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FORMER DWP worker Anna Farish claimed bonuses were offered to staff for declaring disabled benefits claimants fit for work.

Anna worked for the government agency for 32 years before losing her job after a car accident and having to claim for benefits herself.

She said: “I’m an ex DWP officer but I now feel intimidated by them.

“PIP is not fit for purpose, quite often you just want to put the forms to one side and pretend they don’t exist, you want to curl up into a ball and you want to die.

“At the beginning of my career I would say that the DWP was a great job to have. It was fine and I’d say I had less than a week in sick leave in the whole time right up until the car crash.

“After the car crash I had to reduce my hours working. I had the opportunity to get some corrective surgery in my lower back which I took.

“The flip side to that was that I had been on a drug called Tramadol for about 17 years. When I was being weaned off it on doctors instructions I got horrific withdrawal symptoms.

“They immediately pounced on that and I got dismissed. My back issue that had been my long term problem had been resolved, but I paid for it because I lost my job.

“They would ask me to contact a customer and persuade them to either change an answer, or elaborate on an answer in a way that would drop them in it.

“It would be like if you asked someone if they were able to work any hours and they said ‘well I could maybe work two hours’ and you got them to elaborate on that and say they could do five hours.

“At that point they would say, ‘Oh well then you’re not sick’.

“Monday was a good day, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday - forget it.

“Monday is the day any cases that come across the desk are probably going to be allowed, or accepted, or processed well.

“By Tuesday they are looking at their stat figures for Friday and thinking oh crikey I better start getting the figures down. In other words get them out of the system and get the stat figures down.

“Every time we asked questions we were told ‘not your problem this is the service we are going to deliver. Put up or shut up’.

“I didn’t get a performance pay rise because I just couldn’t console my conscience doing what they were telling me to do, It just didn’t rub right.

“For me personally I suffer with depression. The one aid that actually lifted me was when I realised I could get a motability car.

“It gave me a reason to live because I can’t walk far, I certainly can’t use public transport, so having the car meant I could travel, go and see my daughters, go and see friends.

“Now with PIP I know there is a high chance, about an 85 percent chance, that with my initial application they will say no.

“The minute they say no I lose my car. I lose my car I lose my life. And I don’t want to go back to how I was before because I will be shut in, I’ll be imprisoned, and I won’t go back to that, I can’t go back to that.

“But if I don’t have that car then what’s the point in living.”

To make your voice heard go to www.stop-pip.org