Controversy has raged this week over Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey’s membership of the ‘advisory board’ of the Samaritans, an organisation that helps those feeling suicidal or otherwise in mental distress.
DWP policies have been linked to increased rates of attempted suicides among disabled people and other benefit claimants, with the NHS reporting that forty-three percent of disabled people – more than double the number just seven years earlier – have attempted suicide at some point in their lives.
Campaigners were outraged that Ms McVey was on the board at all and remained on it even after her reappointment to a DWP role.
Today, Samaritans posted a notice on the news section of its website stating that Ms McVey had stepped down because of the ‘commitments’ of her government role:
This will be considered a small victory for campaigners. However, their concerns about the appropriateness of the presence of a significant number of remaining advisory board members with close Tory links persist.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to reblog this post, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Who?
Horriidable, evil, snide bastard that it is. What’d be great would be to discover it’d become so haunted by it’s past deeds that if it phoned the samaritans, they’d hang up on it.
mcvile – A modern-day irma grese
I contacted the samaritans about their tory loaded board and the wanted to counsel me