STOP POLITIONS ALLOWING INHUMANE GROSS ACTS OF CRUELTY TO OUR MOST VULNERABLE

PLEASE WRITE TO YOUR MP’s ,MINTERS FOR HEALTH, WELFARE, HUMANE RIGHTS, BEFORE WE TOTALLY LOOSE OUR HUMANITY,plus write to PM, HOUSE OF LORDS, PLEASE EVEN THOUGH AFTER YOU HAVE READ THIS WHICH INCLUDES THE PARTY PRESENTLY IN POWER WHOM IS USING PROPAGANDA ABOUT BRIXIT TO STOP YOU FROM SEEING THE TRUTH about how THEY are SYSTEMATICALLY GETTING RID OF THE LOWER CLASSES to lower end middle class IN THIS COUNTRY THAT ONCE CARED ABOUT ALL THE PEOPLE IN IT AT THE VERY LEAST ENOUGH TO NOT SEE IT AS A LAUGHING MATTER A JEARINGLY LAUGHING MATTER IN THE HOUSES OF PARLIMENTARY MEETING ABOUT THE POVERTY STRUCK AND /OR ALL THE PERSONS STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE WHEN IT WAS BROUGHT UP THAT MASS CHANGES IN BENEFITS UC N SUCH WAS CAUSING DESPERATELY ILL AND POOR TO COMMIT SUICIDE .......PLEASE IF YOU HAVE NOT OR ARE NOT ONE OF THE MANY VERY MANY THOUSANDS WHOM HAVE BEEN BRAIN WASHED INTO HATING YOUR FELLOW MAN SIGN THIS WRITE TO AS MANY POLITITIONS AN LORDS AND YOUR OWN LOCAL MP’s THE EU HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE AND EVERYONE AND ANY ONE WHOM CAN HELP THE VULNERABLE PLEASE THIS IS URGENT PLEASE SHOW YOUR CARE FOR YOUR FELLOW MAN BEFORE TO LATE. In this newsletter we discover that the DWP is now looking to invest in robots, including chatbots, whilst Big Brother Watch is concerned about the use of private sector fraud software for universal credit.

We learn that the DWP are to continue sanctioning sick and disabled claimants into “grinding poverty” in spite of MPs asking them to stop.

A growing number of members contact us because they are having to suffer not one but two face-to-face assessments, before they get a decision about their PIP application.

And while ministers have finally admitted there is a link between universal credit and food bank use, they continue to deny, to supportive laughter and jeers, that there is any connection between the way claimants are treated and the number who commit suicide.



DWP ROBOTS
Who even knew that the DWP has an ‘in-house robotics centre’ called the Intelligent Automation Garage (IAG) unit?

This improbably named team are currently talking to private sector companies about “developing robotic solutions utilising robotic processing automation, virtual assistants, chatbots, [and] machine learning”.

Whether talking to a chatbot will be better than the current service is something that only time and experience will tell.

Though actually getting to talk to anyone – or anything – rather than spending hours on hold might be a vast improvement.



PRIVATE SECTOR FRAUD SOFTWARE
Big Brother Watch (BBW) is concerned about the growing use of private sector software to decide whether you are a fraud risk when claiming universal credit.

Many local authorities are using Risk Based Verification software to decide whether you are a low, medium or high risk.

This is in spite of the fact that the local authorities often have no idea how the software makes decisions on who should be targeted for extra scrutiny.

BBW have produced more information and a template letter to allow you to make a subject access request to find out if you were subject to risk based verification and, if so, what information the decision was based on and who the assessment of risk will be shared with.



ESA SANCTIONS TO CONTINUE
The genuine anger of the work and pensions committee was clear as it condemned the DWP for refusing to stop sanctioning disabled claimants into “grinding poverty and hardship”.

The government’s response to the committee’s October report on sanctions has now been published.

The DWP has rejected the committee’s recommendation that claimants already found to have limited capability for work should be exempt from sanctions.

It has also rejected the recommendation that claimants who are waiting for a Work Capability Assessment should be exempt.

Committee chair Frank Field said:

“Our report laid bare the inhumanity of the Government’s sanctions regime, which it has pursued for years without ever stopping to check whether it works or what it is doing to the people it is meant to “support”.

“In response, the Government has failed utterly to grasp the seriousness of the matter. It talks about reviews and “proof of concept”: it might want to take a look at the concept of not pushing disabled people and single parents—not to mention their children—into grinding poverty and hardship.”



DOUBLE PIP ASSESSMENTS
We are hearing from an increasing number of members who attend a PIP assessment and then, before a decision has been made, are told they must attend a second assessment or have their claim refused.

Most of the cases we have heard about seem to involve Capita.

It is not at all clear why it is happening so often.

Claimants have been told a second assessment is needed because Capita need more information, or because the first report was not filed, or because a more ‘robust’ assessment was needed.

Whatever the mistakes made by assessment companies, the effect on claimants is severe. One member told us:

“I am sick with worry I was already suffering with even more anxiety than usual due to going through this process.”

Another wrote:

“I am in total meltdown mode and if the first one is anything to go by I’m dreading the next one.

Whilst another explained:

“This has left me feeling very anxious. All they would say is that they needed further information as the last assessment was incomplete. I'm confused. I feel that they want to trip me up even though I was completely truthful about my conditions in the last assessment.”

We are urging claimants to complain to their MP if they are forced to attend a second assessment before a decision is made.



UNIVERSAL CREDIT AND FOOD BANKS
Amber Rudd, secretary of state for work and pensions, has finally admitted on behalf of the DWP that the roll-out of UC increases food bank use.

Rudd told MPs:

“It is clear that there were challenges with the initial roll-out of universal credit, and the main issue that led to an increase in food bank usage could have been the fact that people had difficulty accessing their money early enough.”

However, Rudd also claimed that changes to UC and access to early payments were helping improve the situation.

Many charities, however, have argued that the changes have not gone nearly far enough and that advance payments simply plunge claimants deeper into debt.



BENEFITS AND SUICIDE
The government continues to go to great lengths to deny any link between benefits policy and suicide.

Disability News Service has highlighted the fact that the DWP have not been included in a cross-government plan to reduce suicides.

This means that, bizarrely, the government considers that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Transport all have more of a role to play in preventing suicide than the DWP has.

Meanwhile, minister for disabled people Sarah Newton told MPs last week that it was ‘shameful’ to claim there was any link between benefits and suicide.

Newton called claims of a link between benefits policy and suicide “appalling and unsubstantiated”.

As Tory MPs laughed and jeered in support, she triumphantly pointed out that:

“The Adult Psychiatric Morbidity survey does not show any causal link between being on benefits and suicidal thoughts or behaviour. The survey findings indicate certain associations but they do not indicate causality.”

The lack of hard evidence of a causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was an arguement that the tobacco industry used to ensure millions of people died unnecessarily from using its products.

In exactly the same shameful way, government ministers now argue that while there may is a statistical link between being on benefits and suicide, no one has categorically proved that it is the way people are treated as benefits claimants that causes them to harm themselves.

It is an ugly and dishonourable misuse of statistics to say that because you cannot absolutely prove the mechanism that links two things then you should remain silent and do nothing.

It is not one that is trotted out by the government in relation to, for example, concerns about young people’s use of social media being linked to self-harm.

But there is political capital to be made by ministers attacking Facebook, whereas there is none to be made from admitting that their own policies are killing people.

Good luck,