Do They Hear Themselves?

The Department for Work and Pensions allowed sixty-nine people to die.

When bailiffs arrived to evict a man eight months after his benefits were removed they found Errol Graham. He weighed 28 kg (62 lb).

Sixty-nine deaths in six years have now prompted The Department of Work and Pensions to change its systems. The systems that were supposed to have protected these sixty-nine suicides.

Have they learnt from the use of ‘mandatory intervention’ and ‘cut off benefits’?

The department’s Peter Schofield knew that sometimes vulnerable people fell through the cracks of the social security system.

Therese Coffey, Works and Pensions Secretary, admitted that she knew things could go badly wrong for people and that the DWP needs to be more agile about how they pick that up.

Knowingly letting sixty-nine people with mental health issues kill themselves over a period of six years is criminal.

The three letters, three unanswered calls and texts and two visits to Errol Graham’s home elicited no response. His benefits were stopped.

The coroner asked whether this was reasonable, given Graham’s history with the DWP?

A DWP official stated that the ‘safeguarding’ guidance terms at the time said it was the right decision … for us to have made.

What about human decency?

Mr Graham’s family has launched a legal challenge accusing the DWP of failing.

Failing to protect vulnerable claimants, causing degrading and inhuman suffering and ultimately forcing the suicides of 69 people.

With the introduction of a new ‘top-level’ DWP serious case panel, Mr Schofield said;

“We genuinely want to listen and learn and make sure that when we see things that have gone wrong, we make changes that ensure they do not happen again.”

“What we have not been good at is pooling the information we have got.”

In future, a case conference with other agencies will be called to understand more about a claimant.

Still using ‘mandatory intervention’ for a jobcentre meeting smacks of not having learnt a jot from Errol Graham starving to death because the DWP cut off his only income.

What did they expect Errol Graham to do?

Suddenly recover his mental abilities and secure himself a job? Turn to his family and friends for help?

If his family could have helped in the past, I’m sure they would have. Instead of now trying to fight for the right thing. I sincerely hope it’s justice they demand and not money.

Where was the compassion from the neighbours?

“Oh, we haven’t seen Errol for a few days/weeks, should we call the police?

It’s likely Errol lived in a crumbling block of flats with other potential suicides by alcohol and or from mental health issue sufferers who have enough of their own problems. And please don’t say I’m imagining the scenario, I lived in such a building. I delivered political party leaflets to buildings in such disrepair that if I lived there, I would have slit my wrists.

Ten years of the Tory government punishing the vulnerable has created misery and loss of life. Their key aim to cut costs. At all costs.

The vulnerable are a drain on the governmental pockets, their lives have no meaning to ministers other than something to be left to die horribly and good riddance. One less pay-out to begrudgingly make.

Enough

Give people back their dignity. Forcing people to attend ‘mandatory interventions’ was surely designed by a dictator or despot who intended for people to feel ashamed because they were unable to work. Inadequate because they had nobody to turn to.

Imagine the pain Errol Graham went through as he slowly starved to death over the weeks it took for someone to make the decision to break his door down. Not to save him but to evict him.

In Death By Brandy Isn’t the Answer. A woman, who was lucky to have a caring neighbour help her secure benefits, drank herself into a stupor over about a week. On the seventh day, she fell. Loud noises were regular occurrences from the flat above. It wasn’t until the weird mewling noise had been annoying the hell out of neighbours that the police were called. She was incapable of opening the door herself so they, with a great deal of kicking and various inappropriate implements, kicked the door down.

That’s Scotland for you, where vulnerable people are treated — as all humans should be — with respect and dignity.

Information in this article is based on this Guardian article.

I sincerely wish this to be the start of the end for Universal Credit and its despicable treatment of people who need help.

Some of my other articles may be of interest …