High Court throws out Duncan Smith’s “flawed and tawdry” retrospective workfare law

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allowance, appeal, benefit, Cait Reilly, compensation, Court of Appeal, criminal, Department, Disability Living Allowance, dismiss, DLA, DWP, employment, ESA, european convention, government, High Court, human rights, Iain Duncan Smith, IB, illegal, Incapacity, Jobseeker's Allowance, Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013, judicial review, loophole, Mandatory Work Activity, national interest, Pensions, Personal Independence Payment, PIP, Poundland, retroactive, retrospective, sanction, support, Supreme Court, trial, Vox Political, work, Work Programme, Workfare

Criminal: Iain Duncan Smith has made the UK government into a criminal regime, illegally victimising its most vulnerable citizens.

Iain Duncan Smith took an metaphorical slap in the face from the High Court today when Mrs Justice Lang said his retroactive law to refuse docked payments to jobseekers was not legal.

The Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013 was rushed onto the statute books after the DWP discovered the rules under which it had docked Jobseekers’ Allowance from 228,000 people, who had refused to take part in Workfare schemes, were illegal.

The ruling does not mean that everyone who was penalised for refusing to take part, or for leaving the scheme once they had started it and realised what it was, may claim back the JSA that had been withdrawn from them.

But anyone who appealed against a benefit sanction on the basis of the previous decision will be entitled to win their appeals and be repaid the withheld benefits – as Vox Political advised at the time. That payout could be as high as £130 million.

The judge said retrospective application of the 2013 law conflicted with the European Convention on Human Rights and “interfered with the right to a fair trial” of all those affected.

(This is, of course, one reason why the government wants to repeal the Human Rights Act – your human rights obstruct ministers’ ability to abuse you.)

This is the latest twist in a legal challenge brought by Cait Reilly, a graduate who fell foul of the scheme, in 2012. She demanded a judicial review on the grounds that being forced to give up voluntary work in a museum (she wanted to be a museum curator) to stack shelves in Poundland breached her human rights.

Poundland no longer takes part in mandatory work activity schemes run by the UK government.

Her challenge succeeded when the Court of Appeal ruled that she had not been properly notified about the scheme. This meant that the government was guilty of criminal acts in removing benefit from Ms Reilly and hundreds of thousands of others.

In response, the Coalition passed an Act that retrospectively legalised its actions – but claimants argued that this was unfair and demanded their compensation.

In the meantime, Iain Duncan Smith’s own appeal was heard – and dismissed – by the Supreme Court.

And after the Act was passed, it became clear that the Coalition had known since 2011 that the policies it was enforcing do more harm than good and are not in the national interest.

Mrs Justice Lang said today (July 4) that “the absence of any consultation with representative organisations” as well as the lack of scrutiny by Parliamentary committees had led to “misconceptions about the legal justification for the retrospective legislation”.

The 2013 Act introduced a new “draconian provision, unique to this cohort of claimants” which was “not explained or justified” by the government in Parliament “at the time”.

Mrs Justice Lang rejected the Secretary of State’s assertion that flaws in the 2011 Regulations were simply “a technicality or a loophole”, that the 2013 Act sought to give effect to Parliament’s ‘original intention’ or that repayments to benefits claimants would be “an undeserved windfall”.

She also recognised that it would be “unjust to categorise the claimants in the Cait Reilly case as claimants “who have not engaged with attempts made by the state to return them to work”, as asserted by the Department for Work and Pensions.

“This case is another massive blow to this Government’s flawed and tawdry attempts to make poor people on benefits work for companies, who already make massive profits, for free,” said solicitor Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, who appeared for the unemployed.

“Last year the Supreme Court told Iain Duncan Smith and the Coalition government that the scheme was unlawful. In this case the High Court has now told the Government that the attempt to introduce retrospective legislation, after the DWP had lost in the Court of Appeal, is unlawful and a breach of the Human Rights Act and is a further disgraceful example of how far this Government is prepared to go to flout our constitution and the rule of law. [bolding mine]

“I call on the DWP to ensure that the £130 million of benefits unlawfully withheld from the poorest section of our society is now repaid.”

So there it is, in black and white. Iain Duncan Smith has made the Coalition government a criminal organisation, guilty of 228,000 human rights violations.

This is a serious matter; some of these people may have been put in serious financial hardship as a result of the Coalition’s actions. One hopes very much that nobody died but if they did, those fatalities should be added to the many thousands who have passed away as a result of Iain Duncan Smith’s homicidal regime for claimants of incapacity benefits.

Let us not forget, also, that we remain at the mercy of these tyrants. Iain Duncan Smith has announced he intends to waste yet more taxpayers’ money on another appeal. In the meantime, a DWP spokeswoman said the legislation remained “in force” and the government would not be compensating anyone pending the outcome of its appeal.

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Art attack on Coalition policies that drive people to their deaths

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allowance, art, benefit, Coalition, Conservative, Democrat, Department, Disability Living Allowance, DLA, DWP, employment, ESA, government, hb, housing benefit, IB, Incapacity Benefit, Lib Dem, Liberal, Melanie Cutler, memorial, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, People of Thurrock, Personal Independence Payment, PIP, politics, Reform, sick, social security, Stewardship, suicide, support, Tories, Tory, victim, welfare, work

A UK artist has created an art installation as a memorial to the suicide victims of welfare reform.

Melanie Cutler contacted Vox Political regarding her piece – ‘Stewardship’ – a few weeks ago, asking, “Do you think I’ll be arrested?”

The response was that it should be unlikely if she informed the media. The artworks have been displayed at the Northampton Degree Show and are currently at the Free Range Exhibition at the Old Truman Brewery building in Brick Lane, London, which ends tomorrow (June 30).

Entry is free and the installation will be located in F Block, B5.

“I have become an artist later on in life,” Melanie told Vox Political. “I was a carer for my son and, a few decades later, my father. I have worked most of my life too, raising three children.

“Only recently, while studying fine art at University I found my health deteriorating. I have a cocktail of conditions – Type 1 diabetes (diagnosed last year), Coeliac disease, asthma, rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis (currently being investigated), osteoarthritis, psoriasis and a brain tumour (thankfully benign and inactive). I have also lived with depression for almost all my adult life.

“I wanted my work to articulate how I feel about certain issues. In March this year I pitched up in Thurrock, a marginal seat which will be hotly fought-over in the run-up to the next general election. I sat in front of a blank canvas and asked the people of the town to tell me how they felt about welfare reform, the press and the 2015 General Election. I took a team of people to film and photograph the event and to explain to people what the work was about.

‘People of Thurrock’ in the making. Artist Melanie Cutler sits, silenced, while residents of Thurrock write their opinions of ‘welfare reform’ on the canvas.

“Buoyed on by the reaction to ‘People of Thurrock’, I went on to something else I felt was an important issue; I put welfare reform under the microscope and conducted research around this issue. I was struck by the amount of people who, through no fault of their own, seek to end their own lives as they feel they have no other option. My own family has been touched by suicide and one of my own children is on ESA and awaiting an interview with ATOS.”

‘Stewardship’: Each plaque features the name of a ‘welfare reform’ victim and a description of how they died.

‘Stewardship’: This memorial is to Paul Reekie, the Scottish poet and writer who took his own life in 2010. Letters left on his table stated that his Housing Benefit and Incapacity Benefit had been stopped.
The poet’s death led to the creation of the Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign in Defence of Disability Rights.

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Cumulative effect of welfare reform revealed – deprived areas hit much harder than the rich

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allowance, austerity, BBC, business, Centre, close, commission, communities, community, cost, cumulative impact assessment, David Cameron, demonstration, deprivation, deprived, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disability news service, disabled, DLA, DNS, economic, EHRC, employment, equalities, ESA, esther mcvey, financial loss, human rights, IB, Incapacity, Landman Economics, mark hoban, Mike Penning, National Institute, NIESR, Personal Independence Payment, PIP, Reform, Regional Economic, report, Revenue, rich, Sheffield Hallam University, shop, Social Research, social security, spending, support, tax, transparent, travel, viability, welfare

Deprived parts of Glasgow were worst-affected by ‘welfare reform’ according to The Courier [Image: thecourier.co.uk].

The headline should not come as a surprise – of course changes that cut benefits for the poor are going to harm them more than rich people.

But do you remember David Cameron’s claim that his government would be the most transparent ever?

Isn’t it interesting, then, that the independent Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has found a way to compile information on the effects of tax, social security and other spending changes on disabled people, after the government repeatedly claimed it could not be done?

It seems Mr Cameron has something to hide, after all.

We already have a taste of what we can expect, courtesy of our friends in Scotland, who commissioned the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University to study the relationship between deprivation and financial loss caused by “welfare reform”.

The study shows that more than £1.6 billion a year will be removed from the Scottish economy, with the biggest losses based in changes to incapacity benefits. The Scottish average loss, per adult of working age, is £460 per year (compared with a British average of £470) but the hardest hit area was impoverished Glasgow Carlton, where adults lost an average of £880 per year.

In affluent St Andrews, the average hit was just £180 per year.

Of course, the cumulative effect will hit the poorest communities much harder – with an average of £460 being taken out of these communities it is not only households that will struggle to make ends meet; as families make cutbacks, local shops and businesses will lose revenue and viability. If they close, then residents will have to travel further for groceries and to find work, meaning extra travel costs will remove even more much-needed cash from their budget.

For a nationwide picture, the EHRC commissioned the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and the consultancy Landman Economics to develop a way of assessing the cumulative impact of “welfare reform”.

The report will be published in the summer, but Landman Economics has already told Disability News Service that the work was “not actually that difficult”.

Why, then have Mark Hoban, Esther McVey and Mike Penning, the current minister for the disabled, all claimed that a cumulative assessment is impossible?

Some might say they have a vested interest in keeping the public ignorant of the true devastation being wreaked on Britain’s most vulnerable people by Coalition austerity policies that will ultimately harm everybody except the very rich.

Some might say this is why the BBC – under the influence of a Conservative chairman – failed to report a mass demonstration against austerity by at least 50,000 people that started on its very doorstep.

Misguided conspiracy theorists, all!

Or are they?

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Iain Duncan Smith blames rise of food banks on ‘evangelism’ – pot, kettle, black?

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allowance, benefit, Church Action on Poverty, claimant, death, Department, disability, disabled, DWP, Easterhouse, employment, epiphany, ESA, evangelism, food bank, Gallowgates, Glasgow, government, health, Iain Duncan Smith, IB, Incapacity, Laurie Penny, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Neil Couling, New Statesman, Oxfam, Pensions, people, Political Scrapbook, politics, road to damascus, sick, social security, support, Trussell Trust, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare, work, work capability assessment

Crocodile tears: Everybody thought Iain Duncan Smith had a change of heart at Easterhouse and intended to help people. Instead, under his direction, the Department for Work and Pensions has caused the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

The Department for Work and Pensions reckons that the rise of food banks has more to do with Christian evangelism than with helping people who can’t afford food because of Conservative government policies.

According to Political Scrapbook, DWP director Neil Couling said: “For the Trussell Trust, food banks started as an evangelical device to get religious groups in touch with their local communities.”

How interesting.

Has Mr Couling forgotten Iain Duncan Smith’s ‘Road to Damascus’ moment on the housing estates of Easterhouse and Gallowgates in Glasgow in 2002?

Struck by the run-down housing, visible signs of drug abuse and general lack of hope, Roman Catholic Duncan Smith set out – with evangelical zeal – to do something about it.

He now sits in a government that kicks people out of their run-down houses and turns the lack of hope into abject despair by cutting off the benefits they need to survive (his government has pushed wages even further below the amount necessary for people to be able to live without government assistance than ever before).

As New Statesman columnist Laurie Penny puts it, Duncan Smith pretends to be “on a quasireligious, reforming crusade”, approaching his work with “particular fervour and self-righteous indignation”.

So, really, who do you think is misusing the plight of the very poor as an “evangelical device” for his own “quasireligious” ends?

Couling’s attitude defies belief. He refers to a report from Oxfam – one of Britain’s most highly-respected anti-poverty charities – together with Church Action on Poverty and the Trussell Trust, as “unverified figures from disparate sources”.

Okay, then. How about the DWP supplying us with all the figures it collects, and we’ll do the working-out?

We can start with the deaths of people receiving incapacity benefits.

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Will Question Time’s panel do what Parliament can’t – and hold Iain Duncan Smith to account?

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'ad hoc', allowance, Atos, BBC, benefit, biopsychosocial, Coalition, Conservative, corporate manslaughter, Democrat, Department, Disability Living Allowance, DLA, DWP, employment, ESA, fit for work, FOI, Freedom of Information, government, human rights, Iain Duncan Smith, Ian Hislop, IB, IDS, Incapacity Benefit, incapacity benefits: deaths of claimants, Lib Dem, Liberal, Michael Meacher, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Owen Jones, Parliament, Pensions, people, Personal Independence Payment, Peter Lilley, PIP, politics, Private Eye, Question Time, Reform, returned to unit, RTU, sick, social security, support, theory, Tories, Tory, Universal Credit, unum, vexatious, welfare, work, work capability assessment

Picture the scene if you can: It’s shortly after 11.35pm on Thursday (June 5) and all my inboxes are suddenly overflowing – with the same message: Iain Duncan Smith will be on Question Time next week.

The implication was that there is an opportunity here – to show the public the homicidal – if not genocidal – nature of the changes to the benefit system this man mockingly describes as “welfare reforms”.

We were given the name of only one other panellist who will be appearing in the June 12 show, broadcast from King’s Lynn: Private Eye editor Ian Hislop. He is certainly the kind of man who should relish a chance to take the politician we call RTU (Returned To Unit) down a peg or two – in fact the Eye has run articles on DWP insanity fairly regularly over the past two decades at least.

Personally I’d like to see him joined by Michael Meacher and Owen Jones, at the very least. A rematch between Smith and Jones would be terrific television (but it is unlikely that the coward IDS would ever agree to it).

All such a panel would need to get started is a question about “welfare reform”. Then they could start at the beginning with the involvement of the criminal US insurance corporation Unum, which has been advising the British government since Peter Lilley was Secretary of State for Social Security. There appears to be a moratorium on even the mention of Unum in the British press so, if this is the first you’ve heard of it, now you know why.

Unum’s version of an unproven strand of psychology known as biopsychosocial theory informs the current work capability assessment, used by the coalition government to evaluate whether a claimant of sickness benefits (Incapacity Benefit/Employment Support Allowance or Disability Living Allowance/Personal Independence Payment) should receive any money. The assessment leans heavily on the psycho part of the theory – seeking to find ways of telling claimants their illnesses are all in the mind and they are fit for work. This is how Unum wormed its way out of paying customers when their health insurance policies matured – and it is also how Unum received its criminal conviction in the States.

Here in the UK, the work capability assessment appears to have led to the deaths of 3,500 ESA claimants between January and November 2011 – 73 per week or one every two hours or so. These are the only statistics available to us as the Department for Work and Pensions stopped publicising the figures in response to a public outcry against the deaths.

Members of the public have tried to use the Freedom of Information Act to pry updated figures from the DWP. I know of one man who was told that the 2011 figures were provided in an ‘ad hoc’ release and there was no plan for a follow-up; the figures are not collected and processed routinely. The last part of this was a lie, meaning the DWP had illegally failed to respond to a legitimate FoI request.

Having seen that individual attempts to use the FoI Act to get the information had failed, I put in a request of my own and suggested others do the same, resulting in (I am told) 23 identical requests to the DWP in June last year. Apparently this is vexatious behaviour and when I took the DWP to a tribunal earlier this year, it won.

But the case brought out useful information, such as a DWP employee’s admission that “the Department does hold, and could provide within the cost limit, some of the information requested”.

Now, why would the Department, and Iain Duncan Smith himself, want to withhold these figures – and lie to the public about having them? It seems to me that the death toll must have increased, year on year. That is the only explanation that makes sense.

The DWP, and its Secretary-in-a-State, have had their attention drawn to the deaths many times, if not in interviews then in Parliament. DWP representatives (if not Mr Duncan Smith himself) have taken pains to say they have been improving the system – but still they won’t say how many deaths have taken place since November 2011.

If it can be proved that DWP ministers were aware of the problem (and we know they are) but did not change the situation enough to slow the death rate (as seems to be the case), then it seems clear that there has been an intention to ignore the fact that people have been dying unnecessarily. This runs against Human Rights legislation, and a strong case could be made for the corporate manslaughter of thousands of people.

And that’s just ESA!

When we come to PIP, there’s the issue of the thousands of claimants who have been parked – without assessment – for months at a time, waiting to find out if they’ll receive any money.

Universal Credit currently has no budget, it seems, but the DWP is clearly still wasting millions of pounds on a project that will never work as it is currently conceived.

It would be nice to think that at least one member of Thursday’s panel might read this article and consider standing up for the people, but it’s a long shot.

Possibly a million-to-one chance, in fact.

According to Terry Pratchett, that makes it an absolute certainty!

Here’s hoping…

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How can the government’s new ESA specialist claim he knows nothing about all the deaths?

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73, allowance, benefit, benefits, Coalition, committee, Commons, Conservative, deaths, Debbie Abrahams, Department, disability, disabled, DWP, employment, ESA, government, health, IB, Incapacity Benefit, Malcolm Harrington, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Paul Litchfield, Pensions, people, politics, recipients, sick, social security, specialist, Sue Marsh, support, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment

Dr Paul Litchfield, here pictured giving evidence at another committee meeting – so it’s probably another load of tripe.

An evidence session on Employment and Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessments was held by the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee on Wednesday – and was notable for the fact that the ‘expert’ hired to review the system claimed to know nothing about the thousands of deaths taking place because of the current system.

Dr Paul Litchfield OBE was hired to take over from Professor Malcolm Harrington to carry out the fourth annual independent review of the assessment process. It seems Prof Harrington was replaced amicably, but evidence has come to light that he was not happy with political decisions that ran against his findings.

A claim that the government was taking “appropriate steps” in areas singled out for improvement by Prof Harrington was disproved when it was revealed that almost two-thirds of the 25 recommendations he made in his year one review were not fully and successfully implemented.

The government also claimed, repeatedly, that Prof Harrington had supported the migration of Incapacity Benefit claimants to ESA. When fellow blogger Sue Marsh contacted him for confirmation, he responded: “I NEVER—repeat–NEVER agreed to the IB migration. I would have preferred that it be delayed but by the time I said that, the political die had been cast. I then said that I would review progress of that during my reviews. The decision was political. I could not influence it. IS THAT CRYSTAL CLEAR?”

The vehemence of his response suggests some friction with his former employers at the very least – and over “political” decisions.

Now we have Dr Litchfield, who claims to have no information about the staggering number of people who have died after going through the assessment system he is being paid to review. Doesn’t that seem – at the very least – a little odd?

He could have, at least, looked up the government’s own statistical release ‘Incapacity Benefits – Deaths of Recipients’ from July 2012. It is long out-of-date and pressure on the government for fresh figures has been stonewalled for two years, but it does show that 10,600 people died between January and November 2011 – including an average of 73 people every week, when the system claimed they were still being assessed or should be getting better. These figures are believed to be inaccurate measures as the government does not monitor deaths of people who have been refused the benefit – the vast majority of claimants.

It seems we are dealing with another Tory yes-man, hired not to improve ESA, but to make it and the government look good.

Dr Litchfield’s attitude is revealed on the video record of the meeting, which is available on the Parliament UK website, starting two hours, 11 minutes and 41 seconds into the recording.

Committee member Debbie Abrahams (Labour) had just received a Tweet stating: “Litchfield doesn’t want to come out and say scrap WCA because 10,600 dead or he’ll be out of a job, slime bag.”

Turning to Litchfield, she said: “I’ve just been contacted by someone who is commenting on the number of people that are dying every week as a result of being found fit for work after an assessment. I don’t know if you’d like to comment on that?”

The response – from the man who is supposed to have every scrap of information about ESA, let us remember – was as follows: “I don’t have any information of that type; I haven’t seen numbers on that. Clearly every case would be a tragedy.”

That is infuriating for campaigners – one of whom contacted Vox Political and stated: “The wicked toad said he had no knowledge of the deaths. What a lie, how evil – it’s common knowledge, it’s DWP’s own figure, it’s been brought up many times in House of Commons debates… They should sack him and not believe a word he says… no impartiality whatsoever.”

It seems the tragedy, in this case, is the hiring of Dr Litchfield.

Thanks to Katy Marchant for flagging this up.

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Hollow victory for DWP after ‘ESA deaths’ tribunal

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allowance, benefit, benefits, Conservative, Department, disability, disabled, DWP, employment, ESA, FOI, Freedom of Information, government, Iain Duncan Smith, IB, IC, Incapacity Benefit, Information Commissioner, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, politics, sick, social security, support, tribunal, vexatious, Vox Political, welfare, work

Seen to be done: The tribunal took place at the Law Courts in Cardiff (pictured), in public – which allowed friends of Vox Political to hear the case.

It is with a heavy heart that I must report that a tribunal has upheld the Information Commissioner’s decision that my Freedom of Information request, seeking an update on the number of sickness benefit claimants who have died, was vexatious.

The tribunal agreed unanimously that my blog article, to which I appended a single line suggesting other readers should also submit FoI requests to demonstrate that there are many people who want the latest figures released, was an abuse of the system.

If you are unaware of the situation or your memory needs to be refreshed, you can read the article here.

But judge Chris Ryan criticised both the Information Commissioner and the Department for Work and Pensions for every other excuse they invented to prevent the death figures from being made public.

This was not a glowing endorsement of the Information Commissioner’s – and the DWP’s – stance; in fact, as you will see, the wording of the decision suggests the exact opposite.

The very first line of the decision notice states that my request “was in itself innocuous”, meaning that there would have been no reason for the DWP to have refused it if not for the effect of the blog article.

But you know, dear reader, that I wrote my request after at least two previous requests – one of which must have been equally “innocuous” as I based the wording of my own on it – had been rejected by the Department. That was why I appealed for public support in the first place.

“The combination of the importance of the statistics in their own right and the appellant’s belief, rightly or wrongly, that the Department had no intention of publishing updated figures, led him to take the steps for which he has been criticised by the Department,” wrote Mr Ryan in his decision notice.

He then proceeded to trash – comprehensively – all the IC’s (and DWP’s) other reasons for suggesting that it could not answer my request.

“The Information Commissioner accepted that the request had a serious purpose,” he wrote. [All italics and boldings in the quoted sections are mine]

“In terms of the burden the request imposed, the appellant drew attention to statements made by members of the Department’s staff to the Information Commissioner during his investigation, in which it was confirmed that the requested information was held and that it could be located and released without exceeding the relatively modest maximum cost permitted for responding to an information request… we do not believe that any great weight should be attributed to it [the burden on the DWP] in our determination.”

Turning to motive, Mr Ryan stated that the Information Commissioner had claimed that the request, viewed in isolation, may not have been intended to disrupt the DWP’s main function – but, taking account of the requests that were apparently generated by the blog, this purpose was altered to a stage where it was intended to disrupt the Department’s functions.

But his judgement was this: “The appellant was motivated by a determination to ensure that the Department took the request seriously.”

(You should note that I dispute the claim that 23 ‘lookalike’ requests were generated by my blog. I have only ever seen seven of these, with no proof that the other 16 exist at all; of the seven, only one makes any reference to me, while the person responsible for another posted a comment on the blog that ties it to me as well. That’s three messages – not enough to justify any claim of vexatiousness.)

The Information Commissioner had also tried to bolster his decision by claiming that my article, and its comment column, could cause harassment and distress to DWP staff, but Mr Ryan wrote: “We do not think that there is much strength in the Information Commissioner’s argument.

“The request itself is expressed in sensible and balanced terms and, although some of the messages published on the appellant’s blog adopted a more strident tone, we saw nothing that a reasonably robust employee should not have been able to contemplate without distress, assuming (which is not certain) that it was drawn to his or her attention… Little weight ought to be attributed to the risk of staff members feeling harassed or distressed.

“The accumulated effect on the Department, in terms of administrative burden and impact on staff, was therefore relatively light.”

But this did not excuse me from my principle crime, which appears to have been encouraging the rest of you to get involved: “It was in… seeking to bolster his statutory rights with the persuasive power that comes from communal action, that the appellant converted an unexceptional request, on a matter causing justifiable public concern, into one that constituted misuse of the freedom of information regime and could therefore properly be refused on the basis that it was vexatious for the purpose of FOIA section 14.”

That was very discouraging to read!

But look at this: “We have considerable sympathy for the appellant.

“We do not know if he was justified in suspecting that the Department had deliberately concealed statistics about those who died while receiving, or being assessed for, state benefits.

“However, the request did seem, on its face and in context, to be one which might well have resulted in disclosure of the information requested.”

Now, you know, and I know – and the tribunal also knows – that the DWP rejected at least two other FoI requests that were phrased along either identical or similar lines as my own, but those last few comments, along with the others strung throughout the decision, make it clear that the tribunal’s view is that there was no reason to reject any of them.

Therefore the only reasonable reading of this decision is that the DWP was wrong to reject those previous requests.

I must now consider options for the future. The tribunal’s decision seems to clear the way for a request made in exactly the same way as mine (but without the appeal for others to add their voices to it) to receive a full response.

But we are dealing, here, with the Department for Work and Pensions under Iain Duncan Smith. It seems more likely that the tribunal’s decision will be ignored and the same excuses will be trotted out, including a now-invalid claim that the Secretary of State is considering how best to publish the figures.

For that excuse to work, he would have had to publish them very quickly and it is now nine months since the claim was first made. As the figures are time-sensitive – that is, for them to be useful in considering changes to the system, they should be released as soon as they are known – it makes no sense to delay and the DWP’s claim that doing so is “in the public interest” is disproved.

If I do submit another request, the wording of it will have to be carefully considered, to include all the information that the tribunal provided in support of it. Obviously I cannot ask any readers to take any action in this matter at all.

In summary, this is a setback but not a defeat. The tribunal has come to a finding based on its reading of the law, but has made it perfectly clear that it was made with reference to events that happened in connection with my request, and not because of my request itself. The tribunal’s opinion was that there was nothing wrong with the request.

With this in mind, we may move on.

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Sickness benefit death statistics – a quick update

Tags

allowance, benefit, benefits, Coalition, Conservative, death, Department, DWP, employment, ESA, FOI, Freedom of Information, government, health, IB, ill, Incapacity, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, politics, request, Samuel Miller, sick, social security, statistics, support, Tories, Tory, tribunal, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment

(No, I haven’t had the tribunal’s decision yet!)

Those of you who have read my report on the benefit deaths tribunal will know that Samuel Miller received a response to his own Freedom of Information request for updated death statistics of incapacity benefit (and ESA) claimants a few weeks ago – but it did not cover the correct dates and was not ordered in a similar way to the ‘Incapacity benefits: Deaths of recipients’ report released in 2012.

It was impossible for anyone to consider it an update of the figures in that report, as the Department for Work and Pensions was claiming by sending it to Mr Miller.

I reported on Thursday that he had requested another response, made out in an appropriate manner, and that he had been advised he would receive this soon.

In fact, he was told the response would arrive yesterday (Friday).

Guess what?

That’s right – no show.

“As you know, I had asked the DWP to put these latest mortality statistics into context. Well, they haven’t responded by today’s date, as promised,” Mr Miller said on Twitter.

Quelle surprise.

Perhaps we can hope this is a simple mistake and the numbers will be with him soon.

Just don’t hold your breath waiting – or you may become another government statistic.

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Freedom of Information tribunal on benefit deaths – April 23

Tags

allowance, assessment, benefit, benefits, campaign, dead, death, Department, die, DWP, employment, ESA, fit for work, FOI, Freedom of Information, Group, harassment, IB, ICO, Incapacity Benefit, Information Commissioner, judge, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortality, Pensions, Reform, support, tribunal, vexatious, Vox Political, work, work-related activity, WRA

Vox Political may seem a little quiet over the next 30 hours or so. This is because the site’s owner, Mike Sivier (that’s me), will be travelling to Cardiff to take the Information Commissioner and the Department for Work and Pensions to a tribunal.

The aim is to secure the release of mortality figures – death statistics – covering people who were claiming Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance during 2012.

Figures for later dates were not part of the Freedom of Information request that forms the basis of this action (submitted back in June 2013, nearly a year ago), so it is unlikely that these will be forthcoming. The hope is that the tribunal will judge in favour of the information being released, ensuring that further requests cannot be blocked by the DWP.

The government’s claim is that a single-sentence, off-the-cuff line at the end of a Vox Political article about the FoI request constitutes a co-ordinated, protracted and obsessive campaign of harassment against the DWP, and for that reason the request is vexatious.

It is utterly ridiculous. It brings the DWP and the Freedom of Information Act into disrepute. Yet it is enough to prevent this valuable information from being published.

It is important to have the data in the public domain, as a yardstick by which the government’s so-called ‘reforms’ to the benefit system may be judged. Between January and November 2011, 73 deaths were recorded every week, just among people in the work-related activity group of ESA and those going through the assessment process. The government does not monitor the progress of people it has marked ‘fit for work’ and thrown off-benefit altogether, and this group is four times as large as the WRAG, meaning the death toll could be anything up to five times larger than we understand at the moment.

The government has claimed that it has been implementing changes designed to make ESA serve its claimants better. An increased death rate will disprove that. Of course, a lowered death rate would support the government’s position but, if this were the case, it is logical to expect the government to have publicised it widely without any prompting.

This is why tomorrow’s tribunal is important.

People are dying every day and nothing will be done to stop it unless the severity of the situation is made clear.

Let’s all hope we get the result we need.

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Information tribunal on deaths of IB/ESA claimants – next week

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'ad hoc', allowance, campaign, Cardiff, claimant, death, Department, DWP, employment, ESA, figure, FOI, Freedom of Information, harassment, IB, IC, Incapacity Benefit, Information Commissioner, law courts, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortality, Pensions, release, statistic, support, tribunal, vexatious, Vox Political, work

I have just sent out a ‘diary marker’ to press organisations, notifying them of the Information Tribunal that will be held in Cardiff next week.

Inevitably, there will be organisations I have missed – and I also want as much of the social media as possible to be aware of this and to be spreading the word. For that reason, I’m publishing the text of the press release below.

If you have a Facebook page, blog site, Twitter account or whatever, please feel free to use what follows and make sure people know that this is going on.

Diary marker

Tribunal – Law Courts, Cathays Park, Cardiff, April 23, 2014 at 10am

Incapacity benefits – deaths of claimants

A tribunal will decide whether the Department for Work and Pensions should be ordered to release its statistics on the number of people who have died while claiming Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance, at a hearing next week.

The First-Tier Tribunal (formerly the Information Tribunal) will be hearing an appeal by Vox Political blogger Mike Sivier, against a decision by the Information Commissioner and the DWP to refuse a Freedom of Information request on the subject.

The DWP published an ‘ad hoc statistical release’ in July 2012, showing that 10,600 claimants died between January and November 2011. Of these, 3,500 – or 73 people every week – were either going through the assessment process or had been put in the work-related activity group, intended for people who were expected to recover within a year, when they died.

The revelation provoked outcry from people suffering from disabilities and long-term illnesses, and seems to have discouraged the DWP from continuing to publish the figures.

Mr Sivier made his request in June 2013, after learning that the DWP had refused previous requests. The department at first claimed there was no intention to release any further statistics, and the information would take a great deal of time and effort to gather and collate – this is not true. In fact, the DWP later admitted that it does hold the information, and could provide it within the cost limit.

The next excuse was that the Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith, accepted that there was interest in the figures and was considering how to publish them. This was claimed in August 2013. Since no plan to publish these time-sensitive figures after nearly nine months, we must conclude that, like the previous claim, it is not true. The figures are time-sensitive because it is important that the system be improved to prevent unnecessary deaths. Delays in publication mean the figures are unlikely to be used in that way.

Seeing that the DWP had brushed aside privately-made requests, Mr Sivier ensured that his was public knowledge by writing an article about it in his blog (at https://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/dwp-refuses-to-provide-information-on-esaib-deaths-what-is-it-hiding/). As an afterthought, he included a line encouraging readers to follow his example, if they believed the issue was important, reasoning that the DWP may give more weight to it if it was known that there was general concern.

The DWP refused the request, claiming it was “vexatious” under section 14(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Officers had visited the blog and concluded that the last line, “I strongly urge you to do the same. There is strength in numbers,” constituted a co-ordinated campaign of harassment against the department.

Mr Sivier believes this is nonsense and appealed to the Information Commissioner on this basis. But the Commissioner was persuaded by the DWP and upheld the decision, forcing Mr Sivier to take the matter to the tribunal.

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