Friday 30 May 2014

Roger writes to Minister for Work and Pensions and head of Capita to protest delays in processing PIP payments

Roger has written to Iain Duncan Smith, the head of the Department for Work and Pensions, and Andy Parker, the Chief Executive of Capita, to protest about the effects of the long delays in processing claims for Personal Independence Payments. PIP is paid to people who are seriously ill or disabled in order to help them with the extra costs of their condition.


Unfortunately, despite the disastrous failure of Atos’ contract to handle ESA assessments, the Government decided to allow Atos and Capita to take on the contracts for carrying out PIP assessments. The consequence of this is that PIP costs almost three and a half times more to administer than the benefit it replaced, and takes twice as much time to process. Roger commented: “I do not see how this serves either disabled citizens or the British taxpayer. The only people currently benefiting are the shareholders of Atos and Capita, who are making a profit at the expense of the wellbeing of seriously ill citizens.”


In the letters, Roger wrote: “The effects of these delays on disabled citizens cannot be overstated. At a time when they are already struggling to cope with severe health conditions, they are also forced to worry about paying the bills, paying the rent for their homes and putting food on the table, not to mention coping with the extra costs that come with disability. Many of the people who wrote to me about this emphasised that before they became disabled they had worked all their lives, paid taxes and never claimed benefits. They had paid into the system on the assumption that if they ever needed support the safety net would be there for them. They have now discovered that this is not the case.”


Roger was contacted by a man whose wife suffered a stroke, and who was still waiting for Capita to bother to turn up to assess her. He wrote: “It’s seven months since we have any money coming in bar my wife’s state pension. My savings are almost gone. The stress I am under is unbelievable. I just don’t know where to turn. My wife is getting depressed, she just sits and cries on the days Capita don’t turn up. She blames herself for having a stroke."


Said Roger: “I am appalled that this Government has once again permitted companies which are obviously inept and unscrupulous to be in charge of administering a benefit which is so vital to the wellbeing of this country’s most vulnerable citizens. I cannot understand how Atos in particular was permitted to be involved after the utter disaster of their handling of ESA claims. What on earth is the benefit to DWP or to the public purse of outsourcing services to private companies which perform them so poorly that they have to be redone, again at taxpayer expense? What is the benefit to society of pushing hard-working citizens into penury and misery because they have the misfortune to become ill?”

Friday 2 May 2014

Transatlantic trade agreement is a threat to health and sovereignty of UK citizens, says Roger

Roger is concerned that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which is currently being negotiated between the European Union and the United States, poses a severe threat to the UK’s public services and its regulatory standards in a number of areas including safety, food hygiene, workers’ rights and environmental protection.
The idea behind TTIP is to level the differences between European and American regulations and so promote trade. In practice, however, trade barriers between the EU and the USA are already extremely low, and the effect of TTIP would be to drag regulations down to the lowest existing standard in each area, removing protections for people both as consumers and as citizens.


The Conservatives’ constant mantra is that red tape must be cut, but some rules--such as those on workers’ rights, food safety or the use of toxic chemicals--were put in place for very good reasons. For example, in the European Union it is illegal to sell beef which has been produced using growth hormones which have been linked to cancer in humans, or to sell poultry which has been washed with chlorine. These laws do not apply in the US, and TTIP would remove the legal barriers which prevent companies from selling meat produced in these ways in the EU or in the UK. In the EU almost no GM food is sold due to widespread consumer opposition, but in the US almost 70% of processed foods contain genetically modified organisms. TTIP would remove the legal barriers which prevent GM food being sold in the EU, legislating in accordance with food companies’ desire to reach new markets rather than citizens’ need for safe, natural food.


The picture is similar for environmental legislation, where standards are currently much higher in the EU than the US. TTIP would bring deregulation across a wide range of sectors, and remove hard-won regulations which protect human rights and the planet above corporations’ right to make a profit. The consequences of this would be dire for Americans as well as Europeans. While the EU would be under threat from the USA’s lower standards on consumer safety and employment law, American citizens would suffer from the introduction of the EU’s looser financial regulations, with the potential loss of the tighter regulation brought in since the financial crash. American businesses would suffer from the loss of the popular “Buy America” scheme to support local enterprise and jobs, while European workers would be under threat from lower US labour standards and poorer trade-union rights. TTIP would introduce a race to the bottom on the standards which help to protect people’s livelihoods as well as their health.


Also of serious concern is the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism which is included in TTIP. This would give companies the power to bypass the courts, and to use private tribunals to sue governments for enacting legislation which protected people or the environment at the expense of corporate profits. Roger said: “This sounds absurd, but it is already happening. The government of Argentina froze utility bills, only to be sued for lost profits by the transnational water and energy companies whose greed had caused bills to reach such a high level. Tobacco company Philip Morris is suing the governments of Australia and Uruguay over their policies on cigarette packaging, which were brought in to protect the health of their citizens. I do not want to see the UK in this situation.”


TTIP also contains provisions to remove distinctions between public and private providers of services, and between national and foreign providers. In practice, this would put the BBC, the NHS and the UK’s comprehensive schools under threat from transnational corporations. The UK’s public sector would be privatised even further, with a consequent lowering of standards and loss of public accountability. Roger commented: “Essential public services, such as health and education, are called ‘public’ for a reason. When these services are provided by the UK Government, they are accountable to UK citizens in a way which they simply would not be if they were provided by transnational corporations which, unlike the NHS, have absolutely no ethos of serving the public good rather than increasing shareholder profits at all costs.”


Roger said: “I am extremely worried about the possible effects of many of the provisions in TTIP on my constituents and on people throughout the UK. What is perhaps most concerning, however, is that these negotiations are taking place in secret. Most people are not even aware of TTIP, and the treaty is being negotiated without the chance for proper public scrutiny. Astonishingly, the European Commission intends to block public access to all documents on the TTIP negotiations for the next 30 years, prioritising companies’ desire for secrecy over the well-being of citizens.”


“I do not believe that most people in the UK would be happy to see food safety standards drastically lowered, or multinational conglomerates given the right to sue the UK Government--at taxpayer expense, of course--for enacting legislation which protects people’s health or the environment. This is deeply undemocratic, and I do not think people want this. I therefore call on the Government to act with greater openness and transparency with regards to this treaty, and for once to act in the best interests of UK citizens rather than to protect multinational companies’ profits. It is completely unnecessary and extremely dangerous to hand over any more power to greedy, unscrupulous corporations at the expense of the people of this country.”