150,000 people sign petition to block Iain Duncan Smith from receiving knighthood

[IlonaM]

'More than 150,000 people have signed a petition to prevent Iain Duncan Smith ? the architect of universal credit and the ?bedroom tax? ? from receiving his knighthood.

The Conservative MP?s inclusion in the New Year?s Honours list sparked a furious response from those who argued his reforms to the welfare system had pushed thousands into poverty and contributed to premature deaths.

The petition, launched by NHS psychiatrist Dr Mona Kamal Ahmed on Friday, claims Mr Duncan Smith is ?responsible for some of the cruellest, most extreme welfare reforms this country has ever seen?.

It referenced the United Nations inquiry into Britain?s welfare system during his stewardship of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which concluded the government was responsible for ?grave and systemic violations? of the rights of disabled people.

Dr Ahmed branded his ennoblement ?an insult to the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable individuals across this country who are suffering as a result of his policies and to those who have tragically lost loved ones as a direct result?....'

Independent article: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iain-duncan-smith-knighthood-petition-honours-universal-credit-bedroom-welfare-a9263661.html

Petition link: http://chng.it/bwLSfZQjRK

[hpsaucey]

Thanks for posting.

Signed

HP

[Blah Blah]

Whilst no end of hideous people are rewarded with honours, there certainly is a case for objecting to IDS. It is not just his overseeing of Welfare Reform that is the issue, but that this is a man that has lied throughout his career, on his CV, in Parliament and (like Boris) has never been made to account for any of it. While he oversaw the DWP, the OCO had to get a court order to force him to release figures around suicide rates and deaths of claimants incorrectly found fit to work. He put in place a system whee the decision of disability and mental health is not made by a medical professional, but a clerk, looking for 'descriptors' in the answers given by claimants at their assessments. Information that was not available to claimants initally to prepare them for those assessments, but was eventually leaked by insiders to organisations that could help claimants. Now imagine if you were only to be found suffering from a condition if you described that condition and its impacts by using a defined set of words? For all those reasons, I've signed the petition.

[DulwichFox]

I have Signed the petition.

[JohnL]

It's not just IDS - although he's a good example of someone who doesn't deserve a knighthood. It's all politicians who seem to get an Honour for basically doing their day job. Honours should be for going beyond that.

Honours should not be used as bribes either

[Seabag]

Is anyone ?genuinely? shocked?

Are we not numb to the maneuvers of this party/government?

It?s still crap tho, and he?s such a sh*tbag of a human being, he?ll take the honour.

[uncleglen]

Ian Duncan Smith resigned from the Cameron Cabinet over cuts to disability. Universal Credit is fairer than the JSA system we had https://www.1ststoprecruitment.co.uk/2017/06/20/universal-credit/

And the bedroom tax obviously is fair because why should one person live in a 2,3 or 4 bedroomed house on housing benefit when they could house asylum seekers for example in their spare rooms if they cannot downsize- I know someone with 2 asylum seekers in their 3-bed council house.

I'm surprised some fool hasn't called for a re-run of the General Election since they do not like the result. And- what a surprise to anyone who lives around Chingford and Waltham Forest, or knows the area, that IDS retained his seat!

[Blah Blah]

IDS resigned because Osborne reduced the percentage of income that could be kept by a UC claimants. It does not absolve him from imposing and overseeing a system that directly led to the suicides of thousands of people. A system that left many more dying from the conditions they were ill with after being found fit for work, or the millions requiring food banks while being denied any benefits for six weeks after transferring to UC. ALL of that lies squarely at IDS and he did nothing in face of the evidence to address any of it. The DWP had to be taken to court again and again, and it lost again and again, and still IDS did nothing to change anything (and you might want to look at the cost to the DWP of all of this. It far outstrips any savings that were supposed to be made). IDS lied to Parliament over available data and again, had to be taken to court to release what he knew would be indefensible figures. Only when he was gone, did his successors (and especially Amber Rudd) start to make the changes needed to ease the problems.

I will embarrass you with the details if you persist with your nonsense Uncleglen.

As for bedroom tax, even there, you fail to understand the issues. The percentage of those under occupying social homes was very small, and most were doing so because local authorities had nowhere to move them to (something the legislation took no account of and subsequently the government had to give grants to those lumped with the tax and no option to move). Similarly, the extra bedrooms in social housing are so small that most of them can barely accommodate a single bed and wardrobe, hence a successful court challenge that defined a minimum floor space before a room could be considered an extra bedroom. That is before we get into the issues with those using an extra room for carers and medical equipment.

Even one suicide is one too many. I know many Tory voters who wouldn't even defend what you are defending.

[mrwb]

How about just scrapping the entire "honours" system?

Surely no place for such arbitrary elitist nonsense in the 21st century.

[Hemingway]

oooo whoppee that'll do the trick. waste of time but makes people feel worthy no doubt

[uncleglen]

Remember-Correlation does not imply causation. IDS misused some statistics (in the same way that all these self-interested groups are implying that UC and DWP are causing people to kill themselves)- but a lot of people on the WRAG for example, were persuaded to become self-employed and therefore their benefits were halved and they were no longer on the unemployed register

And the reason that Labour involved the private sector of profiteers (e.g. ATOS) in the first place in the DWP was because the incapacity benefit system was being abused on a criminal level by disgusting fraudsters- in fact the efforts of the coalition and conservative governments were doomed to failing at first because the swindling horses had bolted under Labour.

[carlafindle]

...and we're off

[Blah Blah]

Your deflection from the facts is deeply offensive Uncleglen. Justifying the deaths of thousands of people with some exaggerated nonsense about benefit fraud. Is that your rationale? Drive the most vulnerable to an early death in case they defraud the system instead?

I would say that when a diabetic dies because his insulin goes off, because he can not put electric on the meter to keep his fridge on, because he has been sanctioned, that causation is everything. The DWP were fully aware he was a vulnerable person.

When a middle aged woman, leaves a note, blaming welfare reform and the bedroom tax specifically, before walking out in front of a lorry on a motorway, that causation is everything.

Do I really have to list links to a long list of coroner's reports to get through to you? Are you really that determined to casually pass of the deaths of thousands of people as nothing? To pass off a deliberate move to leave millions of people with NO money for six weeks, having to use food banks? Let's see how you cope with no access to any money whatsoever for six weeks! Let's see how you cope if you are found fit to work while dealing with a degenerative illness that kills you a month later. UC has also put two thirds of tenants into rent arrears. Because you see, that is what happens when you make people wait six weeks for any welfare.

What people like you forget is that most of us pay tax at some point in our lives that is supposed to pay for a dignified safety net when we need it. What IDS created was a welfare system with punitive and cruel failures built into it. Now if you were arguing that any new system might have unforeseen issues, then fair enough. But the real crime is that IDS did NOTHING when the obvious issues became apparent. Like you he tried to brush them off as insignificant and bury his head in denials around causation. No-one in any professional capacity could make him see the evidence. There is no defense of his attitude to those adversely impacted, none whatsoever, and even less defense of his failure to act.

Benefit fraud has never been more than a tiny percentage of all claims. But then researching the real facts was never your strong point was it? Well here are the facts for you. More than two thirds of decisions that found claimants fit for work were overturned by tribunals that ruled that the DWP got it wrong, and those people were waiting on average for a year to get to that decision. The only people who should be making decisions on a person's claim for disability, is a qualified medical professional. Leaving that decision to admin staff with NO medical qualification whatsoever, who never even meet the client, is a recipe for disaster. You don't have to be Einstein to see that.

Claimants with genuine conditions, especially those being assessed for PIP, still have to go through hoops to get the help they are entitled to. And they are being treated like they have never worked in the process. I have had eight years of clients facing difficulty navigating this system and know a great deal more than you about the reality of that. Amber Rudd did make some crucial changes to eradicate some of the problems. But then she was happy to engage with and listen to the professionals having to clean up the carnage of the system. IDS never cared, and never gave any of it a second thought. So give it up Uncle. This is one issue on which playing Devil's Advocate will not serve you well.

[Dulwich Born And Bred]

Just to say Uncleglen, that I used to be a Benefits Fraud Investigator for 7 years and all I can say to you is that you need to stop reading the Daily Mail as it?s embarrassing the nonsense that you are sprouting.

[JohnL]

I just realised that since Cameron we don't just get NY Honours we get a Resignation Honours list too.

[fishbiscuits]

TBH the bedroom tax seemed reasonable to me. Still does. There may be issues with the execution (e.g. the example given above of rooms too small to really use as a bedroom, or no suitable smaller property available) but I agree with the principle.

[JohnL]

fishbiscuits Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> TBH the bedroom tax seemed reasonable to me. Still

> does. There may be issues with the execution (e.g.

> the example given above of rooms too small to

> really use as a bedroom, or no suitable smaller

> property available) but I agree with the

> principle.

They were chucking young people out at 18 so the parent could be downsized though IIRC, yet young people are living with parents until 30 in lots of cases where the parent owns.

I also remember looking around for a flat for my mother (who owned her house) with her in the early 2000s and there was nothing she would have been happy in - if it suited in one way there was something else where it didn't or the cost was so close to her house she wouldn't gain so she stayed in the 4 bedroom house.

[Dulwich Born And Bred]

It?s not easy to swap though, so if you want to downsize/upsize within your own area, it?s virtually impossible to find something and that is assuming the other person is up for the swap because people have to consider schools/work/family/health. It?s not a simple case of someone has a three bed in Dulwich and can swap to a one bed in Dulwich because they rarely exist. They did documentary about home-swapping and it?s not easy or realistic for most so they have to pay the bedroom tax despite trying to swap.

Another example is that a two bed house is considered a three bed house by Southwark Council as they state that the dining room is a bedroom, this is baring in mind that the living room isn?t big enough for a dining table nor is the kitchen so the tenant is paying bedroom tax for a dining room.

fishbiscuits Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> TBH the bedroom tax seemed reasonable to me. Still

> does. There may be issues with the execution (e.g.

> the example given above of rooms too small to

> really use as a bedroom, or no suitable smaller

> property available) but I agree with the

> principle.

By

[Blah Blah]

The other thing to understand is that bedroom tax applies only to social housing tenants. These are tenants who on the whole, have the lowest rents. Who knows what logic went through IDS's head there, in singling out tenants who already cost the welfare system least. The vast bulk of Housing Benefits go to private landlords! Everything about this tax is ideological when you consider the actual facts. And assurances made on exemptions (around disability for example) were never kept.

The latest figures show that nine out of ten homes are unaffordable to low income renters (which includes those in receipt of Benefits). It is a complete lack of joined up thinking to create reforms that make housing those on low incomes harder, while doing nothing to improve the amount of suitable housing stock available for them to rent. This is the fundamental flaw in Tory thinking.