Citizen actions against grave injustices

In The Guardian, Mary Brown writes:

• Professor Tobias advises us to vote appropriately and also to watch The Dirty War on the NHS. (Letters, 9 December). I Googled it, to discover that this new film by the highly respected John Pilger, described by ITV as “a powerful and timely investigation [which] gives voice to those who warn that time may be running out in the battle to save both the NHS and the fundamental human right to medical care” is being broadcast, by ITV, on 17 December.

Timely? Time is running out. Come on ITV, show it on the 11th, at peak time.
 
Mary Brown
Chiswick, London

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/10/johnsons-phone-snatch-shows-his-smash-and-grab-tendencies

If any News Forwards From Alan Wheatley blog readers feel bold enough to make calls on any subject or topic, perhaps they could start a petition with the aid of petition website Change.org? Petition signatures can be a news item in themselves.
https://www.change.org/start-a-petition?source_location=header 

Change.org 'Start a Petition' page

Meanwhile, Benefits & Work Publishing Ltd report:

Over £5,000 in one day for Mandatory Reconsideration challenge

Benefits and Work readers donated over £5,000 in the 24 hours after our last newsletter appealed for support for a crowdfunded legal challenge.

The judicial review, which will now definitely go ahead, is seeking to outlaw the cynical practice of mandatory reconsideration (MR).

Since the DWP [Department for Work & Pensions] introduced MRs they have succeeded in dissuading hundreds of thousands of claimants from challenging a benefits decision.

Michael Connor, who launched the challenge, thanked Benefits and Work readers for their support, saying:

“I still cannot quite believe the amount of support.

“The support from donations and encouraging comments for my case has meant the world to me. I have been informed that the DWP have employed two barristers to oppose my case. But they will not undermine my determination to fight and win this case. The court fees are paid. I have the finance to pay for any court filing, court order application and appeals if needed.

“I am so grateful and energised by the support for not now my, but our, case.”

We’ll keep you posted.

Source: https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/4137-fantastic-readers-response-smashes-legal-crowdfunding-appeal-target

And

Pressure for criminal investigation of ministers for claimant deaths increases

The campaign for a criminal investigation into the actions of former Conservative ministers in relation to claimant deaths is gathering pace.

Last week, John Pring of the Disability News Service (DNS) published a 12,000 word article DWP: The case for the prosecution which set out the links between the deaths of six claimants and flaws in the work capability assessment.

Pring has argued that Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and senior civil servants in the DWP ignored concerns raised by a coroner about the WCA.

DNS now says that Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has agreed that the article provides “strong and clear evidence” that Duncan Smith, Grayling and senior civil servants should be investigated over the WCA scandal.

McDonnell has also confirmed to DNS that Labour will hold an inquiry into claimant deaths linked to the DWP if it takes power.

“Labour will fulfil the promise Jeremy Corbyn and I gave during our campaigns to highlight the tragic deaths of disabled people resulting from austerity under the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

“We will hold an inquiry into these deaths.

“It’s critically important that people are made aware of the brutal treatment meted out to disabled people and lessons are learnt so that this never happens again.”

“We will hold an inquiry into these deaths.

“It’s critically important that people are made aware of the brutal treatment meted out to disabled people and lessons are learnt so that this never happens again.”

Source: https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/4136-pressure-for-criminal-investigation-of-ministers-for-claimant-deaths-increases

UK GE2019 dominates Disability News Service uploads for Thursday 21 Nov 2019

The UK General Election set for Thursday 12 December dominates this week's headlines from Disability News Service, that is updated every Thursday.

I present the headline links below without analysing the items themselves, due to time constraints and disability factors on my part. Disability News Service is run by responsible journalist John Pring, and the presentation below helps flag up items of likely interest to my most regular readers.

My main task here is to flag up the 'keywords' related to his output. It also helps counteract my feelings of powerlessness related to what is presented more generally in news media as a 'two horse race' and features demonisation of main opposition rather than focusing on policies.


Do not forget though, that this December 2019 UK General Election falls within Disability History Month!

Alan Wheatley

Latest Stories

Election 2019: Disabled Lib Dems complain to their party over candidate’s disablist tweets

Election 2019: ‘Tories forced a million members of disabled families into poverty’

Election 2019: Lib Dems fail to explain disability omissions… and snub disabled members

Election 2019: Lib Dems overlook working-age social care reform… again

Election 2019: Greens set to outdo other parties on independent living

Election 2019: Labour fails to set accessibility targets for ‘housing revolution’

‘Horrific’ stats show how most disability benefit fraud allegations are false

Disability History Month’s stark messages after Tory austerity decade

Tens of thousands of disabled workers ‘let down by equality law enforcement failure’

Thoughts stemming from an article on the smearing of Jeremy Corbyn's reputation

A family member has sent me this link that I believe worth 'flagging up' here: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/think-corbyn-is-a-danger-to-britain-heres-how-youve-been-brainwashed/12/12/


My choice of 'pull quote' from that article can be applied not just to a The London Economic blog post that related and cited posting that "around £2 million public money was funnelled to a charity in Scotland which posted disparaging stories against Jeremy Corbyn and other Labour figures."

"It should be extremely disturbing to everyone that a ruling Government is using Public funds and official resources for party political purposes. This is the sort of thing we’re told happens in rogue states and banana republics, not here in Great Blighty."

For Private Eye magazine 20 September-3 October issue reported that the Government was spending £20,000 on 'Get Ready for Brexit' Facebook adverts, and I pointed out that the televised adverts with Government insignia must surely be more costly.
https://newsforwardsfromalanwheatley.blogspot.com/2019/09/uk-government-getting-public-ready-for-brexit-and-more.html

And what about the wasted money on a Brexit coin that was minted only to be melted down
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/29/brexit-meltdown-50p-coins-with-31-october-date-to-be-recycled

See also https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/government-adverts-on-facebook-1-6354789

Yes, I do think that Jeremy Corbyn's reputation has been severely smeared through the unfair dominance of government advertising budgets and -- as the
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/think-corbyn-is-a-danger-to-britain-heres-how-youve-been-brainwashed/12/12/
posting points out -- foreign billionaire ownership of dominant UK news media outlets. I believe that should be 'flagged up' and also point out that such foreign ownership of UK news media is a prime example of 'the plunder of the commons' that Prof. Guy Standing draws attention to.
http://camdennewjournal.com/article/attacks-on-jeremy-corbyn-from-his-fellow-party-members-amaze-me?sp=1&sq=bruce%2520kent%2520jeremy%2520corbyn

As a retired disabled jobseeker, I know what it's like to have one's reputation smeared by those with privatisation agendas, and that has led me into blogging and my previous co-authorship of the Green Party of England & Wales response to Labour's 2008 'welfare reform' Green Paper [consultation document] 'No-one written off'. That Green Party of England & Wales document was sat upon by major UK news outlets to which it was sent, but can still be found online via

D – The Green Party is opposed to the use of private for-profit ...

https://www.greenparty.org.uk › reports › GPEW_writing_off_workfare_final

19 Oct 2008 - Writing off workfare: ... Green Party of England and Wales[1] ..... (see Jonathan Rutherford, http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/ ..... [4] The online title of the same article on the Community Care magazine website is ...

 
I also take this opportunity to flag up an article from the pro-Remain news source The New European that focuses on Dominic Cummings as 'adviser' to Prime Minister Boris Johnson:
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/brexit-strategy-dominic-cummings-ooda-loop-1-6339099

That The New European publication is generally negative about Jeremy Corbyn, as might be expected by the intertwining of the right wing of the Labour Party with pro-EU issues.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/home/search?q=%22jeremy+corbyn%22+%22alastair+campbell%22&submitted=true&searchSlot=true&submit=true&resultsSearch=&fromDate=&toDate=&resultsSearch=&sort=relevance&fromDate=&filterFromDate=&toDate=&filterToDate=

Bruce Kent has written against the smearing of Jeremy Corbyn at
http://camdennewjournal.com/article/attacks-on-jeremy-corbyn-from-his-fellow-party-members-amaze-me

But I would add that while I do believe that Jeremy Corbyn is a very decent and much-maligned person, his apparent subservience to a witch hunt of anti-Zionists in the Labour Party is worth examining, as Tony Greenstein points out
https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/11/corbyn-can-win-but-it-is-unlikely.html
I would, however, distance myself from Tony Greenstein's own way of applying derogatory labelling of people.

Kitty S Jones: NAO to investigate DWP suicide monitoring of social security claimants

From Kitty S Jones 'Politics & Insights' blog

National Audit Office to investigate DWP suicide monitoring of social security claimants

by Kitty S Jones 

The National Audit Office is to demand information from Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on a ‘serious and important’ issue after ministers refuse to provide figures on how many people claiming social security have taken their own lives. The watchdog is to investigate the government’s monitoring of suicides among welfare claimants amid longstanding concerns about links between welfare reforms and declining mental health.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said it would call on the DWP to reveal what information it held on the suicides, after ministers refused to provide an MP with figures on the number of people in the welfare system who had taken their own lives.

More at https://politicsandinsights.org/2019/10/22/national-audit-office-to-investigate-dwp-suicide-monitoring-of-social-security-claimants/

Unite the Union Community membership Herefordshire Action Day on Universal Credit — time and place

Unite the Union Community membership
Herefordshire Action Day on Universal Credit
College Road Estate, HR1 1HW
Saturday 14th September, 10:30am-12:30pm

Herefordshire Action Day on Universal Credit
College Road Estate, Hereford HR1 1HW
Saturday 14th September, 10:30am-12:30pm

Map location link: HR1 1HW

How to get there by public transport:

Traveline — for journeys within the South, East, and West Midlands,and by train or coach from most towns in Great Britain

"Will new 'serious case panel' probe benefit-related deaths?"

Following petitioning promoted by Disability News Service pursuing justice for Jody Whiting, "The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) appears to have secured funding to set up an independent panel to examine cases where its own failings have led to the deaths of benefit claimants, reports John Pring of Disability News Service in his 'top story' of Thursday, 5 September 2019. (Disability News Service is published weekly on a Thursday.)

You can read more of this at
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/will-new-serious-case-panel-probe-benefit-related-deaths-dwp-stays-silent/

The Observer: "Mother searches for answers a year after her daughter set herself alight in council housing office"

I flag this up now with thanks to Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty, as urgent after having missed it yesterday while I was offline.

The Observer

Public sector cuts

Emma Graham-Harrison and Maeve Shearlaw

Sun 8 Sep 2019 09.00 BST Last modified on Mon 9 Sep 2019 15.13 BST

Mother searches for answers a year after her daughter set herself alight in council housing office

"This didn't need to happen — that's the thing that hurts," said Melanie's mother.
Photo: Karen Robinson/The Observer

Grieving mother still has questions over daughter's death which followed months of anxiety over eviction threat

It is a year since Melanie Smith* walked into the housing offices of Barnet council and set herself on fire.
Yet her mother, Marie Bennett,** fears vital lessons that could protect others have not been learned. “This didn’t need to happen – that’s the thing that hurts,” Bennett said. “I don’t think anyone has taken on board that they could maybe prevent other deaths.”
Bennett is also still waiting for answers to her questions, including about Smith’s final conversation with council housing officers, after having experienced months of anxiety about being evicted from her home of two decades. “No one has told me who spoke to her that day, or what was said,” she explained....
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/08/unlearned-lessons-death-of-woman-housing-mental-health-crisis

Whoever Melanie Smith spoke to in the housing office of London Borough of Barnet Council in September 2018, it would not have been "Conservative members of the House of Commons from whom the Whip has been withdrawn and Amber Rudd." Those Members of Parliament "all voted for the cruel pressures she and millions of other tenants are now suffering," argues [retired] Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty.

"Council officials administer laws that render low income tenants powerless," observes Paul Nicolson. 

"Government policies have stripped the housing market of truly affordable housing. Housing and other benefits have been shredded. Rent arrears are inevitable and landlords merciless. 83,700 evicted families, many of them unemployed, with 124,000 children are now in temporary accommodation in England, up 74% since 2010. They are made one offer of a permanent home which they are compelled to accept, sometimes miles from their long term home.

"Some are forced into the private sector with unaffordable rents, others into property not fit for habitation.

"If they refuse that one and only offer, they are deemed intentionally homeless and the council withdraws from its duty to house them."

Regarding Paul's comment that landlords are merciless, I note that a Direct Line Landlords Insurance advert fuels landlords' loss of mercy. Targeted at landlords whose tenants' rent arrears lead to lost sleep for the landlord, the advert says, "We will pay all the unpaid rent until the tenants are out." How does that relate to Advertising Standards? What does such advertising do to tv viewers' moral norms?

I would add though, that Barnet Tory Council has been especially keen to support Barratt Homes at the expense of LB Barnet's council housing stock.

In my own 2005/06 past as a domiciliary care worker, after I struggled for over a year attempting to support vulnerable adults while

• council cuts had rendered in-service training virtually non-existent and 
• Jobcentre 'administrative errors' left me without Jobseekers Allowance top-up to declared part time earnings for months, rendering me in danger of rent arrears-related eviction

I observed that care workers were likely to be punished for their in-work negligence while 'key decision-makers' never were, and so I resigned from that work with greater determination to campaign for justice for those affected by cuts that were occurring even before 2010.

NB:
* and **: Names changed to protect family privacy

"General Election manifestos must address homelessness and hunger" — Taxpayers Against Poverty

1. GENERAL ELECTION MANIFESTOS MUST ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS AND HUNGER.  The 2012 and 2016 Welfare Reform Acts were seen through Parliament by government ministers who sought to force the unemployed into work by imposing inadequate incomes and punitive laws designed to treat them as if they are at work. Examples are: a monthly rather than a weekly income; housing benefit paid to the unemployed from which they pay the rent to the landlord as if it were from a monthly pay cheque; and strict rules about keeping appointments at the job centre. The purpose was to “change the culture” of unemployment, on the mistaken assumption that the unemployed lived an easy life on benefits so were unlikely to look for work, hence the cruel benefit sanction on those who “broke the rules”. Lord Freud  on the Welfare Reform Bill 2016. Hansard Column 1427, 19 October 2016: “Every year I stand here because there is a forecast that says that child poverty is going up, has gone up or will go up, but when we actually see the figures, we find that child poverty has actually gone down. When you transform the economy, change the culture so that work is what has been driving things, and move up the employment rates and the earning rates in the way that we have, you find that the behavioural impacts are very different from the static analysis that many of the external experts tell us about.” Lord Freud could not have been more wrong. Child poverty is going up and getting worse.  Attempts by cross-bench peers to insert amendments requiring a health-impact assessment of the government’s policies were rejected. The actual and disastrous impact on the health of low-income families and individuals can be found on the Taxpayers Against Poverty website. UK land grabbed by the rich for private gain London councils have published analysis showing that there has been a significant reduction of about 200,000 in the number of homes that are affordable for tenants receiving the Local Housing Allowance. That is one among a number causes of the escalating homelessness and hunger in the capital. The 1980s’ “big bang” set up the UK housing market to make large landowners very rich indeed, with unearned and untaxed increases in the value of their land. Lending was deregulated, rent controls abolished and funds allowed to flow in and out of the limited amount of British land. Small businesses and family homes, which pay rent, business rates and/or council tax, and own no land, are treated little better than during the 15th- and 16th-century enclosures. Tenants are being pushed off the land with no solutions on the political table to reverse the trend. In Haringey, 3,000 homeless families, with 5,208 children between them, have been forced into temporary accommodation, some for up to and over 10 years. Accirding to the House of Commons Library there are 83,700 homless families in temporary accommodation in England with 124,000 children, up 74% sine 2010. 56,880 of the families are in London. Too many of them are in one room in hostels or other acommodation when none ought to be Graph from IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research)        Taxpayers Against Poverty strongly recommends that the Greater London Authority and Parliament adopt two policies used by the Danish government: Long-term vacancy of properties is discouraged in Denmark. If an owner moves and does not wish to sell the property, it must be rented out or advertised for sale. If it is empty for more than six weeks, the owner must report to the local authority, which then seeks to provide tenants, whom the owner has to accept. Non-residents of Denmark who have not lived in the country for a total period of five years previously may only acquire property after receiving permission from the Ministry of Justice. Income support for a single adult has been losing value since 1979 There is a community of about 11,000 social-security claimants in Haringey. The shredding of their social security incomes since 2010 has been piled on top of decades of adult benefit negligence. The evidence came from Professor Jonathan Bradshaw in 2009  responding to one of mine. In April 2011, austerity measures were then piled onto an already inadequate cornerstone of the benefit system. To that cornerstone are added disabled people’s, children’s, housing and council-tax benefits.  “When unemployment benefit started in 1912, it was 7 shillings a week – about 22% of average male earnings in manufacturing. The percentage fluctuated over the succeeding decades, but by 1979, the benefit rate was still about 21% of average earnings (manual and non-manual, male and female). By 2008, however, as a result of the policy of tying benefits to the price index while real earnings increased, the renamed Jobseeker’s Allowance had fallen to an all-time low of 10.5% of average earnings.” Benefit increases were frozen at 1% a year in April 2011. £73.10 a week Jobseekers’ Allowance equates to £317 a month Universal Credit. Using the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s minimum-income standards for single-adult benefits after rent and council tax as of April 2019, we can see that Jobseekers’ Allowance and Universal Credit are nearly £32 a week too low for healthy living. And that is before  the five-week delay in the first payment of Universal Credit;  the Department for Work and Pensions “budgeting advance” to cover that delay, which is a loan that has to be repaid out of 73.10 a week;  the cuts in council tax and housing benefits, which mean rent and council tax must also be paid out of that £73.10 a week;  income is stopped by benefit sanctions, during which rent, council tax and TV-licence arrears and other debts pile up; adding to the impossibility of living on benefits;  the realisation – often only belatedly at the job centre – by a parent who has a third child that the government’s two-child policy means they will be refused child benefit for their latest offspring.  The hopelessly inadequate single adult benefit cannot maintain a healthy adult life, let alone pay rent or council tax, or their enforcement costs. That is a cruel catch 22. If your children’s benefits pay the rent, they are hungry, naked or cold; if you feed, clothe growing children or keep them warm, then the family is evicted and homeless. Low-income tenants forced into the benefit cap In the United Kingdom, local authority officers and benefit claimants are both the victims of toxic and disconnected central government policies that combine to escalate the number of homeless and hungry families. The benefits freeze is bad enough (Benefits freeze leaves a third of claimants ‘with £100 to live on a month’), but, in 2012, the government introduced another measure that is particularly hard on London families. It allows local-authority housing departments to offer homeless families in temporary council housing at £90 a week rent a move into permanent private-sector housing at £300 a week rent for a two-bed home, for example (see table). Families must accept the council’s first offer or they are deemed intentionally homeless and struck off the list of those the council has a duty to house. The unintended consequence of the 2012 measure is that a family’s total benefit income, including housing benefit, can be forced over the London benefit cap of £442.31 by high private-sector rent. The government cuts the housing benefit to enforce the cap on the total benefit income, leaving that rent to be paid by the family’s remaining benefits, which have been frozen and are already short of £100 a month to live on. Hunger and homelessness are inevitable. UK is the only nation in the world requiring renters to pay the landlord’s property tax. The UK being the only nation in the world requiring renters to pay the landlord’s property tax adds the straw that breaks the camels back. That is a great injustice. The council tax is a property tax based on 1991 evaluations after the poll tax was abolished and the council tax introduced. There is a tenant of my acquaintance who lives in a private two-bed terraced house in Tottenham that was bought new for £95,000 in 1999. An identical property next door, also new in 1999, is on the market for £425,000. The landlord is £330,000 richer, unearned and untaxed, while the tenant has paid about £1,000 a year in property/council tax for 20 years, so is £20,000 poorer. 290 out of 326 English councils require benefit claimants to pay a proportion of their landlord’s council tax. It is enforced by the magistrate’s court, adding the council’s enforcement costs to the arrears and the bailiffs adding their fees. Taxing £73.10 a week income support/Jobseekers’ Allowance/Universal Credit is a pernicious injustice. The good health and wellbeing of all UK citizens in or out of work must now become a national priority.  Taxpayers Against Poverty A VOICE FOR THE COMPASSIONATE MAJORITY No citizen without an affordable home and an adequate income in work or unemployment. Supported by TAP RESOURCES INDEX on our website  TAP DEPENDS ON SUPPORTERS - PLEASE CONSIDER MONTHLY CONTRIBUTION - THANKS

Copyright © 2019 Taxpayers Against Poverty, All rights reserved.

What might be included in Boris Johnson' 'bold new agenda' for the UK Parliament?

A local Green Party colleague sent me pdf [Portable Document Format] e-copy of what Boris Johnson had written MPs today toward suspending UK Parliament.

Boris Johnson's 'Dear Colleague[s, I'm suspending Parliament] letter, p1

Boris Johnson's 'Dear Colleague[s, I'm suspending Parliament] letter, p2

My colleague noted,

see attached for his dreadful letter, which unsurprisingly fails to mention climate change, inequality and child poverty  in his list of what needs to be done (add your own 'burning injustice)

 I responded:

I don't generally get around to read BoJo's literary output, and now I feel more justified in that omission.
Re Bojo's "bold new agenda," I guess that with Gove as Brexit Secretary, Gove's back story as Education Secretary

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2013/11/12/gove-slams-social-work-education/#.UoNAveIqvKc

and as Justice Secretary

https://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.com/2017/07/did-tory-war-on-poor-weed-out-magistrates-opposed-to-push-button-mass-destruction-in-the-name-of-debt-recovery.html

gives us a foretaste of how being more Trump-trade deal friendly might fit in with such a 'bold agenda'.

Beyond that, I append text from my reply to someone's rather misinformed reference to Blair's welfare reforms being worse than his Tory predecessors got up to.

Best Wishes

Alan

[Someone wrote]

----extract starts----

i know the torys have taken things to extremes but it was labour that started the welfare reforms and a lot of the people are still there in the background

----extract ends----

"The people still there in the background" include senior Civil Servants, ex-Civil Servants, and a continuum of Government ministers and opposition spokespersons, as can be deduced from this article outlining the research of a medically retired RAF veteran, Mo Stewart.

Disabled researcher’s book exposes ‘corporate demolition of welfare state’

Disabled researcher’s book exposes ‘corporate demolition of welfare state’ A string of activists, academics, politicians and journalists have welcomed the publication of a new book by a d...

Eg,

----extract starts----

Disabled researcher’s book exposes ‘corporate demolition of welfare state’

By John Pring

John Pring the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

on 15th September 2016

A string of activists, academics, politicians and journalists have welcomed the publication of a new book by a disabled researcher which exposes how successive governments have planned the “demolition of the welfare state”.

Mo Stewart has spent eight years researching the influence of the US insurance giant Unum over successive UK governments, and how it led to the introduction of the “totally bogus” work capability assessment (WCA), which she says was designed to make it harder for sick and disabled people to claim out-of-work disability benefits.

Stewart’s book, Cash Not Care: The Planned Demolition Of The UK Welfare State, published this week, argues that the assessment was modelled on methods used by Unum to deny protection to sick and disabled people in the US who had taken out income protection policies.

She says in her book that the WCA was “designed to remove as many as possible from access to [employment and support allowance] on route to the demolition of the welfare state”, with out-of-work disability benefits eventually to be replaced by insurance policies provided by companies like Unum.

She warns that the UK is now close to adopting that kind of US-style model.

Stewart is a former healthcare professional and a female veteran and self-funded her six years of research, which has been repeatedly referenced in parliamentary debates, and has been highlighted by Disability News Service (DNS) for nearly five years.

She describes in her book how Peter Lilley, secretary of state for social security in John Major’s Conservative government, hired senior Unum executive John LoCascio to advise the UK government on how to cut the number of claimants of long-term sickness benefits.....

----extract ends----

Further on there having been a continuum of Tory and Labour politicians involved in the corporate demolition of the welfare state, the changed 'descriptors' for disability benefit assessment tests that the Tories piloted in 2011 had actually been signed off by Yvette Cooper as DWP Secretary in April 2010, as this article shows:

Even harsher new ESA Medical approved''(warning very bad news inc)

Even harsher new ESA Medical approved''(warning very bad news inc) Even Harsher New ESA Medical Approved Tens of thousands of claimants facing losing their benefit on review, or o...

Yvette Cooper is the kind of Labour MP who would come more to the fore again if Labour right wing MPs managed to oust Jeremy Corbyn as that Party's Leader.