More than 80 people a month are dying shortly after being declared “fit for work” according to new data, prompting campaigners to call for an overhaul of the government’s controversial welfare regime.
Statistics released by the Department for Work and Pensions on Thursday show that 2,380 people died between December 2011 and February 2014 shortly after a work capability assessment (WCA) found they were able to work.
The administration of the WCA by officials has been widely criticised as crude and inaccurate by campaigners. There have been hundreds of thousands of appeals of fit-for-work decisions over the last few years, about four in 10 of which have succeeded.
While DWP is mongering doubt about the correlation, the Black Triangle Campaign has been tracking people who have died as a result of this policy. There's a list of the dead here. Those deaths can be laid squarely at the feet of the UK Cabinet, who should be tried as mass-murderers.
Meanwhile, it really makes you wonder how many have died here in New Zealand as a result of National's welfare "reforms"...