Derby People's Assembly

For a People’s Britain, Not A Bankers’ Britain
-

WELFARE

SOS NHS Derby End the winter crisis with a cash injection to restore the NHS budget Commit to increased funding each year End the cap on NHS pay No cuts, no closures, no privatisation – #SOSNHSDerby #NHS in Crisis: Fix It Now! Transport to London February 3rd #NHS Emergency Demonstration #NHS30218 #Derby People’s Assembly Against Austerity: #Derbyuk #Derbyshire

Aside Posted on Updated on

*End the winter crisis with a cash injection to restore the NHS budget
*Commit to increased funding each year
*End the cap on NHS pay
*No cuts, no closures, no privatisation

Join the demonstration in London On Saturday 3 February.



Dear Friends

Our NHS is in a serious crisis. Ambulances queuing for hours to hand over seriously ill patients, patients left in corridors waiting for beds, operations postponed, and mental health patients taken hundreds of miles to find a bed.

Theresa May & Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt issued a hollow apology and deny any crisis! But the problem comes from deliberate government policy of cuts, bed closures, pay restraint and privatisation.

Our NHS has been starved of funding with inadequate investment in staff and resources. 8,000 front line beds and 20% of mental health beds have closed. Eight years of below inflation pay settlements have contributed to 100,000 vacant posts for health professionals – leaving no spare capacity for peaks of demand & increasing the pressure on the dedicated staff who remain.
We don’t want apologies, we demand change.

On 3 February Health campaigns together are organising a national day of action – an emergency demonstration in London and nationwide protests to demand:

End the winter crisis with a cash injection to restore the NHS budget
Commit to increased funding each year
End the cap on NHS pay
No cuts, no closures, no privatisation

Join the demonstration in London On Saturday 3 February.

Coaches are leaving Derby Bus Station at 8:00am. Book tickets from mozgreenshields@gmail.com or text 07889 274723. Tickets are £10, £5 concessions, and free for the unwaged. SOS NHS DERBY is asking all our supporters to come along.
Coaches are leaving Chesterfield Town Hall, Rose Hill, S40 1LP) at 8:00am. Phone or text 07778480484 to book a seat.

Protest and present the ‘protect the 535 beds’ petition to the County Council on Wednesday the February 7, 1.30 pm.

Don’t forget that supporters from across Derbyshire will be attending the Derbyshire County Council Full meeting on Wednesday 7th February, at County Hall, Matlock, at 1.30 pm.

The plan is to protests outside then present the petition against the plan to cut 535 hospital beds to the Council. (If you haven’t signed the petition please do so, we still need a few hundred signatures to trigger the 30 minute debate). Click on this link to say you will join us

Copyright © 2018 SOS NHS Derby, All rights reserved.

Thanks you for giving us your email address when you signed the 535 beds petition, you can unsubscribe anytime that you wish.

We urge that you stay connected with us because there are lots of things to do in our campaign to save the NHS.

This entry was posted in Austerity in UK, Conservatives, Defend NHS, Fight the Cuts, Inequality, LibDems Quislings, Save the NHS, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby, X Conservative Party Paymasters and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

120,000 DEATHS LINKED TO #Conservative #LibDems AUSTERITY #Derbyuk #Derbyshire #Labour #Momentum #DCFC

Aside Posted on Updated on

120,000 DEATHS LINKED TO AUSTERITY

posted by  | 2937.80sc
November 16, 2017

The Conservatives have been accused of “economic murder” for austerity policies which a new study suggests have caused 120,000 deaths.

The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels.

On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Real terms funding for health and social care fell under the Conservative-led Coalition Government in 2010, and the researchers conclude this “may have produced” the substantial increase in deaths. The paper identified that mortality rates in the UK had declined steadily from 2001 to 2010, but this reversed sharply with the death rate growing again after austerity came in. From this reversal the authors identified that 45,368 extra deaths occurred between 2010 and 2014, than would have been expected, although it stops short of calling them “avoidable”.

Based on those trends it predicted the next five years – from 2015 to 2020 – would account for 152,141 deaths – 100 a day – findings which one of the authors likened to “economic murder”.

The Government began relaxing austerity measures this year announcing the end of its cap on public sector pay rises and announcing an extra £1.3bn for social care in the Spring Budget. Over three years the additional funding for social care is expected to reach £2bn, which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said was “patching up a small part of the damage” wrought by £4.6bn cuts. The study, published in BMJ Open today, estimated that to return death rates to their pre-2010 levels spending would need to increase by £25.3bn. The Department of Health said “firm conclusions” cannot be drawn from this work, and independent academics warned the funding figures were “speculative”.

However local councils who have been struggling to fund care with slashed budgets urged the Government to consider the research seriously. Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the Government must match Labour’s spending pledges in the Autumn Budget.

Per capita public health spending between 2001 and 2010 increased by 3.8 per cent a year, but in the first four years of the Coalition, increases were just 0.41 per cent, researchers from University College London found. In social care the annual budget increase collapsed from 2.20 per cent annually, to a decrease of 1.57 per cent. The researchers found this coincided with death rates which had decreased by around 0.77 per cent a year to 2010, beginning to increase again by 0.87 per cent a year.

And the majority of those were people reliant on social care, the paper says: “This is most likely because social care experienced greater relative spending constraints than healthcare.” It also notes that a drop in nurse numbers may have accounted for 10 per cent of deaths, concluding: “We have found that spending constraints since 2010, especially public expenditure on social care, may have produced a substantial mortality gap in England.”

The papers’ senior author and a researcher at UCL, Dr Ben Maruthappu, said that while the paper “can’t prove cause and effect” it shows an association. And he added this trend is seen elsewhere. “When you look at Portugal and other countries that have gone through austerity measures, they have found that health care provision gets worse and health care outcomes get worse,” he told The Independent. One of his co-author’s, Professor Lawrence King of the Applied Health Research Unit at Cambridge University, said it showed the damage caused by austerity

“It is now very clear that austerity does not promote growth or reduce deficits – it is bad economics, but good class politics,” he said. “This study shows it is also a public health disaster. It is not an exaggeration to call it economic murder.”

The Department of Health stressed that no such conclusion could be drawn. A spokesperson said: “As the researchers themselves note, this study cannot be used to draw any firm conclusions about the cause of excess deaths.

“The NHS is treating more people than ever before and funding is at record levels with an £8bn increase by 2020-21. We’ve also backed adult social care with £2bn investment and have 12,700 more doctors and 10,600 more nurses on our wards since May 2010.”

And independent academics added that it is hard to prove cause and effect with this kind of study even if the underlying assumptions may be correct.

Professor Martin Roland Emeritus Professor of Health Services Research, University of Cambridge said: “This study suggests that a change happened to cause deaths to stop declining around 2014. This is likely to be a correct finding. However, the link to health and social care spending is speculative as observational studies of this type can never prove cause and effect.”

Cllr Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, said: “We would urge government to review the evidence behind this analysis. If correct, it would clearly reinforce the desperate and urgent need to properly fund social care

Mr Ashworth, responding to the study, said: “This shocking mortality gap is a damning indictment of the dire impact which sustained Tory cuts to our NHS and social care services have had on health outcomes across the nation.

“Ahead of the Budget, this appalling news must serve as an urgent wake up call to the Prime Minister. She must match Labour’s pledge to deliver an extra £6 billion for our NHS across the next financial year to ensure the best possible quality of care is sustained for years to come.”

Get involved with the People’s Assembly today. 

This entry was posted in Austerity in UK, Conservatives, Defend NHS, Fight the Cuts, Inequality, LibDems Quislings, Save the NHS, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby, X Conservative Party Paymasters and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Government knew about rise in mental illness long before this week’s study – but won’t talk about it

Aside Posted on

Vox Political ~ politics for the people

Government knew about rise in mental illness long before this week’s study – but won’t talk about it

19ThursdayNov 2015 Posted by

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign]

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign]

Yesterday (Wednesday), This Writer learned two new things about the new university study that has found 590 people committed suicide between 2010-13 after taking work capability assessments (actually, one was a reminder of something I’d forgotten):The study found that, for every 10,000 people undergoing a work capability assessment for sickness or disability benefits in those years, 7,020 were prescribed anti-depressant drugs afterwards, 2,700 reported to their GPs with mental health issues, and six committed suicide.

The reminder came from a Vox Political commenter and was that the DWP already knew there had been a huge increase in the number of benefit claimants with mental health disorders.

According to the Express, of all places: “In 2010 just 221,000 with mental disorders were in receipt of out of work benefits. But official statistics show the figure leapt to 861,000 last year [2013] – a rise of 289 per cent.

“Those with conditions like bipolar disorder, severe depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia now account for 46 per cent of those paid Employment and Support Allowance.”

So the increase of 279,000 people with mental health problems, added to the 221,000 who were on benefit in 2010, gives us half a million people – easily within the 861,000 total for ESA alone.

So figures that were published by the DWP itself totally support the new study.

The second new thing was that the Conservative Government doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

Debbie Abrahams, shadow minister for the disabled, tried to ask an urgent question about the new study in the House of Commons on Tuesday (November 17) but was refused permission. So she made a point of order, asking the Speaker, John Bercow, how she could get the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, to make an early statement on the subject.

Again, she was rebuffed – Bercow told her to table a written question and “if she remains unhappy with the answers—or, as she sees it, the lack of answers—she can try again to deploy the mechanism of an urgent question”.

There might be a justification for not answering if the study had only revealed the extent of mental illnesses, which was known.

But there is the matter of the 590 suicides. Is the work capability assessment driving people to their deaths?

People killing themselves as a direct result of the work capability assessment – as the study indicates – is a serious issue, especially for a government that is still – increasingly desperately – clinging to claims that it is not possible to show that the WCA causes people to die, in any way.

And nobody at the DWP wants to talk about it.

Thomas More once stated: “The maxim is ‘Qui tacet consentit’: the maxim of the law is ‘Silence gives consent’. If therefore you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented.”

Let’s have that question again: Is the work capability assessment driving people to their deaths?

The DWP is silent.

Silence gives consent.

This entry was posted in 12 Billion Welfare Cuts, Austerity in UK, Conservative demolition of welfare, Conservative Party, Conservative Party Paymasters, Conservative Vampire Squids, Conservatives, Conservatives Paymasters, The People's Assembly Derby, WCA and tagged , , , , , , , .

#Conservative Party at War against the Disabled: David Cameron, a champion of disabled people? Try telling Paula Peters

Aside Posted on

David Cameron, a champion of disabled people? Try telling Paula Peters

Matt Kenyon's illustration on austerity and disability
Illustration: Matt Kenyon

‘Paula has so far kept her benefits. But she observes that they’ve barely risen in five years. Sometimes, she goes without eating.

The Wednesday before we met passed without a single meal.’

Aditya Chakrabortty 
A prime minister who talks about caring for his disabled son is about to unleash a new wave of benefit cuts on Britain’s most vulnerable people. People like Paula

George Osborne won’t have a clue who Paula Peters is, but he has shaped the past five years of her life. And when the chancellor delivers his emergency budget in parliament early next month, he should look up to the public gallery. He may well see Paula staring back at him.

As a disabled woman, she’s among those most hurt most by Osborne’s cuts. Now she wishes to hear for herself what the cabinet’s going to do to her next.

I want you to hear Paula’s story precisely because it is not the one David Cameron would have you believe. As the prime minister tells it, he’s a champion of the rights of disabled people. He has talked about how the strain of caring for his own severely disabled son, Ivan, almost led to his family “falling apart” I have no wish to doubt Cameron’s sincerity – but this month he will scrap the independent living fund, a small pot of cash that allows very disabled people to live in their own homes and communities. Without it, people with similar conditions to Ivan will become prisoners in their own homes, or shut away in a residential care facility.

During the election campaign, the Conservative leader promised that “the most disabled should always be protected”. Yet the Centre for Welfare Reformcalculates that his austerity programme has so far hit Britons with disabilities nine times harder than the average. Those with severe disabilities were whacked 19 times harder. And now those same people are about to be devastated all over again.

I met Paula at the end of last week, a couple of days after Cameron refused to rule out further cuts to disability benefits. The 43-year-old has a range of health problems, physical and mental – among them rheumatoid arthritis, which accounted for her swollen hands and the chipped walking cane. Rapid-cycling bipolar disorder makes her prey to vertiginous mood swings. “Up, down, up, down: you want to get off the rollercoaster but you can’t. Your mind won’t quieten down.”

Read more

This entry was posted in Austerity in UK, Conservative Party Paymasters, Conservative Vampire Squids, Conservatives, Fight the Cuts, ilf, The People's Assembly Derby, Welfare Cuts, X Conservative Party Paymasters and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

Austerity has failed, and it isn’t only Labour’s core voters who want change

Aside Posted on

Austerity has failed, and it isn’t only Labour’s core voters who want change

After Scotland, the need for Ed Miliband to make the case for radical reform couldn’t be clearer

  The Guardian, Wednesday 24 September 2014 20.35 BST

Seamus ed
‘In the real-world Labour conference, Ed Miliband lurched nowhere. He was a picture of studied caution.’ Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

If you’re in a fix, create a diversion. That will be the watchword of David Cameron’s Tories next week. George Osborne may have presided over the weakest recovery on record. He may have spectacularly missed his fiscal targets. The deficit may be growing again. Real wages may have fallen for the longest period since the 1870s. But Ed Miliband will certainly be the man in the frame at their Birmingham jamboree.

The Labour leader even forgot to mention the deficit in his conference speech, the Conservatives will hoot – tax cuts at the ready – so Labour can’t be trusted with the nation’s finances. And fresh from bringing Britain to the brink of breakup, Cameron will play the English nationalist card as his winning ace. Miliband isn’t quite one of us, the dog whistle will have it.

The media has been playing warm-up act all week. Labour has “lurched to the left”, the Tory press complained, yet again. Miliband is pursuing a “core vote” strategy. He must return to the “centre ground”. The Telegraph even reckoned that £2m houses – which Miliband plans to tax to pay for more doctors, nurses and home care workers – can be “relatively modest”.

More here

This entry was posted in Austerity in UK, Conservatives, Fight the Cuts, Inequality, Labour, LibDems Quislings, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby and tagged , , , , , , , .

Welfare the gilded cage! Russell Brand takes apart the #Conservative idea that It’s Your Fault You’re Poor and /or on Benefits?

Aside Posted on Updated on

Reaction to a Fox News segment on poverty in the US and UK, and the common argument that welfare displaces work. Subscribe Here Now: http://tinyurl.com/opragcg and send links to video news items of topical stories that you’d like me to analyse.

DERBY PEOPLE'S ASSEMBLY
DERBY PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY

This entry was posted in Austerity in UK, Fox News, Inequality, Murdoch, Russell Brand, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby and tagged , , , , , , , , .

The financial incentive for keeping claimants in ‪#‎ESA‬ Assessment Phase

Posted on

This entry was posted in ATOS, Austerity in UK, Benefits Street, IDS, Inequality, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby, X Conservative Party Paymasters and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

#DWP: Housing benefit will be sanctioned

Posted on Updated on

DWP: Housing benefit will be sanctioned               From INSIDE HOUSING 27 February 2014

 Part-time workers judged to be doing too little to find full-time work face having their benefit for housing costs sanctioned by the government for the first time under universal credit.

Under the present system housing benefit is paid direct to landlords and sanctions can only be applied to out-of-work benefits, such as jobseeker’s allowance or employment support allowance.

Landlords, already concerned by the prospect of universal credit being paid directly to tenants, have been lobbying the government to exempt the housing element of the single payment from sanctions in all circumstances.

However, the Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed to Inside Housing that under the government’s flagship welfare reform, where a tenant is working less than 35 hours a week at minimum wage and is not eligible for JSA or ESA, the housing element can be sanctioned instead.

Landlords are concerned that by extending ‘in-work conditionality’ to the housing element, if the DWP deems claimants to not be doing enough to find full-time employment and applies sanctions, rent arrears could increase.

Sue Ramsden, head of policy for neighbourhoods at the National Housing Federation, said that until now, it has been unclear whether the DWP would allow housing costs to be exempt. ‘We are pressing for DWP staff to have regard for the need for an alternative payment arrangement to be put in place at the same time that the sanction is imposed,’ she said.

Sam Lister, policy and practice officer at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said there was concern about the effect of sanctions on arrears at a time when the housing benefit caseload for in-work claimants continued to rise, but much depended on how the policy was implemented. He added: ‘It will depend on the instructions given to DWP administrators about how strictly the sanctions are implemented in the case of part-time workers who are in receipt of benefit as a contribution to housing costs.’

No research has been carried out on the impact sanctions could have on arrears. More than 1 million people are currently in work but reliant on housing benefit to meet their housing costs, up from 691,000 in 2010.

A DWP spokesperson said: ‘It is only right that people claiming benefits should be aware that not sticking to the rules can have a consequence. Any reductions to benefits as a result of a sanction are applied to the universal credit benefit as a whole rather than a particular element of it.’

Read the full article here

This entry was posted in ATOS, Austerity in UK, BEDROOM TAX, Benefits Street, Disabled, Employment Support Allowance, ESA, Housing, Inequality, LibDems Quislings, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Channel 4 News Disabled people are being left without money for months at a time

Posted on

To watch the Report click here http://bcove.me/ih06vydt

Disabled people are being left without money for months at a time as government contractors Atos and Capita struggle to keep up with the relentless demand placed upon them by the Tory-led coalition in assessing thousands of people for the new disability benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Channel 4 has reported.

This entry was posted in ATOS, Austerity in UK, Benefits Street, Disabled, Fight the Cuts, Inequality, LibDems Quislings, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby, X Conservative Party Paymasters and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Sheila Holt: Woman who was told to find work while in a COMA receives apology

Posted on Updated on

Sheila Holt: Woman who was told to find work while in a COMA receives apology

Sheila Holt’s harrowing story was told in the Mirror a fortnight ago. Today the minister for disabled people said: “That family has every right to be angry”

Apology: Sheila’s plight has finally been recognised by the Government

The minister for disabled people apologised “unreservedly” today to a woman pursued by the Work Programme even though she is in a coma.

Sheila Holt’s harrowing story was told a fortnight ago in the Mirror’s Real Britain column – and has twice been raised in the Commons by her MP Simon Danczuk.

Mike Penning’s apology came at the end of an historic three-hour debate calling for the government to properly assess the effect of welfare changes on Britain’s 11 million disabled people.

He said that he would personally look into every case raised today by MPs in the House – and offered his personal apology to the family of Sheila Holt.

“That family has every right to be angry,” he said.

Read the full article here

This entry was posted in Austerity in UK, Benefits Street, Disabled, Solidarity, The People's Assembly Derby and tagged , , , , , , , , .