DPAC

64 people attended in person or fed their views in.

5 people sent apologies

1)    Welcome and introduction to the day

Messages were read out from people who could not be with us.

Ann Begg, Chair of the Select Committee looking into Work Capability Assessments and MP for South Aberdeen, said:  “I am sorry I can’t be with you today but I have a number of events in my constituency in Aberdeen this weekend.  It is important that disabled people come together to discuss and debate the issues which affect them.  It is only by joining together that your voice will be heard, and people who are not disabled will hear of the attacks on your income and your ability to live a full and independent life.  Good luck for a successful conference.”

Maria Miller, Minister for Disabled People had been invited to come and speak at the conference. She gave apologies for not being able to attend but said that she was working with a number of disability organisations including Scope, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Mencap, RNIB and Mind. She also said she was working with user led organisations “like Radar.”

Sam Brackenbury, one of the co-founders of DPAC, sent a message to the conference to say that even though he could not be with us, we need to stay strong because we make history and because “our sunlight and spirit are NOT for sale”. He encouraged Trade Unions to remember that one out of every four people will become disabled in some way during their lifetime and stressed the importance of fighting the lie that if you are disabled and unemployed you must be a scrounging cheat.

2)    Disabled People Against Cuts – background and achievements –  Debbie Jolly

Debbie explained that DPAC started with a disabled people’s protest at the Tory party conference on 3^rd October 2010. The co-ordinators of that protest went on to set up DPAC as a national campaign to fight back against the government attacks on disabled people. DPAC follows the social model of disability and is based on a rights not charity approach.  Since then DPAC has worked with the Trade Unions to make sure disabled people have been included in national protests including the March for the Alternative on 26^th March 2011. DPAC introduced virtual ways for disabled people to take part in protests and has a website to share information and opinions about government policy and its effect on disabled people.

3)    Right to Work  – Paul Brandon

Paul is the elected National Secretary of the Right to Work campaign. The campaign brings together different groups including Trade Unions and anti-cuts groups like DPAC to fight together to stand up for the rights of people who are suffering because of a financial crisis we did not create. The campaign uses direct actions, sit-ins and strikes to get its messages across. It supports all sections of people who are affected and encourages them to work together and support each other, for example student actions and disabled people’s protests against ATOS.

4)    Why We Need DPAC – Mike Higgins

DPAC member Mike Higgins spoke about why we need this campaign. He said it is not about charities keeping their funding, because disabled people have no common cause with those who beg on our behalf; it is a campaign led by and for disabled people demanding our rights to equality.

5)    Members’ feedback

The following point were made by members:

• We are all in it together to fight the government
• A few people had difficulty accessing the website to join as members and book to come to the conference-DPAC is working with web designer to improve access
• There is a need to set up a Liverpool DPAC
• Croydon ATOS assessment centre is not accessible to wheelchair users and people are being forced to travel for miles to get to an accessible centre
• The campaign against changes to taxi card is on-going
• We need to use real life stories to get attention to our campaign
• Employment Support Allowance is a big issue
• We need to talk about positives and what we want instead of current policy, not just focus on what we don’t want
• We need to take legal challenges
• We need to demand more funding for Disabled People’s Organisations
• Winvisible and other groups have had a letter printed in the Guardian accusing the BBC of bias against disabled people for repeatedly showing programmes about benefit fraud without any perspective on how infrequently benefit fraud actually happens

6)    Black Triangle – John McArdle

John founded Black Triangle, an anti-defamation campaign in defence of disabled people on June 28^th 2010 in response to the suicide of friend Paul Reekie, also from Edinburgh. Black Triangle is campaigning to boycott the Paralympics in opposition to its sponsorship by ATOS. John said we need to really put a focus on putting medical professionals on the spot and campaign to scrap the idea of Personal Independence Payments. He spoke about how 15,000 had joined in a protest in Edinburgh.

7)    Going forward: proposal for constituting and structuring DPAC – Linda Burnip

Linda talked about how important it is to make sure there is an on-going disabled people’s campaigning voice. For DPAC to carry on and get stronger the DPAC co-founders agreed there needed to be an elected steering group to take it forwards as well as working groups for each campaign area.

Questions and comments on the proposal:

–         Steering group elections are tokenistic and create power relationships – why not just have an enlarged group of volunteers

–         The social model is too theoretical and puts people off

–         DPAC was set up to campaign from a basis of the social model and should continue to do so

–         We should support any protest marches whoever organises them

Members voted that everyone should be on the steering group who wants to be. These are:

Andy Greene

Ellen Clifford

Linda Burnip

Patrick Lynch

Richard Rieser

Rob Murthwaite

Roger Lewis

Sarah Mingay

Stephen Hodgkins

Thomas Butler

Members also agreed there should be a wider list of people who want to be consulted and take an active part in running the campaign. In addition to the steering group members, the following people put their names down to be on this list:

–         Eleanor Lisney

–         Lani Parker

–         Svetlana Kotovotsa

–         Paul Mitler

–         Richard Currie

–         Jill Goble

–         Phillipa Watts

–         Jan Pollock

–         Simone Aspis

–         Stephen Aselford

–         Faryal Velmi

–         Sedley Bryden

–         Deborah Sowerby

–         Adam Lotun

8)    Afternoon Speakers

Including and mobilising disabled young people – Gerry Hart

This session looked at ways we can involve disabled young people in our campaigns. The point was made that informed young people make informed decisions. Ideas for how to engage young people included going to schools and to young people’s groups to let them know about DPAC, finding out and promoting the issues that young people are interested in, linking the Facebook page to other anti-cuts groups which might be visited by young people, linking our website with No One Likes a Tory.

The role of DDPO’s in the fight against the cuts – Tracey Lazard

Tracey talked about how a close, supportive relationship between campaigns and local disabled people’s organisations is critical to sustainable, effective and inclusive campaigns. She said that all the barriers that restrict disabled people from taking part in everyday life prevent disabled people from taking part in the democratic process and from campaigning. Another challenge is that there is so much to focus on at the moment that we do not know where to start. She talked about the support and resources that disabled people’s organisation can contribute to campaigns such as putting together facts and figures to support our arguments. 

Taking a legal challenge in Lancashire – Melanie Close

Melanie talked about the experience of taking a legal challenge against Lancashire County Council. It was a very difficult experience and they did not win but it was the right thing to do. There was a discussion about the interpretation of the law and the judiciary’s understanding of disability equality.

Including people with learning difficulties in the fight – Andrew Lee

Andrew talked about how cuts are putting people with learning difficulties at risk. Changes in housing benefit will force people from their homes but the media is not portraying things from our point of view. With the right support people with learning difficulties can have the same chances as other people but that support needs to be funded. Cutbacks will damage the life chances of people with learning difficulties. It is important we make known the impact of cuts. Andrew encouraged members to target their MP and ask them what they have done about disability.

Including the BME community in the fight – Eleanor Lisney

Julia Charles sent her apologies that she was not able to attend. Eleanor led a discussion about the importance of making sure the voices of disabled people from Black and Minority Ethnic Communities are included in the fight against the cuts.

The fight for inclusive education – Simone Aspis

Simone talked about the range of threats to inclusive education being posed by this government through the standards agenda, promoting Academies, doing away with laws on the right to inclusive education, cutbacks to learning support, removing cheaper course fees and spending more money on segregated education. She encouraged everyone to lobby their MP to sign the early day motion on inclusive education.

9)    DPAC Wish-list

Members created their wish-list of demands. The full list is at the end of these notes. Below are the demands raised by Inclusion London:

–         Access to Work to extend its support to people before they get a job and to volunteer placements

–         Stop Welfare reforms including:

• the target to get 20% of people off DLA
• Work Capability Assessment process
• Housing Benefit changes
• Ending the contract with ATOS

–         Free personal care and re-opening the Independent Living Fund

–         Ring fenced funding for Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations in each local area including funding for independent user led advocacy and advice services for Deaf and disabled people

–         Equalities Act to be strengthened by re-instating the duty to involve Deaf and disabled people,  setting a requirement to have at least one equality objective on disability and strengthening the duty to carry out equality impact assessments

–         Commitment to carrying out step free plans on the tube system and to keeping freedom pass and taxi card in their present forms

–         Resources and training to be dedicated to tackling disability hate crime

–         Right to an inclusive education

–         That the Government correct outrageous levels of misinformation about disability benefit fraud in the media and produce information to promote the benefits of support such as motorbility and Access to Work

–         Robin Hood tax

–         Fairer distribution of income through the tax system

10)                      The challenge ahead – Mik Scarlet

Mik talked about the craziness of the bank bail outs and how disabled people are having to pay for them. He talked about how the Thatcher years could, by comparison to what is happening now, be seen as a golden age for disabled people, about how disabled people are seen as over privileged and resented for benefits and support that should be our right and about his own experiences with accessible parking bays being used by non-disabled people and Blue Badges being stolen. Mik suggested we use our own stories about how the cuts are impacting on disabled people to get the media’s attention. He said this will encourage the portrayal of disabled people as tragic and in that way will have a negative impact on the way disabled people are seen but we need to do something to supersede the portrayal of disabled people as benefit scroungers which is currently how the media is showing us.

11)                      The fight ahead – John McDonnell MP

John talked about his experiences as an MP seeing people in his constituency who have been on benefits for years now having them taken away and being left helpless. He said that New Labour laid the ground for the current government’s approach to welfare reform but cutbacks to wages and benefits was inevitably only going to lead to further recession. John encouraged us to challenge the government and resist in unity with other groups that are affected.

12)                      Close

The co-founders were thanked for all their hard work in getting DPAC to where it is today. There is much to be done and everyone looked forward to working together to move things on.

For a version of these notes with pictures click here: Disabled People Against Cuts national conference write up

Presentations from some of the speakers are available separately from the DPAC website.

Here is a letter, and the response, we wrote trying to get support from the Labour party, to oppose changes to make squatting illegal. Making squatting illegal, is also likely to result in occupation of any building for any length of time also becoming illegal. The bill is proposing 12 month jail sentences for anyone convicted of squatting.

Dear Mr. Miliband and Mr. Dromey,

As I’m sure you’re both well aware there is both a major shortage of affordable and accessible housing in the country as well as plans for changes to Housing Benefits which will lead to massive increases in homelessness, including amongst disabled people.

Many disabled people are forced to rent in the private rented sector and just the one change from those under 25 to those under 35 only being able to claim a shared room rate of Housing Benefit has been estimated to be likely to result in 11,000 younger disabled people being made homeless.

These are likely to be people with mental health conditions and neuro-diverse impairments as they are also the groups of disabled people who are most likely to lose their eligibility for Disability Living Allowance.

There are already laws in place to deal adequately with squatting which stop short of making it illegal but protect homeowners. We feel that if squatting becomes illegal more and more disabled people (as well as others) will end up sleeping rough on the streets. If squatting becomes criminalised we also query how an already massively overstretched prison system would cope with more and more disabled people being imprisoned for simply trying to keep a roof of some sort over their heads. Disabled prisoners already suffer from a failure of the prison system being unable to meet their needs adequately.

We would therefore like to urge you to get Labour MPs to oppose clause 26 in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment Bill due to be heard shortly.

xxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxx

Dear xxxx

Mr Miliband has asked me to thank you for contacting him recently concerning the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

Mr Miliband thinks it is important for homeowners and local authorities to be able to take action against people who are squatting or causing criminal damage and appreciates the frustration that many homeowners have experienced when seeking to evict squatters. He is therefore not opposing the Governments new clause on this.

It is the case, however, that many people who are driven to squatting do so as a last resort and are, as Crisis’s report (The Hidden Truth about Homelessness) shows, among the most vulnerable people in society.

Squatting is often the result of deeper, complex problems including the availability of decent affordable housing and it is vital that the Government seek to address the causes of squatting as well as considering the legal framework concerning squatters.

Mr Miliband is particularly concerned about the recent sharp rises in homelessness (the number of people approaching local authorities for housing help has increased by 23% in the last year) and the Government’s reforms to Housing Benefit, which Shelter estimate will further increase homelessness and lead to over 100,000 people having to move home.

He also appreciates the considerable strain that high rents are putting on household budgets, which are being squeezed by high inflation and the Government’s increase in VAT.

Mr Miliband would like to see the Government temporarily reverse their increase in VAT and to introduce a levy of bankers’ bonuses in order to build 25,000 more affordable homes. Indeed, house building is currently at its lowest level for many years and the Government are planning to build 100,000 fewer additional affordable homes (by 2015) than were built under the previous Government between 2005 and 2010. Increasing the housing supply is vital to addressing rent levels and homelessness and the Government urgently need to take action to ensure that more affordable homes are built.

Thank you once again for writing to Mr Miliband.

Best wishes,
Victoria

Victoria Mitchell

Office of the Leader of the Opposition

An independent report posted with kind permission of Mo Stewart

For more information, please see Mo’s website at: www.whywaitforever.com/dwpatosveterans.html, especially the initial report named: ATOS HEALTHCARE OR DISABILITY DENIAL FACTORIES. 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This detailed evidence report is offered to members of the House of Lords as a contribution to the delayed debate on Welfare Reform, now planned for September 13^th, and was prepared at the personal invitation of noble members from the House.

As a retired Healthcare Professional I have invested in excess of 12 months of my time, health permitting, to investigate the relationship between the American insurance corporate giant UNUM Insurance, the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) and Atos Healthcare (AH). AH is the private contractor engaged by the DWP to conduct the medical assessments of the chronically sick and long-term disabled population of the UK, who are in receipt of disability benefits, yet this company is not regulated by the Care Quality Commission and so the public have no protection. The parent company, Atos Origin – another foreign corporate giant – have been awarded several significant government contracts, including the very lucrative IT contract for the 2012 Olympic Games, that the government ensured was awarded as part of “fair and open competition.”

It is cause for enormous concern that, when engaged as UK government advisers on welfare reform, in 1994, Unum Insurance were known as Unum Provident Insurance.  This corporate insurance giant dominates the income protection (disability) insurance market, worldwide, with 25 million clients in the US alone.  Unum Provident Insurance have a diabolical reputation, with strong evidence of atrocious tactics, and a resistance to funding the income protection insurance once a client made a claim following the onset of chronic ill health or permanent disability. (A*)

By 2005, following copious numbers of successful legal cases throughout the USA, the California Department of Insurance Commissioner, John Garamendi, stated that “Unum Provident is an outlaw company. It is a company that has operated in an illegal fashion for years…”  By 2007, the American Association for Justice identified Unum Provident as “..the second worst insurance company in the US.”(5)  Therefore, given this company’s proven record of sustained misconduct, one must surely enquire why they were ever permitted to be involved with the welfare of British citizens on a statutory basis.

Following the statement by the American Association for Justice in 2007 Unum Provident Insurance once again changed its name and is now known as Unum Insurance. Unum Insurance deny culpability for the past history of the company and, mysteriously, the majority of the evidence of past wrongdoing by Unum Provident Insurance has disappeared from the public domain, including the transcript of a BBC News report, from 2007, happily rescued from obscurity by researchers who predicted that the UK was at risk of adopting a copy of the American healthcare system, funded by insurance.  With the latest press release from Unum Insurance, announcing that they are about to flood the UK market with mass marketing for income protection insurance, it looks like this is about to become a reality.

EXTRACT FROM BBC REPORT: UNUM PROVIDENT – BBC News 10pm  6^th November 2007:

Mark Daly, presenter: But, there are still dozens of bad faith cases and allegations outstanding against the company on both sides of the Atlantic.  Despite all of this Unum had senior executives sitting on key government working groups last year, and has provided detailed memorandum on transforming the benefits system. (The government also awarded grants worth £300,000 to Unum’s research centre in Cardiff.  See page 4.  MS)

Mark Daly, presenter: The BBC has discovered internal documents revealing that Unum believes it is driving Government policy.  The Department for Work and Pensions refused to comment on Unum’s past.

WELFARE REFORM – REDRESS FOR THE DISABLED – THE REPORT 

The government’s devotion to its main priority, which is a dramatic reduction of the welfare budget, has meant that the concerns of respected frontline charities such as Citizens Advice(1), Macmillan(2), Scope(3), and the Disability Alliance(4) are all seemingly ignored.  These welfare organisations, and many others, have collectively expressed serious concerns regarding growing evidence that the disability assessment system, using the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), is flawed and totally unworkable – but the government doesn’t appear to be listening.  On this basis there is a legal challenge now being undertaken by the Disability Alliance, which may lead to a Judicial Review of the government’s welfare reforms.

Government concern expressed for the welfare of the chronically sick and disabled people of this nation can only be considered to be totally insincere when employing the services of Atos Healthcare (AH) to assess them.  Indeed, the assessment of the long term sick and disabled population by a private contractor with no formal accountability structure, using computer software instead of a detailed physical examination, has been identified as unnecessarily traumatic.(1-4,7)  This dangerously flawed medical assessment system uses a computer questionnaire, based on a points system, as recommended by government advisers Unum (Provident). Why does a UK government use a discredited US corporate insurance giant as advisers if not to adopt their system?

Successful government propaganda has the able bodied general public convinced that the majority of people in receipt of Incapacity Benefit(IB) or Disability Living Allowance(DLA) are mainly ‘scroungers.’ This is despite the fact that all evidence supports the fact that, out of the entire DLA budget, less than 0.5% were bogus applications with 1.5% admin error.(1,4)  So why do the other 98% need to suffer other than because the chronically sick and disabled population make very easy targets?  Since when is the opinion of medical experts, namely consultants and specialists in the relevant fields of the claimants’ disability, unacceptable as a level of a patient’s ability to work other than when the DWP need to reduce costs?  This is a very dangerous and medically unacceptable precedent, imported from America, that has administrators without relevant qualifications and an unaccountable medical assessment system deciding the fate of often desperately ill and chronically disabled people.  Many people in receipt of DLA do work as the award of DLA is unrelated to employment, but they work because they are well enough to engage in employment, and not when forced to look for employment by DWP medical tyranny because Job Seekers Allowance is much cheaper to fund than disability benefits.

The DWP’s resistance to employing qualified medical administrators has meant that basic grade administrators, known as “Decision Makers”, who have confirmed that they lack the ability to interpret medical evidence,(7) have betrayed the sick and disabled people the WCA was meant to protect. The actual disability assessment, as reported by the AH contracted healthcare professional (HCP), is simply one extremely limited opinion derived from a dubious computer evaluation programme, as confirmed in the WCA review by Professor Harrington.(7) The main responsibility of the DWP Decision Makers, as identified in the government contract with Atos Origin Healthcare Services, is to correlate all presented medical evidence including the detailed reports of GPs and consultants, who know the claimant and have actually treated them.  Given that the opinions of these medical specialists are accepted in every court in the land, it seems more than reasonable to consider their clinical judgement when deciding if anyone is fit to return to work or to retain disability benefits.

However, the Harrington Review (7) confirmed that Decision Makers routinely failed in their responsibility and exclusively accepted the opinion of the contracted HCP from Atos Healthcare, who enjoy “total immunity from all medical regulation” according to the General Medical Council (GMC) and the Care Quality Commission.(6)  Because of this, large numbers of chronically sick and genuinely disabled people are being forced to appeal the often alarming decisions of under qualified junior civil servants.(1-4)  Welfare agencies now advise that nothing has improved since the Harrington review, hence the challenge by the Disability Alliance.

This deeply flawed medical assessment process was identified for a long time by His Honour Judge Robert Martin as President of the Appeal Tribunals. For over a decade Judge Martin’s consecutive annual reports constantly identified serious problems with the AH medical assessments (8). Indeed, Judge Martin was insistent that “..the same problems and errors are repeated year after year, with no sign that anyone takes any notice of feedbacks from Tribunals” as confirmed in evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee.(9) The evidence confirmed that almost half of the Appeal Tribunals find in favour of the applicant (9) with 70% of claims being upheld for claimants who have representation at the Appeal Tribunal.(10) However, the stress and distress of the need to wait for several months to attend an appeal, in order to retain financial support to which these claimants are morally entitled, is totally ignored. If these were civil cases, generous compensation would be offered as an acknowledgement of the unnecessary distress and suffering caused to the many victims. However, all successful applicants can expect is a reluctant reinstatement of their disability payments, and a back dated award to when they were forced to accept Jobseekers Allowance instead of Incapacity Benefit or, more recently, the new Employment Support Allowance.(ESA) DWP letters to their many victims remain unnecessarily hostile and the enforced disability debt is an ever growing problem. These victims of this AH assessment system loose their disability funding instantly, when they fail to obtain the necessary points at assessment. Yet their DLA payments are already committed to fund their Motability car or to identify the need for essential home care as provided by local authorities.  This is brutal, and these consequences appear to be dimissed by the government.

With plans to rapidly transfer Incapacity Benefit to the new ESA and DLA being renamed and reallocated to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), all reference to incapacity or disability is being systematically removed.   How can a chronically sick and/or disabled person, who will never again be fit enough for paid employment, be allocated a benefit named Employment Support Allowance when employment is not a realistic possibility?  How does this support anyone with a permanent serious illness or profound disability?  What happened to welfare?  The Minister for Welfare Reform happened to welfare… and it is cause for  serious concern that the input of this one unelected official can threaten the welfare provision for millions with care, concern and compassion replaced with a price tag (11).

The Minister made his intentions clear in a press interview (11) in 2008 when he claimed that: “… somebody will see a gap in the market and make their fortune” and the article went on to claim that the Minister’s idea was to eventually put the private sector in charge of the long-term unemployed.  “There will be bonuses for hard cases, and no special treatment of disabled people or lone parents with children at school.”(11) As Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud’s past history in finance demonstrates a dangerous lack of any comprehension that a serious illness or chronic disability can indeed be permanent, hence past awards of DLA offered to recipients who, by definition and especially by diagnosis, are profoundly disabled or very ill. These conditions can be exacerbated by exhaustion that often accompanies chronic ill health and serious disability.  American style medical tyranny can’t make them well, and can’t make these genuine claimants fit for work, but constant threats of losing their financial support can and does cause unnecessary distress.

Now, the most vulnerable people in our society, already faced with a limited quality of life, are being terrorised by the DWP with the threat of an annual review of their DLA financial support, despite their confirmed and permanent illness and/or physical limitations.  Any annual assessment is therefore, by definition, a total waste of limited resources for the vast majority of these people.  The sudden removal of DLA may remove a Motability car, or funding for taxis, and may remove the County Council funded home carers as County Councils will not provide carers unless the client is in receipt of DLA for care at the highest level. Any AH assessment is simply one day in the life of the disabled claimant, and cannot be presumed to identify their permanent state of health.  Government claims that AH assessments are to establish ability, and not to emphasise disability, whilst demonstrating a dangerous lack of concern for identified consequences is offensive to many.

Urgent decisions need to be made to enable justice to be seen to be done.

CONCLUSION:

The DWP should employ qualified Medical Administrators, as real Decision Makers, who will comprehend when a given diagnosis means that the patient is far too ill or profoundly disabled to ever consider paid employment.  They would even comprehend that the majority of chronic disability and ill health are, by their definition, variable conditions, and therefore it is  absurd to expect such people to be fit enough to look for paid employment, only to become too ill to work within a short period of time.  Not only would Medical Administrators be able to remove the totally unnecessary distress faced by the innocent victims of this assessment process, but it would also save a great deal of money by greatly reducing the numbers of people going to these AH assessments and, hence, reduce the numbers of Appeal Tribunals.  Any increases in salary costs will be negated by the very significant savings from the reduced costs of tribunals and appeals, as well as the reduced requirement for continued reassessment in many cases.  It would also remove the distress now faced by this vulnerable community.

The DWP can then either cancel this fatally flawed disability assessment contract with AH, or introduce a generous compensation scheme. There are now many thousands of genuine chronically sick and/or seriously disabled victims of this DWP funded medical tyranny, masquerading as medical assessments, as conducted by Atos Healthcare following guidance by Unum Insurance, formerly known as the totally discredited American corporate giant Unum Provident Insurance.

It is no coincidence that Unum Insurance are about to launch a massive UK media campaign to promote their Income Protection Insurance as, clearly, it has been planned since 1994 as the UK takes another step forward towards the American style health service, funded by insurance. (12)

Costs can’t be the only concern in any civilized society.  Care, concern and compassion must be returned to the UK to arrest  tyranny, using foreign companies, against those least able to find social justice.  5000 disabled people and carers didn’t march in London for no reason, and it’s time someone listened to them.

More detailed information may be found in a book by Ray Bourhis, namely Insult to Injury: Insurance, Fraud and the Big Business of  Bad Faith, published in 2005, and in the published papers at the Yale School of Law: The Unum Provident Scandal. (13)

(A*) New York Attorney General Spitzer’s ruling:  www.insure.com/articles/healthinsurance/unum-settlement.html

(1) Citizens Advice: www.citizensadvice.org.uk/not_working_march_2010_final.pdf

(2) Macmillan: www.macmillan.org.uk/Documents/GetInvolved/Campaigns/Benefits/FailedByTheSystemReport.pdf

(3) Scope: www.Scope.org.uk/sites/default/files/counting_the_cost.pdf

(4) Disability Alliance: www.disabilityalliance.org/dbcpress3.htm

(5)  http://unumclaimsdenial.com/2011/07/unum-ranked-2nd-worst-insurance-company-in-america

(1)  Citizens Advice: www.citizensadvice.org.uk/not_working_march_2010_final.pdf

(2)  Macmillan: www.macmillan.org.uk/Documents/GetInvolved/Campaigns/Benefits/FailedByTheSystemReport.pdf

(3)  Scope: www.Scope.org.uk/sites/default/files/counting_the_cost.pdf

(4)  Disability Alliance: www.disabilityalliance.org/dbcpress3.htm

(5)  http://unumclaimsdenial.com/2011/07/unum-ranked-2nd-worst-insurance-company-in-america

(6)  Care Quality Commission: http://www.cqc.org.uk/aboutcqc.cfm

(7)  The Harrington WCA Review: www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/wca-review-2010.pdf

(8)  HH Judge Robert Martin: President of Appeal Tribunals, Report 2007-08

(9)  Decision making and appeals in the benefit system.  Second Report of Session 2009-10

– the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select committee:

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmworpen/313/313.pdf

(10)  Citizens Advice Scotland: Unfit for purpose:

www.cas.org.uk/Publications/publications/Evidence+reports/unfit-for-purpose

(11)  Welfare is a mess, says adviser David Freud:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1577313/Welfare-is-a-mess-says-adviser-David-Freud.html

The Daily Telegraph – 2^nd February 2008.  David Freud interview with Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson

(12)  http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/cover/news/2083156/unum-unveils-consumer-campaign

(13) http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1483&context=fss_papers&sei-redir=1#search=%22Yale%20Law%20School%3A%20Unum%20Provident%20Scandal%22