Why is Labour blocking the release of the Tories DWP death record?

Right, so so much for transparency in this new Labour government of Keir Starmer’s it seems as in yet another scandalous example of things carrying on as if the Tories never left office, for some bizarre reason, the Tories awful, criminally negligent as many surmise it to be track record in charge of the DWP, is being protected by Starmer’s Labour.
A ruling last month by the Information Commissioners Office that the now Labour run Department for Work and Pensions, overseen by new work and pensions minister, the terrifyingly Toryesque Liz Kendall, had ordered the DWP to release information pertaining to deaths of claimants of Universal Credit over the course of the last four years, but Labour have instead chosen to lodge an appeal against doing so.
That four year record would be I’m sure a record of damnation of the Tories, so why on Earth would Labour want to protect them by blocking the release of this data, unless they’re planning on carrying on exactly where the Tories left off, another example of Starmer’s Labour having stood on that election slogan of change, where again, they aren’t actually changing a damn thing, not even on the matter of avoiding unnecessary deaths of benefit claimants it would seem.
Right, so why are Labour hiding the Tories track records as far as information goes on Universal Credit linked deaths over the last 4 years at the DWP? This is your opposition party, this is what they’ve been doing in power at the tail end of the last 14 years, we know there have been substantial and systemic failings at the DWP which have led to the deaths of a large number of sick and disabled people and you want to hide that? You’d think Labour would be shouting such stats from the rooftops, what political capital they could make from such damning information, information that many people, such as myself and others who have lived in fear frankly of what the DWP might do to us, our families, our loved ones, those we care for have long suspected passes the line of criminality, that Tory ministers ought to be facing custodial sentences over, so why are Labour instead choosing to hide such information?
Does this not make you complicit in what has been done to some seriously ill people in this country? Why would you want to associate yourselves with such deceit, unless – and it’s the only logical conclusion I can come to – you don’t plan on doing anything any differently?
I mean at what point Labour was all about scrapping Universal Credit as the colossally expensive failure that it has been, the roll out of it years and years past when it was meant to be fully operational, but of course that is just one item on the very, very long list of things Labour under Keir Starmer once said they were going to do and then changed their minds over. Now it is being kept and the rollout is continuing, so is that the reason they don’t want people to know the death toll? Because it’s going to continue to grow as Labour consciously decide to not change anything at all? That sounds like state sanctioned murder at this point doesn’t it, but do you have a better alternative explanation for Labour choosing to hide the Tories DWP track record?
All of this has come about as a result of the work of the excellent Disability News Service, their work to get this information released and the news that their successful appeal for this information has been blocked is detailed in this excerpt from their latest article on this matter:
‘Labour’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has failed its latest test on transparency after appealing against a regulator’s decision that it should release vital information from secret reports into the deaths of universal credit claimants.
The information will show how many internal investigations were carried out into the deaths of universal credit claimants over the last four years of a Conservative-run DWP.
Disability News Service (DNS) has been trying since last November to secure the information, which would show the number of internal process reviews (IPRs) carried out following the death of a universal credit claimant, and what recommendations for improvements were made by the civil servants who carried out those reviews.
DWP has previously insisted that it intends to publish the information “at a future date”.
It has also argued that the “ad hoc release of the requested information into the public domain could engender public distrust in the DWP” and would “only serve to increase” the “misconceptions” and “incorrect views” held by the “general public”.
Despite those arguments, the information commissioner ordered DWP last month to release the information.
But the Information Commissioner’s Office confirmed to DNS this week that DWP has lodged an appeal against that decision.
It will now be left to the information rights tribunal to decide if the information should be released, but it is likely to be many months before that hearing takes place.’
Sadly, this isn’t even the first time since Labour came to power, that DWP data along these lines has been blocked either. At the beginning of this month Disability News Service reported that it had applied to access information pertaining to so-called IPR’s – internal process reviews – into deaths and harm caused in relation to the dreaded Work Capability Assessment over the last 5 years, again the Tories time in charge. Again Labour blocked the release of this information too, not once, but twice on the grounds of the first time round, because they said they had plans to publish such data themselves in due course and the second time, they changed their excuses inexplicably and that time declared it was too expensive to publish. It all functionally smacks of Labour once more hiding 14 years of the Tories track record with the Work Capability Assessment, but also excuses Labour to keep on using it potentially, when even the Tories were talking about scrapping it. Labour it should be noted aren’t completely squeaky clean here either, as it was they in 2008 who introduced the blasted thing, another dreadful decision by Yvette Cooper, now of course the Home Secretary.
It allows Labour to hide behind excuses, whilst still potentially committing to using it going forwards, possibly even toughening it up to become even more barbaric, as Rachel Reeves hints at more social security cuts coming in her budget, to throw more people in need off of the support they require with the ramifications of that, which should be obvious by now, all to avoid taxing the rich to cover economic shortfalls, which functionally only exist on paper and not in practice, when the government can create as much money as it needs to. Talk of fiscal black holes and gaps in the economic record, or of books being cooked fundamentally are a sham, but a sham that the true cost of could continue to be measured in lives and that really it seems to me is the only excuse that makes any sense as to why Labour won’t publish data that for the most part they aren’t at fault for.
And now we’re back to Universal Credit and this is pertinent, because Labour have wasted no time extending the rollout of moving people from so called legacy benefits, onto the Universal Credit system and the majority of those who have thusfar not been rolled over have been those most complex cases, those with the most complicated health issues and needs that Universal Credit was most ill equipped to cope with and that extends to the family of yours truly at this point, migration notices for ourselves having arrived in the last week, we are very much going through that process ourselves now along with a lot of other people, but as such of course it is more important than ever that there is reassurance that the mistakes and cruelty of the Tories aren’t repeated by Labour and stalling the release of requested information, well that is not going to reassure many people that this is change, that this will be done better, rather it sends a message that it will be business as usual and the failure of the last 14 years of Tory rule and 16 years that the work capability assessment has existed for will continue to be compounded by a party, by a government once again demonstrating they are not the change they promised they would be and the speed they’ve decided to move on with this rollout, having only been in power for six weeks, doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence that they’ve identified areas of improvement, as opposed to just carrying on regardless, heedless of the damage that may cause to the lives of so many.
Disability News Service reported just a week ago, that three disabled people had taken their own lives and that their deaths were linked to flaws within the Universal Credit system. The speed this rollout under Labour is continuing, there is no way they have looked to fix anything, how can they possibly have done so and if indeed they had, surely they would be shouting about it from the rooftops about how awful the Tory administration had been? They left a department verging on collapse and where people have been sent the migration notices telling them that they must now apply for Universal Credit or lose their benefits between July 2022 and February of this year, over a third never did so and therefore lost their support. What has the DWP done to check on the welfare of these people? Universal Credit has been a universal failure not just in how it is administered by the DWP, but because it relies on internet access and computer literacy. Disproportionately it will have punished those with the lack of skills and lack of access to be able to claim it, a massive flaw that has never been adequately addressed.
Not least of all these problems at the DWP now is just how terrifying the new work and pensions minister Liz Kendall is, her rhetoric is all about getting people into work, rather than supporting them because of their additional needs, and completely ignoring the fact many people on benefits are already in work! The last thing people needed was a another DWP minister like her, but again, under Starmer’s Labour, nothing changes at all and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.