..and now the Gauleiters... #satire #conflictofinterests #disability #treehuggers
Posted by Gerard on May 19, 2025, 11:52 am
"Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has refused to apologise after repeatedly misleading MPs by suggesting that her planned cuts of billions of pounds to personal independence payment (PIP) were linked to supporting disabled people into work.
On four occasions in just 23 minutes during work and pensions questions in the Commons on Monday, Kendall replied to questions about her plans to cut spending on PIP by £4.5 billion a year – laid out in March in the Pathways to Work green paper – by speaking about Labour’s plans for disability employment.
Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, also answered a question about the PIP cuts by talking about employment support.
Both ministers will be aware that PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, and that it can be claimed by disabled people who are in or out of work.
But Labour ministers have repeatedly responded to criticism of the planned cuts to PIP, since they were announced in March, by speaking instead about their plans for disability employment.
On Monday, Labour’s Imran Hussain asked Kendall at 2.36pm about the 41,000 disabled people in Bradford who were “rightly horrified” by the PIP cuts, which “has the potential to devastate the lives of tens of thousands of people in Bradford overnight”.
But in reply, Kendall said: “We want to improve people’s chances and choices by supporting those who can work to do so and by protecting those who cannot.”
When Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale, who himself has a long-term health condition, asked about the PIP cuts, Kendall said the government would be “consulting with disabled people about how to build our £1 billion a year employment support programme, and we will make sure that those who can never work will be protected”.
She was then asked by Labour’s Rachael Maskell about the impact of the PIP cuts on public services, particularly adult social care, but told her: “We have clear evidence that being in work is good for people’s health: good work is good for people’s physical and mental health.”
And when Green MP Sian Berry suggested that the PIP cuts were “cruel and wrong”, Kendall told her – at 2.59pm – that “disabled people who are out of work and economically inactive are more likely than non-disabled people to say they want to work, and if they are in work, they are half as likely to be poor”.
When Sir Stephen was asked by Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson Steve Darling about the “300,000 people set to be plunged into poverty” by the PIP cuts, he joined Kendall in misleading MPs by telling him: “The crucial thing is to improve the employment support for people who are out of work on health and disability grounds.”
He then added: “At the moment there are 200,000 people out of work on health and disability grounds who say they would like to be in a job now, and could be in a job now, if they had the support they need.”
Asked by Disability News Service why Kendall repeatedly misled MPs, and whether ministers were refusing to engage honestly with questions about the PIP cuts because they realised the devastation it would cause to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, a DWP spokesperson refused to comment.
Kendall also announced during work and pensions questions on Monday that the government had started its review of the PIP assessment process.
She said the government was now beginning the review’s “first phase”, and that Sir Stephen was “inviting in stakeholders this week to develop the scope and terms of reference of this review”.
Sir Stephen appeared to suggest later that the review could lead to further cuts to support as he told MPs it would “consider whether the assessment criteria effectively target the right people at the right level”, and would “look at the descriptors and consider the points allocated to them”.
In the green paper, the government had said the work capability assessment would be scrapped, and that the PIP assessment would – from 2028 – assess eligibility for both PIP and the health element of universal credit.
The green paper made it clear that the government planned significant changes to the assessment process, which it said needed “modernising” as it was more than a decade since PIP was introduced.
It pointed to “significant shifts in the nature of long-term conditions and disability, as well as changes in wider society and the workplace”, with increases in the number of people receiving PIP with “mental health or neurodiverse conditions as their primary condition”, while “increases in disability have been more marked among younger adults than older people”.
It also said the review would “shape a system of active support that helps people manage and adapt to their long-term condition and disability in ways that expand their functioning and improve their independence”.
"Parliament has refused to criticise a security officer who confiscated a book about benefit deaths because it was “too political” as three disabled activists arrived to watch a debate on disability benefit cuts, and quizzed them about their medication.
The three activists were astonished when the security officer confiscated political leaflets and a copy of The Department*, a book that exposes links between the Department for Work and Pensions and countless deaths of disabled benefit claimants.
The trio – Paula Peters, Andy Mitchell and Anna – were left shocked and shaken as they were passing through House of Commons security, after the security officer questioned two of them about why they needed their medication, and even examined the contents of their notebooks after searching their bags.
*The Gauleiter State in action again, yet it is apparently far beyond the wit of any of our media to satirise the administrations which criticise "Safety Culture" only to immolate 72 people then deliberately target environmental protestors and others by disparaging "Tree Huggers" only to find that this empowers and encourages idiots to destroy the nation's arboriculture.
"Disabled activists have questioned Labour’s commitment to justice for the countless claimants whose deaths were linked to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), after it emerged that one of its senior frontbenchers is married to a DWP director-general.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has been a focus for anger among many activists since she said seven years ago that Labour did not want to be seen as “the party to represent those who are out of work” and was “not the party of people on benefits”.
Only a couple of weeks ago, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer mirrored the 2015 comments made by Reeves by declaring in a speech that Labour was “the party of working people” and “the party of work”.
But it has now emerged that Reeves is married to Nick Joicey, DWP’s director-general for finance and a speechwriter for Gordon Brown when he was Labour’s chancellor.*
There had already been growing concerns about Labour’s commitment to promising an independent inquiry into deaths linked to DWP’s failings, and to calling for a police investigation into allegations of misconduct in public office by senior DWP civil servants and ministers.
This week, Disability News Service (DNS) published a 10,000-word investigation that shows how DWP repeatedly ignored recommendations to improve the safety of its disability benefits assessment system, leading to countless avoidable deaths, and ensured that key evidence linking its actions with those deaths was not considered by independent reviews.
The article also shows how the cultural problems within DWP extend far beyond the assessment system, touching all aspects of its dealings with disabled people in the social security system, and how the roots of its toxic culture stretch back at least 30 years.
There is no suggestion that Joicey, who has been at DWP for less than four years, is himself implicated in any way in the deaths of claimants, although a DWP document (PDF) discovered by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) shows that he attended at least one meeting of the department’s serious case panel, which examines such deaths.
UK’s 50 richest families hold more wealth than 50% of population, analysis finds
Equality Trust says billionaires getting ‘ludicrously’ richer, with top two now wealthier than whole of 1990 rich list
The number of billionaires in the UK has grown sharply – from 15 in 1990 to 165 in 2024 – at the same time as inequality in the UK’s overall wealth distribution has dramatically increased, analysis has found.
Timed to coincide with the Sunday Times’ rich list, the Equality Trust’s investigation also found that billionaires have become “ludicrously” more wealthy, with their average wealth rocketing by more than 1,000% over the same period.
The top 50 richest families in the UK now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, comprising more than 34 million people. In 2024, the two richest UK billionaires held more wealth between them than all the billionaires in the 1990 rich list combined.
“Our analysis also shows the vampiric nature of extreme wealth, which is completely incompatible with the health and wellbeing of the nation,” said Priya Sahni-Nicholas, co-executive director of the Equality Trust. “Property, inheritance and finance account for over half of total billionaire current wealth: sources of wealth creation that are responsible for large-scale planetary and community destruction...
on May 19, 2025, 11:52 am