Iain Duncan Smith has serious questions to answer
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has just published figures showing that between 2011 and 2014, 2,380 people died shortly after being declared ‘fit for work’.
Published in response to Freedom of Information requests, the statistics show that more than 50 people are dying each month just after a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) has declared them fit for work.
These deaths relate to just two benefits, Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and Incapacity Benefit/Severe Disablement Allowance (IB/SDA), both paid to people too ill or disabled to work.
Between December 2011 and February 2014:
270 former IB/SDA claimants died shortly (scans are conducted fortnightly for ESA and six-weekly for IB/SDA) after being declared fit for work and having their benefits withdrawn.
1,340 ESA claimants who had recently completed appeals against the fit for work assessment died.
The DWP document states that ‘the mortality rate [for people of working age out of work] has remained around three times higher than for the general population. There are a higher proportion of people who are sick or disabled amongst those on benefits than in the general population.’
The fact that the DWP feels this needs to be said at all speaks volumes about the way it treats sick and disabled people – with suspicion and lack of compassion.
These figures are truly alarming for disabled people, especially as they come just days after Iain Duncan Smith announced an overhaul of the WCA system which would force many sick and disabled people to work. An investigation is also currently underway into the deaths of people who have recently had their benefits sanctioned.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward
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35 Responses to “New DWP statistics: more than 80 people are dying each month shortly after being declared ‘fit for work’”
Nick
It reads like something out from the Nazis genocide in which
Hitler had killed many Jews and sick and disabled
The figures would need a very superior brain for the public to understand on what these figures mean as a judge once said understanding anything from the DWP were a mind field
My own personal dealing with the DWP of many years would indeed bear that out and i have yet to understand WHAT they say on any level as it to me has always sounded like complete garbage and lies
especially the thank you for your letters of change ? What change what letters? In addition, after
35 years i still get the letters
My conclusion is that they WRITE to you to stress you so you kill yourself and in a nutshell of my 35 years in dealing with them and the police that’s about it as to just speak to them or your legal representative you will just go round in a never ending loop and for those that do get sucked
in to the madness it invariably causes the death of many
As for these figures i am sure that the number are still too low as it does not take into
account local suicide deaths from around the country where the police highlight
with regards the death as (no suspicious circumstances found ) whatever that
means ?
My life and that of my family has been seriously blighted by
the DWP over the past 35 years the past 6 years very much so and at 8 stone
have the body to prove it but live in hope that criminal proceedings will at
some point take place against the government so that I can attend to give my own personal account of the DWP
Samuel Miller
The Work and Pensions Committee has recommended a full independent review of benefit sanctions and is waiting for the DWP to respond to its report on benefit sanctions policy. The author is incorrect in stating
that “an investigation is also currently underway into the deaths of people who have recently had their benefits sanctioned.”
Full disclosure: Since January 2012, I have been reporting voluntarily to the UN’s human rights office, in Geneva, on the welfare crisis for Britain’s sick and disabled. [Fellow Canadian Leilani Farha (@leilanifarha) is the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing; see http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/LeilaniFarha.aspx. You can tweet her on UK housing issues or e-mail her at the UN’s human
rights office: srhousing@ohchr.org; she does follow my Twitter account.]
(Montreal, Canada)
remarx
You sir are a bigot, a stupid, uninformed opinionated twat. Sounds like you believe your own propaganda which makes you all the more morally incapacitated. Or perhaps you are playing devil’s advocate? Bigot or twat? Either way impaling is too good for you and your ilk.
Syzergy_Point
Do you mean the members of the House of Lords?
Chris Kitcher
Surely if Camoron has any decency he will move this murdering basta*d well away from any position that needs care and compassion towrads the most vulnerable in our society.