• About Mike Sivier

Mike Sivier's blog

~ by the writer of Vox Political

Tag Archives: coward

This benefits bully harasses the powerless but runs away from criticism

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Cost of living, Disability, Employment, People, Politics, Poverty, tax credits, UK, unemployment, Workfare

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

allowance, annual report, Atos, benefit, benefit cap, benefits, bully, Coalition, committee, Commons, Conservative, court, coward, dead, death, Debbie Sayers, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, die, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, DLA, DWP, employer, employment, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, fabricate, false, fraud, Freedom of Information, George Osborne, government, Guardian, harass, health, HM Revenue and Customs, hmrc, Iain Duncan Smith, IDS, Information Commissioner, internet, intimidate, Ipsos Mori, Jayne Linney, Job Centre, John Major, law, liability, liar, Mandatory Work Activity, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, Pensions, people, politics, Polly Toynbee, Public Interest Lawyers, regulation, retrospective, returned to unit, RTU, ruling, sick, social security, staff, statistics, support, Tories, Tory, unemployment, Universal Credit, vexatious, Vox Political, welfare, work, Workfare


131101IDS1

Several months ago this blog accused Iain Duncan Smith of being a liar and a coward because, not only had he fabricated statistics on the number of people leaving benefits because of his new benefit cap, but he had also weaseled his way out of an appearance before the Commons Work and Pensions Committee to account for this behaviour.

The very next day, we had to apologise (to readers) and publish a correction saying that the man we call ‘Returned To Unit’ would be attending a follow-up meeting in September, at which the 100,000-signature petition calling him to account for the benefit cap lies, organised by Jayne Linney and Debbie Sayers, would also be presented to MPs.

Apparently the meeting was being timed to coincide with publication of the DWP’s annual report for 2012-13.

Now it is November, and we have still had no meeting with RTU. Nor have we seen the annual report, which is now almost eight months late. Meanwhile the calamities at the DWP have been mounting up.

The latest appears in a Guardian report published yesterday, about the ongoing disaster that is Universal Credit. You may remember, Dear Reader, that the Department for Work and Pensions has admitted it had to write off £34 million that had been spent on the scheme; it subsequently emerged that the total amount to be written off might actually be as high as £161 million.

The Guardian article appears to confirm this, adding £120 million to the £34 already written off if the DWP follows one of two possible plans to take the nightmarish scheme forward.

This would restart Universal Credit from scratch, creating a system based on the Internet – and reducing the need for Job Centre staff – and tends to confirm the suggestion that staff are seen as a liability in the government’s plan to cut back on benefit payments; despite being told to bully, harass and intimidate everyone who darkens their doors, they have an annoying inclination to help people claim the benefits due to them.

The other plan would attempt to salvage the existing system, and is understood to be favoured by the Secretary-in-a-State. The drawback is that it could lead to an even greater waste of taxpayers’ money (not that this has ever been a consideration for Mr… Smith in the past. He’ll waste millions like water while depriving people of the pennies they need to survive).

Universal Credit aims to merge six major benefits and tax credits into one, restricting eligibility for the new benefit in order to cut down on payouts. It relies on the government creating a computer programme that can synchronise systems run by HM Revenue and Customs, the DWP itself, and employers. So far, this has proved impossible and a planned rollout in April was restricted to just one Job Centre, where staff handled only the simplest claims and worked them out on paper. Later revelations showed that the system as currently devised has no way of weeding out fraudulent claims.

A leaked risk assessment says the web-based scheme is “unproven… at this scale”, and that it would not be possible to roll out the new system “within the preferred timescale”. Smith has continually maintained that it will be delivered on time and on budget but, as concerns continue to be raised by senior civil servants that systems are not working as expected and there are too many design flaws, it seems likely this is a career-ending claim.

Is this why he hasn’t deigned to account for himself before the Work and Pensions Committee?

Earlier this week, the government lost its appeal against a court ruling that its regulations for Workfare and other mandatory work activity schemes were illegal. Public Interest Lawyers, who handled the case against the government, has taken the view that anyone who fell foul of the regulations may now take action to get their money back. But the matter is complicated by the fact that the government unwisely passed a retrospective law to legalise the rules, in a bid to stop the 228,000 benefit claimants it had sanctioned after they refused to work for their benefits from demanding the money that ministers had – in effect – stolen from them. Iain Duncan Smith is the man behind this mess.

Is this why he hasn’t deigned to account for himself before the committee?

We have yet to learn why this man felt justified in claiming 8,000 – and then 12,000 – people had left benefits because of the £26,000 cap he introduced in April (he claimed it is equal to average family income but in fact it is £5,000 and change short of that amount as he failed to consider benefits that such families could draw). Information from polling company Ipsos Mori showed that the real number of people who had dropped their claims after hearing of the scheme was more likely to be 450 – just nine per cent of the figure he originally quoted.

Is this why he hasn’t put a meeting with the committee in his diary?

Perhaps we should not be surprised, though – it seems that RTU has never had a decent grip on the way his department works. For example, he allowed George Osborne to cancel Disability Living Allowance for one-fifth of claimants in 2010, claiming that the benefit had been “spiralling” out of control because it had 3.1 million claimants – triple the number since it was introduced in 1992. Smith said the rise was “inexplicable” but in fact the explanation is simplicity itself, as The Guardian‘s Polly Toynbee pointed out just two days ago:

“DLA is only paid to those of working age, but when they retire they keep it, so as more people since 1992 move into retirement, numbers rise fast. There has been no change in numbers with physical conditions, despite a larger population; back injuries have declined with the decline of heavy industry. There has been a real growth in numbers with learning disabilities: more premature babies survive but with disabilities, while those with Down’s syndrome no longer die young. More people with mental illness claim DLA now, following changes in case law: there has been no increase in mental illness, with 7% of the population seriously ill enough to be receiving treatment, yet only 1% claim DLA. Psychosis is the commonest DLA diagnosis, hardly a trivial condition. This pattern of disability mirrors the rest of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, with nothing exceptional here.”

In other words, from the moment he took over this hugely important government department, with its huge – and controversial – budget, Iain Duncan Smith had about as much understanding of its workings as a child.

It seems Sir John Major was exactly right when he expressed fears about the DWP Secretary’s ability last week, claiming his genius “has not been proven”.

Is this why we’ve seen neither hide nor … head of the Secretary of State?

Finally, Dear Reader, you will be aware that Vox Political submitted a Freedom of Information request to the DWP, asking for up-to-date statistics on the number of Employment and Support Allowance claimants who have died during a claim or while appealing against a decision about a claim – and that the request was dismissed on the indefensible grounds that it was “vexatious”. This was not good enough so the matter went to the Information Commissioner’s office and, according to an email received this week, will soon be brought to a conclusion.

Is this why Iain Duncan Smith is hiding?

Perhaps it’s time to drag him out of his bolt-hole and force some answers out of him.

Jayne (Linney), in her blog, has called on people who use Twitter to start tweeting demands for Smith to come forward, using the hashtags #whereisIDS and #DWPLateReview. This is good, and those of you who do so are welcome to use any of the information in this article as ammunition in such a campaign.

There is nothing to stop anyone writing to the press – local or national – to ask what is going on and why benefit claimants are being left in suspense about the future of their claims. People have to work out how they will pay their bills, and the continued uncertainty caused by Mr… Smith’s catalogue of calamities is causing problems up and down the country.

A short message to your MP might help stir the Secretary of State out of his slumber, also.

In fact, let’s use all the tools at our disposal to expose this man for what he is – just as this blog stated in July and in May: A liar and a coward who has committed contempt of Parliament and should be expelled – not just from public office, but from public life altogether.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

Vox Political needs your help!
This independent blog’s only funding comes from readers’ contributions.
Without YOUR help, we cannot keep going.
You can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Alternatively, you can buy Vox Political books!
The second – Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook
The first, Strong Words and Hard Times
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Email
  • Print
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Iain Duncan Smith WILL face Work and Pensions Committee… in September

07 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Corruption, Crime, Disability, Politics, UK

≈ 36 Comments

Tags

benefit, benefits, cap, caution, Coalition, committee, Conservative, coward, David Frazer, Debbie Sayers, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, DWP, evidence, expel, falsehood, government, Iain Duncan Smith, Jayne Linney, John Shields, liar, lie, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, Pensions, people, petition, politics, sick, social security, statistic, suspend, Tories, Tory, uk statistics authority, Vox Political, welfare, work


Cool your engines, everybody; it seems that Iain Duncan Smith was never going to the Work and Pensions Committee meeting in June, despite what we had all been led to believe.

This morning I received a message from Jayne Linney, one of the authors of the petition to make LieDS account for himself before the Parliamentary Committee.

It said that, in fact, he never was going to attend the committee in June/July: “This is an evidence-gathering meeting only. IDS is to attend the follow up Q&A session on September 4 when we are also submitting the petition.

“We’ve been working with Anne Begg, Sheila Gilmore and Debbie Abrahams on this and as far as I know this remains the same.”

This information supercedes the notice on Jayne and Debbie Sayers’ petition website that states, “Iain Duncan Smith will face questions by the Committee over his department’s use of statistics in June”.

I am grateful to Jayne (and Debbie, who also got in touch) for providing this corrected information. It is disappointing that the officials who have been working on this matter did not see fit to keep the public informed about developments. I know many other people, besides myself, spent much of June on tenterhooks, waiting for the meeting – with Mr… Smith – to take place and wondering why it was taking so long.

Apologies for the misinformation in my previous article – there was, of course, no intention to lead you all up the garden path (as the saying goes).

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Email
  • Print
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Iain Duncan Smith – not just a liar; also a coward

06 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Corruption, Crime, Disability, Politics, UK

≈ 83 Comments

Tags

benefit, benefits, cap, caution, Coalition, committee, Conservative, coward, David Frazer, Debbie Sayers, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, DWP, evidence, expel, falsehood, government, Iain Duncan Smith, Jayne Linney, John Shields, liar, lie, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, Pensions, people, petition, politics, sick, social security, statistic, suspend, Tories, Tory, uk statistics authority, Vox Political, welfare, work


He thinks he got away with it: Look at that smug smile. But Iain... Smith has committed contempt of Parliament. He admitted his guilt by failing to explain his actions to a Parliamentary committee and now he must be expelled from Westminster. Nothing less will suffice.

He thinks he got away with it: Look at that smug smile. But Iain… Smith has committed contempt of Parliament. He admitted his guilt by failing to explain his actions to a Parliamentary committee and now he must be expelled from Westminster. Nothing less will suffice.

We were all so thrilled at the time. After being outed as a liar by some of our favourite blogs, and after more than 100,000 people signed a petition calling for him to be held to account, we heard that Iain Duncan Smith was to be called before Parliament’s Work and Pensions committee to account for the statistical falsehoods he has been spreading around Westminster and the UK like a new disease.

Now we learn that he will not, after all, be appearing to give evidence before the committee on the production and release of DWP statistics, despite that meeting having been postponed from June until mid-July.

The session, covering recent UK Statistics Authority investigations into complaints about benefit statistics and the DWP’s response, the quality and accessibility of the department’s statistics, its processes for preparing and releasing statistics, and its role in helping the media interpret those statistics, will instead question two civil servants.

They are David Frazer, head of information, governance and security directorate at the DWP; and John Shields, director of communications at the DWP. And they are completely uninteresting.

I can tell you what they’ll say right now. They’ll say they produced the statistics in good faith, all with warnings on them, telling ministers like the Secretary-in-a-State that they should not be misrepresented in certain ways (especially the ways he has misrepresented them).

For example: Smith’s claim that “Already we’ve seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the [benefits] cap move into jobs. This clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact.”

We know there is no evidence to support this claim. We also know that the DWP officials who provided the figures issued an explicit caution, that they were “not intended to show the additional numbers entering work as a direct result of the contact”.

It is therefore pointless to interrogate the officials over the wrongdoing of the Secretary of State, or any other Conservative or Coalition MP who has bent the facts before the public.

The no-show by the DWP’s head honcho will be a huge let-down, especially for the 100,332 people who signed disability activists Jayne Linney and Debbie Sayers’ petition for the Work and Pensions Committee to hold Iain Duncan Smith to account for his lies.

After the committee announced that it would question him in June, they wrote: “We are really proud that we started this petition. It’s often feels like politicians get away with saying whatever they like. By starting this petition we’ve shown that everyone has the tools to call politicians out if they try to make things up. They can’t get away with spinning statistics any longer.”

It is now apparent that politicians think they can get away with it if they don’t bother to turn up and explain themselves.

So let’s just put it to the Work and Pensions committee that it should forget about the meeting, which is now due to take place on July 10.

Let’s all accept Iain Duncan Smith’s refusal to attend as what it is – an act of cowardice and an admission of guilt.

If he won’t defend himself, then he must stand guilty of the offence.

This brings us to the question of the penalty he should pay.

I refer you to my article earlier this year, in which I quoted Parliamentary convention: “Apparently there is an offence, here in the UK, known as Contempt of Parliament. An MP is guilty of this if he or she deliberately misleads Parliament, and any MP accused of the offence may be suspended or expelled.

“It’s time for Iain Duncan Smith to put up or shut up. He must either admit that he lied to Parliament and to the people in order to justify his despicable treatment of the most vulnerable people in the country…

“… or he must be expelled from Parliament like the disgrace that he is.”

He has made it clear that he will admit nothing. He won’t even bother to explain himself.

There is now only one option available. It’s time he got the boot.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Email
  • Print
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Vox Political

Vox Political

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Vox Political

  • RSS - Posts

Blogroll

  • Another Angry Voice
  • Ayes to the Left
  • Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
  • The Green Benches
  • The Void

Recent Posts

  • The Coming of the Sub-Mariner – and the birth of the Marvel Universe (Mike Reads the Marvels: Fantastic Four #4)
  • ‘The Greatest Comic Magazine in the World!’ (Mike reads the Marvels: Fantastic Four #3)
  • Here come the Skrulls! (Mike Reads The Marvels: Fantastic Four #2)
  • Mike Reads The Marvels: Fantastic Four #1
  • Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 u-turns (Pandemic Journal: June 17)

Archives

  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011

Topics

  • Austerity
  • Banks
  • Bedroom Tax
  • Benefits
  • Business
  • Children
  • Comedy
  • Conservative Party
  • Corruption
  • Cost of living
  • council tax
  • Crime
  • Defence
  • Democracy
  • Disability
  • Discrimination
  • Doctor Who
  • Drugs
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Employment
  • Employment and Support Allowance
  • Environment
  • European Union
  • Flood Defence
  • Food Banks
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Fracking
  • Health
  • Housing
  • Human rights
  • Humour
  • Immigration
  • International Aid
  • Justice
  • Labour Party
  • Law
  • Liberal Democrats
  • Llandrindod Wells
  • Maternity
  • Media
  • Movies
  • Neoliberalism
  • pensions
  • People
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Poverty
  • Powys
  • Privatisation
  • Public services
  • Race
  • Railways
  • Religion
  • Roads
  • Satire
  • Scotland referendum
  • Sport
  • Tax
  • tax credits
  • Television
  • Terrorism
  • Trade Unions
  • Transport
  • UK
  • UKIP
  • Uncategorized
  • unemployment
  • Universal Credit
  • USA
  • Utility firms
  • War
  • Water
  • Workfare
  • Zero hours contracts

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Mike Sivier's blog
    • Join 168 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Mike Sivier's blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: