Guess who's working on a health data-slurping digital tool? Bzzt! Nope, it's the UK Department for Work and Pensions The UK's Department for Work and Pensions is drawing up plans for an internal service that allows it to automate slurps of medical data on claimants to dole out health-related benefits. In an ad posted on the UK's Digital Marketplace, DWP said the work was currently in alpha and it now wanted a supplier to deliver a technical …
So much for politically impartial, might as well call it "UKIP devotees"
Not to mention the tabloid writing they now employ on their articles (look at the difference in quality between 1998 and 2018, its all be dumbed down and promotes reactionary and often bordering on extremism.
Cracker showing the BBCs schism is the contrast in articles from one shilling for Shamima Begum to be brought back to the UK vs the myriad of Pro-UKIP articles often light on research and often putting forward items of dubious accuracy coupled with a failure to challenge interviewees.
Better yet are their pro "extreme feminism" articles where they seem to scrape talking points from private facebook groups, i.e. endorsing those who vandalised an M&S window (erecting posters on someone else's window without permission could be easily seen as vandalism) for the crime of displaying lingerie in a window adjacent to mens formal wear, while ignoring the womens formal wear on the other window display.
BBC can't seem to decide if its Pro Brexit, Farage,Trump and austerity or if its pro fundamentalist islam, radical feminism
I often think the former is winning, especially with articles like "what gadget are due a comeback" and their contributions consist of "corby trouser presses", "heated clothes drying boxes", teasmaids, water power potato peelers i.e. nothing under 60 would want or buy
Yes I completed one for a friend who has little hand use.. I was surprised not to see a codicil, indicating that they had booked the Solyent Green collection 6 months hence. But after the debacle on other DWP health 'assessments' we should not be surprised.
It wouldn't surprse me to find that the DWP had researched if Aktion T4 was possible, always thought IDS and a large number of their staff are itching to dust off some SS uniforms and jack boots.
IDS particularly reminds me of a pastiche of Lewis Prothero and Peter Creedy
Get the impression we are one generation away from a Tory govt becoming Norsefire, listening to some of their most ardent austerity supporters, I think we're already there.
Look at the surveillance thats going on for starters....
It will have as many wee niggly bits as they can get in to the contract to be sure they get the people they want for it when it goes out for "tender". This is just some bright idea someone has come up with that looks for stuff in your health records that would refuse you benefit and they are hawking it to government as a money saving program. Run it and it saves you £££!
For those wondering how it works, it pulls stuff like "Went for a walk in 1972" from your records and uses that as a line in the reasons for non-award of benefit as evidence of "walking unaided".
They currently use custom assessors so they can sidestep a proper medical opinion and cut peoples benefits.
Given the article states that doctors often feel pressured NOT to provide the data required by the DWP, from whom else should they seek it?
"Peoples benefits" are made entirely of "other peoples taxes", so its entirely appropriate that the DWP is extremely careful about what money it gives, to whom it is given, and for what purpose. It's my money being given away so I want that done with due care and with evidence based decisions where possible.
There have been many articles about these so called assessors putting people to work that really shouldn't be working, terminal patients, patients with late stage cancer. They aren't being extremely careful they are being malicious and the reason they get away with it is because they con you into thinking you are paying for it. Do you think your taxes will come down if they scrap the benefit system?
Maybe if they were taking tax rather than backhanders in the form of 1 million pound after dinner speeches when they leave politics from corporations your tax bill might actually come down, demonising everyone on benefits is not going to help and shifts the blame to the poorest and most vulnerable in society and away from the very wealthy who also pay no tax.
The reason they don't use a GP to determine if someone is fit for work is because they know full well assessing someone on whether they can pick up a box or walk more than 50ft is going to get more people off benefits than actual qualified medical opinion on whether someone is fit for work.
I recommend you stop watching the propaganda channel 5 documentaries glorifying life on benefits, it's not like that at all because if it was there would be no need for food banks, charities or schools having to put on extra meals on for kids from homes claiming benefits. Then again most people think they spend the money on fags, booze, flat screen TV's and play stations.
There have been many articles about these so called assessors putting people to work that really shouldn't be working, terminal patients, patients with late stage cancer.
The small number of affected people undoubtedly have a hard time, but you're talking about an extreme minority of claimants.
They aren't being extremely careful they are being malicious and the reason they get away with it is because they con you into thinking you are paying for it
No, I really am paying for it. There's no magic money tree, no matter what your union rep may tell you. All tax comes from the private sector workers to pay for the public secotr workers and any welfare given. It's just a simple economic fact.
Do you think your taxes will come down if they scrap the benefit system?
Probably not, but they will go up if they make it more generous.
demonising everyone on benefits is not going to help
Being asked to prove your financial and medical situations as they relate to your claim for my money is not demonising. It's entirely reasonable, fair, and proportionate.
The reason they don't use a GP to determine if someone is fit for work is because they know full well assessing someone on whether they can pick up a box or walk more than 50ft is going to get more people off benefits than actual qualified medical opinion on whether someone is fit for work.
Its hard to see how someone that can carry a box for 50 feet is not capable of some work. There's an argument that terminal people shouldn't have to work, but that is emotive more than economic. We'd have to look at how much everyone is willing to pay for that, because there just aren't enough bankers/high earners to support further expenditure.
it's not like that at all because if it was there would be no need for food banks, charities
Food banks get used so much because thats the economically correct thing to do. Get the free food there and spend what you would have spent on it elsewhere. It's just basic economics or game theory.
Charities waste almost all the money they're given on themselves. Oxfam probably spent as much on hookers as it did on poverty, and that's before we get to all the 6 figure salaries. The charity sector isn't what you seem to think it is.
Then again most people think they spend the money on fags, booze, flat screen TV's and play stations.
Given that a lot of claimants DO spend their money on such things, you're going to need a different argument. Pop into any wetherspoons on a monday at about 11am and you can marvel at your tax disappearing.
If your claim is that welfare claimants don't have flat screen TVs you're going to end up looking stupid, and I'm fairly sure that isn't your intent.
You aren't a very nice person, are you? The amount you pay in taxes to support the unemployed and others claiming benefit is miniscule compared to the amount paid in bungs to parasites like corporations and bankers. The very idea that is is the private sector that creates wealth displays such a fundamental misunderstanding as to how economies work quite literally leaves me wondering where to start. All people contribute to the economy, whether they are in work or not. All taxpayers, and people on benefits also pay taxes, make a contribution to the economy, and to society. Indeed, poor people make a far greater contribution to the economy in proportion to their incomes than the very rich parasites who hoard their money in off-shore tax havens.
You also seem to have overlooked the fact that people on benefits don't have the disposable income to be able to spend it in Wetherspoons, so I don't know how you manage to argue that one. Claimants may well have flat screen televisions, as that is all that is available nowadays, and hey, just maybe they bought them in happier times when they were in work?
You really don't have a clue about food banks, as is clearly evidenced in your comment about them. They are not optional, and it's actually quite difficult to get a food parcel, and someone has to be referred and is only allowed three food parcels in a year - a food parcel contains food for three days, hardly a bounty.
This article seems to have gone over your head, and if you knew anything about the process of making a claim for benefits, which you clearly do not, then you'd be aware that comprehensive information is required to back up a claim. No one wants a system that can be abused, and by and large the system isn't abused, and a relatively small amount of the benefits budget is lost to fraud in a year, amounting to something like £1.2bn - not a lot in the order of things, and though in an ideal world it would of course be zero, it compares very positively to the amounts of fraud committed by the wealthy in their tax avoidance and evasion scams - indeed, there are far more people investigating benefit fraud than there are investigating tax fraud.
You might wish to change your mind on that magic money tree, as it really does exist. What do you think was used to bribe the DUP in N. Ireland, or to pay for America's wars that May & Co have got us involved in? Or indeed, to bail out the banks when they should have been allowed to go bankrupt and the bankers gaoled for long periods and disbarred from ever again being allowed to work in the financial sector.
You are a throughly nasty individual who clearly does not have an ounce of compassion or humanity, let alone understanding.
Of course your money shouldn't be wasted on piss takers and there are always those willing to try it on, but believe me that you're lucky to not have endured what this process often does to genuinely sick and disabled people.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that in my experience, many of those involved in assesments are sadistic psycopaths. Not all, there are still a few humane humans working for the DWP; I thank them from the bottom of my heart and hope they manage to keep their jobs.
@Simon b-52
Of course your money shouldn't be wasted on piss takers and there are always those willing to try it on, but believe me that you're lucky to not have endured what this process often does to genuinely sick and disabled people.
I signed on once, for less than 2 weeks. The people I had to endure on either side of the counter led me to a vow that I'd never again have to sign on. 25 years later, I've made sure that remains true.
@Ac
Never hear of folk moaning that the winter fuel allowance is non means tested
Retired people get winter fuel allowance. You normally retire at the end of a working life. Rather different to wlefare, no?
"disability benefit fraud" when the reality was it was statistically insignificant (well below 1% of all claims)
Citation needed.
Oh look a Daily Mail / Express refugee
Tired old "its my money" claim
Never hear of folk moaning that the winter fuel allowance is non means tested i.e. you could be sitting on mult millions of pounds and still receive it (and quite a few aged celebrities receive it and have commented on how ridiculous it is and how hard it to opt out)
DWP from personal experience will do EVERYTHING they can to refuse a claim, even when you have a cast iron diagnosis and problems that someone with NO medical training can see. Worse still they repeatedly ignore their own guidelines and criteria.
They also have spend myriads more money chasing "disability benefit fraud" when the reality was it was statistically insignificant (well below 1% of all claims) and the vast majority of it was DWP mistakes. So they've fallen back on "its the principle of it"
Its long overdue to be split back up, its too large and too able to lobby politicians.
Put it back to the Dept of Pensions, Dept of Work / Employment and Dept of Social Security.
Only then you might get some sense
They probably have a "monkey" they put on staffer's desks who authorise a claim, like the border agency did for anyone who approved an asylum claim.
An acquaintance does HR for a restaurant chain and recently had a chef who had lost an arm in an accident come in for a job interview.
She tactfully explained that she felt that his productivity and safety might be imapired by his having only one arm.
He then tactfully explained that he fully understood that, but was obliged to attend job interviews to avoid losing his benefits, and his DWP adviser insisted that he apply for catering posts.
I'm baffled by how my accurately conveying a situation involving an amputee, described by someone who I regard as very honest, speaking from her own personal experience has garnered two down votes.
So please, if you gave this a downvote, take a moment to tell me why. Do you think that either I or the person it happened to are making it up? I can assure you that is not so.
Or am I relating an inconvenient truth?
If it helps, be advised that I am way too cynical to have any partisan political feeling at all.
Yep, the criteria to become an assessor must be to either have superhuman levels of stupidity or to have a heart forged out of stone by beelzebub himself. I’ve got a friend with late stage muscular dystrophy and he was genuinely asked if he expected his condition to improve. Not sure what angle they were going for, but it’s not like he’s suddenly and miraculously going to rise from his wheelchair or something
That's the problem when they use a computer program that's based on the biopsychosocial model, which is pretty much the current equivalent of personality profiling and is about as much use in determining someone's fitness for work as phrenology is in determining character. But hey, it gets people off benefits, at least for a while until they realise they can appeal and win - that is of course if they're still alive. IDS, Mc Vile and David Fraud should be in prison for crimes against humanity for devising such a scheme, and anyone cheerleading 'welfare reform' should be striped of civil rights - they are not fit to have any say on how a civilised society is run
When my wife appealed a PIP rejection, they went to her ophthalmic team for her last assessment results.
They did not believe the ophthalmic certification of being blind because the assessor claimed there was maintained eye contact throughout.
My wife has severe nystagmus - her eyes never (and I mean never) stop flicking. The fact that she could not even see the assessor was the other kicker.
Fast forward 15 months; won at tribunal within 20 minutes.
It's about removing human beings from the decision making process. Just like the banks. So the end result will be "computer says no" followed by "I have no power to override the computer".
You may choose to die, or suffer appallingly, in your own home, or in a cardboard box if your home is not your own.
coerced consent is not legal under DPA2018 (GDPR)
Consent is presumed not to be freely given… if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance
Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment
You might as well as 'if you value your privacy and the of your family and don't want to give carte blanche to a group of faceless beuracrats - or contractors in India why should you not share it.
Oh and why not your banking details, sexuality, show size and lovers maiden and other tidbits.
There is a (large) gap between the evidence they need and the data they will take - they are also claiming consent when none can be given.
Why not just acknowledge that it’s non consensual, but a requirement of the application.
They could just take a letter from a GP/consultant, but they don’t.
LucreLout - with your level of empathy, you would make an excellent assessor for the DWP if you want a new career.
I work. I've always worked. All of my friends, including those with what are commonly considered disabilities (no legs etc), work and have always worked. I have collagues who have come from all over the planet and found work in a language that is not their own.
The simple fact is that many of those not working are not working only because they don't want to.
Almost everyone is capable of some level of work. Call centers require very little physically. Warehouse work requires very little mentally. There's almost always some work that can be done by individuals; they just need to recognise that. For those that can;t work, we rightly have the welfare state, but they rightly need to prove they can't work, rather than simply asking us to trust them.
If nobody used the welfare state as a hammock rather thana safety net, there'd be no problems. Unfortunately, that isn't the real world. It just isn't.
You wouldn't know the real world if it hit you in the face. Stop believing what you read in the Daily Mail or whatever Tory propaganda rag you read. People will work. if there are the jobs, and the pay and conditions are decent. The numbers that have no desire to work are infinitesimally small. The real reason there are so many unemployed, and the real figure is about four times higher than the official figures, is that there are no jobs avaialble. Many, many more are underemployed and struggling with zero hour contracts that wreck their lives.
Yep, agreed totally, but this is the DWP that's under discussion, and they operate to an agenda that even a Stasi officer would think harsh. The DWP isn't going to let a silly little matter of something like a law get in its way, after all, wasn't it a few years ago that they actually changed a law retrospectively after having lost an important landmark case relating to Workfare, the DWP's take on legalised modern slavery - which still exists, but you don't hear about it now as it's embedded as part of Universal Credit, the DWP's scheme to impoverish and immiserate.
Claim declined - you were able to answer the phone / open an envelope / attend the assessment we have demanded that you attend or we stop your disability support (have known people the latter was used as a reason to deny their ESA claim along with - was able to sit down and rise from a chair in the waiting room, sat for exactly x minutes, stood for x seconds, sat for another x minutes - downright orwellian and completely ignores the realities of that person's illness)
"The aim, it said, is to cut down the time and cost involved in gathering information the department needs to makeathe wrong decision about "the right support" for someone with a health condition or disability."
FTFY.
If they want to cut costs they should cut their assessors' high levels of error, errors which happen even when the person being assessed hands over full documentation from their GP. Cut that and they cut the costs of all those successful appeals.
Reading about iGPR, these guys are in bed with the insurance industry. The suggestion being that they scan through patient records, and insurers can spot genetic/cancer type issues from our medical records. Now, I'm not saying the insurance companies would do anything with our life/medical insurance premiums, but this is the insurance industry after all...
Nice idea to use evidence in assessing benefits for the truly ill. Evidence is arbitrarily and constructively ignored at present. As someone who is fortunately retired but if I wasn't a major health event a year ago (and I mean major, only just surviving it) would have had me entirely unable to work now, but by the DSS rules I would actually have no chance of getting benefits, I would welcome an evidence based assessment system. Chance of this actually happening? Nil.
Specifically asking about its design or other technical details. For example...
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/147047/response/357528/attach/2/Slater%20Response%20358.pdf
Additionally, any documentation that details how the LiMA system is designed is exempt from
disclosure under section 43 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This is because, in our
opinion, the disclosure of the information under the Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice
the commercial interests of both DWP and a third party licensee of DWP.
That's right folks. LIMA is a commercial and commercially sensitive product. AFAIK, don't quote me, it was developed in collaboration with ATOS and/or MAXIMUS and they will not tell you about it because of commercial sensitivity... e.g possible profit base. More likely the system is so hopelessly broken that it says people who are dead are fit for work.
Now they want to do what the article suggests but place their hooks more deeply into personally sensitive information and no doubt if they do get access the result will be a commercially sensitive product that you do not get to look at.
I would suggest that if they are not going to be completely transparent about what they are implementing and how they are implementing it then they should be invited to go fuck themselves.
No it isn't. You will have to tick the box for allowing them to read your records or you won't get your benefits. At least with a doctor deciding what is transferred you can stop them trawling your records to find a reason to refuse you, because that is what this is all about. "Getting the right level of support" my ass.
"when asked for more details, the department said it was an internal document that couldn't be shared"
So either hasn't been commissioned yet, barely fills the back of a fag packet or is an unworkable mess, possibly all three.
AC as I did a tour at DWP many years ago.
The DWP force people to give access to their health records under threat of sanction now. Sanction means no benefit to ill people who do not comply. ie. "consent" is made under duress and hence illegal. Is now under GDPR and was before under UK data protection laws.
I'm currently battling them now and have been without any benefit or income since July.
Once they get your forced consent, you then get to go for an "independent" assessment done by a firm called 'Centre for Health & Disability Assessments Ltd.' whose shares are wholly owned by a US firm: Maximus Filth Inc. I think they're called. The assessments are usually done by a physiotherapist, so since I'm a diabetic with hypothyroidism with depression and anxiety the assessment would probably be better done by my postman, since he's more likely to be able to assess my ability to work.
Nor are they independent. CHDA Ltd. and the DWP occupy the same offices at Quarry Hill, Leeds, for instance.
Over half a billion is exfiltrated out of HM Treasury every 3 years to the US for this systematic abuse of the ill and disabled. I dare say Maximus book some of their profits in British Caribbean dependency shell companies & then back to London.
Let me state it for the public record: I'm quite sure that the man who set all this up is not corrupt or dishonest in any way whatsoever and nor did he do it for political advantage and personal gain. His name by the way is Right Hon. Ian Duncan Smith MP.
BTW:
$ host -tMX chdauk.co.uk
chdauk.co.uk mail is handled by 5 acp-ms-mcf01.atoshealthcare.com.
It's almost like they're related isn't it related isn't it?
You don't want to do much googling with regards 'ATOS Healthcare' unless you've got a sickbag handy.
Luv things like this ppl who keep themselves updated, 4 years the benifits grind u dwn snd uts become fact thst we r now powerless and hsve no voice. I understand u move with technology, but u thought the time where we had no voice wud be many years away. Snd it is do as i say not as i do.
Any more wake up country info u want to share please do. thanks for sharing.
Oh, Maximus... The Australian experience with this company should have acted as a warning, but it probably recommended them. Though of course, the guy behind all this stuff is completely innocent, as you say...
This is worth a watch:
https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/the-jobs-game/6247206
I know of numours people who claim disability benifit by lying, that get esa plus pip. If i know lots of people in my area u can guarentee it will be the same in every area.
Example.... We will call him rover, now rover hasnt worked a day in his life. He has been in foster care and not had the best of starts there r lots in the same position.
He claimes top rate pip and esa, he claims to have personality disorder PTSD and copd, and the past few yrs he said he was abused as a child and has an addictive personality, sorry u have to be stupid 2 allow him to pull this off. Some one who is a professional flills in the forms for him this person has to spend 2hours with him and im sorry he must know he doesnt have these problems yet fills in these forms.
Ive called him out on all this and this is a a particular day in rovers life. I witnessed, he has st least £20"a day illegal drug habit, plus around 10 perscribed drugs and 10 prescribed drugs just prescribed for somebody else, which he buys or begs for.
I witnessed this rover walk 3½, miles i cud not to breathing problems. I said u have walked that distence i thought u had copd, i have uve heard me coughing wen ive had weed of a morning
This is worrying. Most of the comments on this suggest that most people have a handle on this, and why the DWP should not be allowed to do anything of the sort. However, there is one slight issue I have with the article. In it it is claimed that Universal Credit contains 'flaws'. I suggest that these are not flaws, but integral parts of the design intended to make life hard for anyone claiming UC. It's an evil system thought up by what I consider to be an evil mind. Plenty of those in the Tory party, and now also in TIG.
From bitter experience the first two stages of PIP assessment are not a fair hearing, only the tribunal considers the justice of a claim.
It is structured so Capita health professionals make the DWPs decisions for them, which they should not be doing, it is a gross wholesale breach of proper procedure.
The first decision and mandatory reconsideration are typically biased beyond reason or rational explanation, it is often blatant. In my case for example they unaccountably twice ignored the same written medical doctor's opinion which was the basis of the tribunal decision and it was not for lack of my pointing it out to them.
Having access to digitised evidence wont enable just decisions because the biased motivation makes them unjust even if they have evidence in front of them. This will in reality be used as a way to look efficient to higher ups and promote a tableau of lies about the effectiveness of decision making, which is causing a dramatic rise in the number and costs of tribunals, because claimants are left with no other choice.
What is going on is not practical or expedient, it is unconscionable and criminal.
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