Disabled couple snooped on and accused of fraud by the DWP

Soldato
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I just watched an ITV News video posted last year about the amount of money the DWP lose fighting claims.

When someone gets denied their claim they can have a mandatory reconsideration. If that fails, so you've been denied twice by the DWP, you can take it to a tribunal. This is setup similarly to a court setting were people outside of the DWP are judging the claim. 80% of DWP decisions are overturned at this stage!

 
Soldato
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I just watched an ITV News video posted last year about the amount of money the DWP lose fighting claims.

When someone gets denied their claim they can have a mandatory reconsideration. If that fails, so you've been denied twice by the DWP, you can take it to a tribunal. This is setup similarly to a court setting were people outside of the DWP are judging the claim. 80% of DWP decisions are overturned at this stage!


yup had to have one many years ago and it was totally nerve wracking, the dwp decision got overturned.
 
Soldato
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I think spending almost a billion is outrageous compared to a few million on tax evasion.

yep agreed, all it does is to completely stress out genuine people and when the decision is over turned all the money gets back dated any ways, im just lucky i have a supporting family or i could have ended up in dire straights.

a lot of the assesors will out right lie about what was said and dimiss medical evidence, then it goes to a pen pusher with no medical knowledge and claim closed, then appeal and claim reopened and back dated, assuming u can survive that long with the large gap of no money coming in and the massive stress :(

its pretty disgusting tbh the way people are treated, can u turn a tap on? ok claim closed, that is not a exageration i have heard horror stories from other claiments :(

the people that do exploit the system are few and far between and they dont care if refused they will just make another claim or more likely multiple ones. while genuine people get demonised :(
 
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Soldato
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yep agreed, all it does is to completely stress out genuine people and when the decision is over turned all the money gets back dated any ways, im just lucky i have a supporting family or i could have ended up in dire straights.

a lot of the assesors will out right lie about what was said and dimiss medical evidence, then it goes to a pen pusher with no medical knowledge and claim closed, then appeal and claim reopened and back dated, assuming u can survive that long with the large gap of no money coming in and the massive stress :(

its pretty disgusting tbh the way people are treated, can u turn a tap on? ok claim closed, that is not a exageration i have heard horror stories from other claiments :(

the people that do exploit the system are few and far between and they dont care if refused they will just make another claim or more likely multiple ones. while genuine people get demonised :(


Yep its horrible.

They will take your reply from a greeting as proof you can talk to people.

Example, assessor asks you how you are as part of greeting you.

You then answer, " I'm good" something you may normally say as an automatic response in conversation. They then use this as a reason to mark you down, as your "able to communicate" which lowers your award.

In reality this isn't telling the assessor anything, random things like this lead to lots of claims being rejected and going to tribunal.

Its utterly nerve racking, no website will prepare you to just skeet through this.

You can answer everything correctly and still score 0, with evidence.
 
Soldato
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Yep its horrible.

They will take your reply from a greeting as proof you can talk to people.

Example, assessor asks you how you are as part of greeting you.

You then answer, " I'm good" something you may normally say as an automatic response in conversation. They then use this as a reason to mark you down, as your "able to communicate" which lowers your award.

In reality this isn't telling the assessor anything, random things like this lead to lots of claims being rejected and going to tribunal.

Its utterly nerve racking, no website will prepare you to just skeet through this.

You can answer everything correctly and still score 0, with evidence.

if you dont get a lift in your dads car and ur mum or some one else doesnt come in with u is also a reason to dismiss a claim as u can use public transport and do stuff your self, their watching every thing from the moment u get close to the building where the assesment is taking place, u can also barely walk etc like with a gout attack and whats also common is saying the lifts are out, so they go ability fine to go up stairs fine :(

or cant cook food with out assistance then they ask can u use a micro wave, then they mark down you can cook proper, its a total joke and im scared to apply for pip even though i should be getting it, genuine peop[le too scared to go out the house and do any thing incase they do you for fraud.

i made sure my mum who done my forms mentioned i can cycle and do so rather than get on public transport just incase they say theres nothing wrong with me coz i can cycle or even worse say im a fraud.

takes the utter pee tbh as fraudlent people will just be like lol while genuine people want to be as honest as possible :(
 
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Soldato
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yep agreed, all it does is to completely stress out genuine people and when the decision is over turned all the money gets back dated any ways, im just lucky i have a supporting family or i could have ended up in dire straights.

a lot of the assesors will out right lie about what was said and dimiss medical evidence, then it goes to a pen pusher with no medical knowledge and claim closed, then appeal and claim reopened and back dated, assuming u can survive that long with the large gap of no money coming in and the massive stress :(

its pretty disgusting tbh the way people are treated, can u turn a tap on? ok claim closed, that is not a exageration i have heard horror stories from other claiments :(

the people that do exploit the system are few and far between and they dont care if refused they will just make another claim or more likely multiple ones. while genuine people get demonised :(

From what I read recently, you are now allowed to record the meetings with the assessors, so any claims they make that are outright lies will very easily be able to be proven against them.
 
Soldato
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There is supposed to be a UN hearing with the British government over it's treatment of disabled people.

The hearing is happening tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see if the government representatives turn up. So far they haven't want to engage.
 
Soldato
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and when broken down it isn't as bad.
I posted this in another thread...

Yea I'm just not getting why the government is making such a big issue out of it, yes historically we used to have one of the lowest Economically Inactive numbers in the G7 but it's not like it's comparably high, it's just not fallen back like other G7 nations.
Between 2010 and the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, the UK consistently had one of the lowest 15-64-year-old inactivity rates among G7 economies, with only Japan recording a lower rate in late 2019 (left panel of Chart A). The initial phase of the pandemic saw inactivity rise everywhere bar Germany, before falling everywhere but the UK in 2021 and 2022. This means that since the pandemic, the 15-64-year-old inactivity rate has increased in the UK by 0.5 percentage points and by 0.3 percentage points in the US (where modest falls in inactivity in 2021 and 2022 have not offset the rise in 2020), but fallen in the other five G7 economies (as shown in the right panel of Chart A). As a result, the UK’s inactivity rate has moved above that of Canada and Germany over this period, but remains below the OECD average.
C2-A.jpg

(Source)

Basically the government, empowered by the media reporting, are making a big thing out of it. I can only assume it's because the government don't want to address the actual reason for why it's become a focus, maybe the long waiting lists for treating health conditions that keep people from working and the need to import healthy working age people (aka: higher levels of immigration).
 
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Soldato
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Others includes people like me, in my 50's but took early retirement, although not taking a pension yet.
The sick and disabled have always been an easy target, what with the 'scroungers' and 'layabouts' labels, and the gullible lap it up. As I often say, people should stop looking down on the less fortunate, and start looking up at the ones at the top robbing them blind.
 
Caporegime
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From a quick look at caring and the rules, You also need to minus carers as they could be overlapping unemployed or retired or others and would definitely push up the count with repeated numbers. Also carers could be classified as working for the NHS because it saves the NHS.

Correct me if I am wrong about carers allowance. As I have zero knowledge of the working between carers and other benefits.
However, they provide service that the NHS or council should be providing. I think it should not be counted.

Now with the above information the numbers would look even lower.

Others what does that mean?

We now established it is not as bad as they say. It seems it is a blame game rather than taking responsibility for MPs running of the country.
What gets me about carers allowance is that you can’t get it if you earn over £139 a week.
 
Soldato
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Do the boat folk count in those numbers?
When you've found that out for yourself why don't you come back and let us know.
This is a direct quote.
A growing amount of UK aid has been spent on UK-based refugees, with spending increasing from £410 million in 2016 to £3,690 million in 2022 (rising from 3.2% of the aid budget to 29%). The Home Office was responsible for £2,382 million of this aid (should say tax payers).
I direct quote from where? Because i just searched the article both myself and you posted and found no mention of the word "refugees"
 
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Soldato
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When you've found that out for yourself why don't you come back and let us know.

I direct quote from where? Because i just searched the article both myself and you posted and found no mention of the word "refugees"

I had a meeting about this a few weeks back. I saw some (public domain) info- similar stuff to your graphs, but uk specific, with regional breakdowns. I think data was 2000--2023.

The rise in economically inactive working age people in the last few years was stark. It rose a lot during the pandemic, and has stayed high. Sickness is a big component of that.

It's difficult to believe that, all of a sudden, uk chronic health outcomes got very bad.

Gut feeling is a lot of people got onto sickness benefits who really shouldn't have- and it is always more difficult to take away than to give.
 
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