I got this email from Mr Burrowes

Dear Mr. Warner

Thank you for your e-mail of 26th October, regarding the reforms of ESA.

Reforming benefits is, of course, a difficult and important task. The government is taking every precaution to ensure that the new benefits system will provide the improved support that the weakest in our society need.

In your e-mail you helpfully attached a striking statistic showing the number of claimants leaving ESA with a recorded date of death. Having researched the issue, that FOI request paper states that this ‘represents about 1% of total ESA caseload in November 2011, the latest caseload now available.’[p. 6] This is a significant increase on the normal death rate, but the FOI request does explain that ‘It would be expected that the mortality rate amongst those on incapacity benefits recipients would be higher than the general population as some people receive incapacity benefits due to life-threatening conditions or terminal illness. Those in the Support Group [who make up 7,100 of the 10,600 mentioned in the table] receive unconditional support due to the nature of their illness, which can include degenerative conditions, terminal illness and severe disability.’[p.4]

You refer to the recent complaints made to the UN. Esther McVey (Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) addressed this in the House of Commons, on 5th November. Specifically with reference to disabled people, she said that the Government’s welfare reform ‘fully conforms with the UN right. In fact, we are a world leader in that regard.’ [Hansard: 5th November 2012, Column 573] The Government is utterly committed to maintaining this world-leading standard.

Thank you again for writing to raise your concerns.

Best wishes

David

My reply is short but brutal: I have had it with these people.

Dear Mr Burrowes

Let us not kid ourselves: These are not reforms these are cuts. There was no need to reform a system with a 99.9995% success rate and you are now paying more money to the fraudsters at ATOS than you are to the disabled.

Still the government persists in using the fraudulent system of Unum Insurance rather than genuine medical professionals and still people are dying every day having been found “fit for work”

Worst still those “Fit for Work” now are as sanction-able as the able bodied when it comes to turning up for appointments at the Job Centre regardless of reasoning and are just as eligible for the SLAVERY of the Workfare scheme.

Workfare is not just an abomination against basic human rights as a businessman I see it as practically undermining the economy. Why pay for workers when you can get them free from the government? There are hundreds of cases of people being sacked from minimum wage jobs only to be put back in the same job under Workfare slavery. Most of my market is the poorest in society. If they can’t afford my stuff I suffer as well. May be not as much but my savings can’t last forever.

My ancestor William Wilberforce would be spinning in his grave at what your party are doing to our own citizens: He fought to the detriment of his own health to stop these kinds of abuses only for the so called Supreme Court to turn round in 2012 and declare slavery legal again.

Not only that but having identified my escape route from your attempt to enslave the working man you are now planning on increasing surveillance of the self employed. There is some dishonesty when it comes to tax amongst us yes but far less than there is amongst the huge companies that not only bankroll all 3 political parties but profit from the poverty they create.

Seeing as there seems to be a cross party consensus that slavery and stealth genocide are a-okay and that this is, thanks to our criminally undemocratic election process, a safe Tory seat my vote doesn’t count for much but rest assured it won’t be for you or any mainstream candidate.

I pity your pathetic defence of the indefensible

In Faith

Ian Warner