Post by nickd on Dec 18, 2011 20:13:18 GMT 1
DWP snubs Hardest Hits' Christmas greeting
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has turned away disabled activists who wanted to deliver a campaigning Christmas card on behalf of 23,000 people who signed a petition calling for urgent changes to the welfare reform bill.
Representatives from The Hardest Hit campaign had told the DWP they would be delivering the card – designed by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe – but when they arrived, civil servants told security staff not to accept it.
The card features David Cameron as Scrooge – from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – kicking away Tiny Tim’s crutch, with the caption: “Kicking away the support.”
Julie Newman, acting chair of the UK Disabled People’s Council, which jointly runs the Hardest Hit campaign with the Disability Benefits Consortium, said they had asked staff at the front desk of the DWP’s offices in Whitehall if the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, or someone in his office, was available to accept the card.
Instead, civil servants in Duncan Smith’s office told DWP security staff not to accept delivery of the card and to turn the campaigners away.
Newman said: “I was completely taken aback. What the government’s representatives have done is they have snubbed 23,000 people who wished to express their concern to the government about their day-to-day lives.”
Campaigners later successfully delivered the petition to Downing Street.
A DWP spokesman said: “It is correct that the security staff phoned the secretary of state’s office about the petition. It was purely down to a misunderstanding, confusion between the two people who spoke.
“It shouldn’t have happened, but I am not going to get into exact details of who said what.
“Once it became apparent what had happened we got back in touch with the Disability Benefits Consortium and said sorry.
“It was a misunderstanding. We are going to invite them back in [to deliver the card]. We are putting it right.”
The delivery of the card and petition were designed to coincide with the report stage of the welfare reform bill in the House of Lords, which began the previous day (12 December).
We all know it's not been the best of years, but this is meant to be a time of year with an important message which we'd all do well to remember; - it's the season of goodwill. Turning away representatives of 23,000 of the hardest hit just isn't in the spirit of things. This was a deplorable rejection of those who wanted to use this time of year to have their say, but once again our government ministers aren't having any of it. So much for us 'all being in it together' - only if you say the right things it seems. I'm sure this kind of attitude isn't representative of the majority of DWP staff who carry out a difficult job in the front-line, with many people taking their frustrations out of hard working staff - but this kind of command from the top is going to do little to improve working relations between officialdom and the general public, campaign groups and the most vulnerable members of society .
See link...
www.bhfederation.org.uk/federation-news/item/1487-dwp-snubs-hardest-hit's-christmas-greeting.html