Crossing the line into organised propaganda

EDIT: May 30th
The posting of this blog led to stories in both the New Statesman and Liberal Conspiracy. The issue had been strongly followed up by Sheila Gilmore MP among others and prompted a petition by disabled activists Jayne Linney and Debbie Sayers demanding an inquiry into Iain Duncan Smith which attracted no less than 98,000 signatures.  All of this has had an astounding resolution.

1. May 9th Iain Duncan Smith was officially rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority
2. May 17th The Work and Pensions Select Committee announced it will conduct an inquiry into Iain Duncan Smith's use of statistics as part of its annual assessment of the DWP Annual Report and Accounts (ARA). In preparation the committee plans to hold a session with the UK Statistics Authority to see how the department should correctly be using their statistics.
3. May 30th Grant Shapps was also officially rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority

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This month saw sweeping changes to the welfare system which impacted on disabled people. In particular Disability Living Allowance was replaced by Personal Independence Payments and the Bedroom Tax came into play, which disproportionately affects households with a disabled member.
Elsewhere Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), the benefit paid to those too ill or disabled to work continues to provoke controversy, with a discredited assessment (WCA) and a backlogged appeals process.

It was maybe not surprising then that, perhaps fearing a reversal of public opinion, ministers from the Department of Work and Pensions decided to act by releasing a number of press releases to support their actions.

This would not be a problem IF they were accurate. It would have still have been acceptable albeit  slightly upsetting if, as is often the case, the statistics were "spun" in their favour. However what actually happened was in my opinion unprecedented and unforgiveable. We saw a string of stories which were completely untrue and highly damaging. I put that a line was crossed into organised propaganda.

It seems others may agree. The former chief economist of the DWP finally spoke out talking of "a consistent pattern of ministers trying to manipulate statistics to their own political ends". MPs have also called for an official inquiry into the manipulation of official statistics by the Committee of Work and Pensions.

In Order these are the Stories.

Over the Easter Weekend on March 30th, two damaging stories came out, one surrounding DLA and the other ESA.

• 1)  Grant Shapps said 900,000 people had abandoned their claim for ESA RATHER than take the assessment.

This was proved to be totally misleading.  This is the sum total of people who had abandoned their claim over a 4 year period since the beginning of ESA and is simply the usual amount of those people with shorter term conditions who rapidly move on and off the benefit. This is confirmed by the government's OWN analysis which says

“Current data does not allow anything conclusive to be said about the destinations of closed and in progress cases, nor to infer what would have been or would be the outcome of assessment."

“An important reason why ESA claims in this sample were withdrawn or closed before they were fully assessed was because the person recovered and either returned to work, or claimed a benefit more appropriate to their situation” 

Unfortunately truth is irrelevant. The 900,000 figure has now entered benefit folklore and is brought up by the general public whenever disability benefits are mentioned as proof that many people are abusing the system and will abandon their claims if challenged.

Please see my previous blog post for more details.

• 2)  Esther McVey, Minister for the Disabled appeared in an article for the Daily Mail. In this she gave a strong impression that many were claiming unnecessarily and even fraudulently. She also said there had been a rush on claims in the run up to PIP to avoid assessment.

It was reported that she would "go after bogus disabled... some of them DO get better!"
She "says many who get DLA and are officially assessed "disabled" are no such thing: Only three per cent of people are born with a disability, the rest acquire it through accident or illness, but people come out of it. Thanks to medical advances, bodies heal."

This was just short of accusing DLA claimants of fraud and/or mindbogglingly ignorant. People who acquire disabilities later in life are just as disabled as those who are disabled from birth. Many such illnesses and disabilities are incurable and life long despite current medical science: for instance Parkinsons, MS, lupus, amputations, paralysis, blindness, schizophrenia, autism but to mention a few off the top of my head.
Furthermore she is being deliberately misleading as under the current system those who have more short term conditions will be given shorter DLA awards of 1 or 3 years.

She then went on to say:
The decision to introduce new tests has produced an extraordinary ‘closing-down sale’ effect, with rocketing claims as people rush to get their hands on unchecked ‘welfare for life’ before McVey’s axe falls on April 8.

Again, this has turned out to be untrue. While the total number of DLA claims has indeed increased, the number of DLA claims among working age people (ie those affected by the changeover to PIP) FELL. So this is in fact the direct opposite behaviour to that claimed by the minister.

• 3)  Iain Duncan Smith repeated the claim on April 8th in all the major newspapers, including The Telegraph, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Express, Sky News, the Huffington Post and others, despite this having been pointed out to the ministers by the Disability News Service by April 4th.

Making one untrue statement using misleading figures to back it up is bad. Doing it twice having had it pointed out is completely unforgivable.

• 4)  On April 24th, Iain Duncan Smith gave a press release claiming that "one million who are fit to work have lived on benefits for 3 of the past 4 years".

This is the front page of the Telegraph and news in the Daily Mail and the Express.

Once again the headlines are untrue. The claimants are not "fit for work" nor even "capable of trying to find a job". Upon reading the articles it becomes clear that the figures include people who are in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) of ESA. 

By the DWP own figures on ESA "fit for work" decisions, these people have been found unfit for work. Unlike people in the support group though, it is felt that they will eventually recover at some time in the future. Right now though, they cannot work. 

When the WRAG was first conceived of, it was felt that it would take 2-5 years for people placed in it to return to work. It is therefore perfectly feasible that WRAG claimants have been claiming ESA for 3 of the past 4 years without being "stuck" or fraudulent.

Once again figures are being used to stigmatise disability benefit claimants.

In 4 weeks, 4 misleading news articles.

In 2011 the Work and Pensions Select Committee severely criticised  the way the government was releasing official statistics. It reported this was leading to negative views of long term disability benefit claimants not only in the tabloid press but the mainstream press as well. It noted that many newspapers had subsequently had to publish corrections.

At the time the minister replied "the government could not control the editorial approach of tabloids" and was often "bemused" by the stories which ran.

I would put that this excuse no longer washes.

Current ministers are releasing untrue statistics and making false statements. The proposed investigation must go ahead at the earliest opportunity and the practise stopped. A whole section of the population is being demonised for political gain. It must not continue.

Your help

A petition has been started by disability campaigners Jayne Linney and Debbie Sayers to the Work and Pensions Committee asking them to commit to hold Iain Duncan Smith to account for his (mis)use of statistics.
It has had a huge response with 38,000 signatures at the last count.
You can read an article about it's success in the Guardian here (when it still only had 16,000 signatures).
To add your signature please go here. Thank you.

Open letter to the Opposition: Where are you?

The Welfare Reform Bill is now law.

As a result of the Welfare Reform Act, DLA is to be scrapped. Its replacement, PIP will be denied to an estimated half a million disabled people, left with no support at all.

Under this scheme, among many many issues consider just the following:

• People who can move just 20m will lose their high rate mobility benefit, will be stripped of their car, yet still face an inaccessible public transport system.
• People unable to bath or shower will be stripped of their personal care benefit as long as they can wash their face and under their arms. Personal hygiene does not seem to matter.
• People unable to dress and undress themselves do not qualify
• People who are incontinent no longer qualify for help to clean up clothes and bedding, regardless of whether they need it.
• People requiring assistance to cook will no longer qualify for help. No information on what they are supposed to do is forthcoming.

Against a backdrop of social services cut, these disabled people will get no help there either and will now be left entirely without support.

Where are you? Why are you not speaking out against this inhumane treatment of disabled people?

As a result of the Welfare Reform Act, a working family who has to support a disabled adult unable to work now receives £100 per week less compared to an equivalent family supporting a child. This is despite the disabled adult having faithfully paid their National Insurance contributions throughout their working lives.

Families with disabled children have just seen their benefit almost halved.

This was done despite the fact that a third of disabled people already live in poverty.

Where are you? Why are you abandoning working disabled families and disabled children to sink even further into poverty?

The Independent Living Fund is closed to new claimants. Its continued existence is under threat. Social services are restricting care to all but the most disabled, cutting care to those who already receive it and increasing cost contributions to a point where people are unable to pay. As a result, many disabled people face an uncertain future and a possible return into institutions. Others already live in dangerous conditions and poor qualify of life through lack of care. This is only set to get worse.

Where are you? Why are you not fighting for the reinstatement of ILF? Why are you not fighting for ringfencing of adult social services care money to safeguard disabled people's independence?

Disabled people unable to work face a test unfit for purpose by a company unable to fulfil its obligations with a third of test centres remaining inaccessible. Seriously ill people with cancer, MS, parkinsons, strokes and heart disease, not to mention debilitating mental health conditions are being found fit for work and face a jammed backlogged appeals process.

Where are you? Why are you not insisting the system be fixed before rolling it out to all claimants?

A disabled person still classed as unable to work can now nonetheless be forced to work for free. Unlike healthy young people, this will be indefinitely.

10,130 disabled people have already faced sanctions, with around 45% handed out to those with learning difficulties or mental health illnesses making them 50% more likely to be stripped of benefits. This is 50 times the amount of sanctions handed to non disabled people and reports are coming in that they are often targeted as an easy way to meet a sanctions quota.

This will only get worse as the workfare programme is rolled out nationally.

Where are you? Why are you leaving sick and disabled people to a system without hope and which will punish them unfairly?

For the past few years disabled people have been the target of a concerted effort from the media and the government, portrayed as scroungers and fraudsters, with misleading statistics released and quoted as “evidence”.

As a result hate crime is rising. In the past year alone disability hate crime has risen by 20% against a backdrop of an overall drop in hate crime. Many disabled people report living in fear.

Where are you? Why are you complicit in this instead of standing against it?

Disabled people need change. They need hope. They need representation. And they need it now before it is too late. WHERE ARE YOU?

Spartacus: The Responsible Reform Report

It is now a couple of months since I co-authored what became known as the Spartacus Report as the main author Dr S.J.Campbell. The results were beyond our wildest hopes. The Responsible Reform report is thought to have played a part in the government defeats in the House of Lords votes as well as in obtaining the concessions in parts of the Welfare Reform Bill. But perhaps most importantly, hundreds if not thousands of disabled people came together in a way we had not foreseen. Many feel less alone and still more are now taking a far more active part in fighting these reforms. I see disabled people all over the net proudly announcing that they are "Spartacus".

This makes it all worthwhile. It is well known that many of the Spartacus report creators are very ill as a result of all the campaigning, the most famous of whom are naturally Sue Marsh and Kaliya Franklin who have been tirelessly active for the past 18 months.

What is less well known is how the Responsible Reform came about and how close Spartacus came to never happening at all.

I would first of all like to thank the group of people who placed the FOI (Freedom of Information) requests which enabled us to get hold of the 500 odd group responses to the DLA consultation. Without this forward thinking step nothing would ever have happened.

This data was then passed on to Sue Marsh who started to look through it and recruited a few volunteers to assist. I became one of these quite by accident having offered to help after she mentioned she was doing a "research project" in one of her blog posts.
Over the next few months people simply read the data and tried to sort through it in an ordered way. However most of the volunteers fell by the wayside.

On December 06th all hell broke loose. I received a panicky email from Sue saying we still had half the data to go through but only a week and no volunteers left.
This was "crunch time". I doubted Sue could manage on her own. On the other hand if I offered to help I knew it would be a mammoth task and my health would suffer hugely. I spent 3 hours wrestling with myself before winning through and saying I would do it. It was a very close call. The Spartacus Report probably nearly ended there and then.

As it turned out we still had a month left. I went through all the remaining data as fast as I could and summarised it. A delighted Sue pointed me towards the Government's response to the consultation and asked if I could have a "quick look" and note down any discrepancies.

After a moment of pure disbelief reading the government's report I set to work. By this time I was extremely ill and could only work 15 minutes per hour. I was pushing myself to the limits to get it done knowing that if I didn't no one else would and it would all be in vain. I sent the result to Sue whose response was "crikey it is a bloody thesis!". This now forms the backbone of the Spartacus report: the section dismantling argument by argument the government's response to the DLA/PIP consultation. Sue was so excited by it she decided to pull out all the stops, deciding that we finally had something that could upset the government.

My job now thank goodness was ended for the time being and I retired to bed for a full 5 days.

Over the Christmas period Sue now recruited and coordinated other people to add to the report and turn it into the finished product, notably Declan Gaffney who wrote the statistics section. Sue herself wrote the executive summary and the press release. Kaliya was brought in to write a conclusion and others came in to help with editing, formatting and the important job of checking details, finding quotes and regulations. These include Mason Dixon, Leigh James, Sam Barnett-Cormack , Rhydian Fon-James, Dawn Willis and a few others. It is a sad indication of the times that these last wish to stay anonymous for fear of repercussions from the DWP or others.

Sue Marsh and Kaliya Franklin then used their extensive media contacts they had painstakingly build up over the past 18 months to prepare for the release of the report. With the help of the other Responsible Reform contributors they planned their attack.

At this stage the wider disability community finally got involved although secrecy was still kept. Funds were needed for the printing and distributing of the report to all the MPs and peers ahead of the voting. It is a measure of the trust people have in Sue Marsh that the £2000 required was raised within 24 hours of an appeal being launched on her blog despite the full details of its purpose being kept secret.

Other people also got involved in a more practical way, volunteering to print, post and help in any way they could. Others volunteered to be constituency reps and contact their MPs on the day of release.

Finally the Responsible Reform Report was launched on Monday January 09th and soon became dubbed the Spartacus Report. I opened my own twitter account as Spoonydoc and joined the other authors and helpers in making as much noise as we could. It worked! #spartacusreport trended all day on twitter and received support from celebrities such as  Stephen Fry, John Prescott, Alastair Campbell, Billy Bragg, Val McDermid, Kate Long, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Sue Perkins and Tim Minchin. It is now said to be the most successful social media activism ever.

Disabled people everywhere appeared to finally find their voice. The Lords found themselves deluged by emails pleading to fight the Welfare Reform Bill. This added to the work already done by other disability groups such as DPAC, black triangle, and various charities started to count.

The government was defeated by no less than 7 amendments in the House of Lords and concessions were made on other issues including the roll out of PIP.

As for the Spartacus Report, initially ignored by the mainstream media, that all changed.  Sue Marsh appeared on Newsnight, and others including Kaliya Franklin appeared on numerous radio shows. Perhaps most importantly disability was finally shown in a positive light with supportive articles from newspapers traditionally full of "scrounger" rhetoric such as the Daily Mail. I would like to thank Sonya Poulton for her efforts in this. However the effort of all this had by now as we know taken its toll on the likes of Sue and Kaliya.  I myself am still recovering from writing the report itself two months on. Seriously ill, I have been unable to resume any disability campaigning at all and am finding it frustrating watching others work themselves to the ground without being able to help them.

Disappointingly the government resorted to "financial privilege" to overturn these defeats and push ahead with its bill. Now back in the Lords, further amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill have been won and more concessions awarded, but the future still looks bleak for many. However we must remember that it is better than it could have been.

The fight though must continue. And it seems that many disabled people want "Spartacus" to be a part of this.

Astonishingly what started as a report into a fudged government consultation has now become a loose informal disability movement.

My hope is that "Spartacus" will help by giving every disabled person assistance, ideas and opportunities to do their bit however small. Because that is the only way we can hope to win this.

If you think it is impossible for you to help, a simple example is signing Pat's petition and asking people you know to do so too.

Some wonderful people have come forward to help "Spartacus". They have written a simplified version of the new draft PIP criteria for instance. They were also involved in helping Sue write the briefing for the Lords ahead of the voting on Tuesday February 14th.

There is a Facebook page for people who want to be involved as well as a website hub for information and ideas so that everyone can do something.

Have a look. And become "Spartacus".