Yearly Archives: 2025

Minister mulls ‘unprecedented privacy intrusions’ to tackle benefits fraudsters

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/totally-unprecedented-privacy-intrusions-and-punishments

Campaigners warn DWP proposals could be counterproductive and create a two-tier justice system

PLANS to ban benefit fraudsters from driving and seize money from their bank accounts will create a two-tier justice system that destroys innocent lives, campaigners warned today.

The elderly, disabled and hard-up families would face “totally unprecedented privacy intrusions and punishments” under proposals by the Department for Welfare and Pensions (DWP).

Employment minister Alison McGovern insisted that banning benefit cheats from driving would be a “backstop” used in “extreme” cases ahead of the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill’s introduction to Parliament today.

But director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch Silkie Carlo said: “We must be extremely cautious about the government creating a second tier justice system, reserved for people who rely on welfare, that side-steps fair hearings in courts to take away people’s funds and freedoms.

“The public and Parliament will rightly be very sceptical about empowering the government to go directly into anyone’s bank accounts to take our money and even our driving licences, least not to target the elderly, disabled and people on the poverty line whose lives could be destroyed by mistaken punishments.”

Public and Commercial Services (PCS) national president Martin Cavanagh said: “While PCS understands the government’s desire to deal with benefit fraud, it should not be their main priority right now, and these proposals will be counterproductive.

“The reality is that is public funds lost to benefit fraud are a drop in the ocean compared to revenues lost through tax avoidance and evasion. This should be the government’s focus if they are serious about boosting the economy and bringing monies into the Exchequer.

“PCS is at a loss to understand how taking away driving licenses, thereby reducing opportunities to work, can help achieve their stated aims.”

…

The original article gets better, see for yourself at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/totally-unprecedented-privacy-intrusions-and-punishments

Continue ReadingMinister mulls ‘unprecedented privacy intrusions’ to tackle benefits fraudsters

Morning Star Editorial: Benefit fraud hysteria demonises the sick – and threatens all our rights

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-benefit-fraud-hysteria-demonises-sick-and-threatens-all-our-rights

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall speaking to the media outside the Department for Work and Pensions in Westminster, London, December 17, 2024

LABOUR’S repeated attacks on disabled people are cynical, cruel and, in providing an excuse to legislate for ever-greater state intrusion into private citizens’ lives, a threat to all our freedoms.

Liz Kendall chases headlines with the latest gimmick (banning those found guilty of benefit fraud from driving). More sinister is the resurrection of Tory plans to make banks share information from private accounts and powers for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to seize funds without a court process.

The state already has ample power both to detect and punish benefit fraud: it can make banks share clients’ financial information if there is suspicion of fraud, while those found guilty can be jailed for up to 10 years (courtesy of Keir Starmer in a previous iteration, as director of public prosecutions egging on the then Conservative-Lib Dem coalition’s war on welfare).

This is not about fighting crime. Nor even about cutting costs: benefit fraud amounts to less than 3 per cent of social security spending, and ministers say the new legislation is aimed at saving £1.5 billion over five years, an almost irrelevant sum given annual spending on social security excluding pensions is over £130bn.

It is about creating a climate of fear.

The approach echoes that toward immigration, where endless scaremongering about “small boats” obscures the rarity of such arrivals compared to immigrants who arrive legally.

…

Original article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-benefit-fraud-hysteria-demonises-sick-and-threatens-all-our-rights

Keir Starmer confirms that he's proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Benefit fraud hysteria demonises the sick – and threatens all our rights

Thoughts of the Day 22 January 2025

Spread the love

Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper are whipping up a moral panic about the Southport killer Axel Rudakubana who killed three children and injured ten others. I’m sorry to state the obvious, that terribly tragic as it is, it pales into insignificance compared to the thousands on thousands of children murdered in Gaza with the active support and encouragement of Starmer, Cooper and the UK Labour Party. Starmer and Cooper are escalating the issue out of all proportion. Yes it was tragic and awful that innocent young children were murdered but the perpetrator was by definition mentally ill and it wasn’t like a mass shooting event that we see abroad.

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE

I’m otherwise busy atm and don’t have much time to blog.

Continue ReadingThoughts of the Day 22 January 2025

UK Green Party on Donald Trump inauguration: “A dangerous turn toward right-wing populism”

Spread the love
Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, October 2022. Image: Bristol Green Party, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, October 2022. Image: Bristol Green Party, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Green Party Co-Leaders, Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer released a joint statement ahead of President Trump’s inauguration saying: 

“We must stand up for peace and democracy in what will be a dangerous turn toward right-wing populism in the wake of Donald Trump taking office. 

“The antidote to Trump in the US, and the likes of Reform in the UK, is to offer people a real hope for real positive change that will transform their lives.  

“That means a new offer to people beaten down by decades of low wages, insecure work, decimated public services and a realisation that the impact of the climate crisis is all around us in the form of floods, wildfires and a devastating loss of nature. 

“We need the green investment to deliver the jobs of the future – well-paid, meaningful and secure – and we need the UK government to invest properly in schools and the NHS, and stand up for international law and human rights. 

“A greener future is a more just and fairer future.  

“The Green Party is clear – President Trump is a misogynist, a racist, a convicted criminal and, we believe, a fascist.  

“We will be pressing the Labour government to recognise that to defeat fascism, political parties that believe in democratic values must work together to keep the flame of democracy alive and show people that democratic politics can deliver real change.” 

Continue ReadingUK Green Party on Donald Trump inauguration: “A dangerous turn toward right-wing populism”