UPDATE - 29th February 2016 Firstly I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of you who have supported me throughout this campaign. David did not have an Inquest and I am now looking to raising funds through Crowd Justice to appeal to the Attorney General to launch an inquest into David’s death. By doing this I am hoping to show that David’s death could have been avoided and help ensure that this stops happening to others. The Crowdfunding campaign is launching Wednesday 2nd March at the below link: www.crowdjustice.co.uk/case/david-clapson ___________________________________________________ Further updates: A) We have now seen the Government’s response on the Parliamentary Select Committee Inquiry: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmworpen/557/557.pdf The recommendations the Government have rejected include: • Call for an Independent Review • Monitoring the destinations of sanctioned claimants • Investigating the deaths of benefit claimants. Agreed in principle: • Pay Hardship Payments to all claimants who have been sanctioned from day one. • Also if they are a member of the vulnerable group the hardship decision making process be instigated by the DWP decision makers whether applied for or not. We will be handing in a second petition to the DWP https://www.change.org/p/rt-hon-david-cameron-mp-implement-the-recommendations-of-the-benefit-sanctions-policy-beyond-the-oakley-review. This petition is still open for signing, and I ask please once more for your support to push the government to act on these vital and lifesaving recommendations. B) In order to do this with the maximum impact we have decided to join up with Unite on their day of action against Benefit Sanctions, which will take place on Wed 9th March. At the same time campaigners will be protesting outside Jobcentres throughout the country. We would ask please if you could sign up using the link below and would welcome your support on these days. We would love to meet you at DWP Caxton House London. http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/communitymembership/day-of-action-against-sanctions/ C) On 11th March, we will demonstrate at The House of Commons as Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh's "Benefit Sanctions Regime (Entitlement to Automatic Hardship Payments) Bill 2015-16" will be having its second reading. The Bill can be found here: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/benefitsanctionsregimeentitlementtoautomatichardshippayments.html We will talk to as many MP's as possible. Please come and join us if you can, it would be our pleasure to meet you. We will update you with more details at a later date. Please do kindly keep signing and sharing and let’s see how many more names we can add to the petition and effect real change. Thank you very much, your support means so much to me. Gill