Damien Willey The benefit system is verging on collapse & nobody's talking about it. Published: November 30, 2023

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The DWP has been run into the ground so badly by the Tories a shock dossier by the PCS union shows it's all verging on collapse. Right, so if the benefits system were to collapse in the near future where would that leave you? Well the Department for Work and Pensions might be in a great deal more trouble than we ever thought. We know there are backlogs, we know they’ve had years of reforms which have proven difficult to the point of impossible to implement. They have been driven towards not helping people into work, but forcing them to do so anyway if they can, the threat of absolute poverty dangling over the head of every person who might be out of work, might be ling term sick or disabled and if anything they’ve in no small part, contributed to the damage to peoples health so many of their victims frankly suffer from. But staff at the DWP, their own staff, have now blown the whistle on just how big a crisis the department and the benefits system itself faces. A devastating dossier of a failing organisation in a state of crisis. Right, so what’s all this about then Damo, I’ve heard nothing at all anywhere about this, where has this come from? Well, unless it’s the government cracking down on people the government are calling shirkers because they aren’t workers, the disabled, long term sick, their carers, people who have been out of work for a multitude of reasons and indeed a great many people who are in work, but for whom work doesn’t actually pay. Of course where the DWP is concerned you need to include pensioners too. Unless it is attacks on people like this, red meat for the frothing gammon class that sells headlines, they don’t care. Thankfully alternative media is there and on all things DWP, if you aren’t tuned in to Disability News Service, then you won’t be hearing about this, or a great many other things. They are frankly disgusted that this story is not being picked up further, so I’m more than happy as a carer myself to draw attention to this because so many low income families won’t have any idea of what is brewing in the Department for Work and Pensions. The dossier has been put together by the Public and Commercial Services Union, the PCS, who’s members include staff at the DWP and this is where the crux of the problem lies; the DWP are so short-staffed now, that they’re barely able to keep things going. The PCS Union itself has accused DWP of “deliberate neglect”, after its members said they believed benefit claimants in vulnerable situations were “falling through the gaps” in the system. One manager describing staff facing “completely overwhelming” workloads. Another, a DWP staff member who works in counter-fraud, compliance and debt, said: “We are also experiencing more threats of suicide by claimants, in some cases already attempted, sometimes successfully.” The report, all 64 pages of it, that the mass media are ignoring, gives example after example of testimony from DWP employees, that the absolute bare minimum is getting done and people are falling through the gaps. There’s a race on to get everybody on legacy benefits like Jobseekers Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance moved onto Universal Credit by the end of next year. **Subscribe to the channel here** https://www.youtube.com/KernowDamo?su...

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