IMAGINE the anguish of young mother Tracey Cullen, so ill with leukaemia that she cannot even hold her baby child. Who would add to the suffering of anyone in her state?

Yet, incredibly and outrageously, we find that the staff of the Benefits Agency at Accrington have treated this poor woman abominably. And they have done it time and again over months.

Unbelievably, they actually insisted that she had to collect her invalidity benefit herself from their office although she cannot walk, can hardly eat and is continually sick.

But this is just one shocking instance of the torture that she and her partner have been put through by these people.

Even now, five months after she first applied for benefit, she still does not know how much she is entitled to, so messed about has she been by these cruel bunglers who make a mockery of their position of public servants whose duty it is to help people in need and are well paid by the rest of us to fulfil that task.

So deplorable has been their treatment of Tracey, her partner and family, that they have been reduced to poverty and desperation.

At their wits' end they came to this newspaper in the hope of getting their plight resolved.

And what a terrible plight these heartless sorts have made it.

Tracey has been accused of fraud, been told she is fit for work, kept without any benefit at all for as long as three weeks, denied child benefit for four months and told her benefit would change seven times in the next 10 months, but not informed why. So passed from pillar to post has this family been that Kevin has been to the benefits office more than 20 times in futile efforts to get their case sorted out.

It is not as if either one of this couple are benefit scroungers.

Until six months ago, both were in work - a family standing on its own feet and contributing to the welfare state.

Then, tragedy struck.

Tracey, pregnant at the time, became a victim of leukaemia and so ill that Kevin had to give up his job to look after her and her two children and drive her every other day to the Christie Hospital in Manchester.

This could happen to any of us.

But if it did, would we not have a right to concern and compassion from the public officials to whom we turn for help?

This family has enough hardship and worry to cope with as it is without this kind of dreadful torment being heaped on them by insensitive and bungling bureaucrats of the Bumbledom branch of the Benefits Agency.

They tell us they cannot comment on individual cases. What a convenient smokescreen!

Well, we are not so restrained.

We demand that, without a moment's delay, the most senior officials of this outfit get themselves down to Tracey and Kevin's house, sort out there and then what they are entitled to and give them their benefits. Then they must go back to Melbourne House in Accrington and root out every official involved in this bloody mess and institute an independent disciplinary inquiry that delivers nothing less than the sack to each one responsible for this outrage.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.