ESA Claimants To Be Treated Like Troubled Families Plus Appeals Changes This Month Dear jim, In this edition we have news that the coalition plans to treat employment and support allowance claimants like troubled families and that IDS is trying to find ways of stopping the ESA of some claimants who refuse to take up offers of work. There’s also the truly revolting news that the DWP only abandoned ‘Conditionality Week’, a week-long celebration of the massive rise in benefits sanctions, after they were caught out by the Guardian. Plus, there’s the long-expected news that mandatory reconsideration before appeal for ESA claimants will definitely be imposed from October 28th. This will force claimants found fit for work to choose between trying to claim JSA or doing without an income replacement benefit until the reconsideration, which has no legal time-limit, is completed. There’s also, however, the rather more welcome news that the awarding of the PIP contract to Atos is to be investigated by the National Audit Office. And then there’s also the story that the DWP are keeping very quiet about – one of their fraud investigators has just been found guilty of a massive tax fraud and is now awaiting a prison sentence. Plus no fewer than nine A4E employees are being charged with forgery and fraud in connection with bogus claims to have found people jobs. And the number of challenges to the bedroom tax, all the way from first tier tribunal to the Court of Appeal, is mushrooming as the policy seems more and more likely to turn into a disaster for the coalition as well as the claimants involved. Plus we’d like you to contact us if you’re running a benefits related campaign. And we’re finally getting back to tweeting. ESA NEWS Today George Osborne announced not only plans to force long-term JSA claimants into work or training, but also a pilot scheme to get ESA claimants in the work-related activity group into work after the Work Programme has failed them. The new scheme will be based on methods used with troubled families rather than, for example, obliging employers to take on sick and disabled candidates. In reality, the scheme seems designed to provide new opportunities to sanction ESA claimants, something which a leaked memo proves Iain Duncan Smith is increasingly keen on. The Guardian has reported that IDS has been warned by civil servants that he can’t impose new ranges of sanctions on ESA claimants without new legislation, something which he doesn’t think there is time for before the election. IDS wants to see additional tasks being forced on ESA claimants in the work-related activity group and even hopes to force some claimants with serious, but allegedly time-limited conditions, to take a job or lose their ESA. Meanwhile, the DWP has had to cancel a week-long celebration of sanctions that have caused misery and hardship to millions and targeted some of society’s most vulnerable people. BEDROOM TAX NEWS The Labour Party have given a headline grabbing undertaking to scrap the bedroom tax if they are elected in 2015. The Liberal Democrat’s conference also voted in favour of overturning the tax (members only)- against the wishes of leader, Nick Clegg. However, the bedroom tax is already causing huge amounts of distress to sick and disabled claimants, many of whom will be threatened with homelessness long before the next election. Steve Donnison Benefits and Work Publishing Ltd Company registration No. 5962666
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 08:09:20 +0000
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