Welfare Reform Bill

‘reform’ is a troublesome word for Iain Duncan Smith. It means, according to the Oxford English dictionary, to “make changes (in something, especially an institution or practice) in order to improve it (my italics).”

One cannot help but think of George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English language: “It (the English language) becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” One might deduce that Iain Duncan Smith is taking as his precedent that well known social campaigner Lewis Carroll and his political tract Through the Looking Glass: ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty says, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less’.

Nothing reforming about welfare bill - diary of a disability benefit claimant (Guardian)

The BBC gave a lot of coverage to a legal challenge which Disability Alliance has launched on Government this morning.[/b]

The alliance say Government hasn’t listened and have written a formal letter of claim; in particular they have challenged how the cut backs in Disability Living Allowance will unfairly impact upon the disabled.

Neil Coyle of Disability Alliance spoke of the unfairness of the reforms and cut backs and said that for many it was unfair to put people through the rigours of unnecessary medical assessments.

It’s good to see Disability Alliance making a stand on this, it’s high time some of these reforms were challenged in Court by way of judical review.

Read the full story on Mylegal.

http://mylegal.org.uk/index.cgi?action=display&board=campaign&thread=383&page=1#796

House of Lords second reading of Welfare Reform Bill, due to take place tomorrow, has been postponed to 13 September 2011 -

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/welfarereform.html

I’ve posted quite a lot on another post (to do with LCFWA’s) which relates to welfare reform.  There are links and attachments to Freud’s introduction paper into the HoL; - it’s horrendous reading.

A summary

Universal credit = utter chaos.

As I suspected the UC will take away a claimant’s right of appeal against an overpayment and leave it to a ‘discretionary code’ and we all know what that means.

Claimant’s will have to go through reconsideration before appealing to an FTT - leaving them to have to wait even more months on nil or reduced money.

Plus the usual nail the claimant for breathing measures in the interest of fraud erradication.

The crazy Bill with no thought given to its implementation.

See link to other post…

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/1681/

Mylegal.org.uk staff member

The Third Reading in the Lords of the WRB has been scheduled to take place on 31 January.

Bill stages — Welfare Reform Bill 2010-11