Fit For Work – Three Part Series on BBC Radio 4

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CRG

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Fit For Work – Three Part Series on BBC Radio 4 by Jolyon Jenkins

"For 30 years, governments have tried to get disabled people into work by toughening up benefit rules. Part of the motivation has been to cut the welfare bill, but it’s also been framed as an attempt to stop disabled people “languishing” on benefits.

‘But the policy has had tragic consequences, particularly for people with mental illness, who have felt coerced and pressured, as the department for work and pensions has deemed them fit for work. Many – maybe hundreds – have taken their own lives.

‘According to a former chief economist at the DWP, “it’s one of the biggest social policy failures of the last 20 or 30 years. We caused an enormous amount of human suffering. We achieved very little, we didn’t save any money and it probably cost more than it would have if we hadn’t done anything.”

Fit For Work BBC Radio 4 'player' Episode 1: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mck1/episodes/player

Twitter thread:
 
I suspect B1ack Triang1e are trying to counter the renewed media/government campaign against out of work disab1ed benefit c1aimants. It's a11 very distressing, it just never ends here in the UK. I don't know if the pandemic has created this sort of issue in other countries, but it's just awfu1 here.

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/media-hate-campaign-against-support-group-claimants-begins

A media hate campaign against support group claimants has begun, as the government moves to abolish the work capability assessment (WCA) and allow unqualified jobcentre work coaches to decide whether claimants are capable of work. Sick and disabled claimants are even being blamed for the rise in immigration into the UK.

The lead article in the Telegraph of 24 May revealed “Millions on benefits do not have to seek work”.

The sub-headline added “Taxpayers face bankrolling payments indefinitely for 3.7 million given exemption from having to find a job.”

The article highlighted the number of people claiming ESA and UC because of conditions such as anxiety and depression, back pain, wrist and hand disorders and carpal tunnel syndrome.

It went on to say that “Britain's growing worklessness crisis comes as official figures on Thursday are expected to show net migration has soared to record levels of between 700,000 and 1 million.”

Iain Duncan Smith was cited as saying that the UK needs to concentrate less on bringing in workers from abroad and more on getting British people on sickness benefits back into the labour market.

He said “Companies should now be ending their addiction to cheap labour. They should be focusing on improving productivity by a greater increase in technology, and by training and getting back into work these people on sickness benefits.

“There is no reason why many of these people on these benefits should not be in work. We’ve got a real problem”

Elsewhere in the paper IDS was quoted as saying:

"Sadly, by being exempt from welfare rules designed to help people into work, they are bound to suffer further – for being in work is acknowledged as a strong health treatment, particularly for those with depression or anxiety."

Meanwhile, the Jeremy Vine on 5 show last week put out a tweet seen by millions of people which said

“Is it time to crack down on jobless benefits?

“Nearly four million people in the UK are being supported by the state without ever having to look for a job.

“That’s because they’ve been deemed too sick to work.

“Is it wrong for taxpayers to fund them indefinitely?”

After arousing considerable outrage the tweet was deleted, but a programme on the subject went ahead all the same.

Clearly the DWP are expecting considerable resistance to their project to abolish the WCA. That they are determined to go ahead with it is clear from the announcement that the combined PIP and WCA assessment contracts have now been awarded. Attacking support group claimants in the media as workshy and responsible for record levels of immigration is one way of convincing the public that the DWP are on the right track.

UPDATE, 1 JUNE
Under the headline “Exactly how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state” and with a sub-heading of “Britain isn’t working – calculate what it’s costing you” the Telegraph yesterday added a calculator to its website to allow readers to work out how much of their tax “goes towards bankrolling the welfare state.”
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I've heard MPs on Times Radio repeated1y make the 1ink between out of work disab1ed c1aimants and the increase in immigration. They refer to the numbers of job vacancies whi1st ta1king about 'removing the financia1 barriers for sick and disab1ed c1aimants to get back into work' (i.e. the remova1 of the work capabi1ity assessment that a11ows the most sick and disab1ed not to have to seek work or engage in work re1ated activity).

Statistics show most of these vacancies are for jobs in the hea1th and care sector, couriers, 1ow paid physica1 manua1 work, seasona1 agricu1tura1 work or high1y ski11ed tech jobs. The idea of societies most sick, disab1ed and vu1nerab1e peop1e being expected to do these jobs is beyond words.

There's definite1y a revived government fue1ed media campaign against support group c1aimants that started just after the White Paper was pub1ished a1ongside the 1ast budget.
 
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From the programme blurb said:
In this episode, he looks at how, despite evidence that the Fit for Work test was failing, governments of both main parties ignored official warnings and pressed ahead with it, expanding the scheme dramatically.
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i havent listened to the programme as i am too emotionally fragile to cope with the DWP 'in the room' atm.

But... call me a cynic but the 'fit for work test' is the WCA, which the govt are scrapping - to the doom and persecution of those of us too ill to work. So it just strikes me that this might be just another sly & utterly disingenuous way of them getting more support for scrapping it.

If they think there were suicides before... there will be many many more if they replace the WCA with the AWIC (Arbitrary Whim of the Ignorant & Contemptuous)
which will be the unchallengeable decisions of work coaches.
 
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Simbindi said:
I suspect B1ack Triang1e are trying to counter the renewed media/government campaign against out of work disab1ed benefit c1aimants. It's a11 very distressing, it just never ends here in the UK. I don't know if the pandemic has created this sort of issue in other countries, but it's just awfu1 here.

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/media-hate-campaign-against-support-group-claimants-begins
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Really upset at Jeremy Vine. I darent watch it it will upset me too much, but i am shocked that he would do such a thing, i thought he was one of the good guys.
I remember him handling the Gilderdale case with sensitivity & I think i even remember him saying that he had visited Lynn, or possibly another Very severely affected PwME & said something like he had never seen anyone as ill as that (or something like that i cant remember exactly perhaps someone else does). My point being that i thought he was a friend, perhaps he thinks very seriously ill people should be wheeled into the jobcentre on their beds, feeding tubes & catheters attached, to meet their work coach, who will tell them they can go on an IT skills course at a college in a nearby town.
And if they dont go they will have all their money taken away & will starve to death.
FFS, we hare heading closer to the Hunger Games every year.

KMN

But of course i suppose those who are 24/7bedbound with 24hr care might be safer from the work coach. Its those who can leave the house for a drs appointment or to be pushed around a park for half an hour once a month, with help of a carer, & so therefore must be 'capable of some work'.

They are going to throw us to the wolves, to the haters. I cant bear it, and Vine being involved in the sales pitch to promote it. A sucker punch
 
Watchdog receives hundreds of complaints over Telegraph’s ‘toxic’ benefits article

The Telegraph wrote that millions were claiming benefits “without ever having to look for work” and it produced an automatic calculator that allowed readers to discover “just how much of our hard-won salaries are spent on the benefits of those who do not work”.

More than 600 people have so far complained about the article to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which is currently assessing the complaints.

Disabled campaigners warned this week that the news story, following a “hateful” Twitter post by Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine show last month, marks a return to “divisive” and “damaging” media coverage that incites hatred of disabled people.
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Rest of the artic1e at 1ink -

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...aints-over-telegraphs-toxic-benefits-article/
 
I have listened. It seems so far to be fairly presented.

They have gone into some detail on a couple of tragic cases where people were judged fit to work but clearly weren't and the numbers of suicides. They have explained the history of UNUM being brought in to advise on how to try to cut the numbers and Mansel Aylward being a key player who then got his professorship funded to give academic backing to the policy. And when a different political party came in they doubled down on it.

They highlighted the fact that the vast majority of cases that go to appeal win their case, showing the WCA and decision maker process is completely wrong. The clear impression that comes so far is that the system was wrong, the WCA isn't appropriate and decision makers make a lot of wrong decisions.

I think there's one more program where presumably they will look at the government's plan to scrap the WCA and what might replace it.
 
Trish said:
I think there's one more program where presumably they will look at the government's plan to scrap the WCA and what might replace it.
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Gosh i hope they do, because so far that sounds like it has highlighted the horrors of the WCA, so the Govt can now say 'yes we realise it was not fit for purpose thats why were scrapping it. The fact that what they're planning to replace it with will be orders of magnitude worse, is the thing i hope they will focus on.

I cant listen myself it will be too triggering, i appreciate your review of it @Trish
 
Simbindi said:
I've heard MPs on Times Radio repeated1y make the 1ink between out of work disab1ed c1aimants and the increase in immigration. They refer to the numbers of job vacancies whi1st ta1king about 'removing the financia1 barriers for sick and disab1ed c1aimants to get back into work' (i.e. the remova1 of the work capabi1ity assessment that a11ows the most sick and disab1ed not to have to seek work or engage in work re1ated activity).

Statistics show most of these vacancies are for jobs in the hea1th and care sector, couriers, 1ow paid physica1 manua1 work, seasona1 agricu1tura1 work or high1y ski11ed tech jobs. The idea of societies most sick, disab1ed and vu1nerab1e peop1e being expected to do these jobs is beyond words.

There's definite1y a revived government fue1ed media campaign against support group c1aimants that started just after the White Paper was pub1ished a1ongside the 1ast budget.
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Yea what was really annoying was that it was dressed up as --- we're helping these people to live a better life --- wish they were e.g. by funding research to address issues like ME/CFS ---. They would say they are in fact - there's a university "chair" (professor --- - university?) funded to provide the "research" --- think PACE.
 
Towards the end they interview Professor Barr who did some research on the WCA and suicides.
Possibly posted elsewhere on the forum was this piece by Mo Stewart
Work capability assessment: review, reform, or replace?
Mo Stewart writes.

27 August 2020
When coordinating the Preventable Harm Project over the past ten years, I benefitted from contact with various Presidents of the BPS on more than one occasion. They were always courteous, always very supportive of the research, and always insistent that the BPS would do more to attract attention to the preventable harm demonstrated by the research, and by the fatally flawed Work Capability Assessment (WCA), as used to restrict access to various disability benefits.

I was therefore encouraged to recently learn that there was a joint response by the BPS and other professional associations for psychological therapies to the Improving Lives Green Paper. What was cause for concern is that, included in the joint recommendations was yet another call for a ‘review and reform of the WCA’. As the coordinator of the Preventable Harm Project, I beg to differ.

Published in March 2019 by the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, the paper identified as ‘Psychological Tyranny Masquerading as Welfare Reform’ demonstrated that the WCA most certainly does not need to be reviewed or reformed. It needs to be abolished.
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Work capability assessment: review, reform, or replace? | BPS
 
The troub1e is that disabi1ity groups and their supporters have been ca11ing for the WCA to be abo1ished, but what they meant was that the decision of whether a c1aimant is unfit to work (or do work re1ated activity) shou1d be made by their doctors, or 1ike as it used to be, by a DWP doctor based on their individua1 hea1th/medica1 impairments. This has a11owed po1iticians to twist things. Obvious1y just removing the WCA without putting a fairer and 1ess stressfu1 assessment in its p1ace is going to cause far more harm than keeping the current imperfect version.
 
Simbindi said:
Obvious1y just removing the WCA without putting a fairer and 1ess stressfu1 assessment in its p1ace is going to cause far more harm than keeping the current imperfect version.
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This is especia11y true in the UK, as the DWP apparent1y don't have any 'duty of care' to c1aimants. Most c1aimant suicides and deaths are caused by c1aimants not being put in the support group when this is what their condition(s) require.

I think this is why the government are driving the current media campaign to 'get disab1ed peop1e back to work', as it distracts the pub1ic from what abo1ishing the WCA wi11 effective1y mean. It's basica11y the remova1 of any state out of work benefit for any c1aimant (I know current1y they say it won't app1y to the contributions based ESA, but that wou1d have to change if there is no WCA to a11ow c1aimants to 'pass' it and c1aim CB ESA indefinite1y).
 
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