More than 2,500 benefit claimants die after being found fit for work in just two years

a reply to: PaddyInf

Precisely what I was getting at - some of the stories are dubious at best and most have nothing at all to do with any assessment for ESA or having their benefits stopped.

Coming in a bit late here sorry!

Totally agree that the stats are not at all clear cut. You can argue the stats and the stories all day long but when it comes down to it, it's only logical that when you commission a profit driven private firm to carry out these assessments and set stealth targets, bad things are going to happen.

originally posted by: stumason
a reply to: woodwardjnr

Oh yeah, definitely. Before I realised there was such a thing as media bias (I was around 16-17), the Daily Mail used to make me so angry with it's "stories" as I assumed they must be true, they were in the paper!

Nowadays, I will look at a headline and use that as a starting off point for my own leg work, always aware of the various outlets bias, from the Daily Mail hating on everything and anything through to the Mirror with it's thinly veiled socialist slant. There has been many an occasion I've seen a headline, thought "Oooh, that would be a good thread" only to find after my own research on the claims that, actually, they've totally misrepresented it and it is nothing like it is being portrayed.

We'd be doing the next generation a great service if it was made part of the national curriculum from Key Stage 3 up. Fewer bigots and less fear? Maybe the Press would change its style when people stopped paying for dangerous lies?

Probably not...

I heard a lovely saying this morning.
Debating with the right is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how much you win or how how well you play the pigeon is always going to knock the pieces over crap on the board and strut around like it won.
Its hard to say exactly what government mean by this release as the only response has been from IDS and he said its not his fault. Of course the figures are misleading virtually every manifesto promise is being u-turned this is the government of smoke and mirrors. In January 2015 David Cameron was asked in PMQ`s about the report linking sanctions and deaths he said those figures were being prepared as he spoke...The figures released are not that report, when originally asked about the deaths the DWP said the information did not exist, DWP and IDS have been caught a number of times lying.
IDS right hand man is Justin Tomlinson a man whos role model was removed from office for stating that the disabled should be sterilized. There is a hate in this party for anyone that cannot pay to be part of its club. If you are supporting this regime and you are not benefiting from it shame on you for missing out and silly you for flying the flag.
Its no secret the Conservative party are there for big business and not the people which is why the first past the post system will never change as long as red and blue are the main colours in gov.

Shelia Holt declared fit for work despite being in a coma. I have details of about
DWP aware that people will self harm or commit suicide have a 6 point FAQ`s sheet. They have NO medical or mental health training.
Scores of ex services returning home to no support but plenty of sanctions.
If we are saying the only acceptable evidence is what gov give out then its rather pointless as they are never going to incriminate themselves. Even if they do you cant take them to court.

Anyone can become ill or dependent in a moment. I mean whats to stop me going to local conservative club with a bat and breaking some backs.....

Just some of the people who were left to die by this government. Its not just IDS they are all in it together.

Terry McGarvey
Elaine Lowe
Mark Wood
Paul Reekie
Leanne Chambers
Karen Sherlock
Carl Payne
Tim Salter
Edward Jacques
Linda Wootton
Steven Cawthra
Elenore Tatton
John Walker
Brian McArdle
Stephen Hill
Jacqueline Harris
David Barr
David Groves
Nicholas Peter Barker
Mark and Helen Mullins
Richard Sanderson
Martin Rust
Craig Monk
Colin Traynor
Elaine Christian
Christelle and Kayjah Pardoe
Mark Scott
Cecilia Burns
Chris Cann
Peter Hodgson
Paul Willcoxsin
Paul Turner
Christopher Charles Harkness
Sandra Louise Moon
Lee Robinson
David Coupe
Michael McNicholas
Victor Cuff
Charles Barden
Ian Caress

a reply to: shayhorse

If you look back you will see that we've been discussing this very list for the last 2 pages. It is a fairly ambiguous list with several people on it who have a loose connection with different aspects of the benefits system at best. I'd like to see where it originated and what their research consisted of.

a reply to: PaddyInf

I find it ironic he mentions the "playing chess with pigeons", only to then act in the very manner in which he is criticising...

originally posted by: purplemer
a reply to: Cobaltic1978

Its brutal.. Lets not forget the hundreds of families being cleared out of london each week becuase of the bedroom tax. Its a form of landclearence and noone buts an eyelid..

It's not just London. It's happened in other cities as well. I grew up in Aberdeen. Back in the 1980's, with the start of the oil industry, when oil workers started being paid twice as much as graduates, house-prices doubled overnight. Due to the demand for apartments and flats close to nightclubs and pubs, homes were converted into flats. Now graduate families like teachers, university lecturers can't afford to live in the city. They actually had to convert school playgrounds into car-parks so that teachers had somewhere park their cars because they commute in. If you look at Google Maps, you'll see where the "shelters" have been converted into parking spaces.

It's the same with Edinburgh. All the desirable homes are owned by bankers or senior government workers. Flats and apartments are owned by buy-to-let landlords. The banks won't let first time buyers buy a property simply to live in - it has to be for buy-to-let. People who work in Edinburgh have to commute from as far as Glasgow and further.

With Glasgow, everyone commutes in from the surrounding towns that have been connected by commuter railway lines. In the home counties in England, families trying to live in places like Reading/Cambridge have to commute from the surrounding villages because the London workers want to live close to the train stations. That in turn displaces farming and agricultural workers who have to live in council housing.

a reply to: stumason

Lol, this whole thread is mostly a lot of bleating with little substance.
Reminds me of a 1970's style trade union meeting

a reply to: Shiloh7

a reply to: shayhorse

A sad statistic, but there are many, many abusers of the system who are definitely fit to work.

originally posted by: babybunnies
A sad statistic, but there are many, many abusers of the system who are definitely fit to work.

There isn't MANY though.
Of all people on benefits, benefit fraud is at level of 0.9% VIA DWP statistics.

www.gov.uk...

Bare in mind this is 2012-2013 and the Gov claim this number is now lower.

So lets say 0.65% are fraudlent claims, should that mean a war on the entire system when it's documented the country is losing far more money elsewhere?

I used to work for a large multi product chain store, in that business they EXPECT leakage (loss via theft by customers or even staff) some people are bad apples and you account for them in your projections and obviously try and stamp it out, that number will never be 0%.

As for the people asking for correlation between the numbers of dead and their benefits being stopped, suicide notes in some cases answer it definitely has affected a some of people who died.

I'll leave it at this, there is a reason it took a petition to get these numbers released, and why people wanted to see these numbers because it confirms what everyone already knows.

a reply to: Taggart

The figure you quote does not take into account the number of people who are fit to work but claim otherwise.

50-60% (depending on the year) of those who initially try to claim ESA are found fit for work. Of those left about half are found fit for work related activity and the other half are not fit for any type of work. Many of the support group list are made up of people who do not meet the criteria for support group, but are regarded as being at physical or mental risk.

The numbers of people reporting self harm or suicidal intention has increased massively since it started to be taken into account. Prior to this virtually everyone denied this as it had no bearing in their outcome.

My other half tells me that most of those who she assesses in a week with diagnosis of depressive illness report that they have tried killing themselves in the past. Many of these have no medical record of this though, and state that their GP is not aware of this because they don't like talking about it, but they are quick enough to mention it when seeking benefits. If the quantity reporting this to the DWP were accurate the number deaths from suicide in the UK would be astronomical and would challenge cancer in terms of mortality rates.

originally posted by: babybunnies
A sad statistic, but there are many, many abusers of the system who are definitely fit to work.

How many Public sector workers pull the same stunt.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

And the relevance to the topic is? And what "stunt" would that be?

originally posted by: PaddyInf
a reply to: Taggart

The figure you quote does not take into account the number of people who are fit to work but claim otherwise.

50-60% (depending on the year) of those who initially try to claim ESA are found fit for work. Of those left about half are found fit for work related activity and the other half are not fit for any type of work. Many of the support group list are made up of people who do not meet the criteria for support group, but are regarded as being at physical or mental risk.

The numbers of people reporting self harm or suicidal intention has increased massively since it started to be taken into account. Prior to this virtually everyone denied this as it had no bearing in their outcome.

My other half tells me that most of those who she assesses in a week with diagnosis of depressive illness report that they have tried killing themselves in the past. Many of these have no medical record of this though, and state that their GP is not aware of this because they don't like talking about it, but they are quick enough to mention it when seeking benefits. If the quantity reporting this to the DWP were accurate the number deaths from suicide in the UK would be astronomical and would challenge cancer in terms of mortality rates.

Do you mind quoting your source for those stats? Here's what I found on the government report...

Claimants with an outcome for their claim can be broken down as follows*:
• 79 per cent of claimants were entitled to the benefit.
• 21 per cent of claimants were assessed as Fit for Work (FFW) and are no longer eligible for Employment and Support Allowance

www.gov.uk...

And I have to say, I have absolutely no faith that those found 'fit for work' are indeed fit for work.

Whistleblowers...

Greg Wood decided that he could no longer tolerate working for the fitness-for-work assessment firm Atos earlier this year when he was asked, for perhaps the 10th time, to change a report he had made on a claimant, in this case making it unlikely that the individual would be eligible for sickness benefit.

www.theguardian.com...

Mum-of-one Joyce, from Mosspark, Glasgow, said Atos decision makers paid no attention to her professional clinical opinion and were only interested in cutting down the number of claimants.

www.dailyrecord.co.uk...

Blunders...

Blunders include ruling that a 39-year-old woman from Livingstone with a brain tumour was fit to work just weeks before she died and a double heart and lung transplant patient from Essex dying nine days after being declared well enough for employment.

www.independent.co.uk...

Targets...

Ask Atos, the company responsible for executing the work capability assessment (WCA), or the Department for Work and Pensions, which defines how the WCA is conducted, and they will tell you that they have no targets for the number of people who pass. Yet a new report from the Centre for Welfare Reform, How Norms Become Targets, uses a leaked set of Atos data to suggest that the DWP is holding Atos to extremely tight tolerances on its results.

www.theguardian.com...

With regard to reporting attempted suicide I can totally understand why this might happen as I have seen it first hand. I have a family member who is very ill and kept getting fobbed off by the GP. She was too embarrassed to tell the GP that she felt so awful she felt like ending it all, I had to tell the GP in the end just so she would be taken seriously (nothing to do with claiming benefits, just getting help). So yes if someones life depends on it as in their ability to buy food, power etc... then I could totally see why they might mention it.

a reply to: teapot

Probs putting youtubes up. The vid was Cassette Boy's 'Cameron's Conference Rap'.

Recommended viewing even if you support Tory policy.

a reply to: Scouse100

Got it from here .

originally posted by: Scouse100
With regard to reporting attempted suicide I can totally understand why this might happen as I have seen it first hand. I have a family member who is very ill and kept getting fobbed off by the GP. She was too embarrassed to tell the GP that she felt so awful she felt like ending it all, I had to tell the GP in the end just so she would be taken seriously (nothing to do with claiming benefits, just getting help). So yes if someones life depends on it as in their ability to buy food, power etc... then I could totally see why they might mention it.

Fair one. However it could be argued that mentioning it to the GP is also a matter of life and death as the GP can signpost them to help.

Its slightly different from some 20 year old scrote who lives at home and tells you they have taken an overdose in the past and are suicidal but has no proof or evidence to support this claim. There are plenty of web sites that tell you exactly what yo say in these assessments.