Lead story
Austerity regime kills
by Daphne Liddle
THE DEPARTMENT of Work and Pensions last week, after years of prevarication, published the figures on the numbers of disability benefit claimants who have died shortly after having been found “fit for work” by a Government Work Capability Assessment (WCA).
Activists had been calling on DWP to publish updated statistics since November 2012, in an effort to prove that the WCA, the eligibility test for employment and support allowance (ESA), was so damaging that it was causing deaths. The information commissioner finally ordered DWP to release the figures after an appeal by Mike Sivier, a freelance journalist and carer who runs the Vox Political blog.
The figures show that that, of the two million people who had gone through a work capability assessment and had received an ESA decision between 1st May 2010 and 28th Feb 2013, nearly 41,000 had died within a year of that decision.
The reports also show that between December 2011 and February 2014, 81,140 people died while claiming ESA or incapacity benefit (IB). And 2,650 ESA and Invalidity Benefit claimants died soon after being found “fit for work” as a result of an assessment.
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Austerity regime kills
Osborne opts for Trident renewal
CHANCELLOR George Osborne took advantage of the bank-holiday weekend to launch his announcement for a £500 million upgrade for the Royal Navy base at Faslane in Scotland — “to make it ready for the replacement for the Trident weapons system”.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon attacked this “arrogant decision” when MPs in Westminster will not vote on the Trident replacement until next year.
Osborne denied he was jumping the gun, saying that the majority of MPs in Westminster had been elected on a manifesto committed to replacing Trident
But he warned the political consensus that Britain needed a nuclear deterrent “risks being shattered again by an unholy alliance of Labour’s left-wing insurgents and the Scottish nationalists”.
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Osborne opts for Trident renewal