Labour hiding data on how many people Tory-led DWP killed

Could anything provide better proof that Starmer’s party is just the red-badged version of the murderous Tories?

Liz Kendall’s (DWP) is trying to block the release of data from reports compiled under the Tories on how many people’s deaths were linked to the hated and punitive Universal Credit (UC). If released, the information is expected to show what internal investigations were carried out by the DWP into the deaths of claimants since 2019.

Data the Tories did release in 2021 showed that 43% of UC claimants were in food poverty – well before the steep rises in food and energy prices caused by corporate price-gouging in the so-called ‘cost of living emergency. The previous year, the Conservative government had been heavily criticised by the United Nations’ poverty expert for its intentional cruelty and the misery it inflicts on millions.

The Tories have a long record of hiding information about the impact of their policies on the vulnerable. Data on the impact of the punitive benefit ‘sanction’ regime on poor claimants was blocked by then-DWP Secretary Therese Coffey. The Tories had commissioned the research themselves into whether benefit sanctions did any good – then hid the results of their investigation and applied more sanctions anyway, more than half a million every year.

The Disability News Service (DNS) had been trying since November to obtain the DWP data on the number of internal process reviews (IPRs) it carried out following deaths of UC claimants and what actions investigators had recommended the DWP take to prevent further deaths.

Last month, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ordered the Labour DWP to release the information, but the ICO has announced that the Labour government is appealing the decision and trying to block the release.

DNS had also reported that Labour is also blocking the release of information about IPRs carried out into the work capability assessment (WCA) under the Tories. As commentator Kernow Damo has pointed out, Labour is withholding information that would damn the Tories – and the only feasible reason for doing that is because Keir Starmer’s DWP Secretary, right-wing horror Liz Kendall, is planning to continue the Tories processes and policies.

Despite the refusal of the Tories, and now Labour, to disclose the requested information, academic studies of the impact of austerity – of which benefit cuts and sanctions form a major part – have linked it directly to at least 300,000 deaths since 2010. A 2018 study found that almost half of disabled people claiming benefits had attempted suicide and another university study around the same time found that the Tories were using austerity to commit ‘social murder’.

Keir ‘Starver‘ Starmer has already suspended Labour MPs for voting against his plan to continue the two-child benefit cap that pushes hundreds of thousands of children into poverty and hunger, while Chancellor Rachel ‘Freeze’ Reeves has announced that most pensioners will lose the Winter Fuel Allowance that prevents them freezing in cold weather.

Despite these findings of the effect of austerity and punitive benefit systems, Labour plans to roll out UC to hundreds of thousands of disabled people from next month – and, as Skwawkbox exclusively revealed last year, did not even both to conduct an assessment of the impact on disabled people and other vulnerable claimants of its plans to ape Tory policies.

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect proof that Labour is the Tory party with a red rosette than the red Tories trying to hide proof of the evils of the blue Tories they’re supposed to be opposing.

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