a rebel group downs a russian fighter jet in the northwest of syria and executes the pilot. i think it's terrible if you want to know the truth i think it's a disgrace a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that. the republican party memo is released claiming it to show the f.b.i. and u.s. justice department abusing their surveillance powers as they investigated team trump in two thousand and sixteen at. a rally in support of refugees in the german city caucuses held alongside a massive anti migrant protests. coming up in about an hour's time my colleague in india at twitter brings you all of the top stories of the week but for now it is going underground on our to international and in the u.k. and ireland it's put me still. use.

i'm not generated here by going underground is echoes of the twenty eight failure of western capitalism resoundingly on the british capital the people's assembly against austerity today holds a demonstration against the policies of tory minority government needed to resume here in central london going up in the show as competition has collapsed after profit warnings this week we speak to a labor m.p. and member of the karelian inquiry roots george about whether tory welfare reform is driving people to suicide and to claimants in different stages of the disability testing system tell us whether reassessing one point six million britons following arguably another failed neoliberal privatization experiment is a good thing told us and more coming up in today's going underground but first since you can't be empty. resume was hold not being with communists in beijing it

was left to a man called david living didn't to answer questions at this week's pm queues in london and i'm a celebrity please get me out i livings in replace tourism a is deputy pm damian green who left because of covering up porn in his office computer living to new used to work at controversial mining company rio tinto was called mr clean by the tory daily telegraph will emerge that he wanted u.k. taxpayers to pay for his toiletries anyway as the share price and u.k. government private contract to capita all but collapsed while he spoke living did was first for us to say that a previous multi-billion pound failure karelian was being addressed would be publishing proposals later this year to stop directors being able to siphon off pension funds in any way that he described the message to directors of u.k. taxpayer funded monopolies could be interpreted then as siphon the cash out of pension funds now before teresa mayes government publishes stuff well replacing jeremy coleman for label the shadow foreign secretary emily thornberry just some

identity rather than class politics questions before the speaker had to intervene the order i'm sure it will no obvious kate public notice and it is rather a sad irony that when a woman is addressing the house quite a lot of noisy berish and in one case rather stupid individual out trying to shout the right honorable lady down the. hall merry return to our main questions about rights of sixteen year olds to vote when change is right it cannot be resisted for ever and this is a change whose time has come to its living to name checks fred wilma bonnie and betty my advice there i told the lady is to wean herself off the habit of watching old versions of the flintstones on the rock and roll away from the fence stones and lowering the voting age a blairite member of jeremy cool beans palm and relabel body use b.m. cues to attack his own leader and arts fun. being in goldman's london constituency

of his things and every year for over a decade one london borough to london is reeling turn has received more arts council funding than the entirety combined of the middle earns a northern ex caulfield community yes the big issue of our age is arts funding in areas represented in westminster by jeremy corbin's front bench no wonder living in was confused i'm not sure whether that was mentors an attack directed on the right old member for islam to north or for islam to the south is a good south is the constituency of the shadow foreign secretary and livingston went on to defect to defend both corbin and thornberry it seems as if the real battle in parliament is now not between tories and labor it's arguably between the red tories of blairite labor and the largest socialist movement in europe led by jeremy corbyn corben certainly does not favor means testing private contractors and

the arguable perfect storm created when the conservative government decided on mandatory testing of disability for those too sick to work personal independence payments or pip were brought in by the coalition government in twenty thirteen to replace disability living allowance as part of austerity cuts to bail out the bankers in the city of london assessments once carried out by the british government were outsourced to private companies capita and i toss now the independent assessment service sincerely thirteen nearly two hundred thousand disabled people who previously receive disability living allowance were denied pip with over sixty percent of cases winning on appeal former parliamentary under-secretary of state for the d.w.p. and disabled people just in tomlinson heard this to say in this week's debate on pip claimant experiences. only sixteen percent of claimants the highest rate of benefit under it is twenty six percent if you had a mental health condition only twenty two. said

a straight sixty six said this is why we are spending three billion a year. jeremy goldman shadow minister for business energy and industrial strategy . this just say back if there is an alternative reality. these are things these affairs these if it does diminish an. experience is it. well going underground wanted to speak just some of the people affected by the changes made by the d.w.p. and minority government leaders or is amazed to reassess one point six million claims after the high court ruled it was a blatantly discriminatory system the why of never nine when you're going to be assessed never. going to. render department of. health. on how we fair we do treat it and. frame it we get the

pip assessment is a functionality test is about what you can do and not about. impairment know about your condition know about what trade me in a medication you know taking it's can you pick up that cup can you get out of bed can you get dressed can you. talk to people can you travel on public transport is about functionality it's not about your impairment it's about disability denial and that you've got. health condition to nine you need treatment you know and you need medication their attitude you can improve it can get better. and you have any kind of impairment until. twenty first thing they reassess me. twenty twenty seven.

going to go for assessment which is. really when it's not it's not a north wind. and it's a if the closer the city is the voice. of the medical evidence how hard it was that thick and the martha did not want to take it i have to prove the army and. the impression not poor arthur prove it every world for makes it pain sometimes it's three hundred eighteen months. with this one point six million i could look at me as i know we want to so you're going to say well enough if you know the model. of the person anxiety but you still got to go prove that you deserve your eye hundred pound a month when you lose your support or your supports being cut you can't afford to say your high carb food to pay your electric bills with castillo's you're in a freezing cold house you can't afford eight c. or relying on the food bank to eight we know people who have.

cut back on their medication if they've had to pay for their medication i have a prepayment prescriptions to fix if i lost my paperwork yet afford that which mean i couldn't have the medication i need day to day so you're making life or death decisions stark choices can i hate can i ate can i pay for my miti cation cannot pay for my equipment that i need and to be a disabled person we have additional costs tutoring pearman we need equipment and additional support when you've lost a pet that supports taking away your mobility car which is your legs your independence we are losing our independence our icici been right city to this day are abusing our fundamental here are not in this country has got money it always has money for bombs wars we were. we have money for that we find money for that

that way but we can't find money to help kids starving you know people are starving old age pension is not here now we can't for money for that of all and here mark a food bank and i can tell you now that over sixty seventy percent people in work poverty they're coming for food but are working out a lady turn up in a carriage in the form. and put she's come into a food bank because she cannot afford to eat. and when you see you see things and you talk to him and you just see him you know all of them appear on paper as well. is just food banks anything not a food bank should exist in a country which is a country with an affluent hundred twenty thousand people who've died on the streets through to the cuts and i think that's confirmed and we are the first government saw you for good. we pledge of all aid fable people who are u.n. c.r.p. they were published this week the world was involved in it. and then in the shadow

side our report is going there's another i call on a government that we're going to watch commission going on or i thought that there's eleven point. the eleven points then went on for an advance of one and this is you know this is you wince and you've you've got you've got a you've got to do this you've got or you go out for war you train your seriousness disciple people this is why this government is they want a welfare state on welfare states going union they want unions gone i don't want any of that because then you've got roy i just want you to work to do in the capitalist attend that's all i want you to do this work for your people and then you don't pester independents by mitt's process assesses asking claimants who have a history of five or dicing and trying to tell you right now why you know dead yet . that she said to my g.p.

consultant if the nats are success or asked me why you know on seven die prescriptions dive to go to the chemist every week to get to stop me from harming myself my medication is supervised pharma family so i can overdose and i am high risk of harming myself that is what the consultant said if i couldn't if that's a success or asked me that. i could all end up i know the assessment i've told my kids and so cartoonist. seriously distressed me i wouldn't be able to cope with it they're in doubt ask me a question not that i could end up buying high. and take in serious money medication and another statistic will never grow and. i don't go out drinking

i don't go out you know gambling not i. do is go out drinking you've got gambling you go with money go. now i haven't. got anything. but you know why i've got to go. now to our forum. where we're some people. they can't fire as well as alex and i will fight for them and that is what we do this is what we do it we will fight for we will. we will win if in the end but it's a war and that's what filled in a way that's what for over display was about this week was about. it's been one. where we were in a war. we pit where win awards of all men award for wife. what if we lose and then i. will all die and i'm afraid this is war some people. come in government put out care if

i could have warm would be best in the fire but now. that you know what you got blood on your hands for your during this government has blood on its hands the human rights abuses for the human catastrophe of the cuts and this i will people's lives for the foulness of people are no longer here. disabled people right now is. another organizations and groups out there get involved join in. your rights these are your services you can fight back and do something about it it's not hopeless it might feel like. there are people out there to support groups out there to get involved when he can do something about this and it's it rattles the m.p.'s when you go into parliament and sit it by its because you are living testimony of what they're doing and i can't run from that. heart i

try and you know i. exist we are here and i am here to say this is rome and we will. if you're being affected by any of the issues raised contact any of the following organizations which may be able to provide professional help and advice coming up after the break more from collective punishment or austerity britain the u.k. work and select committee's rules george impede the number of british suicides of those being assessed for disability is double pole is a ball coming up in part two of going on the ground.

level for hard selling you on the idea that dropping bombs brings police to the chicken hawks forcing you to fight the battles. that you stopped by to tell you that something gossiping probably my files to. tell you poland might. be all the hawks that we along with all the. well go back to the first of the show we heard from two people in different stages of an arguably calf gasket assessment process that has been ruled by the british

high court as blatantly discriminatory the d.w.p. said we introduced pip to replace the outdated d.l.a. system pip is a better benefit which takes a much wider look at the way an individual's health condition or disability impacts them on a daily basis underpaid twenty nine percent of claimants receive the highest rate of support compared to fifteen percent under the d.l.a. our next guest attended this week's debate on personal and about abatements ruth george labor m.p. and member of the u.k. work and pensions committee joins me now ruth welcome back to you are going underground so we heard a little earlier from some of those affected by these disability tests conducted by private contractors or big logs on the show about it we created a debate in parliament about this what are you hearing from your constituents about disability testing absolutely i think all them pays a hearing from their constituents about disability testing we're getting cases through often every week. particularly after i was first elected i agreed to meet

with a group of women who were survivors of sexual violence and abuse who wanted to tell me about how the benefit system had affected their i'm a member of the work and pensions select committee so they wanted me to be able to take that very harrowing evidence and try and use it change the systems that they're finding because so many assessments are not allowed to be done as a home assessment then people have to travel often considerable distance to an assessment center somewhere in a in a big city very impersonal buildings often and for someone who's a survivor of violence and is often and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder then that's incredibly difficult thing to do and very traumatic again let alone to be faced with an assessor who simply wants to get them through a list of questions in the time. time allotted and they have a standard script to follow i mean i've heard from women who've said that they've been curled up on the floor and crying from the trauma of having to relive the

experiences that they've been through and describe the impact that it's had on them with an assessor who simply repeats the question to them doesn't acknowledge their trauma and their grief at all and this has a lasting impact on people who have to go through the process and he also said the . newton leaders abilities to do instead as to regress department they want to give people a good customer experience will you make of the answer to what you just said when you say the environment what i asked them really is a language there give people a good customer experience it's very much the language of the private sector but i i don't object to the fact that if people in they they do you have to we do have to have some form of assessment for benefits we can't just have anyone who applies to receive benefit absolutely we all understand that on all sides of the house but you want to make sure that it's helpful it was weary and means these were means tested

before were they being means tested now why do you recognise the importance of mean it's it's not so much means testing for income it's about testing what people are able to do one nasal of the able bodied she work and i mean the government say that they want to enable people to live a fulfilling life often there should be enough medical evidence from people's medical records to be able to ascertain what's the point where they're all in knots they're able to work for some people there might be a need for them i mean my view is that there's far too many people having to undergo these assessments far too many are having to go to assessment centers and the private companies that are doing them are actually cutting the costs by particularly outsource or i.a.s. as they're now calling themselves say about. sixty nine percent of their assessments are done in assessment centers whereas the other company capita it's only sixteen percent done in assessment so it was members of the minority

conservative government say the problem with what we're going through is you don't understand that we have to reduce costs there's no doubt this is reduced cost testing the most vulnerable in society to bail out because of the cost of bailing out the banks incentivizing bankers to come here this is what is what is important you don't realize it because. government is again still repeating even though they've changed their mind on the testing regime that its intention is to reduce cost by twenty percent absolutely that's the aim is to reduce costs but the government themselves are admitting that they're failing in that way the whole system is actually costing more than it did previously partly because we've got private companies involved so they're making a profitable way although maybe only if you are not as in people's hundred quid a week is it. disability benefit they're paying the disability benefit but i mean they're also paying for the costs of the whole assessment process where we're seeing so many hundreds of thousands of people having to go to monday to

reconsideration and then even more than that having to go to tribunals and appeal because the decisions are wrong that's costing the state millions and almost a balance of sounds really added to the cost of the assessment process so if you are the costs to the government of rectifying the appalling decision that they made to illegally refuse people with psychological trauma support in order to get out of the house then that's going to cost three point seven billion pounds to reassess that make takes up all of the savings that they've made over a three year period they should have simply done these assessments properly in the first place in a way that really supports people with disabilities have to be made properly why are they being made at all i mean now the government does seem centers. as you would have it and i just cited to two of now again reassess what point six million claims. that the right decision listing government finally we've had the right

decision that the government needs to reassess the claims of one point six million people to make sure that they're receiving the benefits that they need to make sure that they get the support that they need to get out of the house to work if they're able to do that. certainly we on the labor benches would say they need to look very carefully at how they do that to try and make sure that they don't actually contribute. any more why are we testing them at all i mean if one figure is seven hundred million pounds the cost to someone argue torture people out of one hundred pounds a week do you in the labor party seem to believe there are a significant number of people faking mental illness no absolutely. not certainly not saying that everybody needs to be tested by any means and only a very small number should actually have to go for any sort of assessment notice that who is tested i'm certainly arguing on the work and pensions select committee

and the labor party are arguing that the government ought to be bringing this back in-house so that we've got a proper system for training the assesses and proper system for making sure we haven't got targets in place so that they have to meet the targets for the numbers of people who are refused benefits and that we've got a decent system that treats people properly not as we've seen from all the case studies that have come through give a general exam which labels only it's not demagogue and labor party policy to get rid of this it's not mean says you're on income which means testing on health you're going to continue it if you're going to government what we're saying is that the vast majority of people can be assessed from their medical records and that their medical information should be made available to assesses and it should be clear is day for most of that. medical records what a person is capable of or not in a few cases because there are cases where people have graduations of a different disease then maybe

a few people need to sesson but not the sort of ninety percent or so assessed in assessment centers or at home as they are at the moment we're looking more like a sort of five or ten percent number who may lead to five or ten percent it's done in-house by the government in a way that supports people make sure that they're actually getting the support that they need because that's part of it to some peers in the region to blairism to the golden everybody that you are still going to means test this isn't this isn't about means testing it's about where it's absolutely necessary there will be cases where people have to be tested on abilities. in the vast majority of cases that is not necessary what people are being put through is not necessary it's not cost effective and all it's doing is putting money in the pockets of private companies you not only on the official work and pensions committee environment your other sort of a committee regarding karelian the multi-million pound failure because

a lot of it was going drag are you going to bring some of this experience you're having over a person depends very much disability has to do what you do on that committee you want to really i think it's absolutely relevant to look at the way that these huge outsourced companies which gain billions of pounds of taxpayers' money are actually using that money whether they're meeting quality standards and whether there's actually any competition in there to make sure they're not simply taking money for old rope. and driving their own costs down driving paying conditions for their own staff down to the lowest common denominator but simply using a system that takes more and more contracts and fees of the government to prop up an increasingly failing internal financial structure where you've got huge dividends of directors taking huge bonus payment. of ours as a the taxpayer is being mugged for hundreds of millions of pounds to. her these people are trying to get around. i think that if we look at the way the system operates the system is mugging people for. a by putting them through so

much trauma that often they don't feel able to go through an appeal process because they've been through so much as part of an assessment process already and those people individuals are losing out this is what we can show that it wasn't meant to you because the majority agree winning their cases on appeal yet almost two thirds of people win their cases on appeal that's how bad the system is i would absolutely advise people if they have been turned down for a benefit assessment that they should go to appeal if they feel they can cope with that process but there's so many people in such a fragile state of mind that they really don't feel they can cope we've had some figures in the last couple of months from disability news service who said that the number of suicides the proportion of suicides had actually doubled the people who undertook the work capability assessments that's an absolutely appalling statistic that labor party have asked the government to go away and look at in the context of

the questions on suicide that being asked in those assessments and it's very important that we protect people absolutely i would want to see people go to appeal if they will get what they need and what they deserve from that i would hope that they can also find support through that process because it is so traumatic but unfortunately support services are being cut as well and many people are finding that they're having to go through that whole legal a stick adversarial process with minimum support george thank you that's it for the show will be back on monday the door jam again showed the british member of parliament who represent the richest constituency in the u.k. which includes the world of kensington and chelsea she thinks a new government led by jeremy told me you can get to god with us by virtue of media with your money fifteen. he is today u.s. secretary of state colin powell would use to fabricated evidence to the u.n. security council to justify the illegal anglo-american invasion of iraq.

all to see we have a great team but we need to strengthen before the free float world cold and greenbacks have been a legend to keep it so i took it back. in ninety ninety two that must qualify for the european championships at the very last moment no one believed in us but we won and i'm hoping to bring some of that winning spirit to the r.c.t. . recently i had a lot of practice so i can guarantee you that peter schmeichel will be on the best form since my last will come on that story as well as three. thousand zero zero zero zero zero zero i called russia. nice dr. no i was left left left more or less ok stop that's really good.

oh no appetite i mean for conflict is very very low these days publics are much more eager to see economic improvement than they are to actually get into a fight with a neighbor or or with other powers in the world. p.d.q. .