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Revealed: The facts about DWP lies

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Benefits, Conservative Party, Corruption, Disability, Health, Housing, Media, People, Politics, Poverty, UK

≈ 22 Comments

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allowance, Atos, benefit, benefit cap, benefits, Coalition, committee, Conservative, Daily Mail, David Frazer, death, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, employment, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, FOI, freedom, government, Grant Shapps, health, Iain Duncan Smith, Incapacity Benefit, information, Job Centre Plus, John Shield, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, Pensions, people, politics, Samuel Miller, sick, social security, support, Tories, Tory, vexatious, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment


Hands up if you're a liar: Both Iain Duncan Smith and Grant Shapps have been outed as using inaccurate material in a manner contrary to officials' advice (if they'd bothered asking for it) in today's meeting.

Hands up if you’re a liar: Both Iain Duncan Smith and Grant Shapps have been outed as using inaccurate material in a manner contrary to officials’ advice (if they’d bothered asking for it) in today’s meeting.

I never expected to see the first round of my fightback against the DWP over my ‘Atos deaths’ FoI request fought out at Westminster – by other people. We truly live in interesting times!

I refer to the ‘information gathering’ session of the Commons Work and Pensions committee that took place this afternoon involving John Shield, Director of Communications and David Frazer, Director of Information, Governance and Security Directorate at the Department for Work and Pensions. They provided some fascinating information on the workings of the Department which may prove extremely helpful in the future.

Readers will recall that my request followed one from Samuel Miller about the number of ESA claimants who died in 2012 – while going through the Atos-run work capability assessment process; while appealing against a decision; or shortly after a decision, no matter what it was. In essence, this would be an update of a DWP statistical release entitled ‘Incapacity Benefits: Deaths of recipients (9 July 2012)’. After a seven-month wait, he was told that the document had been an ‘ad hoc’ statistical release and there was “no intention” of updating it.

Let’s look at that. According to Mr Frazer, “The main way we make statistics available is through the publication of regular statistical series – number of people on working-age benefits, employment programmes and so forth… We release something like 50 statistical series, sometimes four or more times a year.” Why not the number of people who have died while going through the Atos-led assessment process? Is this a political decision?

“We put out regular publications that say ‘this is the latest number of people on working-age benefits; here’s a summary of the key trends and matters around that.” He went on to say this was supported by background information and charts created by dedicated statisticians and analysts. In that context, it stretches credibility for the DWP to say it does not keep statistics on the results of ESA work capability assessments, including – especially – the number of people who have died. This government department has an army of experts compiling data on its activities every day, and it is claiming that it keeps no such information?

He mentioned a ‘tabulation tool’ that allows people to create their own statistics – but this, of course, depends on the figures that are made available. He describes the data sets available as “fairly rich”, but DWP-related deaths are not among them. It is a shame that nobody picked him up on the fact that fatalities are not included. As social security benefits are principally used by people with no other means of support, in order to continue living, citizens of this country expect that to be an important part of this information; it is a key indicator of the efficacy of government policy. And it is not mentioned.

Then he said: “If ministers themselves want to use information publicly, and it’s not readily available from a first-release publication or a tabulation tool, then we also produce what’s known as an ad hoc statistical release… It’ll have the key numbers and advice on how to interpret.”

We know that ‘Incapacity Benefits: Deaths of recipients (9 July 2012)’ was an ad hoc release – so Mr Frazer was saying not only that the information it contained is gathered as a matter of course; he was also saying that this information is routinely kept out of the public domain. There cannot be any other interpretation.

Let’s move on to Freedom of Information requests. I submitted mine, requesting the same information as Mr Miller, plus some extra facts that I consider to be in the public interest. Readers will be aware that my claim was rejected as “vexatious” on the paper-thin grounds that I had written an article on this site, stating that I was submitting a FOI request and suggesting – as an afterthought – that other readers might wish to do the same, the idea being that officials and ministers could judge the strength of feeling on the issue by the number of requests arising from a single refusal, made to an individual who is not – let’s be honest – a popular media personality.

The response wrongly stated that this was “the stated aim of the exercise”, rather than the afterthought it obviously was, refusing my request by claiming it was “vexatious” in that it was “designed to harass the DWP”. Of course it wasn’t. It was designed to get the death statistics into the public domain, as anyone with an ounce of intelligence can tell!

The refusal notice stated: “Compliance with multiple repetitions of a known request also causes a burden, both in terms of costs and diverting staff away from other work, due to the significant time required to administer these requests.”

But Mr Frazer said today that the DWP makes itse responses to FOI requests publicly available on its website. He actually said, on the record: “Besides sending them to the person that’s made the FOI request, they’re readily available to everybody else”. Clearly, then, if someone sends in an FOI request for identical information to that requested by someone else, they can be directed to the relevant webpage with a minimum of effort from DWP staff. The time required is TINY, not “significant” – therefore any claim that a request is “vexatious” on such grounds is obstruction on the part of the authority – abuse of the legislation.

The next factette knocked this one into a proverbial cocked hat: It seems my request was most probably refused by a Conservative DWP Minister, for political reasons. Take a look at this exchange between Dame Anne Begg, chairing the meeting, and Messrs Frazer and Shield.

Anne Begg: Who makes the decision of whether to answer a Freedom of Information request?

David Frazer: In some cases the decision is finally down to the Minister, but on a routine basis it is officials that will routinely answer and prepare them.

Anne Begg: Recently there has been a Freedom of Information request and a reply came back saying that it was a ‘vexatious’ request, and the department wasn’t going to provide the information. Who would make that decision?

David Frazer: In the first instance we have officials who will look at what the request is; they will look at whether it would produce a disproportionate cost for what it is – they will make that judgement, but I believe it will come down to Ministers to make that call. (He is saying it was a political decision).

Anne Begg: The reason given for not providing the information was the person asking it had mentioned something on a blog, and therefore it was interpreted as being vexatious, and therefore they wouldn’t supply the information.

David Frazer: Okay. I think that’s fairly rare.

John Shield: My understanding of what happens is that requests come in, officials analyse – look at those requests, go through the process David has described. Once that has happened, a recommendation is made, and that is sent to Ministers as part of a wider brief on FOIs. But of course we can check that for you to make sure that is copper-bottomed, 100 per cent accurate.

Go ahead if you like John, but I’ve already had a look at the Information Commissioner’s advice on “vexatious” requests – and you’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Having been sold down the river by their ministers, the two officials can take heart that their responses to further questions managed to inflict considerable damage in return. Referring to Iain Duncan Smith’s claim that 8,000 people moved off-benefit and into work before the start of the benefit cap, in order to avoid being affected by it, it seems this was based on two sets of statistics – an estimate of the number of people the DWP believed would be affected, and information from Job Centre Plus that people had sought advice on the benefit cap, and 8,000 people were no longer on benefit.

It seems that Iain Duhhhhh… Smith put two and two together (conflated the information) got 8,000 and then wrote a silly little opinion piece in the Daily Mail, despite the fact that the information carried a warning from DWP officials.

“In the context of that quote, that was in relation to an opinion piece given to the Daily Mail where the Secretary of State was stating his opinion on the statistics and not only basing it on that but basing it on what staff had been telling him about the impact of the cap, the management information that he had been receiving, and what claimants had actually been saying to him,” said Mr Shield. “So that was a judgement formed by him. As a politician, he can make those judgements around what he thinks data is saying in the context of everything else.”

He continued: “This was part of an article from the Secretary of State that made out that view… It would have had some involvement from DWP officials, special advisors and the Secratary of State.”

Dame Anne Begg asked the obvious question: “So no-one checking the written articles from the Secretary of State – from the statisticians’ point of view – actually said ‘Secretary of State – if you look at the little footnote… It says that you cannot interpret that these people have gone into work as a result of these statistics’. Nobody pointed that out?”

Mr Shield’s response was revealing: “If a Minister is doing very much an opinion piece which is about their reflections and views on how policy is working and performing, sometimes they’ll be produced without press office involvement at all. Sometimes they’ll be produced by special advisors; sometimes they’ll be produced partly by us, partly by advisors, partly by ministers.”

He admitted that, “in this instance it did involve the press office”, but added: “I’m just trying to be clear that not everything that comes out of the department will go through us – particularly when there are political ends.”

In other words, it seems he’s saying that Smith ignored his officers’ advice and went ahead with a false statement. That’s my interpretation. Can anyone see any other way he could have been playing it?

Finally, for this article, let’s look at Grant Shapps and the 878,000 people he said shuffled off ESA because they were afraid to take the work capability assessment. We all know, by now, that the statement was false; it was a figure covering a five year period, and included significant numbers of people who had quit the benefit for many other reasons. The total number who had dropped out before taking the WCA was something like 19,700, who may have had their own good reasons for doing so.

What was Mr Shield’s defence of the Conservative Party chairman?

“This is purely a party piece of output. People look at the website, form their own judgements and interpretations and put out their own material…. We stay away from the politics of these matters.”

So the meeting concluded that Conservative ministers have withheld information, despite receiving perfectly valid Freedom of Information requests, for political reasons. The Secretary of State made an inaccurate statement about the effect of the benefit cap, despite being warned about the facts, for political reasons. And the Conservative Party Chairman made up a story – for political reasons. Liars all.

We should be grateful to the DWP officials for making that perfectly clear.

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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).

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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.

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