PR and tinker around the edges.

Hundreds of thousands of people with serious health conditions or disabilities are still being found ‘fit for work’.  The appeals figures show over 1 in 7 of those decisions are ‘officially’ wrong, whilst the Work Programme statistics show barely any of those thrown off sickness benefits are finding jobs.  The number of disabled people helped into work via the Government’s Access to Work scheme has slumped to an all time low over the last two years. 

There has been no time in living memory that those who are too sick or disabled to work have been treated so viciously. It has not been enough for this Government to impoverish people and now even drive them from their homes, but also to collaborate in callous smear campaigns in the press to abuse and discredit sick or disabled claimants.  This week’s figures show that those smears were based on lies so big that not even the DWP dare attempt to hide the truth any further.

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Man Jailed After Comments Made In Atos Assessment

UPDATE 26/04/13  Steve Topley has been bailed, has pleaded guilty and is now expected to receive a community sentence.  Seems he wasn’t such a threat to the community after all.

A Nottingham man has now been held in custody for two weeks after he was accused of “threatening behaviour”* due to comments he allegedly made during his Atos benefits assessment.

Steve Topley is a 49 year old father with multiple serious health problems who was required to attend a Work Capability Assessment with the notorious IT firm Atos – the company responsible for stripping benefits from hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people.  During the process Mr Topley made some comments about someone not present at the assessment.

These comments led to Atos staff calling the police and Mr Topley was asked to attend Queens Medical Centre (QMC) in Nottingham.  When he refused to do so he was arrested.  At QMC he was de-arrested and received a mental health assessment but no reason was found to detain him under the mental health act.  He was then re-arrested and taken in handcuffs to Nottingham police station where he was later charged.

He has now been refused bail twice in closed courts which his family say they were not permitted to attend.  His sister Gina Topley, who says the family are being kept in the dark about the legal process, has said:

“My brother has not been given any opportunity to speak and give his side of the story to a judge and he was not offered an appropriate adult to accompany him when he was arrested.”

His family have not been allowed to visit him in prison and have raised concerns that his medication may not be being administered properly.  Mr Topley will face another appearance in a closed court tomorrow (Friday 26th April) and there are major fears that he will be remanded once again pending psychiatric reports.

His family and supporters have called a demonstration outside the court tomorrow calling for his immediate release.

Meet outside Nottingham Crown Court on Friday 26th April from 9.30-11.00am – please help spread the word.  For more details and the  latest news visit: http://freestevetopley.wordpress.com/

Thanks to 3monkeys in the comments for spotting this.

*Clarification:  Mr Topley was finally charged with making a ‘threat to kill’.  This can be a very serious charge which can result in a long sentence depending on other aggravating factors, however in this case it seems this was not the view of the Judge.  According to Mr Topley’s family:

“The Judge on the day appeared to accept that Steve was not a threat to anyone, however the ludicrous charge of ‘threatening to kill’ is still hanging over him. Police have not so far informed the alleged ‘victim’ of any plot against him, and cannot seem to find them, demonstrating how seriously they actually take this.”

One point worth making is that this incident happened in the middle of an Atos assessment which are notoriously stressful and frightening for claimants.  If he hadn’t been put through that, it is unlikely he would have said whatever he said, which it seems was not a very credible threat at least as far as the Judge was concerned.  When people who are marginalised are subject to this kind of shit then it can make people react irrationally or angrily and they end up doing things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.  The context these events take place in is often ignored by ‘professionals’, because to them it is all just a job and they can’t understand why people are not being reasonable.  The stark terror felt by some people facing courts, benefit assessments, arrests, bailiffs, prisons or even more seemingly benign institutions such as social services, Jobcentres and community mental health teams can often cause people to destroy themselves.  This can happen even if ‘professionals’ concerned do their jobs properly within the constrain of the system and no-one is really personally culpable.

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5000 People With Cancer Declared Fit For Work Boasts Grant Shapps

Internet con-man Grant Shapps has been crawling all over the papers today as the Government used Easter Sunday to launch an all out attack on sick and disabled people.

Tory party chairman Shapps claims in the Telegraph today that he will do his job from the pub from now on and his bizarre diatribe suggests that he’s already well on the way to being pissed.  The notorious get rich quick scammer rants that sickness benefits are ‘evil’ whilst brandishing figures attempting to smear all those out of work due to illness or disability as scroungers.

Once again the Tories are suggesting that most claims for Employment Support Allowance are not genuine based simply on the fact that many people give up a claim for ESA before they are assessed.  This is the exact same trick that the DWP tried to pull last year which simply reveals that for many people sickness is temporary and when they get better they end their claims.

Digging into the numbers however reveals some tragic statistics.  Shapps’ pub bore rhetoric is based on figures which breakdown claims for ESA by condition, and provide details of the results of their assessments.

They make for depressing reading.  Almost 5000 people with cancer were found ‘fit for work’ between 2008 and 2011, including ten people with malignant brain tumours.  Over 1000 people diagnosed with schizophrenia were also deemed scroungers and had benefits stopped.

Two and a half thousand people with MS were found fit for workfare if not paid work and placed in the Work Related Activity Group.  A further 800 MS sufferers were thrown off sickness benefits altogether.

Confirming that many claims are temporary in nature, the figures include many people who had broken a limb or suffered some other short term injury or condition.  Unsurprisingly many of this group came off benefits before being assessed which can take place several months after making an initial claim.

There are many other reasons a claim might stop before an assessment takes place.  Claimants could marry someone and no longer be eligible, or in many cases reach retirement age.

In a predictable spittle-flecked outburst, the right wing press have crowed that almost 10,000 people whose primary conditions was associated with drug use ended their claim before assessment,  A similar number were found fit for work – as if employers are suddenly rushing to hire currently using heroin addicts.

Whilst some of this group may have stopped using drugs and therefore ended their claim, some may have found themselves in prison.  Others may have slipped out of the benefits system completely due to the chaotic nature of their condition.  Some will probably have died from an overdose before the assessment took place.

And it is this that reveals the truly nasty face of this Government.  Around 14,000 people with cancer ended their claim before they were assessed.  It should be hoped that this is because many of them went into long term remission.  The sad truth is that some of them will have died whilst awaiting a benefit decision.

It is these tragic deaths that the vile Tory party are only too happy to exploit in an attempt to prove that half of people on sickness benefits were faking their conditions.  They truly are beneath contempt.

The figures are available via google viewer for those without Excel or can be downloaded direct as an xls format.

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Work When You’re Sick Say New DWP Guidelines

New advice issued to doctors, patients and employers on sick pay shows just how far the Government intend to push the brutal regime for people on disability or sickness benefits into the workplace.

The DWP recently renamed ‘sick notes’ as ‘fit notes’ which in the new guidance has led to some genuinely Orwellian gobbledygook such as:  “if your employee’s doctor thinks they are fit for work, they will not be issued with a fit note.”

Just like the despised Atos run Work Capability Assessment, doctors can now declare a patient ‘fit for work’, unfit for work, or capable of some work but not necessarily the job they usually do.  This means that if an employer makes some changes to a staff member’s working conditions then they may be forced back to work.

The new rules, which were devised in consultation with the Confederation of British Industry, seem little more than an attempt to bully people into work when they aren’t really well enough.  The document is littered with bold claims that work is good for your health such as “People can often come back to work before they are 100% fit – in fact work can even help their recovery”.

Nowhere in the documents does it warn that people’s conditions may also be made far worse by going back to work before they are ready.

Bosses have welcomed the chance to force their sick employees back to work with one quoted as calling the new system ‘a joy’:

“The joy of the fit note is that it’s flexible enough for us to interpret and fit the GP’s recommendation within the context of our business.”

The truth is that the DWP are playing a dangerous game and could tempt employers into a legal minefield.  One stark warning says:  “You may need to carry out a risk assessment to accommodate the clinical judgment in the fit note (eg if it states that your employee should avoid lifting, you are liable if you give them work that involves manual handling).”

In a further complication, according to guidance from Citizen’s Advice, if employers refuse to make changes to an employee’s working conditions to accommodate doctor’s recommendations, then they are still liable to pay Statutory Sick Pay.  The confusion doesn’t even end there.  ‘Fit Notes’ are advice only and bosses are not legally obliged to follow that advice.  They can sack you even if a doctor claims you are too ill to work.  They could however then be taken to court.  Employment tribunal lawyers will be rubbing their hands in glee at the DWP’s meddling with an already complex  legal situation.

The DWP have already shown they are happy to play fast and loose with the Courts.  Bosses who act the same way may be in for an expensive shock.

The guidance can be read at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/fitnote/

(The above google graphic – which is genuine, try it – was stolen from somewhere but I can’t remember where – please put a link in the comments if it was you and I’ll add a credit)

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Member of ‘Fit For Work Coalition’ Brought in to Scrutinise Atos

The DWP have brought in a member of the ‘Fit For Work Coalition’ and the neo-liberal think tank the World Economic Forum, to carry out a review of the brutal assessments for sickness and disability benefits.

Dr Paul Litchfield will replace Professor Malcolm Harrington who was sidelined after being mildly critical of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the relentless health and disability tests which have driven some claimants to suicide.

As well as his membership of the sinister sounding World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council – who promote more capitalism to deal with the problems created by capitalism – Litchfield is Chief Medical Officer at BT.  He is also a member of the aptly named Fit For Work Coalition which: “brings together healthcare professionals, policy makers, employers, and patients to improve the productivity of Britain’s workforce, by empowering and supporting people, including those with long-term conditions, to remain in or return to work and be economically active.”

Litchfield has long been working behind the scenes with both the current and the last government in a bid to dismantle the welfare state.  Way back in 2006 he was a member of the Mental Health Technical Group who were involved in proposals to ‘transform’ the old Personal Capability Assessment (PCA) – the previous assessment regime for Incapacity Benefit.

He then went on to sit on the Technical and Consultative Working Group involved in the creation of the Work Capability Assessment, along with Angela Graham of Atos Origin and Sue Godby of Unum.

He will now prepare a review on the shambolic Work Capability Assessment which is seeing more seriously unwell or disabled people than ever successfully appealing Fit for Work decisions.

Litchfield has already given an early indication of his true role at the DWP , which appears to be that of a glorified spin doctor.  He claims in a statement on the DWP website that:  “Any assessment not only has to be fair but must be perceived as being fair.”

He’s not there to change the assessments, but to change people’s minds about the assessments.

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Sue Ryder Admit They Will Force Sick and Disabled Claimants to Work Unpaid (and that workfare doesn’t work)

BREAKING NEWS: Sue Ryder have said they will begin a ‘phased withdrawal’ from the Government’s mandatory workfare schemes.

In the second astonishing statement in a week, Sue Ryder have admitted their workfare scheme is useless at helping people find work and they will be possibly the only UK charity to force sickness benefit claimants to work unpaid.

In an effort to excuse their shameful use of forced unpaid workers they have released a Q&A document in an attempt to justify their appalling activities.   The first question asks:

“Why continue involvement when government statistics show that workfare schemes are not helping more people find paid jobs?”

Sue Ryder had already answered this in their earlier statement when they boasted that they make millions from unpaid workers in their shit charity shops.  According to their own “internal research” the charity claims that just 1 in 4 of their forced workers eventually find a real paid job,  This is a somewhat suspicious boast given that in their first statement, just a few days ago, the figure was one in five.  Even this merely suggests that 75% of people are so traumatised by their time at Sue Ryder that they never work again.

It is the third question in their statement however which is likely to shock even the most hardened benefit bashers.  Sue Ryder now have the horrific distinction of being the only charity so far in the UK to admit to being happy to force claimants on sickness and disability benefits to work unpaid.

The charity states:

“Since December 2012, people who have been assessed by the government and found unfit to work, but potentially able to work in the future with support, may be referred onto a work placement.

“Our volunteer recruitment process ensures we have honest and open conversations with individuals about any conditions they have that could impact on their ability to take on a volunteering role. We don’t put volunteers into roles they are not able to carry out, and we regularly review volunteers already in roles in case of changes in ability, physical or mental, as well as changes in their interests, availability and training needs.”

Note that in the first paragraph Sue Ryder admit that even Atos and the Government consider this group to be too unwell to work at present.  These claimants have also all been signed off work by their own GP.  This matters not to greedy Sue Ryder bosses, who after a quick chat – no doubt with a charity shop manager – will now force people with serious health conditions into unpaid physical labour.

This defiant statement, which praises forced labour even for those whose own doctors have said they should not work, comes after the charity’s twitter and facebook pages were bombarded with people demanding an end to their cruel and exploitative practices.

That Sue Ryder have chosen to come out fighting shows utter contempt for the hundreds of former customers and donors who have complained about their use of unpaid work.

It is clear that all this charity cares about is money so boycott them, keep up the pressure and tell them what you think on twitter @sue_ryder and facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SueRyderNational

Join the National Week of Action Against Workfare beginning on March 18th: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=1996

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid