Department for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith tells furious MPs to stop ‘lecturing’ him for refusing to reveal benefits deaths

Reposted from the Mirror on line

The arrogance of this man and his sidekick beggars belief! A pox on them and their kind! Who the Fu8K do they think they are!

The good thing is, what with the Freedom of Information requests, the eruditness of Mike Sivier @ Vox Political, the petitions  and the public and political pressure being brought to bear on this odious little shit and his (let’s not put too fine a point on it) his murder/manslaughter of innocent and vulnerable citizens is now coming home to roost.

Debbie Abrahams … you are a legend.

Labour MPs want Iain Duncan Smith to reveal the truth – but they’ve been accused of  ‘chuntering away’ and ‘scaremongering about suicide’

Iain Duncan Smith has told furious MPs to stop ‘lecturing’ him for refusing to say how many people died after being declared fit for work.

The minister made his ‘insulting’ aside in a heated Commons debate – where he sent his deputy to confront Labour instead of doing it himself.

Mirror Online has told how his Department for Work and Pensions is fighting a legal battle to keep the number of deaths secret.

Instead it is planning to publish ratios by this autumn that won’t reveal the actual number of deaths – saying real numbers could be too misleading and ’emotive’.

The scandal was raised in the Commons today by Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, who demanded to know how much public money has been spent on the legal fight.

Smug: Iain Duncan Smith sent employment minister Priti Patel, left, out to bat for him

She declared: “Now is the time to deliver.

“Be open and transparent and publish the numbers the public and Parliament are asking for. Without this it brings the house into disrepute.”

But Mr Duncan Smith simply attacked Labour over its time in government, saying: “Don’t lecture us about it, you never publish a damn thing.”

And employment minister Priti Patel didn’t agree to publish full death figures – instead accusing Labour of ‘chuntering away’ and ‘scaremongering about suicides’.

This week we told how diabetic dad David O’Mar, 58, died just two weeks after being declared fit for work, a case Labour’s Kate Green raised at the despatch box.

Matthew Horwood

The Commons heard David O’Mar was declared fit for work – and died two days later

Yet Ms Patel said: “I think it’s quite audacious from the party opposite. They’re the government that never published any information.”

She said the data, which it’s not thought will include actual numbers of deaths, will be ‘published very soon, no later than the autumn’.

The hot-headed minister was attacked from all sides by MPs including the Commons’ longest-serving MP Sir Gerald Kaufman – who told her to be more polite.

Labour shadow work and pensions minister Kate Green told her: “The shenanigans in the DWP around the release of the statistics are concerning and puzzling if the department has nothing to hide.

“Why is it taking so long? On what grounds are the DWP appealing publication?

Attack: Ms Patel accused Labour MPs of ‘scaremongering about suicide’

“There’s a fear that by the time this procrastination has finally ended in it being published, it’ll be so out of date as to be useless.”

Ms Patel said: “Unemployment benefits have always been conditional and benefit sanctions have been part of that for four decades and that’s right and proper.

“We have nothing to hide.”

Yet Labour MP George Howarth told her: “The reason we aggregate and analyse that data is to see if a pattern emerges.

“Won’t she accept that as long as she drags her feet on this issue people might conclude the government has something to hide?”

Campaign: Labour MP Debbie Abrahams shook her head as she was berated

Green MP Caroline Lucas said: “Accusing the people on this side of the house of scaremongering is hugely insulting to those constituents who’ve contacted us.

“For them the government looking as though it’s hiding information is enforcing concerns that this is a punitive regime designed to hurt disabled people.”

And Labour’s Andrew Gwynne asked her simply: “Why won’t the minister just do the decent thing?”

More than 240,000 people have signed a petition calling on Iain Duncan Smith to release the figures.

The last figures were released by the DWP in 2012 after a Freedom of Information campaign by the Mirror’s investigative team.

They showed 1,300 ESA claimants died within six weeks of being placed in a ‘work-related activity’ group between January and November 2011.

Push: More than 200,000 people have signed an online petition

The figures prompted outrage and since then the DWP has released no more, insisting it’s ‘irresponsible’ to suggest stopping benefits can kill someone.

In April the DWP was ordered to release the figures by the Information Commissioner watchdog.

So it’s appealing to a tribunal with a letter that says the real number of deaths is ‘likely to be misinterpreted’.

The document declares: “Incorrect conclusions were likely to be drawn as to causal links between assessment outcomes and mortality.

“Such misinterpretations would be contrary to the public interest, particularly given the emotive and sensitive context of mortality statistics.”