There will be ‘full mitigation for the losses’ cause by removal of WRAC apparently

Yesterday in House of Commons David Burrowes (Conservative MP for Enfield) asked -

Some of those who are eligible for PIP may well lose entitlement to the work-related activity group element come 1 April. Will the Minister reassure me that whether through the flexible support fund, the hardship fund or indeed third-party deals, there will be full mitigation for the losses they incur from 1 April?

to which Penny Mordaunt replied -

I can give my hon. Friend such an assurance. People are open to apply to the financial channels he mentions if they need further support. We have been doing some work in the Department on social tariffs and budgeting, which will be rolled out across our Jobcentre Plus network, and all the elements of the support offer for that group are already in place.

So full mitigation for the weekly £30 loss then - I look forward to seeing that…

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-03-27/debates/F0BF1FFF-F519-4005-AFD0-0754BF432309/PersonalIndependencePayments

‘full mitigation’ if you go cap in hand to request payment from funds that a) do not actually have the remit to make payment in this scenario b) in the case of the flexible support fund specifically require efforts to enter the job market and c) have not been increased to meet this demand - which most likely will mean that funds are not available for those they were initially iintended for. And what are ‘‘third-party deals’ when they are at home?

And no ‘mitigation’ at all of course for those in the WRAG who do not receive PIP…..

I’ll stop now as if I say any more shawn will either ban me or have to edit my comments out.

The Art of the Third-Party Deal…....?

Following the debate about ESA and the cut to those in the WRAG where Penny Mordaunt set out the ‘support’ available - http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/welfare-rights/news/item/government-announces-measures-to-provide-additional-support-to-those-in-the - she was asked to elaborate on which suppliers of telecoms and energy offer social tariffs to ESA WRAG claimants. She replied -

BT (and KCom in the Hull area) offer a social tariff for home phone and broadband under EU and domestic legislation. Whilst no specific tariffs are offered by the main energy providers, the Money Advice Service found that people could save money by switching. There has been an improvement in the switching infrastructure to help customers and Work Coaches are now able to direct claimants to switching services through the new “managing you money” leaflet.

So it appears the ‘additional support’ is that they can switch supplier if they want and the work coach will direct them to a leaflet to help…

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2017-04-19/71359

What a load of tosh. A loss of ~£1,500 annually can be “mitigated” by switching energy supplier that will save ~£200 a year if you’re very lucky?

There are no words I can safely use on her to describe how angry this bumch of mendacious frauds make me.

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK - 25 April 2017 02:08 PM

What a load of tosh. A loss of ~£1,500 annually can be “mitigated” by switching energy supplier that will save ~£200 a year if you’re very lucky?

There are no words I can safely use on her to describe how angry this bumch of mendacious frauds make me.

‘Like Button’

Is it a recent phenomenon that Politicians assume they can blatantly lie to parliament and Public, and somehow this is acceptable? I vaguely remember a time when a politician caught out lying would be expected to resign.

Unfortunately, it’s been going on for some time and is certainly not confined to the Tories. To quote myself from elsewhere on this forum;

Back in 2000 I was one of two welfare rights advisers employed as part of the very first Sure Start programme, on the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark. The ‘success’ of that pilot was then the basis for the programme to be rolled out across the UK.

In the years that followed I lost count of the number of times I heard Tessa Jowell, Patricia Hewitt, Hazel Blears etc appear on Newsnight or the Today programme and claim that Sure Start had helped X number of hundreds of thousands of families out of poverty. This was nonsense.

Whilst Sure Start undoubtedly did some very good work, and I don’t doubt the positive impact we had on the finances of the families we worked with, no statistics were collected that could even begin to justify those claims. What we were required to provide in our monthly reports were;

- the number of lone parent families we had worked with
- the number of families we had worked with where no-one was employed
- the number of ethnic minority families we had worked with
- the numbers of children in each family we’d worked with
- the number of children under 5 in families we’d worked with

and so on. These figures were then passed on the national Sure Start unit - and they produced the government statistics. Every Sure Start programme was required to report the same stuff.

Nowhere were we required to provide information on the number of benefit claims made, the number awarded or what those claims might be worth financially.

Apparently the DWP haven’t done any analysis of the savings claimants can expect from social tariffs, according to Penny Mordaunt answering another written question yesterday -

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2017-04-20/71517

Perhaps you could send them your analysis Paul to help them?