16 days to go - In which Iain embarks on a profound moral mission!

21/04/15

Dear Claire,

For tonight’s letter, I’d like to return to our favourite Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, IBS. Sorry, IDS.

I must thank Thomas G Clark and his excellent blog, Another Angry Voice, for providing the source for a lot of this, plus the picture above.

 

In the same week that the Bedroom Tax was introduced, Peter Oborne, writing in the Torygraph, wrote an article entitled: “George Osborne can’t claim credit for Iain Duncan Smith’s virtuous reforms". Oborne’s article contained the phrase “At the heart of Mr Duncan Smith’s programme (of welfare reforms) is a profound moral vision”.  

At this point, it’s appropriate to provide a definition of the word ‘Orwellian’, because we’ll be using it a few times tonight. "Orwellian" is an adjective describing the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past.  

Let’s now look at some of these virtuous reforms:

Iain Duncan Smith’s profound moral mission

Virtuous reform number 1: The Bedroom Tax.

Stephanie Bottrill is a lady whose name should be engraved on a memorial to all those who perished as a result of IDS’s reforms. This poor lady had the Bedroom Tax applied to her benefit payments and subsequently fell into debt. As a result of the debt, subsequent depression and pressures this lady faced, she committed suicide. To make matters even worse, the Bedroom Tax was implemented in such a poorly thought through manner, that it transpired that Stephanie shouldn’t have had any deductions made to her benefit payments.

 

What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to a "Bedroom Tax" regime that was implemented so incompetently that it drove someone to suicide, even though they should never have been made to pay it?

Virtuous reform number 2: Forced Labour.

So IDS reckons it’s a good idea to use the unemployed as a source of free labour, often for highly profitable foreign companies. Well, we can see one reason why it might be a good wheeze to do this: the thousands of people forced into this scheme under threat of destitution, are removed from the official unemployment numbers, despite the fact that they have no paid work and still claim benefits!

You may remember from my letter (26 days to go) written on Saturday 11^th April (link here) that we covered IDS’s retrospective law-making stunt to avoid being brought to book over this forced labour debacle, after the courts ruled it unlawful. This grotesque abuse of parliamentary process was carried out in order to stick two fingers up at the courts and keep the estimated £130 million he stole from his victims.

What kind of Orwellian definition of "virtuous" would you have to be using to apply it to Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes, and his "I'm above the law" retroactive legislation?

Virtuous reform number 3: The ATOS Work Capability Assessment (WCA) regime.
Another of IDS’s wheezes that has been condemned by the courts on numerous occasions, the WCA regime, is notoriously inaccurate. The constant flood of bad decisions made by Atos has resulted in a cost of £50 million per year in appeals, borne by the taxpayer rather than the company that made all of those inaccurate assessments in the first place.

Now here’s the bit I really hope causes IDS to sit up in bed and consider: the bit that, had any normal person been responsible for, they would now be spending the rest of their days behind bars. Between January 2011 and November 2011, 10,600 people died within six weeks of being declared ‘fit for work’ by Atos.

Let’s say that again, because it bears repeating. We’re talking about 10,600 people: someone’s father, someone’s mother, someone’s uncle, aunt, someone’s grandparent. Someone’s brother, someone’s sister and worst of all, someone’s child.

10,600 people: people that had loved ones, dependents, partners, siblings and children. 10,600 people died as a direct result of the catastrophe that is the WCA policy.

In a period of 10 or 11 months, 10,600 people died, because of IDS’s disastrous miscalculations, 10,600 people that will never share a birthday with loved ones again.

Now let’s go back to something you said to me in your letter of 2nd July 2014. You said this:

"Thank you very much for your communication. I have to say that I profoundly disagree with you (on this issue re: DWP). Your assertions are, I’m afraid, not backed up by the facts.

"On your point of welfare reform, I’m afraid to say that you cannot be more wrong. Our welfare reforms are what every government has wanted to do for decades, which is to collapse a whole series of ill thought-out and ill targeted benefits into one very simple stream that ensures that those in work are better off than those on welfare. I too visit Jobcentres and indeed deal with people on the Work Programme and see every day the huge efforts being made to get people back into work, with the result that unemployment is tumbling in the Constituency and across the UK."

So every government has wanted to cause the unnecessary death of thousands of its citizens? Let’s also consider something from Virtuous Reform Number 2, above: People forced into this forced labour scheme are removed from the official unemployment numbers, despite the fact that they have no paid work and still claim benefits. Now I know what you were referring to when you said that unemployment was tumbling across the UK!

As a final thought for tonight, let’s consider that the DWP have stonewalled all Freedom of Information Requests for the figures for 2012 and 2013, for numbers of deaths amongst people recently assessed as ‘fit for work’.

One more time: Between January 2011 and November 2011, 10,600 people died within six weeks of being declared ‘fit for work’ by Atos.

More on this tomorrow.

Sleep tight!

Polly

P.S. Claire, I know you’re a real ‘go-getter’, and I’m sure you would be screaming for justice, had one of those 10,600 deaths been somebody you loved. What would you do to try and seek some sort of redress?