I was moved by the tragic story of 81-year-old Joy Worrall, who took her life after being left with only £5 to survive.
Mrs Worrall received an inheritance in 2014 after the passing of a family member and dutifully called the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to alert them.
Instead of only freezing the pension credits, the DWP also froze Mrs Worrall’s ordinary state pension.
With no income, she relied on her £5,000 savings until there was only £5 left.
An inquest into her death found that Mrs Worrall was too proud to make her family aware of any hardship and had previously stated that, rather than become a burden, she would rather throw herself off a quarry.
And that was what she did near her home last November.
Her son said the DWP was “guilty of a failure of duty of care”.
The intention behind social security and health provision in 1940s Britain was to create a system we can contribute to which, in turn, propels us through the storms of life between cradle and grave.
It was never there to put us in an early one but, by contrast, it should have intended to extend Joy’s life, not end it.
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