Green Paper Related Discussions

A friend was awarded enhanced for both DL and mobility for 3 years. It was obvious her condition would not improve though it's not progressive. Covid arrived and her reassessment was delayed. A year or so later she was reassessed on paper ("light touch") and given an ongoing/10 year award.

It's probably normal. Suppose someone has a major heart attack, stroke, or injury. They're helpless but could recover 100%.

Oh I’d love some good luck like that . My first assessment took two years fighting to upper tier . Second one was during Covid , was told they’re only doing paper based so I’ll be fine . Then they extended my award until it wasn’t paper based but phone . A quick review ended up a two hour interrogation. My advisor gave me wrong advice and I had to have a MR done by myself. I said to the assessor why do they keep doing this when there’s no cure ? She said I’ll write that down and then gave me two years. Even dwp added a year

It does seem silly as there are conditions that can’t be cured or treated . This is where the money is wasted

I have ME fibromyalgia arthritis among other things . Don’t think they’re progressive but obviously they can’t get better certainly not with age .

Hello, all. I love how you're all so wise and putting superb points of view to this "government". I can't tell the difference between this current lot and the ones they replaced almost a year ago. I know it's a lot, but here's the email that I sent to my MP about this. I did this in early May. Maybe it's of interest - it's a lot, yeah, but there's so much to be said and my contact with my MP doesn't even begin to cover it:

**

(Sent to "dear MP" type person and yeah, I do not expect an answer but you never know):

I write the following, with no malice and certainly no intent to cause offence or insult and with the greatest respect to you, though perhaps not to your government, further to my having recently signed the uk.gov petition (I expect you will know which one I have in mind).

As a disabled person myself, I feel that I must add this communication to your no-doubt massively-overloaded inbox in order to make abundantly clear my objections to your government's proposed, appalling, treatment of people with disabilities. 

I expect that you will probably understand this strength of feeling. The proposed changes are already doing great harm to those of us who have great vulnerabilities.

It is astonishing (though hardly surprising) that there has recently been a statement (by you-know-who) that the announced cuts will be carried out in a “compassionate” way, compounded by a surely-not-sneering statement by another you-know-who, equating cuts in the already-inadequate support for disabled people to the withholding of “pocket money” to children. I do appreciate that an apology had been uttered later, however I doubt this was either sincere or genuine, just as I doubt that your government is sincere or genuine, shown in part by their seemingly-ridiculous, fig-leaf “consultation” on the subject of the changes, with many of these apparently not even being open for “consultation” in the first place. 

This behaviour I expected would have been perpetrated by the usual culprits – the egregious tories - however NOT from your party, which I had – once upon a time – expected and hoped would never stoop to such lows. I fear that your government is obsessed with plumbing well past these depths and continuing on its merry course to damage society's most vulnerable. 

I am quite sure that your chancellor will gleefully seek to be “compassionate” in this ham-fisted pounding of little children who find ourselves as nothing more than nice, big, juicy, slow-moving and oh-so-vulnerable targets. On you go!

Ready! Fire! Aim! 

And – once the consequences of your lot's zealotry become obvious – I fear we will see increasing numbers of media reports of innocent individuals dying or – heaven forbid - worse (which seems to have happened during the egregious tories' benefits “reforms” (c.f. [Among others] https://citizen-network.org/news/government-disability-policy-increases-suicide-rate and  https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/more-than-69-claimant-suicides-in-six-years-says-nao-after-dwp-decided-600-was-too-much-to-spend-on-counting-the-dead  ), which will naturally be “learned from” and then, as usual and as so often before, swept under the rug – in a “compassionate” way, no doubt.

Bravo. Well done. After all, the general attitude in government and in areas of “society”, since time immemorial, is that disabled people are nothing more than an unwelcome burden, just lumpen, work-shy ingrates who run up the oft-quoted “benefits bill”, now mere children whose pocket money should be cut. I cannot help but recall the advice on your web page re “threatening or offensive” commentary. Given the “pocket money” insult, I feel that your lot are now absolutely on record for the “offensive” part at the very least; should they not self-report to the police about this? Why have they not done so already? Or must we wait for the “threatening” part to catch up? It will do so very soon, no doubt – unless of course it has already.

Why not simply do away with us all so that there is no-one left to insult and belittle, sneerily, from on high? No burden: no bill. End-Of. And then your lot can all dance on our graves and make merry. I advise that they be careful not to fall and damage a limb while doing so – or worse; after that, one or two might become disabled, yes? If so, what then? Would they then see some “compassionate” treatment, with patronising belittlement uttered with the usual, out-of-touch, condescending “pocket money”-style disdain from our “betters”? And why is this utterer of the aforementioned, offensive statement still “in post”, come to think of it? Has this “tactless” comment inadvertently exposed the real government attitude and intent in all of this? 

Intriguingly, it is reported that The Times and here in The National (https://www.thenational.scot/news/25047979.keir-starmer-urged-address-dwp-benefits-pocket-money-comment/) has your Esteemed Leader as the original source of this little hilarity. Is it true, may I ask? Will he answer to this? If so, presumably he will find his shoes (surely not paid for by someone else, as per spectacles, jacket etc?) very interesting. Still, there is at least the apology for the “tactless” pocket money insult. That's all right, then, isn't it? 

Yes: IT ISN'T.

I expect that your government will increasingly wheel out the usual, tired, threadbare phrases of how “committed” (government-speke of course to mean the reverse) this government is to being “compassionate” as it cuts mere “pocket money” from children and that those affected human beings can simply land jobs that do not and will not exist because employers in general are downsizing, with the resultant lessening in available openings – in large part due to your esteemed chancellor, who seems to have so skilfully choked off all the nascent, post-election growth potential by lumping employers with more massive costs.

Bravo again. 

I trust that we can look forward to more “compassionate” treatment being meted out to us by your lot at some point in the future, when their imagined, cloud-cuckoo land savings from pocket money-cutting may not quite hit targets? Give it time; after all, we must wait until autumn for the OBR “impact assessment” regarding all this (hence the seeming rush to “get in there” before the results of the assessment become known). In any case, it seems that the apparently-minimal research already done into the number of disabled people projected to be “helped” into the workforce shows that relatively few will be successful. Your lot, after all, seem to be far more sure of and obsessed with the savings to be made by trashing disabled people and (naturally) massively less interested in those of us who might be “helped” into employment – and remain there. They know all about the savings, yes, though what about those who are affected and who will have huge cuts to the already-inadequate incomes, with nothing to make up for it? Do your lot CARE? Seems not. The savings seem of course to be the whole point of this. Therefore: Cut The Lie, please. I advise that your lot ditch the non-existent “compassionate” smokescreen and focus solely on the cuts; the “compassionate” bit seems to be nothing more than an insult to our intelligence. Cuts, Cuts, Cuts: that's why this is all happening, yes?

No matter, I have seen it said: there are still many opportunities for disabled people; one thousand more “work coaches” will (if one believes the rhetoric) miraculously secure employment for every single one of those affected, assisted by one billion Pounds retained from the Cuts, Cuts, Cuts for “helping” disabled people into work for employers, many of whom (if they exist by then) will be too stressed and rushed to appoint, accommodate and support us vulnerable people struggling with the “ups and downs of life that is (he can't even get that right – he means “are”, of course) the part of the human condition”, an April 29 2024 utterance on Radio 4's Today Programme, I believe, from that egregious you-know-who, the tory millionaire, apparently graduate of economics among other, non-relevant subjects, who had miraculously and overnight become a professorial expert in all matters disability and mental health while heading up the DWP in that egregious tory government before the arrival of your new slew of seemingly, equally-egregious tories.
 

“Tough Choices” indeed. Those who make them rarely (if ever) have to endure the consequences, do they? 

Perhaps, however, with reports of hostility to all this in the ranks of your MPs who actually seem to have honour and integrity, not to mention a conscience, your lot may see well-deserved erosion, if not collapse, in their support, unless the egregious tories prop them up during the votes to come; of course, that would then seal the fate of your lot and lay bare the stark reality that they are indeed nothing more than the continuation of the egregious tories (in a slight and totally unconvincing change of guise) that I increasingly see them as being. 

I do believe that it's actually people – not spreadsheet cells in your chancellor's compassionate cutting-frenzy – who live in these great countries that make up the UK. 

And hark! By The By! As your lot will have very recently seen: people with disabilities also happen to be – voters! And our friends and families are also – voters! Your lot seem to forget this, do they not? Come the next general election (you will already have seen the results of certain, recent elections in parts of England), this may well be made abundantly clear by those of us still here. P45s all round, then! By then, I hope that the local Job Centres and Work Coach Teams are sufficiently enhanced to cater for your lot and their needs. I have a feeling that they'll need them.

Before closing, I would take the opportunity respectfully to request that you, as my honoured and respected M.P., vote against all of this viciousness when it comes to a Parliamentary vote or votes. I very much hope that you will - and I will accept and respect your decision when I learn of it. The outcome of all this will, of course, inform my own future voting intentions.

I now end this with absolute respect to you – however and with regret, somewhat rather less respect for your seemingly tory-in-all-but-name government, which seems in turn to have far less of it for the vulnerable people whom it is so successfully terrifying and threatening ("compassionately" of course) with great gusto,

Yours sincerely,

If anyone on here is on X go on to Dr Jay Watts @Shrink _at_Large page and view this which was posted on her page. Apologies I posted this under 'Green Paper and Benefits Reforms updates' by mistake.

Dr Jay Watts

TW "Peace of mind will...be given to 200,000 individuals in the Severe Conditions Criteria group... as they will not be called for reassessed for Universal Credit (UC) under new legislation."Right, this is the hill I will die on. These criteria rule out nearly all with MH.

Department for Work and Pensions

The Severe Conditions Criteria does include those with mental health conditions - where it is applied claimants will receive the higher rate of LCWRA and not face reassessment(1/2)

DR JAY WATTS

Technically yes, de facto no. You keep mental illness in the criteria but ALL MH conditions are treated as fluctuating and episodic so we’re excluded by the ‘constantly’ requirement. Ditto ‘no chance of recovery’ - MH profs literally trained in the recovery model however severe.

Department for Work and Pensions

Also - all existing claimants of LCWRA, including those with mental health conditions - will continue to get the same amount until 2029/30

DR JAY WATTS

It is not the same amount as it is not rising with inflation so it is less each year.

As Paul Merton said on HIGNFY in relation to Starmer's - "my dad was a tool maker".

Well he did make you!