Author Archives: davidhencke

A toothless quadriplegic prisoner, Tthe Lord Chief Justice and a boiled sweet

Posted on by
Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice

Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales (salary £275,534 a year) and two other Court of Appeal judges ( salaries £225,978 each) spent this week delivering a judgement on whether a prisoner could eat a boiled sweet.

In what must be one of the most lofty and byzantine judgements of the year a judicial review at the Court of Appeal threw out a request from a disabled prisoner at Liverpool jail to be able to eat boiled sweets.

The prisoner only known to the courts as JJ is a toothless quadriplegic inmate serving time until 2027 in the health wing of the prison. Lady Justice King delivered the verdict, which the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Justice Lewis concurred after spending time on a hearing and taking advice from the Royal College of Physicians.

In what must have been a very expensive case -since it was an appeal from another high court judge – barristers from top NHS lawyers Hill Dickenson and DAC Beachcroft to defend the prison’s healthcare company, Spectrum community Health. who were caring for him in jail while JJ was in the health wing. JJ had his own barrister, Aswini Weereratne KC.

Lady Justice King pic credit: Law Gazette

Lady Justice King said: “JJ is quadriplegic and without teeth. While his cognitive and communication skills are unimpaired, his physical capacity is limited to pushing a button with one finger. Since 2016 he has been bed-bound and wholly dependent on care staff for all his personal cares and for feeding. He is nursed in a supine position.”

“As a consequence of JJ’s condition, eating food poses a risk of death or serious injury by choking or aspiration. Some foods pose a more significant risk than others. Until 2021, JJ ate a mixed diet of soft and non-soft foods. Meals would be sent to his cell and he would decide whether he was capable of eating them. He would regularly supplement his diet with snacks bought from the prison canteen, including non-soft foods such as boiled sweets.”

Prisoner goes on hunger strike over the denial of boiled sweets

There have been several instances of him choking on food but JJ insisted that he would take responsibility for himself and still wanted to suck boiled sweets.

The care company however were worried about his choking. They called in a therapist who decided that he should only eat soft and bite sized food once his supply of boiled sweets ran out. JJ wanted to choose what he ate and when this was not allowed went on hunger strike only taking high energy fluids to stay alive.

The judge said: “JJ’s approach was, and is, that he could exercise his basic freedom of choice to decide what he will eat, being fully aware of the risks.”

Do not resuscitate me says prisoner

Spectrum wouldn’t agree to this so in December 2021 JJ signed an Advance Decision to Refuse Treatment. In this, JJ confirmed that food refusal was to apply even when his life is at risk and that he does not wish to be ventilated or to have cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). It follows that in the event that JJ choked or aspirated as a consequence of eating a boiled sweet which, as he is quadriplegic, would have been put into his mouth by a carer, neither that carer nor any other medical professional on the ward would be able to intervene to give JJ lifesaving CPR.”

In July 2022, JJ brought a claim for judicial review, contending that Spectrum’s refusal to feed him foods of his choice was irrational, discriminatory, in breach of his common law right of autonomy and his Article 8 right to physical and psychological integrity.”

It went to court and he lost and the judge refused an appeal. But it was decided as the issue was a compelling one it should go to the Court of Appeal.

Here the key issue was elevated to whether a patient can refuse to follow a clinician’s treatment and the fact that prisoners cannot choose what food they can eat – only what the prison choose to provide.

Also a bombshell ruling that as Spectrum was regulated by the Care Quality Commission if a nurse gave JJ a boiled sweet and he choked to death would he or she be prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter?

Liverpool prison where JJ is held

JJ filed a statement to the court : ” In it he describes how he has little or no quality of life. He is completely bed-bound, lying on his back for 24 hours a day, and is unable to do anything for himself other than call for help or control a television. He concludes his statement by saying that he has lost almost everything in his life and ‘being able to eat what I want represents my last shred of humanity and dignity. I want o be able to cling on to it for as long as I can’.

But the judges rejected this saying ” It may be that in certain different medical circumstances the balance would come down in JJ’s favour but not, in my view, in this case. JJ cannot feed himself. He cannot obtain boiled sweets from the prison shop, unwrap them and put them in his own mouth. The provision of boiled sweets in circumstances where JJ cannot even put a sweet into his mouth is different; it is treatment or care carrying with it the considerable risk that on any given day, giving JJ that boiled sweet may cause him to choke to death and in circumstances where JJs advance decision would prevent all but the most basic life-saving intervention on the part of the person who had given him the boiled sweet.”

So what would happen if a friend came to visit him at Liverpool jail? Presumably the prison will have to confiscate any boiled sweets to comply with the Lord Chief Justice’s ruling. We hear of drugs, illicit mobile phones and porn being smuggled into jail now in this case the judiciary’s top judge has extended it to boiled sweets. Given JJ’s brain is the one part of him not impaired It is over the top.

For highly intelligent people the three cold hearted Court of Appeal judges lack any empathy or humanity in this case. Their judgement is more concerned with avoiding liability for the company and the prison if JJ dies rather than granting him a boiled sweet to make his limited life more pleasurable.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my reporting.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00
£5.00
£15.00
£100.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

The Dan Wootton case: Why Byline Times is right to probe the dark side of the media

Posted on by

Journalists hold a unique position in a democracy. They are the only people with the time, energy and hopefully a decent salary to investigate matters of public interest that the rest of people are too busy or exhausted to have the time and space to devote to it.

Their no hold bars investigations of dodgy politicians, the Royals, the entertainment industry, and business scandals fill our screens, print pages and social media every day. Undercover investigations expose malpractice and bad treatment of vulnerable people. The only caveat to that is some of the media spend loads of money pursuing celebrity gossip and tittle tattle that they believe the public are interested in rather than devoting cash to expose scandals from whistleblowers in the public interest .

But there is one area where there is a wall of silence and that is the media itself. Unlike everything else which is fair game, journalist practices are off limits.

Leveson’s second inquiry should not have been stopped

Now I am not one who wants huge regulation of the press by the state but I supported the Leveson inquiry and it was a mistake not to have the second part of the inquiry which would have examined in detail what happened over the phone hacking scandal that affected more than one national media organisation. Why couldn’t the media be put under the microscope in a judge led inquiry just like we are doing over the Covid 19 inquiry and the Post Office Horizon scandal.

Lord Justice Leveson

In this column I have no intention of going into the detail of the Dan Wotton case – you can follow that by reading Byline Times – and his reaction to the stories on GB News and Twitter. I am upholding the right of journalists to investigate other media if people come to them with allegations of malpractice just like they would with any other area. And sadly most mainstream media avoids doing so.

Not only is malpractice not reported but the BBC tried for years to avoid scrutiny on how well it spends its money and protect its household name journalists and commentators from revealing their salaries.

You may have noticed in the last few weeks that the salaries of top BBC presenters have been highlighted in the news.

BBC’s attempt to avoid scrutiny

The only reason this has happened is because two successive auditor generals took on the BBC which claimed that it was a special case and could not be scrutinised by the National Audit Office or have to reveal the salaries of top people unlike other publicly funded bodies. The NAO was interested in both whether major capital projects like the setting up of Salford Quays and revamping Broadcasting House were value for money. The BBC sought to try and control what the NAO could investigate and even argued that its editorial independence was in jeopardy if the NAO had powers to investigate what it chooses. The defence was rubbish. Is the present auditor general going to spend time investigating whether the latest Panorama was value for money or whether the current BBC political editor, Chris Mason, has made biased reports? I don’t think so..

Misrepresentation of Byline Times by Dan Wootton

One issue over the present furore between Dan Wootton and Byline Times is the misrepresentation of what Byline Times is about by Wootton

At a recent Press Gallery reception in the Commons I had an interesting discussion about this with a Tory MP I have known for a long time. He asked what Byline Times was and was told by other journalists that it was a left wing publication. When I explained to him as a freelance journalist who regularly writes for them on Westminster and Whitehall that the editor, Hardeep Matharu, rightly expected me to get a response from whatever department was facing a highly critical report he was amazed. He had assumed that articles would be left wing polemics, not based on hard fact.

Dan Wootton has claimed Byline Times is a hard left blog. It is nothing of the sort. It is a growing multimedia publication , on line, in print and on TV.

Its determination to get the facts right and collect real evidence was tested when six years ago it took on the powerful Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail exposing journalistic malpractice. Here again there were dire threats to sue. But they came to nothing. Not a good precedent for the present media furore.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my reporting and investigating.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Campaign to end discrimination against women reaches Downing Street

Posted on by

Rishi Sunak gets a report on why women are still hugely disadvantaged in decision making across the world

Video from Downing Street where Jocelynne Scutt hands in the report on Women, Power and Decision Making to Number Ten

Here is a video taken yesterday when Jocelynne Scutt, a former Australian judge and anti discrimination commissioner and now an academic in the UK, handed in a report to the Prime minister detailing how women are still at a huge disadvantage to men in taking key political decisions in the UK and the rest of the world. She says the position of women is ” lamentable” in the UK

The report by the UK based Cedaw in Law, the organisation which is working with the Geneva based UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and Girls (CEDAW). to put pressure on the government to implement in full the convention ratified by Margaret Thatcher in 1986.

The campaign covers everything from the 1950s born women battle for full restitution of their delayed pensions when the age went up form 60 to 66 to the dearth of women MPs and peers in Parliament.

At the moment we seem to be going backwards with Labour having an all white male prospective Parliamentary candidate list for five pending by-elections and former premiers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss putting forward an overwhelming number of men to be new peers in their resignation honours lists Even the Supreme Court which took on a big role under its former woman president, Brenda Hale now has 11 male judges and just a token woman judge.

As the report says : “…overlooking women’s right to equal participation in decision-making leads to an ignoring of, and ignorance about, women’s economic rights, health and wellbeing. Worse, it shows how the failure to ensure women’s participation in decision-making can lead to a wilful failure of government to consider the impact of policy decisions and law-making on women and women’s rights generally.“

We also discovered that the rules governing the delivery of petitions and reports to Downing Street had changed. Previously when Backto60 and trade unionists had delivered petitions to Downing Street it was allowed for people to make a short speech. Now under Rishi Sunak speeches that criticise the PM cannot be made from the steps of Downing Street. We did not discover this until both me and Jocelynne Scutt had made them.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my reporting on issues often ignored by mass media.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Official – Work till you drop: Women in their 50s expect to have to stay in work long after retirement age

Posted on by

The Office for National Statistics – the independent official body which produces official figures for work and inflation in the UK – has come up with some alarming predictions for women born in the 1950s 1960s and 1970s.

They show that post the Covid pandemic there has been a big drop among women expecting to have enough money to retire and enjoy a life of leisure on their pensions. As a result a significant proportion of women now aged 50 to 65 are planning to stay in work – either with reduced hours or full time when they reach the retirement age of 66.

An organisation called Rest Less, which acts a community and an advocate for the over 50s, has analysed these figures and estimates that nearly one in two women pensioners now expect to have to continue working after retirement age.  Either they will work their existing hours (13%) or work with reduced hours (31%).

Huge inequalities between men and women’s pensions

The main reasons for this is pensioner poverty among women and huge inequalities between men and women when it comes to their pension pots. Not only are women less likely to get full state pensions – often they have missed years – than men but there is a big discrepancy in private pensions. The ONS figures show while 78 per cent of men will fund their retirement with a private pension, only 68 per cent of women have one. And the inequality goes on and on. Some 47 per cent of men will fund their retirement through savings, compared to 40 per cent of women. And only seven per cent of men will rely on funds from their partner, while 18 per cent of women will rely on their partner to help fund their retirement.

These figures were compiled 10 months ago in September last year. I hear that the ONS does not plan to update them since the survey was a ” one off” following Covid. Curiously a lot of publicity was given to people dropping out of the workforce when they got to 50 – I can only think that the majority must have been men or women married to men with a very good private pension.

Stuart Lewis, Chief Executive of Rest Less, commented: “Years of gender based earnings disparity has resulted in a large pension savings gap between men and women, leaving many women in their 50s and 60s in real financial precarity.  Nearly half of women aged 50-65 said they plan to continue working in some capacity after reaching state pension age – a number that is likely to have risen even further given the subsequent cost of living crisis.

…..“‘In the last recession of 2009, women could retire at 60 and receive the state pension; today it is 66.  Many women aged 50-65 are stuck between a rock and a hard place – they struggle to find work due to age discrimination or a lack of flexible work opportunities but they are too young to claim their state pension putting them in a vulnerable financial position as they approach retirement. Whilst the state pension age for men and women may now be equal, this data shows that the retirement fortunes of men and women remain anything but equal.”

One person who is caught in this trap is Back to 60 campaigner Michaela Hawkins known as Mac to her friends

Michaela Hawkins

“.I was forced to stay in work longer than I wanted to or hoped for. 
“My husband is 10yrs older than myself so was relying on retiring at 60 so we could enjoy some quality time together. When SPA was raised this devastated our plans.  It would have meant if I retired before receiving my SP we would have had to survive below the breadline. 
“Austerity along with the pandemic put untold pressure on both myself and husband. I was transferred to work in care home from Day services during Covid. As my husband was in high vulnerable category during this time you can imagine the stress this put on both ourselves. 
“Another reason why I felt stressed also is because as a woman gets older her body is not the same. The physical aspects of working in care sector takes its toll.  When you come home from work you feel exhausted. But if you’re caring for loved one or helping out your children with childcare which I done both you have got no time for any sort of quality life.” 

now tax allowance frozen

“Now the Tax allowance that’s been frozen.  Now I’m retired I’ve been hit with a tax bill for over £1300  on top of cost of living crisis this is going to push many 50s women over the top. “

UPDATE : Since then there has been another demand for £1300.

Mac writes:

“I then received a letter saying I owe them a further £1,300. If this wasn’t payed then they would get in touch with debt collectors.

It took me 2 1/2 hrs to get through to tax office to query this.
It couldn’t be done online.
Although I disputed the amount I owe they were insistent that I did owe that amount.
I was then put through to debt management. Who I got to say was accommodating. But the problem is when older people receive letter from HMRC saying they will bring in debt collectors or as people our age call them bailiffs they become confused and frightened. 
Then to be put on hold for that length of time is again frustrating to say the least. 
When you think how HMRC is quick to chase up pensioners who in good faith think they payed their fair taxes and are chased up and then you got those who knows how to play the system get away with it. It makes me so angry.”

Certainly Backto60, which campaigns for full restitution for all the 1950s women who lost up to six years of their pension, is inundated with stories of women living on the poverty line, unable to heat their homes properly or use their ovens to cook because they can’t afford the fuel bills.

Instead the government concentrates on getting everybody back to work rather than seeking to compensate people who have already worked for decades and now should be able to put their feet up if that’s what they want to do without fear of paying the bills.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my reporting.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

DWP in 2022: Record underpayments, record benefit fraud and deleted child benefit records

Posted on by

Last year I reported that the national audit office had qualified the Department for Work and Pensions accounts for the 34th year running because they were inaccurate and it couldn’t balance the books.

Auditor General threatens to refuse to pass pension accounts next year if DWP carries on like this

But this year the DWP has surpassed itself – it is now the 35th year that the DWP has had its accounts qualified.

Benefits overpaid officially fell a little from the pandemic year – £8.2 billion instead of £8.6 billion- but when you strip out the extra cost of living payments – they are much higher than the pre pandemic year of 2019 -£7.8 billion compared to £4.4 billion – a massive increase.

Most of the fall in the amount DWP overpaid benefits related to fraud in Universal Credit. The amount of Universal Credit that DWP overpaid fell from 14.7% (£5.9 billion) of expenditure in 2021-22 to 12.8% (£5.5 billion) in 2022-23. But again compared to the pre pandemic year of 2019 this was a rise.

DWP estimates that Universal Credit claims started after the COVID-19 peak (March to June 2020) were overpaid by 13.1% in 2022.This remains significantly higher than the 9.4% that it overpaid all Universal Credit claims in 2019-20.

The reduction is mainly due to a fall in the level of self employment claimants and the reintroduction of rules designed to prevent self employed claimants understating their income.

On average 33% of Universal Credit claims were incorrect in 2022-23,equivalent to 1.6 million claims. Most of these claims (24% of all Universal Credit claims) were overpaid.

The report says: “Around 40% of overpaid claims were to people with no entitlement to any payment at all, which is equivalent to 10% of all Universal Credit claims. Some of these were marginal cases where small amounts of undeclared income or claimant circumstances (such as attending hospital) made the whole claim invalid. However, some other claims were overpaid as much as £1,800 per month; some were completely fictional; and some related to serious and organised crime.”

Pensioners lost hundreds of millions of pounds in underpayments

The record underpayments of pensions and benefits topped £3.3 billion. A large number were caused by people claiming Personal Independence Payments who had not updated the DWP about their increased medical needs.

But it was pensioners who were cheated by the DWP into not receiving their full pension entitlements that is worrying the National Audit Office.

The report says: “The level of State Pension underpaid by DWP has been trending upward for six years to 0.6% (£670 million) in 2022-23. Most of these underpayments (£580 million) were a result of official error. DWP believes that part of the increase is due to changes in how it measures State Pension error and that its previous estimates may have been understated. This brings the total fraud and error rate for State Pension, including overpayments, to 0.7%.

“I will keep the gross level of incorrect payments in State Pension under review and may have to include State Pension in my regularity qualification in future years if the estimated rate continues to rise.”

There is £1.2 billion owed to 165,000 married pensioners, widows and those over 80- all caused by official errors in the past. It will take until the end of 2024 before everyone is paid.

And now the DWP has discovered another 210,000 pensioners owed up to £1.5 billion because officials did not record their right to paid national insurance contributions while looking after children

The report says; “These issues affect people (mostly women)who received Child Benefit before 2000 and whose National Insurance record was not updated to reflect periods of HRP (Home Responsibilities Protection) they were entitled to. DWP cannot begin to correct cases until HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), which administers both National Insurance and Child Benefit records, corrects the National Insurance records and notifies DWP.
“HMRC intends to begin work to identify people who may have missing HRP in autumn 2023 and will write to them to invite them to apply for missing periods of HRP to be added to their National Insurance record.”

However it turns out that HMRC have destroyed many of the people’s records.to meet Data Protection laws so it may not be able to find them.

Then there are 10 million people claiming Universal Credit have not been updated properly – a small proportion of these may have also been underpaid their State Pension. HMRC began correcting records in February 2023 and expects this work to be completed by the end of March 2024.

The report adds; “DWP has still to determine how many people have been underpaid and by how much they were underpaid. Of those missing the Universal Credit National Insurance credits, 137,000 have already reached State Pension age.“

jonathan Mills
peter schofield
neil couling
nick Joicey
katie faringdon
simon McKinnon
amanda reynolds- director service excellence
Debbie Alder

Roll call of this year’s DWP top officials and their bonuses and pensions

Meanwhile the DWP continues to pay out bonuses to senior staff. Peter Schofield, the permanent secretary, did not take a bonus this year and his pension payments were half last year’s at £16,000. His full package is £210,000 a year compared with £240,000 the previous year.

Neil Couling, the change director who is responsible for universal credit, got a £5000 bonus and had a £52,000 deduction in his pension pot, in a year when he presided over record fraud over universal credit.

Debbie Alder, director of people, got a £15,000 bonus, and put £59,000 into her pension pot, giving her a package worth £200,000 this year.

Jonathan Mills, responsible fo the Labour policy at the DWP, left in June with a £5000 bonus. He is now director of energy markets and supply at the Department for Energy Security.

Nick Joicey, director general of finance who earned £80,000 for five months is now chief operating officer and second permanent secretary of Defra. He is also the husband of Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor.

Simon McKinnon, director general and chief digital officer, who left in April 2023, Got a final year bonus of £15,000 and £62,000 in his pension pot, taking his final package to £240,000. He was responsible for reorganising the DWP’s system to bring it back in house.

Amanda Reynolds, director of service excellence, also got a £15,000 bonus and £61,000 into her pension pot, taking her package to £240,000 for providing what some claimants and pensioners would claim was hardly a first class service.

Katie Faringdon, director general for disability, health and pensions, got no bonus but had a £175,000 package including £44,000 into her pension. Over the last two years she has put pension benefits worth £131,000 into her personal pension fund. I am sure the millions of pensioners facing delayed pensions and still waiting to be reimbursed for mistakes by officials into their pensions will be pleased for her!

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my forensic reporting.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Half baked and half finished: How courts and tribunals burned through £1 billion on computers to improve access to justice and failed

Posted on by
Royal Courts of Justice

It is portrayed by HM Courts and Tribunals Service as “our vision for reform to make the justice system more straightforward, accessible and efficient.”

But this £1.3 billion digital court reform programme has been exposed by the National Audit Office and last week by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee for having failed to meet its objectives. This ambitious programme started in 2016 has been much delayed and only half completed. As MPs commented last week it has ” burned through” over £1 billion of public money and is the on the verge of running out of cash before half the benefits can be realised.

No one would argue that the courts and tribunal system is antiquated and needs reform. One only has to watch judges in the employment tribunal system writing down what claimants and respondents are saying by hand in courts that don’t keep proper records of hearings to realise how antiquated it is.

But once again it looks like that Whitehall has fallen for an expensive simplistic digital solution for a service which is incredibly wide ranging and complex. The aim was to create a common computer platform to serve 44 different aspects of justice from the criminal courts to magistrates courts and from the family and divorce courts to the probate service and the tribunal service.

Timetable five years behind schedule

It also had a timetable to be completed by 2020. Now we will be lucky whether the truncated programme will be up and running by 2025. Also £1.3 billion won’t be enough – there is only £120 million left to spend and that is nowhere enough to meet what is needed. And £22 million was wasted trying to integrate the Crown Prosecution Service into the system which didn’t work.

Also there are promises of big savings by going digital. This is always promised and we will see whether that really happens.

Also plans to have fully digital probate and divorce services had not fully worked. The MPs said:

“HMCTS found that significant proportions of its online divorce and probate cases required manual interventions from staff and in March 2022 HMCTS identified that 55% of divorce cases could not be completed online.”

In addition it appeared that both services discriminated against ethnic minorities.

Both the Bar Council and the Law Society were not impressed. The report says:

The Law Society “explained that there were functionality issues with online portals for family services, such as family public law. These issues led to problems, including instances of solicitors not getting necessary notifications which made the system difficult to use and, in some cases, significantly delayed cases. It told us that it had frequently expressed concerns to HMCTS about the functionality and design of some reformed services.”

System developed in a vacuum – Bar Council

The Bar Council told MPs:” the designers and producers of the common platform appeared to
have a limited understanding of working needs and practices, and “displayed a marked reluctance for the system to be designed in conjunction with, and for the benefit of, professional court users”.

It said it looked like the system had been designed in a vacuum.

As for the general public, it looked like that it was going to be a problem at magistrates courts ,purely because most of the defendants didn’t have any legal representation and therefore might not have proper access to the system to defend themselves.

Meanwhile the project continues so far with the pausing of integrating possession orders, special tribunals except for the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal.

Dame Meg Hillier MP

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

“Our courts were already stretched thin before the pandemic, and the backlogs now faced pose a real threat to timely access to justice. These are services crying out for critical reform, but frustratingly HM Courts & Tribunal’s attempts appear in some cases to be actively hindering its own staff’s ability to carry out their jobs. In particular, the roll-out of the Common Platform digital system was a blow upon a bruise for pressured court users.”

Given there are already many issues whether the courts do deliver justice, this rather botched computer programme does not give you much faith in the system.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my forensic reporting.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Conbfidential

£10.00

Britain is becoming disconnected – 1 million people quit broadband because of the cost of living crisis

Posted on by

pic credit: Andrew Neel

A report published today from House of Lords savages the government’s failure to tackle digital exclusion when ministers have promised the country will become a world leader in digital technology.

Figures in the Communications Committee report are absolutely astounding.

It says: “1.7 million households have no mobile or broadband internet at home. Up to a million people have cut back or cancelled internet packages in the past year as cost of living challenges bite. Around 2.4 million people are unable to complete a single basic task to get online, such as opening an internet browser. Over 5 million employed adults cannot complete essential digital work tasks. Basic digital skills are set to become the UK’s largest skills gap by 2030″.”

The most disturbing figures came from Citizens Advice which has picked up that people are cancelling or reducing internet packages. This means we are going backwards. The report cites Which? for showing that on top of higher fuel, food, council tax, rail fares. broadband and mobile phone providers are upping their prices year on year by between 14 and 17 per cent.

Paltry 5 per cent of eligible people get a social tariff

There are social tariffs for the poorest on Universal Credit but they don’t seem to be marketed well by the broadband providers. They are taken up by a paltry 5.1 per cent of the people who are entitled to claim them – representing 220,000 of around 4.3 million eligible households. Monthly costs are lower -around £10-£15 rather than £30 or more but not low enough for the poorest who could only pay between £4 and £7 a month. The peers suggest VAT could be abolished on them to help and BT Openreach which has a near monopoly on connecting people could reduce its charges as well.

The breakdown of where the digital excluded are follow a familiar pattern. The largest number are in ” Red Wall” areas – the North East of England and also in Wales and Scotland. Internet connectivity doesn’t help either – there is a double whammy effect in the North East – Darlington and Middlesbrough are cited as having poor internet. The lowest number are in London and the South East. Age and disability is a factor as well. There is a significant drop in those not connected to the internet or having a smartphone for people aged 55 and above. But there are also a small minority of young people and those in their 30s and 40s who are also not fully connected.

Why does all of this matter? According to the report the failure of the government to update its digital inclusion policy since 2014 and its lethargic response to the problem will hit plans both by the Tories and Labour to grow the economy.

Government’s priority ” not credible”

The peers’ findings are savage.

“The Government’s contention that digital exclusion is a priority is not credible. Its flagship digital inclusion strategy is almost a decade old. Formal cross government evaluations seem to have stopped. Working groups have been disbanded. Interventions to help with internet access are too timid. The
Government cannot be expected to solve everything but it can achieve much by showing interest in driving change against clearly defined objectives. We have no confidence that this is happening. Senior political leadership to drive joined up concerted action is sorely needed.”

Liam Halligan, a Daily Telegraph columnist and journalist for GB News, giving evidence put it more vividly:

He said solutions were ““Just not sexy. Ministers like talking about unicorns and AI. They like being photographed with the tech bros in T-shirts and sand shoes, rather than dealing with what is a necessity of life now.“

Baroness Stowell of Beeston: Official Portrait House of Lords

“ Baroness Stowell, Chair of the Communications and Digital Committee said:“

“We have found a distinct lack of leadership in Government to tackle this issue. It is shocking that a digital inclusion strategy has not been produced since 2014 and the Government sees no need for a new one. It is vital we get a grip of this now.

“The cost of living crisis has made access to the internet unaffordable for many. We need urgent action to ensure people aren’t priced offline.”

A spokesman for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said:

“We are committed to ensuring that no one is left behind in the digital age. Steps we are taking include putting essential digital skills on an equal footing in the adult education system alongside English and maths.

“To boost access, we have worked closely with Ofcom and the industry to bring a range of social broadband and mobile tariffs, available across 99% of the UK and starting from as low as £10 per month, and our £5 billion Project Gigabit has already resulted in 76% of the UK being covered by gigabit broadband, up from just 6% at the start of 2019.”

Unless something is done quickly the future is bleak. A sizeable minority of people will soon be excluded from society altogether. Already 90 per cent of jobs are only advertised on line, bank branches are closing down and pressing people to open on line accounts. Ticket offices for trains are closing. Some 75 public services are planning to go digital and already some councils will only deal with people on line for applying for blue badges – even though many disabled people have no internet.

And future government policies are going to be based on machine learning information – which will effectively exclude those not on the internet. Cynically that is one good way to deal with the poor and the old – make them disappear so you don’t have to provide anything for them.

But in the end digital exclusion will hit the British economy very badly and we will all suffer. And those boastful and complacent ministers will see their world leading plans turn to ashes.
Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my forensic reporting.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Will a DWP £1 billion digital “transformation plan” for health assessments of disabled benefit claimants be a new disaster?

Posted on by

The National Audit Office last week gave its verdict on plans by the Department for Work and Pensions to digitalise and transform all the health assessments of disabled people claiming benefit and Personal Independence Payments (PIP) by 2029 and raised serious concerns whether it would work..

This is not a minor matter for the disabled. Some 3.9 million working age people claim these benefits and those claiming both PIP and the Employment and Support Allowance have to pass two health assessments. By 2025-6 the number of claimants is estimated to rise to 5.8 million. Every year private contractors assess nearly two million people. There also has been a rise in people claiming ESA as a result of the pension age for women going up from 60 to 66 and for men from 65 to 66.

As usual this report appears to have had little coverage in the national media -despite the millions of people that will be affected.

High risk of delay, cost overruns without achieving benefits

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said:

“While the Programme is ambitious and has the potential to make savings and improve the experience of those being assessed, the scale and complexity of the transformation leaves it at high risk of delay, cost overruns, and of not achieving the intended benefits.”

He called for the department to revise its business plan for the £1 billion scheme and for more transparency so that perhaps even MPs can understand its implications.

At present disabled people have to provide multiple documents and fill in long forms to claim and the system is unpopular. The new system will digitalise the process, cut out duplication but will still depend on private contractors assessing whether people are unfit enough to claim.

Therese Coffey, former DWP secretary of State

Appeals over claiming PIP are unnecessarily high with decisions by the private firms being overturned and there have been cases where people turned down for disabled benefits have died and the DWP under Therese Coffey covered up reports about this. See this report in the Disability News Service.

The transformation is going to take place alongside new five year contracts for three private companies, Capita. US company Maximus, and Australian firm Ingeus worth over £1.6 billion with an IT contract to Atos to provide the computer back up. Nearly all the companies (except Ingeus) have been linked to claimants deaths as an article in Disability News Service reveals.

Limited testing of system using state appointed medical advisers

At the same time there is going to be a limited state provided service in London and Birmingham where the DWP will employ medical assessors directly. The aim according to the NAO report is to ” test and learn ” the new system and pass on the information to the contractors.

The NAO is sceptical whether this twin approach will work in time for the national 2029 launch as the contracts awarded to these firms will not be flexible enough to make changes without no doubt further expensive negotiations.

One of the main aims of the scheme is to save public money through digitalisation and the DWP estimates a £2.6 billion saving up to 2035. One wonders though whether all the disabled people will be able to use computers to apply on line ( all PIP applications will be on line) eventually. Can they download apps etc and do they all possess smart phones?

Once again I am going to be sceptical about this – particularly after the NAO’s report on Making Tax Digital which it revealed has been subject to long delays and huge increases in costs. Given other areas I have covered in the DWP I have little confidence they can get things right.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my forensic reporting

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Revealed: the damning figures that show the NHS can’t cope with patient demand

Posted on by
St George’s University Foundation Trust’s A & E department Pic credit: health trust

If you thought the NHS was at breaking point and want to know why – the National Audit Office have today provided a handy fact and figures guide to the decline of the country’s most cherished service.

A new report from Parliament’s financial watchdog charts the scale of both the failure of the NHS to respond to emergencies fast enough and the unprecedented demand from the public to use its facilities in the 13 years the NHS has been run by the Tories and the coalition government.

These are the startling figures:

711,881 A&E patients waiting over four hours from arrival to be admitted, transferred or discharged in December 2022, an all-time high. Since fallen to just over 550,000 in March this year.

90,998 ambulance handovers to A&E taking longer than 30 minutes in March 2023, equivalent to 25.9% of all ambulance handovers

32.0m reported number of appointments in general practice provided in October 2022, an all-time high, compared with 27.1 million reported in October 2018

92.3% general and acute hospital beds occupied during Q4 2022-23,representing record levels

88 seconds mean time to answer 999 calls related to health issues in December 2022, an all-time high

July 2015 the last time the NHS met its target for 95% of A&E patients to be admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours of their arrival

8.4 million 111 calls answered within 60 seconds in 2021-22, compared with 11.2 million to 13.3 million between 2014-15 and 2020-21

1.27 million full-time equivalent NHS staff in February 2023, compared with the most recent low of 0.96 million in June 2013

£21.5 billion estimated annual cost in 2020-21 of providing the services reviewed in this report

Big variations in different regions in England

Delving deeper into the figures there are big variations in different regions of the UK. For example those being admitted, treated and discharged from A&E within four hours varied between 67.9 per cent in the East of England to 75.9 percent in the South East – both noticeably lower than the standard 95 per cent treated in that time just after the Tories got into power in 2011.

Similarly among ambulance response times there were wide variations. In 2021-22, the mean Category 1 (life threatening incidents like strokes and heart attacks) incident response time for the London ambulance service was 6 minutes 51 seconds compared with 10 minutes 20 seconds for the South-West ambulance service.,

In the same year the mean Category 2 incident response time for the ambulance service in the Isle of Wight was 26 minutes 20 seconds, compared with 1 hour 1 minute 57 seconds for the South-West ambulance service.

Some other points emerge why this is happening. The growing elderly population and general population increase in the UK is increasing demands on the NHS and effects of the Covid pandemic has left its mark.

More staff recruited but more off sick from stress

The government can claim it has recruited more NHS staff, including GPs and ambulance drivers. But this has been offset by more staff going off sick and more staff leaving the NHS because they can’t cope with the workload. I should not think the government’s attitude to keeping down pay rises in the middle of a cost of living crisis has helped either.

The government is promising a great £2.5 billion recovery programme and has allocated the extra money. But the NAO report says:

“More people than ever before are receiving unplanned and urgent NHS care every day. To support these services, the NHS is spending increasing amounts of public money and employing record numbers of people. Nevertheless, patients’ satisfaction and access to services have been worsening, suggesting there is no single, straightforward solution to improving what is a complex and interdependent
system.”

The real test will come next winter -since the government is promising much better services by March 2024. If it fails it will just add to the multiple problems facing this government and increase the distrust between the public and politicians.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my forensic reporting.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00

Yet another pension scandal .. Tory government cheats 4000 scientists out of their pensions by giving misleading advice when their company was privatised

Posted on by
Their misleading advice has cost retired workers dear

The Commons Public Accounts Committee this week published a damning report on a long running pension scandal which has seen retired pensioners lose hundreds of thousands of pounds from their pension pots because of misleading official advice given to them 27 years ago.

The pensioners were all employees of the AEA Technology – the state owned commercial arm of the UK Atomic Energy Authority – which was privatised in 1996 by Sir John Major’s Tory government.

This sorry tale took place almost at the same time as the government had implemented the 1995 Pensions Act which raised the retirement pension for 1950s women from 60 to 65 and the DWP has been found guilty of partial maladministration by Rob Behrens, the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

The Tory government gave AEAT employees just one month to exit their contributory Whitehall pension scheme for a new one with the company taking over AEA. 90 per cent of the staff did.

Crucial to this rushed decision was an independent report by the Government Actuary’s Department which told all staff that the scheme was as good as remaining in the state scheme and might even be better.

What it failed to tell people was that if the company went bust or the pension scheme failed all the staff would lose their guaranteed protection of their pension savings that is provided by the government. It would be transferred to the Pension Protection Fund, lose all their inflation protection up to 1997, and they would live for the rest of their lives with only a 2.5 pc annual increase in their pension.

Government Actuary’s report was secretly changed by UKAEA lobbying

According to the written evidence from an ex employee David Roberts, a freedom of information request has revealed that this ” independent” report was tampered with by AEAT and the UKAEA behind the scenes. They got it rewritten because it was not persuasive enough to get people to quit the government scheme .

He wrote:” The sections which have caused the complaints were significantly changed as the result of a telephone conversation between UKAEA and GAD on 5/11/1996. “

GAD also failed to undertake a risk assessment about the switch.

In 2012 AEAT which had already cut funding to the pension scheme went into administration. The company was bought by Ricardo, an American firm, who immediately divested all its nuclear work .Its headquarters of a new firm are now in California.

One would have thought they sacked employees could get redress but for the last 11 years they have got nowhere.

They are barred from complaining to either the Parliamentary Ombudsman or the Pensions Ombudsman.

Current legislation bars the Parliamentary Ombudsman from looking into case involving private pensions – and the government has just told the Commons Public Administration Committee there is no priority to change the law.

The case could come under the Pensions Ombudsman but there is a 15 year cut off point from when the event happened which blocks him from awarding any compensation.

Nobody in government takes responsibility

As the PAC report says:

“Nobody in government has taken overall responsibility for the case. There has been no independent review because the relevant ombudsman services have said they cannot investigate the information given to members in 1996, clearly highlighting that there are gaps in the routes of appeal people have for complaints about their pensions.”

The response from government since 2012 has been appalling. The DWP not only did not help but confused the issue. The report says: “In July 2013, DWP produced a factsheet summarising the complaints government had received and a response to each on behalf of the government. In February 2014, it then sent scheme members a further letter explaining that it was not responsible for the case.”

But it didn’t tell them who was and it turned out to be the Cabinet Office.

Sir Steve Webb- declined to help as pensions minister

Ministers were no better. Sir Steve Webb, then the Liberal Democrat pensions minister, would not intervene to change any rules to help the pensioners -saying if AEA Technology rules were changed it would affect other government services that had been privatised citing the BT pension scheme. He was actually wrong in this case, it is protected should BT go bust.

Two MPs tried to use private members bills to rectify the situation by changing the Ombudsman’s powers – but they were blocked by the Conservative government.

The government has escaped responsibility by never setting up an independent review of what happened and the Government Actuary’s Department has tried to avoid censure by saying their report was not the main reason why people switched their pension. This is contradicted by the employees who gave written evidence to the PAC.

people abandoned by an uncaring state

The whole saga is simply part and parcel of a government that cares little for the welfare of the ordinary citizen and tries to evade responsibility for its errors. Meanwhile people – who contributed to their pension and even put extra contributions to increase it – are just abandoned by an uncaring state. One person lost 40 per cent of their pension and all are affected by the cost of living crisis since they are not protected by the huge rise in annual inflation by the Pension Protection Fund.

Please donate to Westminster Confidential to allow me to continue my forensic investigations

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

£5.00
£10.00
£20.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00
£3.00
£9.00
£60.00

Or enter a custom amount

£

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Please donate to Westminster Confidential

£10.00