UPDATE: Monday 4/9/12
Dear Ian,
Many thanks for forwarding the response to our complaint from the Permanent Secretary at the DWP Mr. Robert Devereux.
I must inform you that the reply is wholly unsatisfactory and unacceptable to us.
In the reply Mr. Devereux states:
“I am not sure from your letter whether your constituent was present at the event where Mr. Moran spoke. I say this because her (sic) account differs so sharply from Mr. Moran’s.”
I can categorically state that my account does not differ in the least from the account Mr. Moran is reported to have given Mr. Devereaux in the ensuing paragraphs.
It seems to me that the facts of the case as put forward are admitted. Only the interpretation given to those statements by Mr. Moran differs sharply.
Mr. Devereaux states that Mr. Moran’s comments were ‘intended to be supportive of disabled people.’
We say that Mr. Moran’s comments constitute playing fast and loose with disabled people’s lives.
He claims that his Mother (who is also disabled) is ‘frequently distressed by stories of fraudulent disability claims: she is worried that such stories would colour how her neighbourhood and community perceived her own disability.’
Disabled people generally are extremely distressed about such stories which are invariably reported in a sensational manner by the right-wing tabloid media and, we submit, in a manner that is calculated to give the general public the impression that there are an army of fake disabled people in our society ‘scrounging’ off the state.
The truth, as Mr. Moran very well knows, is very different.
According to the DWP report on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System for the whole of the financial year 2010/11 0.8% of benefit spending is overpaid due to fraud, amounting to £1.2 billion, the proportion is the same as in 2009/10.
The estimates for different benefits are:
Retirement Pension 0.0%;
Incapacity Benefit 0.3%;
Disability Living Allowance 0.5%;
Council Tax Benefit 1.3%;
Housing Benefit 1.4%;
Pension Credit 1.6%;
Income Support 2.8%;
Jobseeker’s Allowance 3.4%;
Carer’s Allowance 3.9%.
Updated statistics document from the DWP here.
Fraud and Error in the Benefit System: Preliminary 2011/12 Estimates (Great Britain) Revised Edition:
http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd2/fem/fem_preliminary_1112_revised.pdf
Mr. Moran is playing a very dangerous game.
Careless talk costs lives. The ‘scrounger’ rhetoric put out by DWP Ministers in statements and skewed statistics to the tabloid media has cost our community in human lives as the following articles attest:
We have, frankly, come to expect cynical propaganda from this Government as they seek to implement unprecedented, unconscionable cuts to the support to which disabled people are entitled in a society that deigns to call itself ‘civilised’.
However, as equal citizens of our country we refuse absolutely to accept such irresponsible statements from our Senior Civil Servants who must abide by a strict code of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality and who ought to know better.
Mr. Moran’s suggested solution that “if I had my way” he would stick photographs of cheats to their neighbours’ lamp-posts is particularly dangerous and offensive. It displays a lack of respect for the rule of law and encourages and reinforces the vigilante mindset that all too many individuals have already adopted, as the ITV Tonight documentary has graphically illustrated.
If Mr. Moran had wished to discharge his public service statutory duties to disabled people it would have been far more appropriate for him to have publicised his department’s own figures showing how very low abuse of the system is – in contrast to what sensational media propaganda would have the general public believe.
Our complaint against Mr. Moran stands. He stands in clear breach of the Civil Service Code
We demand that our complaint now be referred to the Civil Service Commissioners for a full investigation and a public response.
Yours sincerely,
John McArdle
As a Constituent and on behalf of Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign in Defence of Disability Rights
John,
I’ve sent this straight to the secretary of state.
I’ll let you have his reply as soon as it arrives. If it is unsatisfactory we will see where we go next, i.e. Commissioners etc.
Best,
Ian Murray MP
Labour Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South
Terry Moran, a senior official at the Department for Work and Pensions , said he wanted to shame bogus claimants into stopping claiming but admitted his idea was unlikely to be adopted.
Mr Moran is the chief operating officer at the DWP, and is the official “senior responsible owner” of the Universal Cerdit programme, Iain Duncan Smith’s key benefits reforms.
He told hundreds of civil servants at a conference in west London on Tuesday that he wanted to shame bogus claimants into stopping claiming – but admitted that his idea was unlikely to be adopted.
More than £1billion is fraudulently claimed every year, which £60million is paid out in disability allowances, while another £10million is wrongly claimed in sickness benefits.
Mr Moran told an audience at Civil Service Live, in Olympia, West London, that healthy people who claimed disability benefits illegally distressed him “greatly”. He said “if I had my way” he would stick photographs of cheats to their neighbours’ lamp-posts.
He said: “One of the things that distresses me greatly is when I see these headlines in newspapers when people have pretended to be disabled in order to get money out of the system.
“If I had my way I would put their photograph on every lamp-post in the street where they live because it is a very distressing thing for genuinely disabled people to see the reputation of disabled people damaged in the way that is by those people. We have got to do something about it constructively.”
Mr Moran told The Daily Telegraph afterwards that he was speaking personally, and it was not Government policy.
He was moved to speak out, he said, because of disabled family members who were upset by the frequent reports of bogus claimants.
————————————————————————————————————
Terry Moran, Chief Operating Officer, Department of Work and Pensions (DWP)
Terry Moran – Director General, Chief Operating Officer
Contactable via the Departmental Secretariat, 4th Floor, Caxton House, 6-12 Tothill Street, London, SW1H 9NA
Role and responsibilities
Responsible for leading all of DWP’s services to the public, both those delivered by our own staff and those delivered under contract. Also the Senior Responsible Owner for the Universal Credit Programme responsible for the design and implementation of the Universal Credit .
Universal Credit will simplify the benefits system by bringing together a range of working-age benefits into a single streamlined payment to make work pay and combat worklessness and poverty.
Terry is also responsible for Business Continuity for the Department.
Biography
Terry took up post as the Chief Operating Officer on 3 October, having previously been appointed as the full time Senior Responsible Owner for Universal Credit on 1 December 2010. He has previously been the Chief Executive of the Pension, Disability and Carers Service (1 April 2008 – 30 November 2010); the Acting Chief Executive of The Pension Service ( 23 July 2007 – 30 March 2008); and the Chief Executive of the Disability and Carers Service (June 2004 – June 2007).
He joined the Department in 1977 straight from school as a clerical assistant and spent his first 12 years working in local offices in Yorkshire and London. Terry’s career has included time as Head of Benefits Management, Yorkshire Area Director in the Benefits Agency and Jobcentre Plus Field Director for the North West.
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/about-dwp/senior-management/the-executive-team/#tm
I got the same letter… 🙁
It’s not over – believe me
He is a complete and utter W****r the man is a disgrace and should be sacked immediately for his dangerous right wing rantings.
ESA fraud is less than one third of one percent ! where as DWP making wrong decision, cruel rules and tribunal judgements fluctuates 40-70% , basically amounting to DWP have been cheating people of monies and causing much misery and anxiety (and that is based on DWP own continual fiddling of their made up rules and arbitrary sanctions) !
Based on DWP own figures – fraud and their error is £2.2 billion, which is reduced to £900 million as this is offset is £1.3 billion that has been knowingly underpaid to claimants ( the public accounts committee found they had no intention of rectifying this), additionally £16 billion has not claimed publically acknowledged by DWP Darra Singh, CEO (or more the case that DWP makes it too difficult to claim) hence further cheating people of monies !
So based on actual figure, it appears DWP staff are the cheats and incompetents !
More appropriate strategy for the incompetent and corrupt DWP staff – public humiliation of their staff, monies docket from their wages – might encourage their personnel to have humanity and integrity reflected in better systems and performance, think of how much money that would save – enabling the government to pay more MPs expenses and give money to the poor bankers !
As someone that has been left without either ESA or JSA since April 2010 – I will never ever forgive the political system !
The Political System is a Slavery of Slavery and can Only be ” Reformed ” by
being Abolished
We Need Government by Good Principle Not the Capitalist Power Monopoly
Well done JJ-never give up!
if you want a honest answer dont ask this lot as like atos dwp they all lie so much that its getting to be a reguler thing ,if honesty was thought to be dead by those in power so would they like us lying to them no but we try but they deny us our benefits and cant even give honest answers they hide behind a wall of lies deceite full lot who should never be in office jeff3
He has broken the code by which his employment stands, and on the basis of that must be sacked, without question.
Great letters John …….we are being heard….keep fighting everyone. 🙂