PIP claimants: All 1.6 million claims to be reviewed

Toko Black

I gave you the select comitee report, referenced the UN report as well as quotes from the Conservative Party press release and the Conservative Party Chairman.

All you have done is i) repeatedly quoted the government banging it's own drum about getting getting 600,000 disabled people into work and ii) inferred that because the Scope report indicated an increase in disabled rights legislation, that it was evidence of the governments doing good for the disabled.

i. Helping additional disabled people into work is a positive thing as long as:
a) those people are competent to work and are not forced to struggle and suffer unnecessarily.
b) the 600,000 increase in people getting into work is not offset against significant uneccessary suffering, hard ship and economic waste either for those getting into work, those that can't or both.

ii. Firstly an increase in disabled rights legislation has occurred over the last 20yrs, which means you can't automatically attribute it to occuring during the tenure of the current government, since they have not been in power for more than 50% of that time.
Secondly and most importantly, the majority of increased legislation has come from EU regulations and as a result of court cases being won AGAINST the government forcing changes in legislation.

There is much debate and disagreement over employment as a whole with issues like zero hour contracts, working tax credits and low wages.
A certain number of people who were unemployed are now self employed, but essentially earning trivial amounts and essentially getting their income for the most part from working tax credits.
Essentially, there is a potential issue of people who have become either:
1) cheap government subsidised labour that helps company profits and share holders at the expense of real and fair wage paid positions.
2) numbers of people doing minimal actual economic benefit, being paid in work tax credits as benefits by proxy, but no longer appear on the unemployment figures.

I am not at all suggesting that most disabled people who have additionally joined the work force are cheap subsidised labour or doing 'fake' jobs.
What I do know for sure is that at least some people who were unemployed are definately doing 'playing at working' while receiving the majority of their income from working tax credits instead of claiming unemployment - as a response to the increase amounts of hoops, sanctions and worries about their benefits being stopped.

In summary, it is not clear that on balance the government have made a positive contribution to helping the disabled or unemployed merely from the number of disabled/non disabled now technically classified as 'in work'. Nor can the current government or even previous ones claim credit for positively increasing the amount of disability rights legislation simply because it has happened - since a) without specifying when those increased legislations were planned, pushed through and established, who was actually responsible is in question and b) much of the legislation occured despite the government either comming from the EU or the government loosing court cases.

Toko Black

I totally agree.
Very few people, disabled or non disabled, on benefits or not don't get angry, upset and frustrated by those that cheat and play the system.
Even those cheating the system get angry at other cheats - like most of us human beings, we tend to justify our own behaviours as 'not really being that bad' or even justified, but we don't tend to extend those allowances or feelings towards others except those we directly care about.

The issue is not whether or not there are cheats, or whether or not cheating is bad and makes us angry, it is about how we rationalise and deal with the fact that there are cheats.

We have to balance the cost to the economy, to social well being and health of how we respond to those cheats against doing nothing or remaining as is.

What worries and troubles me, is that seemingly, some people would prefer or feel it is more important to achieve a pyrrhic victory against benefit cheats that worry or care about the costs.

Consider the issue of road deaths.
There are lots of small, cheap and effective things one can do initially to reduce the number of people killed on the roads with little impact on the practicalities of driving on and maintaining our roads.
However, once you have done all the cheap, effective things that do little to restrict peoples ability to travel economically, you are faced with a dilemma.
Do you spend ever increasing amounts of time and money, restricting more and more freedoms to travel economically for ever decreasing reductions in the number of lives saved.

For example, we all know that if a car hits you at 40mph, you have a 10% chance to survive.
At 20mph, you have a 90% chance to survive.
At what point is the speed limit too slow ?
If you are purely fixated on reducing the number of deaths, then there isn't really a too slow until the chance of survival is 100%.
Yet we don't set our speed limits purely on that consideration even though there are lobby and pressure groups continually trying to get more and more lower speed restrictions.
We attempt to balance the practicalities of getting from A to B against the risks.

Now also consider the war on drugs.
Very few people would argue that taking drugs is not potentially harmful and that it would be better for everyone if no one ever felt the need to consume drugs.
Yet after years of prohibition and the 'war on drugs', we have spent a fortune in policing, prisons etc done very little to actually stem the flow and usage of drugs ...... and created massive amounts of criminality, deaths and suffering needlessly.
Even in the US, were the war on drugs was fought the most aggressively, things are now changing and people are starting to look at how we approach drug use even though we still wish people didn't want or need to use them.

So back to benefits and specifically the case of disability benefit cheats.
How many cheats is too many ?
What costs to society, health and well being are justifiable and when does it get too great ?

Is there a point at which we can accept that our anger and desire to pursue the punishment of cheats causes too much suffering and is at too greater cost ?
If so, what is that point ?

My position, and I am not alone, is that we have already crossed over the point of diminishing returns with regards to practical and reasonable attempts to curb cheating with low enough impacts on the health, welbeing and social conditions for the disabled.
That we have in recent years moved into the position of allowing our anger and frustration at the cheats justifying continued policies and actions that come at a far higher cost to society and in particular, the lives of the disabled than is reasonable, fair or practical.

IronGiant

The equalities act 2010, was passed in October of that year under the coalition government.

I don't need to prove the government have been positive for disabled people, but the evidence I've provided is fairly strong.

But you do need to substantiate your claim that the government has demonised the sick and disabled.

Demonise : portray as wicked and threatening

Your UN report is not evidence of demonising the sick and disabled. And I don't think you actually linked to it so I could read what it actually said. Same for the treasury select committee report.

This is just going round in circles.

Toko Black

It was promised, then initiated in 2005 under Labour, reports were completed and reviewed in 2007 then it went through all the processes and was finally read after the Queens assent in April 2010* and innacted into law in October 2010.
The coalition government had only been elected 1 month prior to the Queens assent in May of 2010.

So what you are saying is that because the 2010 Equalities act that spent 98% of it's time in inception, development, review and preperation under a Labour government is down to the less than 2% of the time it took to gain the Queens assent and be implemented into law under a Tory/Lib Dem coalition just going through the already established motions ?

That's a bit like building a house then someone else coming in to fit the light bulbs and being given credit for the whole thing.

Additionally, the Equalities act 2010 is not really any significantly new legislation on additional disability rights.
It was more about taking the different previously individual legislational acts on Disability, Religion, Gender equality etc and creating one singular act to cover them all.
Those individual acts were primarily based upon EU equal rights law.

So even the previous Labour government who were actually responsible for the 2010 Equalities act would struggle to really claim the credit for wanting to increase disability rights, since amendments and additions were developed and proposed by the EU.

“nearly a million people have come off incapacity benefit [...] before going for the test.” - Grant Shapps MP, the Conservative Party Chairman

“878,300" people claiming incapacity benefit, more than a third of the total have chosen to drop their benefit claim entirely rather than face a medical assessment - Conservative press release.

Care to explain how to read and understand the message being given there that does not strongly suggest there is a large number (33%) of incapacity benefit claimants dropping their claims because of the fear of being caught by a medical test.

I suggest that most normal, rational and reasonable people taking those words at face value are being given the impression that 1/3rd of people who were on incapacity benefit were in someway cheating the system and that the implementation of ESA medical assessments caused them to drop there claims.

Maybe we should have a poll to see how many people think the message is or isn't implying significant amounts of disability benefit cheats ?

Especially given that fact that those messages are based on falsely conflating different statistics and fail to inform the audience that in fact the major reason for people dropping claims before going to a medical assessment by the DWP's own data and admissions is that of them simply getting better because it wasn't a long term illness*, going back to work, or being advised of a more appropriate benefit they should claim.

* many claims for incapacity and now ESA are short term for issues like depression, stress, incapacitating injuries etc.
People attempt to cover themselves in case their problems end up being long term, but if they end up getting better sooner than expected and are able get back to work, they tend to do so and drop their claims according the the DWP itself.
The percentage of claims being dropped on those grounds pre and post the introduction of medical assessments are roughly the same.

tapzilla2k

Fair enough on the equalities act.

But on the rest... We are back to blatant, implied demonisation again. Zzzzzzzz.

IronGiant

“nearly a million people have come off incapacity benefit [...] before going for the test.” - Grant Shapps MP, the Conservative Party Chairman

“878,300" people claiming incapacity benefit, more than a third of the total have chosen to drop their benefit claim entirely rather than face a medical assessment - Conservative press release.

Care to explain how to read and understand the message being given there that does not strongly suggest there is a large number (33%) of incapacity benefit claimants dropping their claims because of the fear of being caught by a medical test.

leamspaceman

Care to explain how that demonises the genuine claimants who didn't drop their claim?

IronGiant

It gives the impression, perception and narrative that 1/3rd of people who were claiming or are attempting to claim disability benefits are cheats or otherwise putting it on.
This is patently false as the DWP's own data shows that the majority of the 33% of abandoned claims were down to things like short term conditions where people have simply got better and been able to return to work.

Consider the fact that there are still a significant number of people with disabilities and long term illnesses that are not as yet transfered to ESA or PIP so have not been given the new medical assessments.
They are still on Incapacity benefit and DLA.

When you see someone in the street in the afternoon during working hours walking with a stick or parking in a disabled bay with a blue badge, you can't be certain what category of benefits they are on or whether they have been assessed under the new system.
Therefore, any one of them you see could potentially belong to a group that the Tories have falsely implied are made up of 1/3rd of cheats.
Not only that, but even if they have been assessed and manged to pass, since the implication is that a significant amount of people try to cheat the system, it stands to reason that some will get away with it.
If you believe that the number of people attempting to cheat the system is far higher than reality, you are also likely to estimate the number of people 'getting away with it' to be far higher than reality.

It essentially spreads more suspesion and doubt about the legitamacy of disabled people as a whole.

Since the number of assaults and harassment against against disabled people has risen 40% in the last few years, it is not unreasonable to assume that supplying a narrative that 1/3rd of people trying to claim disability benefits are cheats is contributing to a rise in anger and therefore a rise in aggression towards people with disabilities.

That is backed up by numerous reports, polls and studies by leading charities, the UN and the parliamentary select commitee.

It's not definitive nor absolute, but it does stand to reason considering what we know about human social behaviour , the simple fact that the government has falsely created negative impressions about disability claimants and the dramatic increase in disability related hate crimes.

Neither you nor I are experts or are truely qualified to break down and assess all the data and social impacts on this issue, but I have been trying my upmost to be as honest and accurate as I can.
The main sources of expert opinion in these cases come from the government/dwp and the select comitee, UN reports and charities.
The only expert opinion that doesn't state the the governments polices, actions and messages have been detrimental and contributed to negatively portraying the disabled are from the Government themselves.

The Government have already been caught out lying, providing misleading information and proven in court to be acting illegally with regards to people with disabilities.

So it's down to a case of who do you believe, the charities, the UN, the parliamentary select comitee who all say there is a clear indication of the government effecting a negative impact on the disabled, or the Government who say they are doing a great and fair job.

Bl4ckGryph0n

So we're still on with this blatantly implied nonsense?

It gives the impression, perception and narrative? Oh come off it.

It's mental gymnastics to excuse that you can't find a single example of direct demonisation of the sick and disabled by a member of the government.

Apologies to everyone else for this boring, circular discussion. I'll stop replying now.

leamspaceman

Lets see, the DWP has a target of 80% to uphold original decisions when a mandatory reconsideration takes place. They've exceeded that target (last time I checked it was near 90%). In most cases it seems they merely look over the assessors report and once again ignore the medical evidence. The system is adversarial and designed to put people off appealing. My appeal only happened due to Mind representing me. I would suggest you go and find a PIP application form and look over it. Along with the PIP descriptors and regulations.