Latest news with #InfectedBloodCompensationScheme
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mirror
5 benefits that could be stopped if you save too much money
How much you have in certain savings and assets can determine how much you get from these benefits, or if you're eligible for it at all Eligibility for certain DWP benefits can depend on your savings. These are referred to as means-tested benefits, which are only paid to people that have less than a specific amount of capital. Means-tested benefits and savings limits: Universal Credit - £16,000 Pension Credit - £10,000 Council Tax Support - dependent on each individual council Income-related Employment and Support Allowance - £16,000 Housing Benefit - £16,000 The exact amount you have in savings will influence how much you receive from these five benefits and whether you're eligible for payments at all. However, it's not just cash that contributes towards this limit. Experts from Money Helper explained that the DWP will examine your entire financial situation, as well as your partner's in some cases, but not your child's. This includes cash in any bank or building society accounts, regardless of whether it earns interest. National Savings & Investments savings accounts, Premium Bonds, stocks and shares, inheritance, and the value of any property you own that isn't your main home all contribute towards your savings threshold. If you are currently drawing from your pension, this pot might also be considered as savings. Certain lump-sum payments are also viewed as savings in relation to means-tested benefits. This includes redundancy pay and compensation payouts. However, some special compensations have been specifically excluded from these calculations, such as the payments made through the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme. And some items and assets are 'disregarded' by the DWP. More information can be found on the website. Disregarded savings and assets: Personal possessions like jewellery, furniture, and cars Pension pots you haven't taken money from yet Pre-paid funeral plans Life insurance policies that haven't been cashed in Insurance claims if it's being used to replace or repair something You are not allowed to deliberately reduce your savings amount simply to qualify for benefits or secure a higher rate. This practice is known as deprivation of assets and includes giving money away, transferring property ownership, or purchasing exempt items like cars. This won't include spending your savings on essentials such as food or settling debts. Should you be suspected of deliberately depleting your assets to claim benefits, the DWP will probably examine precisely when and how you disposed of your savings or assets. According to Money Helper: "The DWP will look at the evidence to decide if they consider it to be deliberate. If, at the time, you wouldn't have been able to predict needing benefits, it might not count as deprivation of assets. You might be asked to provide paperwork and receipts to back up the date, and the reasons for getting rid of savings or assets." However, if it is determined that you intentionally spent money solely to qualify for additional benefits, your application will be assessed as if you still had all of the money. This is referred to as notional capital and will impact your eligibility.
The Herald Scotland
18-07-2025
- Health
- The Herald Scotland
British state has a shameful record of moral cowardice
Consider the infected blood scandal, victims of which are only now able to access the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme. From the 1970s to the 1990s, over 30,000 NHS patients were infected with HIV and hepatitis C by infected blood or clotting factor products, killing at least 3,000 people. The history of this scandal is marked by stubbornness and cover-ups from the outset. In the 1970s, American scientists, including Judith Graham Pool, a pioneer in haematology, were characterising the products infecting patients with hepatitis C as 'dangerous' and 'unethical'. The World Health Organization was warning the UK not to import blood from countries with a high prevalence of hepatitis. They were ignored. So too were doctors like Spence Galbraith, the founding director of the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre in England and Wales, who warned the Government in 1983 that blood products may be transmitting HIV. An NHS pamphlet for blood donors distributed in September 1983 stated that HIV could 'almost certainly' be transmitted by blood products, and the consensus among haemophilia physicians by this point was that blood products were spreading AIDS. Despite that, Ken Clarke, then the Health and Social Care Secretary, made statements to the House of Commons that the evidence was inconclusive and maintained the policy of importing untreated blood products. In the decades since the Government settled out of court, in 1990, with claimants who had been infected with HIV by untreated blood products, inquiries were repeatedly denied and evidence destroyed. In 2000, Caroline Flint revealed to Parliament that papers had been destroyed related to both the HIV litigation and the litigation over hepatitis C infections. In 2009, the Archer Report – a privately-funded investigation into the scandal chaired by Lord Archer, a former Solicitor General – reported that 'some of those who gave evidence to us suspected that there was an exercise in suppressing evidence of negligence or misconduct,' and that one witness, Lord Jenkin, Health Secretary from 1979 to 1981, had been 'left with the clear impression […] that all the files bearing upon the issue of contaminated blood products had been destroyed, and that this had been done 'with intent, in order to draw a line under the disaster.'' Read more by Mark McGeoghegan The 2015 Scottish Government-commissioned Penrose Inquiry into the scandal north of the Border was branded a whitewash by victims and campaigners, after it concluded that little could have been done differently, which is untrue, looking at the timeline of warnings, and refused to apportion any blame. Even when a full inquiry was undertaken, it was discovered that hundreds of documents related to the scandal had been removed from archives by Department of Health and Social Care staff and not returned, sparking renewed concerns about a cover-up. As recently as 2023, the Government was still attempting to prevent the implementation of a compensation scheme. The final inquiry report was published last May, concluding that the scandal could have been avoided, that patients were knowingly exposed to 'unacceptable risks', and that the Government and NHS did indeed attempt a cover-up by 'hiding the truth'. It would be easy to say that these scandals are relatively rare, if not for the fact that we've just lived through the culmination of the Horizon IT scandal, in which Post Office officials displayed the same stubbornness and aversion to accountability that the NHS did over infected blood products. This sense of entitlement, to a right to avoid scrutiny and accountability, to a prerogative to avoid paying the price for its screw-ups and those of its staff, manifests in other ways, too. Shamima Begum, stripped of her British citizenship despite having been born and raised in London (Image: BBC/PA Wire) What, for example, is the case of Shamima Begum, stripped of her British citizenship despite having been born and raised in London, if not an attempt by the British state to wash its hands of a teenage girl, groomed online by terrorists, who was ultimately our responsibility as a society and the UK's responsibility as a government? And what of efforts to protect British soldiers from being held accountable for war crimes, committed in Northern Ireland, Iraq, and now Afghanistan? Which brings us back to Afghanistan. We know, for example, that in one instance, a UK Special Forces officer who may have been connected to alleged SAS war crimes personally rejected 1,585 resettlement applications from Afghans who may have witnessed those alleged crimes. When Johnny Mercer, then Veterans Minister, raised his concerns with senior officers, one UK Special Forces officer told him that his concerns were offensive – either 'lying to my face', as Mr Mercer put it, or 'so deeply incompetent that he didn't know.' The super-injunction granted to the Government over the Ministry of Defence data leak of the details of thousands of Afghans is an unprecedented, but logical escalation of the British state's tendency towards avoiding scrutiny of its errors. It prevented MPs from holding the Government accountable for the error or overseeing its spending on the secret relocation scheme for those affected. It meant the victims of that leak had no awareness that their personal information was in the hands of people willing to publish those details online, and potentially to sell them to the Taliban. The argument that the super-injunction was needed to prevent the Taliban finding out about the leak doesn't hold water, given reporting this week showing that it continued long past the point it was clear that the Taliban were aware of it. As journalists affected by the super-injunction, like Lewis Goodall, have argued this week, such a super-injunction should never have been granted and should never be granted again. It undermined Parliamentary democracy to cover up a scandal. However, there's a wider, deeply ingrained set of practices in the British state that need to be examined and, ultimately, abandoned to secure a government that's transparent and accountable to those it governs. Mark McGeoghegan is a Glasgow University researcher of nationalism and contentious politics and an Associate Member of the Centre on Constitutional Change. He can be found on BlueSky @
Straits Times
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Iran threat to UK is significant and rising, lawmakers say
FILE PHOTO: British MP Kevan Jones speaks during a debate regarding the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme at the House of Commons in London, Britain, May 21, 2024. UK Parliament/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo LONDON - Iran poses a significant and wide-ranging threat to Britain and, while not in the same league as Russia or China, it is one which is rising and for which the UK government is not fully prepared, British lawmakers said in a report released on Thursday. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) said the Iranian risk varied from physical attacks on and potential assassinations of dissidents and Jewish targets, to espionage, offensive cyber capabilities and its attempt to develop nuclear weapons. "Iran is there across the full spectrum of all the kinds of threats we have to be concerned with," the committee chair, Kevan Jones, said in a statement. Although the evidence given to the committee concluded in August 2023, the lawmakers said their recommendations about action the government should take remained relevant and it is the latest message from the British authorities about the danger they say Tehran poses. Last year, the head of Britain's domestic spy agency MI5 said since January 2022, his service and British police had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots to kidnap or kill British nationals or individuals based in the United Kingdom regarded by Tehran as a threat. In March, Britain said it would require the Iranian state to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK, subjecting Tehran to an elevated tier of scrutiny in light of what it said was increasingly aggressive activity. British security services say Tehran uses criminal proxies to carry out its work in Britain, and the ISC said the threat to individuals was comparable to that posed by Russia. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Business S'pore to launch new grant for companies, expand support for workers amid US tariff uncertainties Singapore HDB flats less attainable in 2024 compared with 2022: Report Singapore PAP appoints new heads of backbench parliamentary committees Sport No pain, no gain for Singapore's water polo teams at the world championships World 'Do some homework': 6 key exchanges between US Senator Duckworth and S'pore envoy nominee Sinha Singapore New regional centre for sustainable aviation in Asia-Pacific launched in Singapore Multimedia 60 objects to mark SG60: Which is your favourite? Business Fresh grads should 'stay calm' in job search; uptick in hiring seen: Tan See Leng In December, two Romanians were charged after a journalist working for a Persian language media organisation in London was stabbed in the leg, while just last month three Iranian men appeared in court charged with assisting Iran's foreign intelligence service and plotting violence against journalists. The ISC said the British government should fully examine whether it would be practicable to proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), an action for which some lawmakers have long called. REUTERS
The Independent
28-02-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Delaying redress for mesh scandal could end up costing taxpayers, warns MP
Delaying redress for victims of the pelvic mesh 'scandal' could end up costing the public purse, a Conservative former Treasury minister has warned. John Glen on Thursday called for a Commons debate about valproate and pelvic mesh, telling MPs that 'we must move on this matter'. Thousands of babies are thought to have been harmed by sodium valproate use during pregnancies since the 1970s, a drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder which is now known to cause birth defects and lifelong learning difficulties. Pelvic mesh used to treat stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse is also thought to have caused complications and harm for thousands of women – possibly more than 200,000 in England – between 1998 and 2020. A report by Patient Safety Commissioner Henrietta Hughes published in February last year recommended that victims of harm should start to receive compensation payments this year. Mr Glen told the Commons: 'It has now been a year since the publication of the Patient Safety Commissioner Hughes Report, which highlighted the devastating impact of valproate and pelvic mesh on thousands of woman and then children. 'Given my experience on the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (as a Cabinet Office minister) and given what I learned from (policing minister Dame Diana Johnson) when she was sat here in opposition, please can we have some time to discuss this? 'The further delays that could occur will cause enormous additional anxiety but also expense to the taxpayer. 'We must move on this matter.' Commons Leader Lucy Powell replied from the despatch box: 'He does raise a very important issue that has been raised as he said by colleagues with me before recess on the Hughes Report and the valproate and pelvic mesh scandal, which I know is a big issue in the last parliament. 'I know the minister has met with families and is considering in great depth the report, and I will absolutely ensure that at the earliest opportunity the House is given a full update on these matters. 'And I look forward to him from those backbenches as well continuing to raise that with me if that doesn't happen.'
