New Welfare Minister Esther McVey has 'chickened out' of confronting the courts over Personal Independence Payments for people with Mental Health Problems. An announce Appeal of a Tribunal decision affecting thousands of PIP claimants will not now be pursued.

On 21st December, the High Court published its judgment in the judicial review of Regulation 2(4) of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) (Amendment) Regulations 2017 S.I. 2017/194. https://mind.org.uk/media/19875988/rf-vs-sswp-ors.pdf These new regulations were the Tories' attempts to reverse the effect of a Benefit Tribunal judgment in a case known as 'MH' where the courts had had declared the DWP systems for judging PIP payments to people with Mental Health problems were unlawful.



Councillor Tony Dawson has fought scores of battles with and for Southport residents with disabilities over the past 20 years, including one Avondale Road resident who died while receiving no benefits at all for months. He says:



"This backing down is good news for thousands of people with mental health problems up and down the country, The assessment regime adopted by the private agencies making a fortune out of the sick and the disabled is 'patchy' to say the least and it is clear that the government's intent was to deprive genuinely ill people from their due support."



"Ms McVey has said that the government 'will now take all steps necessary to implement the court's judgment . . . in the best interests of claimants, working closely with disabled people and key stakeholders over the coming months.' even though she insists that the court were wrong. We shall have to watch her carefully in the months to come to see whether there is any substance to that statement."



"The Department for Work and Pensions now has to undertake an exercise of going through all affected PIP claims and all decisions made following the judgment in the case "MH" to identify anyone who may be entitled to additional payment as a result of the judgment. They will then have to write to those individuals affected, and make payments back-dated to the effective date for each individual claim."



"Ms McVey has suffered a lot of hideous and totally-unacceptable personally-directed criticism and threats since her appointment. This has distracted people from the serious proper criticism which should be rightly be levelled at her - which is that she was previously an awful Minister in an awful 'Work & Pensions' Department which set out to do awful things to many thousands of vulnerable people. I only hope that this announcement shows a change of heart accompanying her 'come back'.



"I am not holding out much hope, however. I think the government's own lawyers have simply told them that they would lose again in the courts and they have simply 'chickened'."



"People with disabilities themselves crowd-funded the cash to support the successful judicial review in the High Court: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/wish/ . They are to be commended for not rolling over and allowing themselves to be kicked by the government. It is sad, though, that they had to go though all this stress unnecessarily. If Labour MPs had joined others in opposing the critical Tory regulation back in March of last year, the rule would not have been passed and thousands of people would have had the support which they have been due many months ago."



Note: the original MH Upper Benefit Tribunal judgment is here: https://assets.publishing.service.go...47_2015-00.pdf. MH's original PIP claim was made in 2015 and the initial decision supporting him was taken by the Upper Tribunal in November 2016.

There are plenty of photos of her without ones of her cleavage - which you have used before. Try using a more appropriate and recent photo rather than resort to posting a photo for the men.

So she's done the right thing, giving you the outcome you wanted and still you carp and criticise.

As the PM said in PMQs this week "putting politics before people".

Nice.

Wow bet she was sexy when she was young.

Originally Posted by VB123

There are plenty of photos of her without ones of her cleavage - which you have used before. Try using a more appropriate and recent photo rather than resort to posting a photo for the men.

Agree, awful photo choice to put a serious and credible debate over

It would be interesting whether Dastardly Dawson chose the photo himself to try and help make people think bad of her.

May be an editors choice however but it’d be nice having councillors who know how to behave and get results, personally, I dislike the constant mantra of Southport versus the world via the libs and the knocking of others....the whole Kew playground debacle in the area committee shows how rotten our local politics is if local people aren’t free to hold their electives to account in front of some grumpy old men full of self importance and bitter because they haven’t made an impact on the council.

If the likes of Tony and Simon stopped trying to discredit others with stories, some speculative then maybe they’d make a better impact.

A photo we have used many times. NOTHING to do with Cllr Dawson.

Originally Posted by admin

A photo we have used many times. NOTHING to do with Cllr Dawson.

Fair enough, not a great photo choice though for a serious story that cllr Dawson has posted on two sites.

Originally Posted by admin

A photo we have used many times. NOTHING to do with Cllr Dawson.

Yes, and we know exactly why you chose it the first time (when you received plenty of comments from men on her cleavage). Sexist c**p! Maybe you should post a photo that represents women as serious contenders in political careers. This was obviously from her days in TV. - try using up-to-date photos - you seem to have plenty of them of your pal Dawson. This just shows the mentality of the men who run this site.

Agree 100% about the use of an appropriate picture.
I also don't want to see the juvenile use of so-called nick names being used in politics. It's bad enough that that imbecile Trump does it as a way of belittling anyone who disagrees with him. Let's not import any more bad practice from the USA.



Note to Admin:
I haven't been able to access the forum for weeks now. What's up with that?

Note to I presume the politically correct men on here, women have breasts just get over it and get your narrow minds to concentrate on the story its really not too hard.

Nothing.

https://www.qlocal.co.uk/southport/forum