Is Labour Selling Out the Disabled Over Assessments?

Right, so the fallout of Labour’s disastrous conference is still being felt and when it comes to the subject of Department for Work & Pensions policy, now under the helm of chronic Blairite Liz Kendall, it’s one of her appearances at Conference and more to the point who she was seen with, that should be giving the long term sick and disabled pause for thought, because if this is the sort of organisation she wants to get into bed with at the DWP under Labour and the fact this is going grossly unreported will be of enormous concern to a great deal of people and of even more concern will be the fact that when asked about this, she dodged the question completely. So what is going on here because if the company she kept at Labour Conference ends up with government contracts in relation to long term sickness and disability again, the end results don’t bear thinking about.
Right, so what’s going on here then Damo, who has Liz Kendall been seen stepping out with at Labour Conference that has got you in a bit of a tizzy? Well, it comes down to a fringe event, never the most widely reported on parts of Conference unless they are likely to be particularly newsworthy, certainly the Palestinian fringe events have had a bit of press, but just as sickness and disability rights so often get ignored in this country, 14 years of such people being demonised for the health issues as somehow undeserving, which is properly fascistic thinking in my opinion, it’s not the attitude of a considerate and caring nation, but of a thoughtless and selfish one, but in that vein, such is the case with fringe events concerning such matters themselves and it was that Kendall attended as a speaker called the Future of Work, that is causing great consternation now, not just because of who she was sat alongside, but who was actually hosting this event, who Labour had actually permitted, given their track record on such matters to attend their conference and host a fringe event on benefits and work essentially, is terrifying, because this event was co-hosted by, on one hand there is the Fabian Society, Britain’s oldest think tank, still claims to be socialist, though very much as socialist in my view as Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall are, and indeed 141 Labour MPs are apparently members of the Fabian Society, including Starmer, which the Fabian Society has quite successfully infiltrated since Labour was created, the Fabian Society predates Labour itself you might be surprised to hear.
But it was who they co-hosted this event with that was of far greater concern in my view, because they are the very last people you want anywhere near the long term sick and disabled in this country ever again, because the event was co-hosted by Maximus.
Maximus, if you aren’t familiar with them, they are a US healthcare company, who for the last 10 years or so have had 12 DWP contracts outsourced to them to deliver on the dreaded work capability assessment and of those 12 contracts 5 are still live. They have profiteered off the backs of the long term sick and disabled for years and are one of the worst involved. Frankly if you have heard of them you know this already and the fact a Labour DWP boss is now hanging out with them, speaking at an event co-hosted by them, it should be setting off alarm bells.
Of the five contracts Maximus still has with the DWP, one of which still includes carrying out what are called functional assessment services, which is to say they are still carrying out work capability assessments in relation to Universal Credit and the main disability benefit, Personal Independence Payment. Nothing has been learned and there is ample that should have been learned by now about this company and that Kendall is mixing with them will be of enormous concern to a great deal of people.
Arguably the biggest scandal Maximus were involved in, came in 2017, the so-called ‘Kill Yourself’ scandal, where they had been asking vulnerable claimants why they had not taken their own lives.
Their conduct has also been closely linked to people very much dying as a response of not just the assessment process but also the sanctions regime used all too often as a club to beat people with for not meeting demands put upon them that they were not adequately supported in being able to, of course the ethos very much being one of trying to throw people off what meagre support they got under the Tories as it was.
Several of the cases Maximus were linked to actually did garner some media attention, such was the appalling nature of the failure of DWP outsourcing and a direct reflection on the DWP.
There was the case of Jody Whiting, a woman with significant health issues who was bipolar and had scoliosis, was on 23 tablets a day plus morphine who had requested her assessment be carried out at her home. Five times the DWP failed to meet their own safeguarding remit, having flagged her as vulnerable. They passed it to Maximus to carry out, Maximus failed to arrange a home visit, sent her a letter to attend a fact to face instead, Whiting had just come out of hospital having been treated for pneumonia and a cyst on the brain and never opened it. She therefore missed the assessment and got sanctioned. She then took her own life.
There are other stories you may have heard of, may read on, such as Alan McArdle, who died from a heart attack after being told his benefits were going to stop, there was Roy Curtis, who took his life in 2018 having written desperate notes detailing his disability benefits nightmare, there was Philip Pakree who died from the stress of the assessment process, there are so many more stories, so many people have experienced similar and have lived to tell the tale, they are not called survivors for nothing. People survive the UK benefits system, they aren’t supported by it, it’s evil, it drastically has to change from the inhumane state the Tories made into and yet here we have Liz Kendall, now in charge of the DWP for Starmer’s Labour hanging out at events co-hosted by them.
But not only was she there, when it was put to her that attending an event called the Future of Work hosted by Maximus, she was cut off from answering and the Fabian Society host, instead passed the question to Maximus to answer as this excerpt from Disability News Service exposes:
‘Towards the end of Monday’s fringe event, Disability News Service (DNS) asked Kendall whether – in the light of such deaths – Maximus was the right company to be telling the government and Labour party members about the future of work.
But instead of asking Kendall to respond, Andrew Harrop, general secretary of the Fabians, who was chairing the event, said he would ask Maximus UK president Dr Paul Williams to “very quickly respond” instead.
After Williams had spoken, Kendall was asked by Harrop for her “closing comments”.
She did not answer the Maximus question, even though DNS had made it clear it was directed at her.
In his response, Williams had said: “I’m not sure that I recognise that characterisation.”
He insisted that Maximus were “credible partners” because of their work supporting “people with disabilities” through Remploy.
He said Maximus had carried out assessments for about 10 million people in the last decade and took “tremendous pride in the way we seek to personalise those assessments, make them detailed and thorough where needed and try to support people through the process”.
He said: “I think we have actually got a wonderful track record for that, and I am very proud of my team.”
After the event, Harrop insisted that – despite his asking Maximus to comment on the question and then not asking Kendall to answer it – she had had “the opportunity to do so”.’
My first thought here was who exactly is in charge of this? Is Liz Kendall in charge of the DWP or are the Fabians? This was a question directed to the person in charge of all things work and pensions and social security, who did a centrist think tank deflect to the outsourcing company when really Kendall should be justifying their possible involvement, given she was speaking at their fringe event? Disabled campaigners and activists up and down the country want Maximus sent packing for the harm they’ve been implicated in, yet here is Labour, supposedly all about change, hanging out with them as well.
Kendall has questions to answer because the last thing people want to see is Maximus getting more contracts from this government when they should be consigned to the same dustbin the last government has been.
It’s not the first instance that Liz Kendall has caused concern over in this new Starmer administration either, as her views on the long term sick and disabled were exposed in a piece of damning footage shortly after her appointment to the DWP following Labour’s win in July. Check out this video recommendation as your suggested next watch to learn more about that and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.