Catalogue Number
NMLH.2025.14
Object Name
banner
Title
'One death is one too many.'
Place
Westminster, London, UK
People
Conservative Party, Ian Duncan Smith, Department of Work and Pensions (DWP)
Events
Austerity era 2010s
Description
The front of the banner is a white rectangle outlined in black with black text 'One death is one too many.' and the reverse is grey with black text 'Deaths due to sanctions and benefit cuts. RIP.' below the text is a set of 6 photographs and 97 white boxes holding the names of people who died following cuts to their benefits.
This banner shows the names of 97 people who died following benefit cuts or sanctions. It was created after the maker was sent a list of the names during a campaign to force the government to release statistics showing how many people had died after social security benefits were removed from them. Between 2015-2020, the banner maker created a blog documenting the names of any benefit claimant who she became aware of who had died after losing their benefits between 2010-2020. The banner maker was invited to display the banner during the premier of Ken Loach's film I Daniel Blake, a 2015 film documenting inhumane treatment of a benefit claimant.
During the austerity era under the Conservative governments during the 2010s, there were many high profile cases of disabled people being stripped of their benefits and dying either through suicide or in some cases starvation. The DWP subcontracted companies like ATOS and Maximus to conduct disability assessments on people applying for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) which can be claimed by working disabled people as well as non-working ones, and Work Capability Assessments to determine if disabled claimants of Employment Support Allowance were too sick to work. Assessments conducted by these companies, which often contradicted the expert opinions of medical professionals involved with claimants cases, often decided that people with significant care needs were "fit for work" and ineligible for benefits, plunging people into poverty, and sometimes leading to deaths from starvation or suicide as documented on this banner. DWP decision making and behaviour of staff during assessments were directly named as contributing to the deaths of multiple disabled people in coroners courts during the 2010s, and the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found austerity measures to cause gross and systemic violations of Disabled peopleâs human rights. A study published by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that during the austerity era there had been 334,327 excess deaths from 2012-2019 (more deaths than were predictable based on previous years data).
Maggie's blog can be found here. PHM claims no responsibility for content on external websites: https://mzolobajluk.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/the-increasing-death-toll-due-to-the-loss-of-benefits/
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