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Thanks to the Freedom of Information act, Iain Duncan Smith has been forced to release figures showing how many ­people declared fit for work by his department dropped dead.

More than 4,000 people died within six weeks of being found “fit for work”, the Department for Work and Pensions has admitted.

The figures cover the period between December 2011 to February 2014. All were told they should find a job following a “Work Capability Assessment”.

Of the total, 1,360 died after losing an appeal against the decision.

Apparently 80 people a week are dying after being assessed as fit for work.

Now we know why Mr Duncan Smith and the Government were so reluctant to release these figures.

It will shock nobody to hear the Iain Duncan Smith response to this shaming revelation is to adapt the famous line from the Bruce Willis film The Sixth Sense – “I don’t see dead people”.

(Image: Image Net)

So, in ­addition to throwing the disabled out of their adapted homes under the hated Bedroom Tax , wasting billions of public money on a complete turkey of a ­computer system for universal credit, we can now add hounding the sick to death to the charge sheet.

This was all supposedly to save the taxpayers money and weed out the shirkers and scammers.

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As for the people doing the work placement assessing, from what I know they are not given time or resources enough to carry out the ­assessments fairly.

They are paid per ­assessment, so they try to carry out as many as possible, making random conclusions based on interviews in which they don’t listen properly ­because they are too busy working out the route to the next ­assessment.

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Of course, those disabled and sick have to appeal and the majority of them are successful. But then comes more expense as the appeals process costs money.

Also the stress to people suffering multiple illnesses because they are ­basically being treated as con merchants can lead to serious deteriorations in their health.

I wonder how many of them had to be ­hospitalised and needed expensive ­aftercare.

How much money did we as taxpayers save with these callous tests – and was it enough to pay for the extra NHS care necessary?

One wonders what Mr Duncan Smith and his fellow travellers in cruelty will come up with next.

I have no inside track on this – but my fiver would be on something like “pay as you go“ wheelchairs, to save money and incentivise the paraplegic to walk. Watch this space and despair.