Last Thursday I used an Adjournment debate I had won in the Common ballot to raise the tragedy of one of my constituents, Colin Traynor. He was diagnosed with grand mal epilepsy at the age of 14 months. At the age of 25 in 2008, striving to be independent, he was interviewed at Oldham Jobcentre to try to find an employer who would be willing to give him a job.
Remploy was contacted, but assessed his condition as so severe that he was deemed unemployable. In August 2011 he got a letter from DWP, again summoning him for a medical assessment. On the Atos Healthcare work capability assessment scale he was awarded 6 points, but told he needed 18. He was judged fit for work, and for that reason was told by letter on 19 December that his Incapacity Benefit was being cut by £70 a week. Colin worried he would lose his home, not be able to pay his bills or even afford food to eat. His health deteriorated, his seizures increased due to stress, and he lost a lot of weight. On 3 April this year he had a massive seizure that killed him.
As the first pilot schemes for getting claimants off Incapacity Benefit and into work have judged that 70% were fit for work, the real attitude of the Tories towards unemployment is becoming painfully clear. Their Work First model of active labour market policy is defined by increasingly punitive approaches to conditionality and compulsion, the tightening of access to working-age benefits, and contracted-out services that prioritise fitting the workless into any job available. All this in the context of rising unemploment and the lack of decent quality job opportunities throughout the depressed regions. But the real scam is only now coming to light in the Government’s announcement of who it has awarded contracts to for forcing people back into work, any work, even while the Government is itself contracting the economy and shrinking the jobs base. 