INVESTMENT banker David Freud is the adviser behind Prime Minister Brown’s plans to slash the benefits of the sick and the disabled.
This is at the same time as there are no limits to the billions that the Brown government is prepared to hand over to the banks, to stave off bankruptcy, as the Northern Rock debacle has shown.
In fact, while Freud is screaming from the roof tops that 1.9 million people of the 2.6 million who are on Incapacity Benefit are fraudsters who must be made to work, Chancellor Darling has announced that in future the government will secretly hand billions of taxpayers’ money (on top of the £50 billion that has been handed to Northern Rock in loans and guarantees) to failed bankers.
They are to be bailed out and it is to be kept a secret from the public.
This is in case people draw the correct conclusion that to protect their savings they must withdraw them from the banks.
The government stands with the rich, greedy and failed bankers against the working class and the poor of Britain.
Not only that, but as the capitalist crisis deepens, it insists that the poor are robbed of their benefits and pensions in order to save the bankers and the bosses from the crisis of their own capitalist system.
This is the reason behind a whole raft of government policies. They are imposing three-year below-inflation-rate wage deals on the public sector in order to ‘save’ billions that can be handed to the banks.
They are prepared to end the Incapacity Benefits of 1.9 million people, and treat them in the most cruel fashion, to slash billions more off the government’s budget, again to try and save the banks.
David Freud, the investment banker, says up to 185,000 claimants work illegally while on the benefit. He has no proof at all for this demagogic statement, and he does not even consider that he should try and prove it.
In his stampede to slash benefits, he continues to slander tens of thousands of hard-working and conscientious GPs, who provide health care for millions.
He says that it is ‘ludicrous’ that medical checks are carried out by a claimant’s own GP.
He wants to see medical checks carried out by private contractors who will be getting a bonus for the number of people they dismiss from benefit.
Freud says the system is ‘a recipe for getting people on to Incapacity Benefit’ and recommends private firms be paid ‘bounties’ to get claimants off incapacity benefit and into jobs.
Even the Department for Work and Pensions has had to draw back from the propaganda of this extremist by stating that the numbers claiming Incapacity Benefits was at its lowest since 2000.
But of course there is no lack of careerist politicians willing to put the boot into the disabled.
Tory shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling said every claimant should have an independent medical check.
Grayling said: ‘Those fit to work should have their Incapacity Benefit withdrawn immediately and those with the potential to work should get proper support to help them back into employment.’
You’d think that the Tories would be too ashamed to speak out about alleged fake claims after their experience of the taxpayers’ support for the Conway family who were enriched out of the public purse.
But they, along with the Labour front bench, know no shame. They are going to use every dirty trick possible to get millions off benefits so that the cash can be handed straight over to the bankers and the bosses.
Workers in the trade unions must defend the sick and the disabled from this disgraceful attack.
The banks and the ruling class must be made to pay for the economic crisis of their own system.
Workers must bring down the Brown government and move forward to a workers’ government to expropriate the bosses and the bankers and bring in socialism.
