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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“””access to justice is under threat. The government is planning a fresh assault on what’s left of legal aid. Under their proposals people will no longer be able to choose the lawyer who represents them – instead they will be allocated the cheapest lawyer the government can find. Tomorrow is the last public event where we can make our views on this heard.
Cut-price justice is no justice at all. These plans turn a fundamental human right into a cost-cutting race to the bottom.
And the race has some pretty surprising competitors: current contenders who’ve said they’ll bid for the contract include the trucking company, Eddie Stobart, and G4S, the security firm who botched their job at the Olympic Games. Not to mention Serco, who rely on tax havens to hide the huge profits they made from delivering public services.”””
38 degrees don’t have long – the petition is being delivered tomorrow. Click here to sign it now:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/legal-aid
I saw the 38 degrees campaign on that pat just now.
I want to know why justice is so bloody expensive in the first place, cut the salaries of the judiciary and solicitors and I would sign, most are working for the government or big business anyway not representing us.
When the govt appoint someone to oversee the Atos WCA who on record claims that sickness is a lifestyle choice and was a director of an organisation so closely linked to Atos has got to tell you something.
Btw my social worker who is a mental health professional tells me his caseload had drastically increased due to clients being subjected to Atos WCA..
people with mhp’s should be exempted from wca, in any case…
my thoughts are, that those that run the wca…should provide a definitive list of evidence types, that they would require, to be able to make an informed decision, on the sufferers disposition to work…and the onus would be on them , to gather the info….and not on the sufferer…which i think, is the victory that has been won…subject to appeal…the gp and sufferer have already agreed…that the sufferer is not fit for work….
which when the assumed, precautionary principles of exceptional circumstances, are considered, means…a default exemption in any case….so in actual fact, the wca provider has no role, and the dwp could simply make the decision, not to include those with mhp’s in the 1st place!
The DWP will carry on appealing until it loses each one and then they’ll get parliament to change the law so that they’re not breaking it.
The same will happen with this workfare company list – I’ve not heard anything else about it getting published so I can only guess that they’re plotting to have the law changed again.
IDS should resign now- everything he touches turns to crud!!
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FUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
I agree with you. Those who lose out and who die before things are put right will be considered a net gain by the DWP!
On another note, has anyone heard of the security employer GMC Security that the Salvation Army plan sending claimants to?
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/158198/response/392017/attach/html/4/Mark%20Hoban%20letter%20Redacted%20copy.pdf.html
Why is there no opposition from other parties?
phoenix…”we’re all in it together!”
Look at the benefit bashing crap going on in the EDL hashtag:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23EDLthat&src=tren
Stupid cunt #1:
https://twitter.com/atiqur7/status/337387631300210689
That poster/banner is so funny on so many levels.
Never submit to Aslan? I doubt that the Narnian Lion is coming here anytime soon.
#2
https://twitter.com/Mcam_10/status/337382115341639680
To be honest all this shows to me is that a lot of stupid and ignorant gits use Twitter. Which I already knew. Which is why I don’t bother with it.
#3
https://twitter.com/Owletrocks/status/337378535767429122
https://twitter.com/Mcam_10/status/337377003382657024
https://twitter.com/danhazza/status/337397557116416000
Attitude towards all welfare claimants in a nutshell
How old is Daniel Harris? Twelve?
ConDem Cruelty.
Amount gained with benefits cap: £17 million.
Amount saved by cutting Legal Aid: £350 million.
Amount gained with bedroom tax: £465 million.
Amount saved by scrapping disability benefits: £1.4 billion.
Amount lost to corporate tax avoidance: £69.9 billion.
Amount spent on bank bailout: £500 billion.
Finding and exposing evidence of ConDem cruelty: priceless.
There are some people money can’t buy. Everyone else is a Tory politician.
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What do the EDL loonies have against Narnia? Seriously though, don’t know if anyone else on here is thinking along the same lines as me, but yesterday’s events in Woolwich have “false flag” written all over them. It’s all just too weird,maybe I’m too suspicious but can’t help wondering what Camoron, IDS et al are going to sneak under the radar while everyone’s distracted. A good day to bury bad news, perhaps?
Adding to the mix the appearance of the EDL from their caves to get pissed & throw bottles at plod shows that strings are being pulled, question is, why & by whom? “Cue bono” who benefits?
It is very convenient for the government, and the other swivel eyed right-wing loons considering the anti-immigrant, anti-EU message they and the right-wing media have been relentlessly pushing recently, so it does make you wonder … I bet Osborne and the right-wing media stayed up all night into the small hours studying the terrorist’s records to see if they were on benefits, to see if they can tie that into what they did as well and call the murder the “product of the benefits culture” too like they did with Philpott.
Farage, Cameron and all the other swivel eyed loons must have been cockahoop and danced a merry jig when they heard about the murder. They will have an absolute field day with this. It’s also a twofer, since the terrorists are black as well as Muslim which is the little Englander’s arch bogeymen wrapped up in one neat package. Cameron will exploit this to the maximum, making another speech blaming the murder on the failures of multiculturalism and use it as an excuse to abolish more equality legislation, cut more legal aid, expand their surveillance powers, bring in secret courts, call for internet censorship and use it as an excuse to stop and search black men even more.
What they will do from now on is talk about the murder of the soldier, immigration, human rights legislation and pulling out of the EU in the same breath all the time, so people link them together in their minds and push the idea that pulling out of Europe will prevent people like the black Islamic terrorists getting into the country in the first place.
If these guys do turn out to have been on benefits, that’ll be another stick to beat claimaints up with. Can see the headlines now in the Sun or the daily heil “Murdering Scum on Benefits” so the subliminal message will be – benefit claimant = terrorist. That’s why it’s essential that no-one should be taken in by this hoax, for hoax it is as the story is constantly changing as is the case with all false flag attacks from 9/11 to the Boston Marathon bombing
I don’t think MI5 agents did this murder. At most, they may have known it was going to happen and let it happen on purpose.
Does the DWP being found to have carried out illegal acts mean anything in our society any more? They just carry on doing it and, with some help from the Labour Party, retrospectively change the law to enable them to carry on doing it if required, just as in the Kat Reilly case.
How about this one, they use it to push through a law while everyone else is so busy raving about it, it sure has the hallmarks of a F Flag.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/23/305070/woolwich-sparks-snooper-charter-return/
Thought that have been dropped, but it all makes perfect sense now.Just knew there was some reason behind it.
Meant to put “thought that had been dropped”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10076095/Why-the-Right-could-doom-welfare-reform.html
Telegraph and ESA medical welfare reform
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Can IDS change the law retrospectively? I doubt it this time. The Mental Health Discrimination Act has just been passed.
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all these court judgments and DWP keeps losing and being told they are breaking the law!!! AND YET THEY KERP GOING ON AS IS!!! So I ask what’s the point of the courts decision if the DWP and ATOS are going to keep discriminating
They all want their feet puttin in buckets full of concrete until set then stood at edge of the river Thames and leave them and watch them try and scramble for their life as the tide comes in then they might realise how hard it actually is to be disabled in the 21st century when there is no one there too help Ohh by the way I’m home now so let the bastards drown