Monday 17th August

D.W.P. case law – deductions unlawful D.W.P. 2024 update with master : kevin :

Rishi Sunak wants to make it harder for some patients to obtain sick notes, officially called fitness to work notes, which confirm a valid reason for staying off work and eligibility for sick pay.

Here is splspro.com very latest update, regards the agency known as the Department Of Work And Pensions and the respective agencies.

video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckNsUK-zCws

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DWP case law regards deductions unlawful:

Neutral Citation Number: [2023] EWCA Civ 656
Case No: CA-2022-002107
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
KING’S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Mr Justice Cavanagh
[2023] EWHC 2392 (Admin)

Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
09/06/2023
B e f o r e :

LORD JUSTICE PHILLIPS
LORD JUSTICE EDIS
and
LORD JUSTICE WARBY
____________________

Between:
THE KING (on the application of MS HELEN TIMSON)
Respondent/Claimant
– and –

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WORK AND PENSIONS
Appellant/Defendant
– and –

SEVERN TRENT WATER LIMITED
Interested Party
____________________

Clive Sheldon KC, Katherine Apps KC, and Gethin Thomas (instructed by Government Legal Department) for the Appellant
Jenni Richards KC, and Tom Royston (instructed by Bindmans LLP) for the Respondent
Jason Coppel KC (instructed by DWF) for the Interested Party

Hearing dates : 25 and 26 April 2023

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Atos, blood on its hands, departments and agencies under close scrutiny

Atos ‘is left with blood on its hands’ after DWP calls time on its 20 years of assessments.

Assessments are not fit for purpose!

Souls are dying, waiting for their entitlements,  whilst being informed that they are “fit for work”! ( splspro.com has proof of our claim) 

contact@splspro.com for lawful help and assistance regarding effecting a lawful claim, for private prosecutions against the agencies and departments, that are private for profit companies, they are not departments of UK Government!

visit:  https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/ for further disability assistance

Click here to have the audio read out to you

Two disabled campaigners whose brothers’ deaths were closely linked to the actions of the outsourcing company Atos have welcomed the announcement that its 20 years of carrying out disability assessments for the government will end next year.

From September next year, Atos will no longer deliver disability benefit assessments on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

DWP announced this week that it had awarded a five-year contract to carry out assessments in south-west England to Serco, which first sought to carry out assessments for personal independence payment (PIP) more than 10 years ago.

Contracts to carry out assessments in other parts of the UK were awarded to private sector providers earlier this year, with Atos again missing out.

Among those welcoming the news was Sarah Carré.

Her brother Stephen took his own life in January 2010 after he was found fit for work, following an Atos work capability assessment (WCA) that failed to seek any evidence from his GP or psychiatrist and ignored what he had told an assessor about his significant mental distress.

A coroner later concluded that his suicide was triggered by the decision to find him fit for work.

Sarah Carré told Disability News Service (DNS): “I’d like to believe that they lost the contract as a result of their bad behaviour, and I’d like to believe that disabled people will be treated with honesty and fairness now, but my cynicism appears to have become ingrained after the last 13 years.

“I’d also like to be a better person and wish the staff losing their jobs all of the best for the future – but I don’t.

“Childish of me, perhaps, but I feel nothing but contempt for anyone complicit in that company.

“I’ll reserve my good wishes for the individuals and families who have suffered the untold damage caused by them.

“A very good riddance from me, and let’s hope that we never have to hear from them again.”

Dave Smith is another whose sibling’s death was closely linked to the actions of Atos.

His brother James Oliver was desperately ill with chronic liver disease caused by alcohol dependency, as well as other health conditions including scoliosis, hypertension and depression, but he was twice denied PIP following Atos assessments.

Shortly before he died in hospital, in April 2019, he told his brother: “I can’t believe it. I am dying, I am going to be dead, and I’m still not sick enough to get PIP.”

Smith said he was “delighted” that Atos would no longer be delivering assessments.

He said the Atos nurse who carried out his brother’s second assessment ignored clear evidence of how much he was struggling in his day-to-day life, despite visiting his “pigsty” of a flat and reading his written evidence.

He said it was as if Atos was set up “to decline people automatically, not to do an honest assessment”.

He told DNS: “It’s good news that they are finally going to go, but you just wonder what’s coming next.”

He wants to see an end to the outsourcing of benefit assessments and for them to be carried out in-house, as they are by the Scottish government’s Social Security Scotland for its new adult disability payment.

This week, Atos failed to respond to requests to comment on losing out in the assessment contract awards, and failed to apologise to the relatives of those who lost their lives because of its actions, and the countless others who were caused harm.

DWP’s decision to award the final contract to Serco will mean an end to 20 years of Atos delivering assessments on DWP’s behalf, which started when the French company Atos Origin took over IT services company SchlumbergerSema – the existing assessment provider – in 2004.

Since then, Atos has been responsible for – at various times – assessments for disability living allowance, PIP and, most notoriously, employment and support allowance.

It earned more than £465 million over seven years from delivering work capability assessments (WCAs) before it withdrew from the contract in 2015, following years of negative publicity and multiple links between the actions of the company and its staff and the deaths of disabled claimants.

Atos healthcare professionals were also repeatedly accused of dishonesty in the provision of PIP assessments, following a DNS investigation.

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said Atos had “blood on their hands” and had acted as “mercenaries” and as the government’s “dogs of war against disabled people”.

He said: “They are losing the contract, but they are not going to be held to account for the harm they have caused to people.

“They should be a pariah company.

“Those assessors that wilfully lied should be struck off by their respective professions and by no means does the fact that Atos have lost the contract means justice has been delivered.

“In fact, they have got off scot-free and they have grown fat on profits from the sufferings and deaths of the most vulnerable people in society.”

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “This is very welcome news although whether Serco will be any better remains to be seen.”

She added: “The damage caused to disabled people, and the number of claimants driven to their deaths by the actions and assessments carried out by Atos on behalf of the government, should never be forgotten.”

Paula Peters, another DPAC steering group member, said the end of Atos assessments was “welcome news”, but other companies carrying out assessments were “still denying disabled people financial support and denying disability and causing distress and harm”.

She added: “We’ve a lot of campaigning to continue with.”

Tom Pursglove, the minister for disabled people, announced this week that Serco was the successful bidder for the £338 million contract to carry out WCAs and PIP assessments in south-west England, over the five years from 2024.

This was the last of five contracts to be awarded by DWP, covering assessments in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Under DWP’s new Functional Assessment Service, the successful bidder in each region will carry out both PIP assessments and WCAs, although a Conservative government would eventually phase out WCAs if it won the next general election.

DNS reported two months ago that DWP initially awarded the south-west England contract to Serco after an evaluation of the two bids saw Serco come out ahead of Atos on the scoring system by just three per cent.

Atos disputed the fairness of that decision and took DWP and work and pensions secretary Mel Stride to the high court’s technology and construction court.

That legal process appears now to have been settled – although Atos has declined to explain how this happened – and a relaunched procurement process has led to the award of the contract to Serco.

The five delayed contracts will now all begin in September 2024.

Five-year contracts have already been awarded to Maximus (for the north of England and Scotland*); Capita (for Wales and the Midlands, and for Northern Ireland**); and Ingeus UK for south-east England, London and East Anglia.

Maximus will also work as a “delivery partner” to Capita in Wales and the Midlands.

In all, the five assessment contracts will be worth more than two billion pounds over the five years from 2024 to 2029.

*In Scotland, the Scottish government is now responsible for running its replacement for PIP, adult disability payment, although Maximus may have to manage a small number of ongoing PIP cases, while also carrying out WCAs

**In Northern Ireland, DWP has acted on behalf of the Department for Communities, which will be responsible for managing the service in Northern Ireland

DNS editor John Pring’s book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled benefit claimants in the post-2010 era – The Department – will be published by Pluto Press next August

Picture: James Oliver (left) in a hospital bed shortly before he died, and Stephen Carré 

 

source

Further references here

 

Deaths linked to DWP’s failure.

Thousands of disabled people’s deaths linked to DWP’s failure to act on benefits flaws!
Further damming evidence of not fit for purpose.
New research by Deaths by Welfare concludes the Department for Work and Pensions failed to fix systematic flaws in the disability benefits system that potentially led to thousands of deaths.
 
The Government’s failure to act on warnings about its disability benefits systems has been linked to hundreds – maybe even ­thousands – of suicides and other deaths of disabled people.
A detailed 160-page study published today exposes how the Department for Work and Pensions was alerted more than 40 times to life-threatening systemic flaws, by academics, coroners and its own researchers over the past 30 years.
The Mirror has been given exclusive access to the Deaths by Welfare Timeline, which brings together for the first time the three decades of ­investigations linking DWP and its social security reforms with the deaths of disabled benefit claimants.
It documents the DWP’s “cumulative harm” and “slow bureaucratic violence” that has led to countless suicides and other deaths, particularly in the post-2010 austerity era.
One piece of research connects just one area of the 2010 coalition government’s welfare reforms with an extra 590 suicides between 2010 and 2013.
 
Disabled activist Ellen Clifford, author of The War on Disabled People, who provided key input into the Timeline, said it was “an enormously important piece of work”.
She said: “Welfare reform has destroyed lives and caused avoidable harm on such a scale that the United Nations made a [2016] finding of grave and systematic violations of ­disabled people’s rights. At the most extreme end this has meant the loss of life. We will probably never know the true number.
“The culture of dehumanisation and hostility fostered within the DWP to justify the government’s conscious cruelty has meant a complete lack of ­accountability or remorse. The Timeline ­represents an important step in the continuing battle for justice for the victims of welfare reform.”
 
Colin Traynor, 29, died following a seizure in April 2012 after being wrongly found fit for work
Work and pensions ministers have repeatedly been warned of the harm caused by the assessment system, mostly to claimants of out-of-work disability ­benefits such as ­incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance but also the personal independence payment, which was introduced in 2013.
As far back as 1995, Professor Nick Wikeley, who would later become an Upper Tribunal judge, was warning new social security legislation would “leave marginal groups with ­inadequate protection” against the risk of long-term illness.
In 2006, Professor Alison Ravetz warned that if the then Labour government was wrong about its proposed incapacity benefit reforms “the cost, in stress, to those people and their families will be ­incalculable”.
 
Those reforms were rolled out, first under Labour and then – with even harsher restrictions – under Tory-led governments. In March 2010 came the first indication from a coroner the reforms – the work ­capability ­assessment (WCA) and the ­employment and support allowance (ESA) – were having the impact of which Ravetz had warned.
Stephen Carré, 41, had taken his life two months earlier after his appeal against being found fit for work was rejected. Coroner Tom Osborne said this “trigger” led to his suicide, and urged changes to the WCA.
 
In April 2012, Colin Traynor, 29, died following a seizure, after months of growing anxiety about his finances and being wrongly found fit for work.
Five months later, Labour’s Michael Meacher became one of the first MPs to speak in parliament about the controversial medical assessments.
“Sadly, Colin was not an isolated case,” he said at the time.
Dad Michael O’Sullivan, 60, of North London, took his life in September 2013, again after being found fit for work and ineligible for ESA. He had been claiming incapacity benefit since 2000, due to depression, social anxiety and agoraphobia.
To read more content from our week-long series on Disabled Britain click here.
In January 2014, coroner Mary Hassell linked his death to the WCA, warning of “a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken”.
The needless deaths continued…
Jodey Whiting, 42, took her life in February 2017, after being told by the DWP she had been found fit for work.
DWP’s assessors had noted the severity of her mental health ­condition, and the risk posed if she was found fit for work.
Two years after her death, the DWP’s Independent Case Examiner found the department had failed five times to follow its safeguarding rules.
 
Errol Graham’s body was discovered by bailiffs who had been sent to evict him in June 2018. He had starved to death, months after DWP wrongly stopped his ESA, and weighed 4st 7lb.
In January 2020, Jodey and Errol, 57, were mentioned in the House of Commons with a demand by Labour’s Debbie Abrahams for an independent inquiry.
Errol’s daughter-in-law Alison Burton said: “It makes us angry and frustrated. You can’t put into words the devastation that department has caused. It just doesn’t seem to care.”
 
Debbie Abrahams, a former Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “I don’t want any more families like Jodey Whiting’s, Errol Graham’s and hundreds, possibly thousands, more to go through the pain that they have.
“I have been calling for a public inquiry into the scale and causes of the deaths of social security claimants from 2008 to date. Despite all of this, the ­Government has refused to listen.”
Claimants continue to lose their lives because of DWP failings.
A ­disabled woman, who her family claims was traumatised by the daily demands of the universal credit system, took her life two months ago.
 
The DWP insists it is committed to being “compassionate and responsive”. It said: “These are tragic, complex cases and our sincere ­condolences remain with the families. We continually improve our services and have new teams to focus on our most vulnerable customers.”
The timeline, which is being published today in draft form before being launched officially later this year, is part of the Deaths by Welfare project headed by Dr China Mills and supported by Healing Justice Ldn (CORR), which works with marginalised and oppressed communities.
Dr Mills has led the work on the timeline alongside John Pring, editor of Disability News Service, with key input from disabled activist Rick Burgess, disabled activist and author Ellen Clifford, welfare rights expert and researcher Nick Dilworth, and disabled artist-activist Dolly Sen.
Dr Mills, Senior Lecturer in Public Health, said: “We may never know the names of all of those who have died – the lives lived and lost. But we’re seeking people’s feedback, to remember those who have died and to reimagine welfare justice.”
Click here to visit the Deaths by Welfare website.
 
http://deathsbywelfare.org/
 
source:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thousands-disabled-peoples-deaths-linked-27375255

P.I.P AND E.S.A. REPEAL WON…D.W.P H.C.P

P.I.P AND E.S.A. REPEAL WON…

INTERNAL D.W.P REVERSAL ON PREVIOUS H.C.P REPORTS.
Well done ???????

One of our beneficiaries, has taken part in one of our famous live chats over in the Facebook Trust.

They have been to a work based capability assessment, then deemed able to work, after the fraudulent and incorrect assessment results, where administered!!

We have taken this case and then in-formed on how we would deal with this rejection, of public trustee duties.

 

Using P.O.A – Power Of Attorney – our new beneficiary went down to their local Job-Center and laid down the facts.

They explained that they no longer had the wish, energy, or desire to continue, to deal with them and to fight for what is simply due to them,under the

NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE CONTRIBUTION SCHEME!!!

 

Behold a miracle – days later payment was suddenly received,into our beneficiaries bank account,then the detailed letter of payment breakdown, arrived some days later!!

Result – we have a process,to internal;l overturn the H.C.P A.T.O.S. decisions within the D.W.P and J.C.