Annie

Mar 162023
 

‘Heartless’ reforms to disability benefits ‘defy logic’

“Heartless” government reforms that will eventually scrap the “fitness for work” assessment “defy logic” and pose significant risks to sick and disabled people who cannot work, say activists who have fought for years to highlight the test’s fatal flaws.

The decision to scrap the work capability assessment (WCA), which has been blamed for countless deaths and years of harm caused to claimants since its introduction in 2008, was the centrepiece of a new disability benefits white paper published yesterday afternoon (Wednesday).

The decision will mean disabled people who were previously assessed as not needing to carry out any work-related activity will in the future have to rely on the judgement of jobcentre work coaches to “determine what, if any, work-related activities an individual can participate in”.

This raises the prospect of claimants with significant impairments or long-term health conditions facing strict conditions imposed by their work coach, including potential benefit sanctions if they are unable to meet them.

The white paper confirms that its new approach “will mean both voluntary and mandatory work-related requirements may be set for health and disability benefit claimants, where this is appropriate, with requirements added at a pace that is appropriate for the individual”.

The long-awaited white paper, Transforming Support, was published nearly four years after the government first announced it intended to reform support for disabled people who rely on the social security system.

If and when the WCA is eventually scrapped, eligibility for the extra element of support paid to those currently assessed as having limited capability for work-related activity – either under universal credit (UC) or through the support group of employment and support allowance – will instead be awarded to anyone who receives both UC and personal independence payment (PIP).

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures reported by DNS this week (see separate story) show that 632,000 people are receiving out-of-work disability benefits that only those with the highest support needs are eligible for, but not receiving PIP or disability living allowance, which PIP is gradually replacing for working-age claimants.

The reforms mean the government plans to fulfil its long-promised plans to – in effect – merge the WCA with the PIP assessment, which has also been associated with years of harm, flawed and dishonest assessments and claimant deaths.

Ministers stressed that PIP and universal credit would not merge and that PIP would remain a benefit people receive “whether they are in or out of work” and would “not be means-tested”.

Scrapping the WCA would need to be included in new legislation, which the government says is not likely until after the next election.

Even then, it would likely only be rolled out to all new claimants by 2029 at the earliest, with the process of moving existing recipients onto the new system probably not starting until 2029, or even later.

In a phrase used repeatedly by ministers as far back as 2007, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride and disability minister Tom Pursglove said their reforms would focus “on what people can do rather than on what they cannot”.

But Ellen Clifford, disabled activist and author of the award-winning The War On Disabled People, was among many who raised serious safety concerns about their plans.

She told Disability News Service last night: “After over a decade of fighting against the WCA, disabled campaigners should be celebrating the news.

“But we’re not – we are terrified of what is next.

“Scrapping [it] is not being done to stop the grave harms inflicted through the WCA.

“If that was a concern, the WCA wouldn’t have got past the awful suicide of Stephen Carré in 2010.”

She said the measures were instead being introduced because of the failure of the WCA to reduce the number of disabled people who are not in work, and the government’s concerns about the high number of people who are not working or seeking work.

Clifford said the “deeply flawed strategy” would “inevitably result in enormous pressures in communities already pushed to their limits” after more than a decade of austerity, social security reform and personal tragedies.

She said the Conservatives wanted “a social security system so punitive there is no safety net enabling anyone long term out of work for any reason to have anything near a semblance of a bearable life.

“That way, people will keep pushing themselves to stay in the most body-, soul- and mind- destroying jobs.

“Meanwhile, disabled people will be facing new nightmares with all their income dependent upon a single assessment known for wrongful decisions and at the mercy of a conditionality and sanctions regime that is known to discriminate against disabled people.”

Activist and researcher Caroline Richardson, a member of the Spartacus Network of disabled campaigners, said the government’s move was an attempt to silence critics of the WCA.

She said: “However, disabled people are often in work, and sick people are not, so this effectively cuts the financial support to sick people who cannot access [PIP].

“So, working disabled people can access a sickness benefit, and sick people cannot.

“It defies logic to leave people who are sick without support and subject to the whims of work coaches under universal credit.”

Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said the reforms would mean disabled people “previously protected by the support group will be facing the grim prospect of conditionality and the constant bombardment of tasks and demands set by work coaches.

“As a result, benefit sanctions will rocket under universal credit.

“This is a callous, heartless, punitive move by the Conservative government which has shown once again it doesn’t give a damn about disabled people.

“This will cause untold stress, distress and harm.”

DPAC co-founder Linda Burnip added: “Basically, I’d say having unqualified job coaches decide if you’re not fit for work is even worse than having an ex-physio or occupational therapist making that decision [through the existing WCA system].”

Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy officer for Disability Rights UK, said the proposals would “completely remove the protection of no work conditionality, with instead a system geared to driving disabled claimants into seeking and applying for jobs.

“This conditionality would be enforced by a benefit sanctions regime.”

He added: “Those disabled people who can work need support to do so, backed up by the provision of reasonable adjustments by employers.

“However, those disabled people who can’t work or can only work limited hours need protection from sanctions.”

Although the WCA would not be scrapped for several years – and even then, only if the Conservatives win the next general election – concerns about the welfare of sick and disabled claimants over the next few years were heightened by other measures announced in yesterday’s budget.

Budget documents pledge to strengthen the DWP sanctions regime and ensure “that Work Coaches have the tools and training to implement sanctions as effectively as possible”.

The documents also show the government plans to spend an extra £90 million in 2023-24 on “additional work coach time for incapacity benefits claimants”, with £145 million in 2024-25 and £240 million in 2025-26.

16 March 2023

 

 

DWP white paper offers mix of ‘human catastrophe’ and overdue reforms

Nearly four years after announcing plans to reform support for disabled people, work and pensions ministers have published proposals for sweeping changes to disability benefits and employment support.

Some of the proposals – including plans to scrap the work capability assessment and expose severely ill people to the “whims of work coaches” – were greeted with anger and frustration by activists, who warned that they pose significant risks of harm.

Other measures, which could make the benefits assessment system fairer, are likely to be welcomed – if they are ever implemented – although questions will be asked over why it has taken so many years for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to agree to introduce them.

Ministers said this week that they wanted to “improve the overall experience of, and trust in, the benefits system for disabled people” through the white paper, Transforming Support.

But as chancellor Jeremy Hunt had also announced plans to toughen the sanctions regime, that pledge was dismissed by many disabled activists.

Dr Jay Watts said on Twitter that building this trust was impossible when “sanctions that deprive people of their capacity to eat, heat and have housing are on the table, let alone with the back cloth of abuse that the DWP has and does to claimants”.

Most of the media attention was focused on the plans to scrap the work capability assessment (WCA) and rely instead on the assessment for personal independence payment (PIP) to decide eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits, a move which disabled activists said would pose significant risks to sick and disabled people who were unable to work (see separate story).

But other proposals in the white paper affect areas such as Access to Work, the accessibility of jobcentres and the PIP assessment system itself.

The white paper says DWP is testing a new Access to Work package for disabled people “who need more support than the existing scheme can provide”.

It will offer “increased personal support, supervision in excess of what is usually required to perform work tasks” and ongoing support from a work coach.

The government also plans to expand the use of employment advisers as part of psychological therapy, through the NHS Talking Therapies service, another idea likely to prove controversial among disabled activists concerned about the government’s insistence that finding a job or returning to work is an important health “outcome” for those with mental distress.

The white paper promises to create “a more efficient service and a vastly improved claimant experience” for its PIP assessment system.

DWP is developing targeted help for those claimants of disability benefits “who need it most”, including those who do not have family or friends to support them, through a new Enhanced Support Service.

This has been tested in Kent, and will also now be piloted in Birmingham, Blackpool and King’s Lynn, and if it proves successful and “good value for money”, could be expanded into areas of high demand next year.

The white paper includes several other measures to improve benefit assessments that may be well received but are also likely to spark questions over why they have taken so long to be accepted by DWP.

It is testing the idea of sharing benefit assessment reports with disabled people before a decision is made on their claim, “offering them the opportunity to clarify evidence so that we can make the right decision as early as possible”.

The white paper says DWP wants to increase the number of decisions on benefits such as PIP that it gets right first time “by engaging people throughout their journey and ensuring we are obtaining more relevant evidence earlier”, including medical evidence.

It says: “This should lead to a reduction in mandatory reconsiderations and appeals and make it more straightforward to challenge the outcome of a claim.”

These suggested improvements are likely to anger and frustrate mental health system survivors, who fought for years through the courts to try to force DWP to address flaws in the assessment system that meant relevant medical evidence was often not collected before a decision was made on a claim.

These flaws were associated with countless deaths.

DWP is also moving to an IT system that will be able to record all assessments, including those carried out by telephone and on video, if requested by the claimant.

And it says that, later this year, it will begin testing how to match people’s primary health condition to an assessor who specialises in that condition, another demand long made by many disabled people.

DWP has also appointed architects to develop a new jobcentre design guide so that new and refurbished sites “will be accessible environments for customers, visitors and employees”.

The white paper was published soon after the chancellor’s budget speech.

The move to scrap the WCA had been announced by Jeremy Hunt, who claimed it meant “disabled benefit claimants will always be able to seek work without fear of losing financial support”.

He also announced a new voluntary disability employment programme, Universal Support, with the government spending up to £4,000 per person to support 50,000 disabled people a year to find appropriate jobs.

But details in budget documents released yesterday are likely to alarm disabled activists, with the warning that the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that the welfare cap will be breached by £4.1 billion in 2024-25.

The Treasury says in the documents that the government “remains committed to ensuring welfare spending is sustainable and is focused on meeting the welfare cap” by 2024-25, which suggests there will be further DWP efforts to cut social security spending over the next two years.

The budget documents also pledge to strengthen the DWP sanctions regime and ensure “that Work Coaches have the tools and training to implement sanctions as effectively as possible”.

The documents show the government plans to spend an extra £90 million in 2023-24 on “additional work coach time for incapacity benefits claimants”, with £145 million in 2024-25 and £240 million in 2025-26.

The measures mirror announcements made by previous governments seeking to clamp down on social security spending and cut the numbers on out-of-work benefits.

About 15 years ago, New Labour work and pensions secretary James Purnell warned that jobcentre advisers would be given more powers to impose sanctions on claimants and said those advisers wanted “greater freedom to use the sanctions that currently exist”.

That was taken up by the 2010 Tory-led coalition government, with employment minister Esther McVey bragging in November 2013 of how she wanted to end the “something for nothing” culture and that jobseeker’s allowance claimants had had their payments suspended 580,000 times in the first nine months after “new tougher rules” had been introduced in October 2012.

Just months earlier, in July 2013, David Clapson had died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an acute lack of insulin, three weeks after having his benefits sanctioned.

His electricity key had run out of credit because he had no money, so the fridge where he kept his insulin was not working.

An autopsy found his stomach was empty, and the only food left in his flat was six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date can of sardines. He had just £3.44 left in his bank account.

Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), said: “Benefit sanctions are at record levels and are used as a blunt instrument to bully and intimidate claimants to take slave labour jobs.

“The scrapping of the WCA will drag sick and disabled people into this brutal system where people can lose all their benefits/income at the whim of an unqualified job coach or an artificial intelligence computer programme.

“The DWP treats claimants far harsher than the criminal justice system, where if you are convicted and fined your income and ability to pay is taken into account.

“How can this be a compassionate and fair welfare system when it fails to provide a safety net for sick and disabled people?

The UN was right, this is a ‘human catastrophe’ from a government which continues to commit grave and systematic violations of our human rights.”

Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy officer for Disability Rights UK, said: “Those disabled people who can work need support to do so, backed up by the provision of reasonable adjustments by employers.

“However, those disabled people who can’t work or can only work limited hours need protection from sanctions.

“The new employment programmes targeted at disabled people are welcomed but these need to be co-produced by disabled people with disabled people’s organisations involved in their implementation.

“What is not needed is the removal of no work conditionality with its replacement by a sanctions regime.”

16 March 2023

 

 

DWP figures show 600,000 could be missing out on disability benefits

More than 600,000 disabled people could be missing out on thousands of pounds a year of disability benefits they are entitled to, according to new figures released by the minister for disabled people.

They show that 632,000 people are receiving out-of-work disability benefits that only those with the highest support needs are eligible for, but not receiving the extra costs disability benefits disability living allowance (DLA) or personal independence payment (PIP).

The figures could mean that tens or even hundreds of thousands of disabled people could be eligible for up to £156 a week more in benefits than they currently receive.

The figures, released by Tom Pursglove, show that, as of August 2022, 259,000 disabled people who were in the employment and support allowance (ESA) support group were not receiving any PIP or DLA.

Another 373,000 disabled people were receiving the limited capability for work-related activity element (LCWRA) of universal credit without receiving PIP or DLA.

Both the ESA support group and the LCWRA group are for those with limited capability for work-related activity because of their impairment or health condition, so it is highly likely that many of them would also be entitled to some level of PIP or DLA.

Some of these disabled people could be receiving the new adult disability payment from the Scottish government, but that is likely to apply to only a few thousand claimants, as only 3,470 disabled people were receiving that benefit in October 2022.

The figures were obtained by Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft, who has called on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to take action, including writing to every one of the 632,000 claimants to ask if they have considered applying for PIP, a move which could help drag hundreds of thousands of disabled people out of poverty.

She said: “I am concerned to see that 600,000 people who are in the ESA support group or claiming universal credit with LCWRA are not receiving PIP or DLA.

“Ministers need to urgently investigate the discrepancy to establish the reasons behind it.

“The government must do all it can to ensure people are aware that they may be entitled to further non-means tested support.”

Anela Anwar, chief executive of the poverty charity Z2K, told Disability News Service: “This data suggests that hundreds of thousands of low-income disabled people could be missing out on money they’re due.

“Disabled people are more likely to be in poverty than the general population, and the cost-of-living crisis is hitting hard.

“DWP must take greater responsibility for making sure people can access their full legal entitlements – not just put the onus on disabled people themselves.”

DWP refused to say what action it had taken to ensure disabled people in the two groups were claiming all the benefits they were entitled to.

But a DWP spokesperson said: “Take-up may be affected by broad factors such as the attractiveness of the benefit, awareness of the benefit/application procedure, awareness of entitlement, and the perceived stigma of receiving a benefit.

“PIP/DLA can help with some of the extra costs if your health condition or disability is expected to last 12 months, while ESA/UC can provide financial support to people whose disability or health condition affects how much they can work.

“Receiving one benefit does not mean an individual will be eligible for the other.”

16 March 2023

 

 

DLA ‘disallowances’ plummeted after death of Philippa Day, DWP figures show

The number of people who had their disability benefits stopped for failing to return a reassessment form plummeted following the death of a young disabled mum in 2019, new figures have revealed.

The figures show that, from 2016 to 2019, there were roughly 20,000 “disallowances” a year of disability living allowance (DLA) from disabled people who had failed to return the PIP2 re-assessment form to apply for the new personal independence payment (PIP) benefit.

The number of monthly disallowances reached nearly 3,000 in September 2019, according to the figures obtained by Disability News Service following a freedom of information request.

The following month, 27-year-old Philippa Day, from Nottingham, died in hospital after falling into a coma on 7 or 8 August 2019.

A coroner later concluded that flaws in the PIP system were “the predominant factor and the only acute factor” that led to her taking her own life.

Her life had begun to spiral out of control in January 2019 when DWP stopped her DLA after it did not receive the PIP2 form she had posted to the department.

From November 2019, the number of DLA disallowances for failing to return the PIP2 form began to fall.

The following year, there were less than 9,000 DLA disallowances – a fall of more than 10,000 in just one year – in 2021 there were about 5,000, and in the year to October 2022 there were just 4,000, with an average of about 400 a month, compared with 2,898 in September 2019.

DWP refused to say this week if it took action in late 2019 or early 2020 as a direct result of Philippa Day’s death.

Marsha De Cordova, the disabled Labour MP who has been asking parliamentary questions about disallowances, said: “It is completely wrong and unacceptable that nearly 20,000 people a year between 2016 and 2019 had their DLA and PIP disallowed due to them not returning their reassessment forms.

“This has led to hardship for many ill and disabled people and in some cases death, such as that of Philippa Day.

“By failing to implement safeguards until 2019, it shows the level of disdain the government have for disabled people.

“All the evidence shows how the Conservatives in government have created a hostile environment for disabled people.

“The government must apologise to everyone that has been impacted by this cruel policy, commit to greater transparency and ensuring that no-one is left worse off for not returning their reassessment forms.”

Philippa Day’s sister Imogen said the number of disallowances in the years before her sister’s death was “horrifying” and “shocking”.

She said she was “terrified” by the thought that other disabled people could have lost their lives because they had unfairly lost their DLA.

She said the figures appeared to show a clear decline in disallowances in the months after her sister’s death.

She said: “I am pleased that it’s downward trending but it’s still not enough.”

DWP refused to say if it took action on DLA disallowances after it learned of Philippa Day’s death; refused to apologise for those who lost their lives after having their DLA removed for not returning their PIP2 forms; and refused to say how many other claimants it believed had lost their lives in similar circumstances.

But a DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “To ensure we continue to provide the necessary protection and support to our most vulnerable customers we keep our processes under constant review and ensure all staff are provided with appropriate guidance and training.”

16 March 2023

 

 

Activists accuse NHS England of ‘betrayal’ over StopSIM co-production

Disabled activists have accused NHS England of “betrayal” after it went back on its promise to publish a policy – developed with service-users – that would have put an end to a mental health scheme branded discriminatory, coercive and punitive.

Members of the StopSIM coalition said service-users would feel “anger, disappointment and fear” at NHS England’s decision to publish a pared-down letter rather than the full policy, and its failure to include an apology or a commitment to change.

The coalition had been working on the “rigorous and detailed” policy with NHS England for 15 months after its members exposed the dangers posed by the multi-agency Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) scheme.

They say the failure to publish the document “means service-users will be left without access to a policy that could help protect them from SIM and SIM-like approaches”.

And they say it shows NHS England (NHSE) has “a greater interest in protecting their reputation than protecting service users’ lives”.

One member of the coalition said they had been left “physically sick” by NHSE’s actions after 15 months of tireless, unpaid work that had put their and their colleagues’ health – and lives – at risk.

They said on Twitter that they had lost the “hope of ever being heard no matter how hard we try”, and told NHSE that they did not “have any more words for the pain and hurt I’m feeling”.

SIM-type schemes focus on users of mental health services – often those at high risk of suicide and self-harm – who have not committed a crime but are seen as “high intensity users” of emergency services.

The coalition’s campaigning revealed the flaws in the “sinister” and “disturbing” scheme and persuaded NHSE to order local reviews of how it had been implemented by trusts across the country, seven years after it was first piloted on the Isle of Wight.

For the last 15 months, the coalition has been working with NHS England on a new policy document and had been expecting it to be published in full by 10 March.

But on Friday (10 March), Professor Tim Kendall, NHSE’s national clinical director for mental health, published only a short letter that had not been approved by the coalition, stripped the policy “down to the bare minimum”, and used the coalition’s words without its members’ consent.

Among the elements missing from the policy, said the coalition, was an acknowledgement from NHS England that its endorsement of SIM had caused harm to patients, an apology, and “commitments to make changes to prevent this from happening again”.

The coalition said it had been told that NHSE’s communications department had refused to sign off the new policy because it was “politically inconvenient”, despite it having been approved by NHSE’s legal team and chief executive.

The coalition also criticised the “obstinance and unprofessionalism” shown by the Academic Health Science Network – set up by NHSE to “spread innovation” and link the NHS with academic organisations, local authorities, the third sector and industry – which it said had supported and promoted the SIM scheme and disrupted the coalition’s role in developing the new policy.

The StopSIM coalition said in a statement: “Our experience with NHS England shows that their commitment to ‘co-production’ and embedding experiential knowledge is nothing more than rhetoric.

“Indeed, this will have a ripple effect on wider lived experience involvement in deterring other service user/survivor groups from seeking to work with NHS England at all levels.”

SIM was first trialled in 2013 on the Isle of Wight, but was eventually rolled out to nearly half the mental health trusts in England, and had been backed by NHS England and recognised with national awards.

But an increasing number of disabled activists began to warn that it was based on coercion and denial of potentially life-saving support and was causing some service-users to live in fear of arrest or prosecution when they were in mental health crisis.

Documents obtained by Disability News Service revealed last September that reviews carried out by NHS trusts into the use of SIM-type schemes raised multiple concerns about its use, and showed that many of the trusts had continued with practices that campaigners had described as “harmful” and “inappropriate”.

In Kendall’s 10 March letter, he says that SIM or similar models “must no longer be used in NHS mental health services”.

He says there must be an end to the involvement of police officers in delivering “therapeutic interventions in planned, non-emergency, community mental health care”.

And he says the use of coercion, sanctions, withholding care and other “punitive approaches” must also end, including making patients sign contracts about how they will behave or arresting or prosecuting them for regularly appearing at mental health services.

Kendall also demands the end of “discriminatory practices and attitudes” towards patients who express self-harm or suicidality or are seen as “high intensity users”, including labelling them “manipulative” and “attention seeking” or telling them they “have capacity to take their own life”.

NHSE refused this week to say why it had reneged on its promise to publish the policy; and whether it agreed with the concerns about AHSN’s actions.

It also refused to say if its actions would deter other service-user and survivor groups from working with NHSE, and if they showed its commitment to co-production was “nothing more than rhetoric”.

And it refused to say if the absence of a robust statement outlining the existence of SIM teams across England and the decisions which enabled SIM to be implemented showed “an egregious lack of transparency and accountability”.

NHSE has denied that its communications department refused to sign off the policy.

An NHSE spokesperson said in a statement: “NHS England has taken this matter very seriously and is grateful to the StopSIM coalition for initially highlighting concerns about the SIM model and for giving them a platform via their campaign.

“Following the local reviews, engagement, and review of the evidence it is NHS England’s position that SIM or similar models must no longer be used in NHS mental health services.

“While mental health services will continue to work in partnership with the police where appropriate, any approach that seeks to punish or withhold care from patients who are experiencing distress is deeply unethical.”

AHSN had not responded to questions about its actions by noon today (Thursday).

16 March 2023

 

 

NHS England’s StopSIM ‘betrayal’ is ‘ticking time bomb’ on co-production

NHS England has been warned that its actions could “plunge co-production into crisis”, after it went back on a promise to publish a mental health policy that disabled campaigners had been working on for 15 months.

Grassroots groups and disabled activists spoke out this week after the decision of NHS England to prevent the release of a document drawn up with detailed input from members of the StopSIM coalition, who had worked “tirelessly” – without payment – on the policy.

The coalition had been working on the “rigorous and detailed” policy with NHS England (NHSE) after exposing the dangers posed by the multi-agency Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) scheme.

But last Friday, Professor Tim Kendall, NHSE’s national clinical director for mental health, published only a short letter that had not been approved by the coalition and which stripped the policy “down to the bare minimum” and used the coalition’s words without its members’ consent (see separate story).

Now StopSIM and other campaigners have expressed their frustration at the “betrayal” and have warned that it could have serious consequences for co-production across the mental health sector, particularly within the NHS.

The StopSIM coalition said: “Our experience with NHS England shows that their commitment to ‘co-production’ and embedding experiential knowledge is nothing more than rhetoric.

“Indeed, this will have a ripple effect on wider lived experience involvement in deterring other service user/survivor groups from seeking to work with NHS England at all levels.”

The grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin (RITB) said NHSE’s move was “the final nail in the coffin” for any confidence that NHS positivity towards co-production “was anything more than virtue-signalling rhetoric”.

An RITB spokesperson said there were “serious ethical and safeguarding concerns around the continued promotion of co-production in the NHS until there are better processes in place to make sure patients aren’t pouring their heart and soul into tokenistic activities that will block any real change and facilitate continuation of the status quo.

“Insincere ‘co-production’ and involvement is profoundly damaging to patients’ mental health and heart-breaking on a personal level, creating disillusionment and loss of hope, not just in the NHS but in society.”

They said that seeing a campaign with the profile of StopSIM “get screwed over so publicly” was “crushing”.

They added: “It may not have such a big effect on people new to involvement but for those of us who have been doing it for a while, seeing what’s happened even when there’s such support for the cause and so much public scrutiny is deeply discouraging.

“On the upside, it makes me more confident that activism outside the NHS is the right way forward.”

Dr Jay Watts, a disabled activist and consultant clinical psychologist, said NHS England’s “sudden reversal of its commitment to publish the full StopSIM statement” was “a ticking time bomb that threatens to plunge co-production both nationally and locally into crisis”.

She said: “Building trust is crucial in the early stages of co-production because patients and activist groups often have valid reasons to be cautious about professionals’ commitment to shared work.

“Far too often, decision-making has been taken out of their hands, whether it’s in individual care or systemic decision-making that claims to value their opinions.”

She said professionals had “appeared to be making genuine progress in making co-production something more than just lip service, thanks to the hard work, at considerable cost, of countless survivors who had shown the game-changing benefits of truly learning from patient expertise and innovation.

“The principles of co-production had begun to be enshrined in national policy, at trust board levels, and were even being spearheaded by NHSE themselves.

“The decision not to publish the co-authored statement puts this progress in real jeopardy.”

She questioned how patient groups could trust they were not being “used” for political purposes “if genuine joint work can be pulled by the powers that be, in this case after 15 months of shared working.

“Acts of genuine collaboration linger long in the hearts and minds of activist groups, betrayal longer still.

“It’s crucial that NHS England realise the potential domino effects of their decision, and make a U-turn, publishing the full co-authored #StopSIM statement.”

Akiko Hart, chief executive of The National Survivor User Network (NSUN), also expressed concern at NHSE’s actions.

She said: “NSUN is deeply disappointed by NHS England’s failure to publish this policy after 15 months of intensive labour from service-users and allies.

“This betrayal contributes to an already heavy history of mismanaged initiatives which co-opt or erase survivor and service-user work.

“We call on NHS England to urgently rethink this decision or risk embedding further distrust in the system and co-production work.”

NHS England’s decision also appears to have left some NHS executives bemused.

Bobby Pratap, former deputy head of mental health for NHS England and still working within the NHS, said on Twitter that he did not know why the policy had not been published but he believed it was “the most genuinely coproduced work” he had seen in 16 years of national policy, and that it had “rare” near-universal support from stakeholders.

NHSE refused to say why it had reneged on its promise to publish the policy; whether its actions would deter other service-user and survivor groups from working with NHSE; and whether its actions showed its commitment to co-production was “nothing more than rhetoric”.

But an NHSE spokesperson said in a statement: “NHS England has taken this matter very seriously and is grateful to the StopSIM coalition for initially highlighting concerns about the SIM model and for giving them a platform via their campaign.

“Following the local reviews, engagement, and review of the evidence it is NHS England’s position that SIM or similar models must no longer be used in NHS mental health services.

“While mental health services will continue to work in partnership with the police where appropriate, any approach that seeks to punish or withhold care from patients who are experiencing distress is deeply unethical.”

SIM-type schemes focus on users of mental health services – often those at high risk of suicide and self-harm – who have not committed a crime but are seen as “high intensity users” of emergency services.

SIM was eventually rolled out to nearly half the mental health trusts in England, and was backed by NHS England and recognised with national awards.

But an increasing number of disabled activists began to warn that it was based on coercion and denial of potentially life-saving support and was causing some service-users to live in fear of arrest or prosecution when they were in mental health crisis.

The coalition’s campaigning revealed the flaws in the “sinister” and “disturbing” scheme and persuaded NHS England to order local reviews of how it had been implemented by trusts across the country.

Documents obtained by Disability News Service revealed last September that those reviews raised multiple concerns about its use, and showed that many of the trusts had continued with practices that campaigners had described as “harmful” and “inappropriate”.

16 March 2023

 

 

MPs hear of deep concern over energy companies’ forced installations

Energy companies will not be allowed to restart the forcible installation of prepayment meters in the homes of “vulnerable” and other customers until they can prove they are complying with a new code of practice, the regulator has told MPs.

Jonathan Brearley, chief executive of the energy regulator Ofgem, told MPs that the watchdog was “deeply concerned” by widespread reports about the behaviour of energy companies such as British Gas.

He said: “We are very clear vulnerable customers need to be treated fairly and that means vulnerable customers need to be treated with respect.”

He was speaking to a joint hearing of the business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) committee and the justice committee.

It followed media reports – initially in the i newspaper and then The Times – about the forced installation of pre payment meters (PPMs) by energy companies.

A four-month investigation by i found that courts were processing hundreds of warrants in just minutes, allowing debt agencies working for energy suppliers to forcibly fit the meters, despite concerns over insufficient checks on the “vulnerability” of disabled and other customers.

Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge of England and Wales, told magistrates’ courts last month to stop listing applications from energy companies for the warrants.

And Ofgem launched a review investigating the rapid growth in prepayment meter installations following the “extremely serious allegations” in The Times about forced installations by British Gas.

The industry had been told it could not restart forced installations until the end of this month, but Ofgem now says they will not restart until energy companies can prove they are treating disabled and other customers fairly.

Brearley told the MPs: “We are deeply concerned about, not only the reports in The Times, but the reports that have been appearing for some time around the behaviour of energy companies with regards to the forced installation of pre-payment meters.”

He said Ofgem had been clear through the last year of huge energy price rises that the energy sector’s focus “needs to be on its most vulnerable customers”.

He said Ofgem had launched a review in January to look at the systems, processes and outcomes for customers who have had PPMs installed.

A new code of practice is now expected by the end of this month.

Brearley said forced installation of PPMs would only restart “when and if they can establish they are acting in accordance with that new code of practice”.

Labour’s Darren Jones, chair of the BEIS committee, pointed out that Ofgem had announced action on the issue as far back as 2018 and promised then to “take tough action if the suppliers fail to treat their vulnerable customers in the right way”.

Brearley claimed Ofgem was now working more proactively.

Chris O’Shea, chief executive of Centrica, which owns British Gas, had earlier been asked by the committee if its agents breached rules by breaking into the homes of disabled and other “vulnerable” people to forcibly install PPMs.

Among the cases of forcible installation reported by The Times and raised by the committee this week were those of a woman with mental distress, and a partially-sighted woman with arthritis.

But O’Shea said he did “not have the details” of either case.

He said: “It’s sometimes not possible to identify a vulnerability because customers will simply refuse to engage. If we identify a vulnerability, we don’t install PPMs.”

But Jones said: “All of the cases that have been reported, and these are only some of them, are to me a very clear breach of your licence conditions.”

O’Shea said he was waiting for British Gas’s own investigation before he could conclude if the incidents reported by The Times were “isolated or systemic”.

Asked if British Gas would compensate the victims of its actions, he said: “If we identify that we acted incorrectly we will make that right.

“I can only answer that question when we have the results of that investigation.”

But he said that, since The Times allegations were published, 300 customers have written to British Gas to say they believe they were wrongly moved onto PPMs.

British Gas forcibly installed more than 20,000 PPMs last year after obtaining warrants from magistrates’ courts, the committee heard.

Labour’s Karl Turner, a member of the justice committee, said that between July 2021 and December 2022, magistrates granted a “staggering” 536,139 PPM warrants to agents acting for energy companies and refused just 75.

Many of the warrants that are granted do not end up with PPMs being installed, the MPs were told.

Robin Cantrill-Fenwick, a former magistrate, told the committee that the process of obtaining the warrants had altered in favour of the energy companies in 2019, making it much harder for magistrates to reject a PPM warrant.

Some magistrates’ courts were dealing with as many as 1,000 applications to forcibly install PPMs in a single day, he said.

The applications were dealt with by magistrates over the phone, and the occupants of the homes had no idea when or at what court the applications were being dealt with.

Cantrill-Fenwick eventually resigned as a magistrate in protest at the changes.

He said: “My strong suspicion is that there were conversations around how we balance the interests of an efficient process in the courts with an efficient process for the energy companies, and somewhere in that the interests of the person, the occupier, got lost.”

He said he believed it had been presumed that the energy companies could balance their interests and those of the occupier “and they would be the people who would exercise restraint on whether or not to put a warrant application in”.

But he said that that expectation “has been shown to be quite naïve”.

He told the committee that nobody in the justice system “has accepted wrongdoing” for what had happened with the PPM warrants.

He said this “poses a very real danger that when the media attention moves on, the parliamentary attention must inevitably move on, [and] this snaps back to the way it was before, which would be a tremendous injustice”.

16 March 2023

 

 

DWP backs down in legal case over release of secret death reports

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has backed down in its fight to hide recommendations made in 22 secret reports into the deaths of benefit claimants.

Ministers had been told by the information commissioner to release the recommendations to Disability News Service (DNS), but they appealed against the ruling.

The case was due to be heard later this year by the information rights tribunal, but DWP told DNS last week that it has now withdrawn its appeal.

The recommendations were made by DWP’s own civil servants in secret reports completed between April 2019 and September 2020 and should show what advice was given to ministers on how to improve safety and reduce the number of suicides and other deaths of disabled people claiming benefits.

The DNS bid to secure the information was made in September 2020, but DWP has been resisting its release for more than two years. It is now likely to be released early next month.

DWP had argued that releasing the reports would interfere with the formation or development of government policy.

But DNS has argued that releasing the recommendations made by the internal process reviews (IPRs) – previously known as peer reviews – is vital in ensuring DWP can be held to account for how it has responded to deaths linked to the social security system.

The information commissioner decided last October that DWP had “failed to consider the strong public interest in the timely understanding, and scrutiny of, the recommendations made in the IPRs” and that releasing them would “allow scrutiny of whether the actions taken were sufficient or timely enough to prevent the harm identified occurring again”.

The commissioner said he had decided there was “a strong public interest in understanding DWP’s approach to preventing future errors and safeguarding issues”.

The decision should have meant that ministers released recommendations from 22 IPRs that were completed between March 2019 and September 2020 and have until now been kept secret.

John Pring, editor of DNS, submitted a lengthy witness statement to the tribunal.

In his statement, he referred to DNS news stories which he said showed “that DWP’s actions continue to cause the deaths of claimants”.

He added: “By continuing to secure access to the recommendations made in IPRs we can at least secure some information that will help to hold the department to account and force it to offer a public explanation if it fails to act on recommendations made in its own reviews that could prevent further deaths.”

He said he believed DWP was only seeking to avoid the release of IPR recommendations to avoid embarrassment and to make it easier to prevent being held to account for its failures.

He said: “Preventing the release of further IPRs will make it easier for DWP to hide its fatal errors and will put the lives of countless disabled people claiming benefits at risk.”

It is the latest episode of a near decade-long battle by DNS to force DWP to release information about deaths linked to flaws in the benefits system.

The tribunal previously ruled in 2016 that redacted versions of reviews carried out between 2012 and 2014 should be released.

But in recent years, particularly under the last work and pensions secretary, Therese Coffey, the department has tried to rely on exemptions contained within the Freedom of Information Act to prevent the release of further reviews.

The reviews that have been released have revealed key safety failings by the department.

The first batch of reviews, when they were eventually released in 2016 after a 21-month legal battle, showed that at least 13 reports had explicitly raised concerns about the way that “vulnerable” benefit claimants were being treated by DWP.

Another review obtained by DNS, in 2018, helped show how DWP had been forced to soften the “threatening” tone of the agreement that universal credit claimants must sign to receive their benefits.

And in December 2020, another freedom of information request allowed DNS to show that DWP staff had had to be repeatedly reminded what to do when claimants said they may take their own lives, following reviews into as many as six suicides.

Those reviews suggested that a series of suicides between 2014 and 2019 were linked to the failure of DWP staff to follow basic rules that had been introduced years earlier.

DWP refused this week to say why it had withdrawn its appeal, and whether it would apologise for delaying the freedom of information process and wasting money on the appeal.

16 March 2023 

 

 

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Thousands of people with learning difficulties are stuck in long-stay hospitals because of a lack of psychological support and overly complicated treatment systems, according to research. The report from the University of Birmingham has been released in conjunction with an exhibition from the subversive street artist Foka Wolf titled Why Are We Stuck In Hospital? The Birmingham-based artist, known for his billboard pranks, has created a gallery installation to illustrate the invisibility of people in long-stay hospitals such as assessment and treatment units or secure units: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/14/thousands-learning-disabilities-trapped-long-stay-hospitals

Baroness Masham, a retired Paralympian and the longest-serving female member of the House of Lords ever, has died aged 87. Baroness Masham won medals in swimming and table-tennis at the 1960, 1964 and 1968 games and was created a life peer in 1970. She spent much of her career campaigning for disability rights. The Spinal Injuries Association, which she founded in 1974, said it was “devastated to have lost our greatest champion”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64947909

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been ordered to release “sensitive” research into whether fining benefit claimants is effective in getting them to take a job or work more hours. The internal DWP study was commissioned in 2019 after a cross party committee of MPs concluded that while there was no evidence benefit sanctions incentivised people to get work, they did have a negative effect on claimants’ health and finances: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/14/dwp-ordered-to-release-sensitive-research-into-effects-of-benefit-sanctions

16 March 2023

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 16:47
Feb 252023
 

YOUR RIGHT TO PROTEST AS A DISABLED PERSON

What rights do disabled people have to protest? Can the police take my equipment at a protest? What can disabled people do if the police break the law?

[Header image description: A cropped image of 5 disabled protestors.  From left to right: the first person is standing in front of a walker with a plaid seat covering. The second person is standing, holding a blue placard with the words “stop killing us” written in bold white letters outlined in black. The third person is standing wearing a black coat. A white poster with the words “Care charges = violence against women” in red and blue writing hangs from their neck. The bottom of the poster reads “Win Visible”. The fourth person is standing wearing a red t-shirt with “free our people” written in bold white letters on it. They have their arms around the people to either side of them. The fifth person is using a wheelchair, wearing a dark coat and dark trousers. There are more protesters in the background.]

Disclaimer: this article is for general information. It’s not intended to be used as legal advice. For information on how to get legal advice, please see our page here.

EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO PROTEST

Your right to protest is protected by the Human Rights Act.  Freedom of expression (which covers ‘freedom of speech’) is protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Freedom of assembly (gathering together with other people) is protected by Article 11. These Articles have been brought into UK law by the Human Rights Act.

This page will cover further information that is useful to know if you are disabled and you want to protest.

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTEST WITHOUT BEING DISCRIMINATED AGAINST

THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT

Article 14 of the ECHR bans public authorities, like the police, from discriminating against you when you exercise your rights under the ECHR.

For instance, if you are protesting, you are using your rights to freedom of expression and assembly, so the police must not discriminate against you.

Discrimination under the ECHR means when

  • a person is treated differently than another person who is similar to them, and
  • there is no good reason for treating them differently.

You can read more about Article 14 here.

THE EQUALITY ACT

The Equality Act also bans public authorities, like the police, from discriminating against you. Unlike the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act applies to service providers too, like shops and restaurants.

Under the Equality Act, discrimination means being treated worse than someone else because you have a protected characteristic. Protected characteristics include things like age, race, and being disabled. You can read more about protected characteristics here.

As well as saying what service providers and public authorities shouldn’t do, the Equality Act also says what they should do.

YOUR RIGHTS UNDER THE EQUALITY ACT

WHAT ARE THE POLICE NOT ALLOWED TO DO?

Since they are a public body, the police are not allowed to unlawfully discriminate against people. This includes at protests.

Under the Equality Act, there are different types of discrimination, such as:

  • direct discrimination.
  • indirect discrimination.
  • discrimination arising from disability
  • harassment
  • victimisation

You can read more about the Equality Act here.

All of this means that the police shouldn’t discriminate against disabled people at protests.

  • Direct discrimination: the police shouldn’t treat you worse than a non-disabled person just because you’re disabled. This is unlawful. Direct discrimination against disabled people is never allowed.
  • Indirect discrimination: the police shouldn’t have a way of working that has a worse impact on disabled people even though it applies to everyone equally. Indirect discrimination is unlawful unless there is a good reason, or an ‘objective justification’. You can read more about objective justifications here.
  • Discrimination arising from disability: The police shouldn’t treat you worse than a non-disabled person because of something connected to you being disabled. This is unlawful unless there is an objective justification.
  • Harassment: the police shouldn’t make you feel bad about being disabled or embarrass you because you’re disabled. This is called harassment and it is unlawful.
  • Victimisation: the police shouldn’t treat you badly or put you in a worse position because you’ve done a protected act, or the police think you might to a protected act. A protected act includes things like making a complaint under the Equality Act, or doing anything else in connection with the Equality Act. This is unlawful.

WHAT SHOULD THE POLICE DO?

The Equality Act also states certain things that public bodies, like the police, must do. The two main things are

  • the duty to make reasonable adjustments
  • the public sector equality duty

THE DUTY TO MAKE REASONABLE ADJUSTMENTS

The Equality Act requires police to take steps to reduce the negative impact their policies and ways of working can have on disabled people. This is called making reasonable adjustments. This duty applies even if the police don’t know you’re disabled.

 

When do you have the right to reasonable adjustments?

You have the right to reasonable adjustments whenever you, as a disabled person, are put at a substantial disadvantage, compared to non-disabled people.

 

At what point do the police have to make reasonable adjustments for you?

The police have a duty to make reasonable adjustments:

  • when they are making the policy –a public body, like the police, should be thinking ahead and shouldn’t wait for you to ask them to do something
  • in the individual case –the police have to consider how to make reasonable adjustments to you, and not only disabled people in general.

This means that the police must have considered making reasonable adjustments when they are policing a protest. For example, if

  • the police are using any of their powers to control or manage protests, such as issuing conditions or dispersal orders
  • the police decide to use crowd control tactics, like kettling.
  • they need to confirm that you understood something.

THE PUBLIC SECTOR EQUALITY DUTY

The public sector equality duty applies when police are carrying out public functions, like enforcing the law and keeping the peace. There are 3 main parts to the Public Sector Equality Duty. In the context of disability, this means the police should have due regard to the following:

  1. The need to not discriminate, harass, victimise, or do anything else that is banned under the Equality Act.
  2. The need to foster good relations between disabled people and non-disabled people.
  3. The need to advance equal opportunities between  disabled people and non-disabled people.

This last requirement means the police should be thinking about the need to:

  • Remove or reduce problems that negatively impact disabled people more than non-disabled people, and which are connected to them being disabled.
  • Take steps to meet the needs of disabled people. This means that the police should be taking account of the fact that you are disabled and that you might have different needs from non-disabled people. For example, this could mean
    • changing the way the police interact with disabled people, liking give you more time to comply if they ask you to do something.
    • taking reasonable steps to help disabled people understand the conditions, like providing written information in large print.
  • Encourage disabled people to participate in public life and other activities where disabled people’s participation is very low compared to other people. For example, this could mean only placing minimal limits on protests involving disabled people, so as many disabled people as possible can protest.

‘Having due regard’ means that the police must think about their need to do these things in a way that’s appropriate in the circumstances.

WHAT IF I’M KETTLED AND I’M DISABLED?

‘Kettling’ is when the police contain protesters in one place for a long time. The police surround the people and don’t let them leave. It’s a tactic to control and manage protests. You can read more about kettling in our article here.

WHAT SHOULDN’T THE POLICE DO IF I’M DISABLED AND IN A KETTLE?

The Equality Act still applies. So, if the police decide to kettle protestors, they:

  • shouldn’t directly discriminate against you
  • shouldn’t indirectly discriminate against you without an objective justification
  • shouldn’t treat you worse than a non-disabled person due to something connected to you being disabled, unless there is an objective justification
  • shouldn’t harass you because you are disabled.

WHAT SHOULD THE POLICE DO?

The police also have certain things that they should do. If the police decide to kettle people:

  • they should be thinking about how the public sector equality duty would apply.
  • they should make reasonable adjustments when they kettle protesters – and should have also made these adjustments when they made their kettle policy.

There are other specific things police should be doing if they kettle protestors.

  • Release plan: the police must have a release plan that allows vulnerable or distressed people, or those accidentally caught up in the kettle, to leave.
  • Essential utilities: If it is feasible, the police must also make essential utilities available to people who are being kettled. This includes things like toilet facilities and drinking water.
  • Time: The police cannot kettle you for any longer than is reasonably necessary to prevent a breach of the peace.
  • Necessity: the police should constantly review whether they need to keep kettling people.

CAN THE POLICE LIMIT MY RIGHT TO PROTEST?

Yes. Articles 10 and 11 are qualified rights, which means that the police can limit these rights.

This is often done by imposing conditions. Conditions are certain limits the police put on protests. Police can also completely ban the protest in certain situations.

You can read more about these in our article on how to organise protests.

WHAT RIGHTS DO DISABLED PEOPLE HAVE IF POLICE IMPOSE CONDITIONS?

Before taking any measures to restrict people’s rights to protest, the police must consider the impact on everyone’s right to protest. This is because the right to freely express yourself is one of our fundamental human rights, and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

When imposing conditions, the police must obey anti-discrimination laws, like the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act. This means that any measures the police take at protests

  • must not be discriminatory, including not discriminating against disabled people
  • must have due regard to the public sector equality duty, including the need to take steps to meet disabled people’s needs
  • must respect their duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.

If you feel that the police have discriminated against you at a protest because you are disabled, you can complain. Skip to the bottom of this page for more information.

CAN THE POLICE TAKE AWAY MY EQUIPMENT AT A PROTEST?

In some situations, the police can seize items that they reasonably believe have been used or are likely to be used to cause harassment, alarm or distress. This is their power under Section 37 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The police sometimes use this to take away equipment like megaphones and loudspeakers.

WHEN CAN THE POLICE TAKE THINGS UNDER SECTION 37?

If the police want to use Section 37, they must have already issued a dispersal order under Section 35 of that act. A dispersal order is when the police tell people to leave an area for up to 48 hours

However, there are limits on when the police can give dispersal orders. The police can’t give them to you if you are taking part in a protest march and

  • the organiser has given written information about this to the police, or
  • this is the kind of march where the organiser doesn’t have to give the police written information.

You can read more about having to give the police written information about protests here.

WHEN CAN THE POLICE ISSUE A DISPERSAL ORDER?

The police might be able to issue a dispersal order if

  • you are doing a static protest (which stays in one place) with a group of people
  • you are protesting by yourself (a one-person protest)

However, if the police are deciding to do this, they must especially look at your rights:

  • your right to freedom of expression under article 10 of the ECHR
  • your right to freedom of assembly under article 11 of the ECHR.

WHAT RULES MUST THE POLICE FOLLOW IF THEY TAKE MY EQUIPMENT?

When police use their powers under Section 37, they must follow certain rules like:

  • communicating this to you in writing (unless they can’t reasonably do so)
  • telling you that it’s an offence if you don’t hand over the item
  • letting you know in writing when and where you can get your items back (unless they can’t reasonably do so)

The police must return your equipment to you once the period that you’re banned from the area under the dispersal order is up – unless there is another law that allows them to keep it.

If after 28 days you haven’t come to get your equipment, the police may destroy the item.

CAN THE POLICE TAKE AWAY MY INDEPENDENT LIVING EQUIPMENT USING SECTION 37?

The police shouldn’t be using Section 37 to take people’s independent living equipment. To lawfully do so under Section 37:

  • the police must reasonably believe that the equipment has been used or is likely to be used to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
  • the police must also comply with Section 35 and its requirements.

If the police decide to use Section 37 to seize disabled people’s independent living equipment, they must make sure that they have due regard to their duties to:

  • respect the public sector equality duty
  • make reasonable adjustments
  • not discriminate against disabled people.

WHAT IF THE POLICE USE SECTION 37 IN A WAY THAT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST ME?

There could be indirect discrimination if the police have taken away equipment and this has had a worse impact on you because you are disabled.

There could be discrimination arising from disability if there was a worse impact on you because of something connected to you being disabled.

If you think this has happened to you, you have the right to complain.

HOW CAN I CHALLENGE UNLAWFUL POLICE BEHAVIOUR AT MY PROTEST?

You can make a complaint if you think the police acted unlawfully at your protest. More information on doing that is here.

There are other ways to stand up for your rights. You may be able to challenge the actions or decisions of the police using

  • judicial review
  • the Human Rights Act

You can see our article here for more information on how to go about this. If you are planning on doing this, it is best to get legal advice first.

GETTING LEGAL HELP

You might want a lawyer or advice

  • if you have been arrested at a protest
  • if you are considering suing the police.

You can find more information on how to find a lawyer here.

Also, our page on organising a protest has more information on things such as

  • legal observers
  • other protest support
 Posted by at 20:47
Feb 172023
 

Anger over ‘disgraceful’ Network Rail plan for more inaccessible footbridges

The organisation that runs most of Britain’s railway infrastructure is installing more inaccessible footbridges across the country, in apparent breach of its duties under the Equality Act.

Earlier this month, Network Rail – whose directors report to transport secretary Mark Harper – defended its decision to install an “innovative” new “FLOW” railway footbridge that is completely inaccessible to many disabled people, at Wistanstow, Shropshire.

Its decision caused shock and anger among many accessible transport campaigners, with one describing the move as throwing access “under the bus”.

Only last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported that the equality watchdog had taken action under the Equality Act against both the Department for Transport (DfT) and the rail regulator over concerns that cuts and reforms to train services were making the network ever more inaccessible.

But DNS has now been passed details of plans by Network Rail to build at least two more inaccessible footbridges in other locations in England.

In Wokingham, Berkshire, Network Rail is set to replace two run-down inaccessible bridges at a point where the railway line splits into two near the town centre.

But the planned new single footbridge that will replace them will also only be accessible to pedestrians who can use steps, unless the local council can obtain the necessary funding and planning permission for an accessible version by August.

In a letter to Wokingham Borough Council, Network Rail said the construction of an accessible bridge was “deemed to be unviable at this time” but that the bridge “has been designed to allow for modification to make it fully accessible should this become a possibility in the future”.

And in its planning application to the council, it argued that it had “no demonstrable, positive duty” to provide an accessible structure because the previous combination of a level crossing and a footbridge were also inaccessible.

Network Rail is also planning to install an inaccessible footbridge at Copmanthorpe, near York, as a replacement for a level crossing.

The local parish council has complained that the new bridge will be inaccessible to many people, and it has asked for an alternative design that uses ramped access.

But Network Rail has used a similar argument to the one it used in Shropshire, arguing that the crossing was not currently used by anyone with reduced mobility because of rough terrain on either side and that an accessible bridge would cost millions more pounds to build, while the ramps would be “visually intrusive”.

Meanwhile, in a post on social media, Network Rail’s chief executive Andrew Haines praised the new inaccessible footbridge design that has been used in Shropshire – which he said was “one of the most beautiful things we’ve built in the railway for many, many years”, and said he hoped to reduce its cost “to a position where hundreds of communities can benefit from it”.

Network Rail runs most of Britain’s railway infrastructure, including 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts, and its aim is “to ensure [its] policies and actions support the wider strategic policies” of UK and Scottish transport ministers.

The UK government’s Inclusive Transport Strategy “sets out the Government’s plans to make our transport system more inclusive, and to make travel easier for disabled people”.

The strategy also says that one of its five main themes is: “Improving physical infrastructure – ensuring that vehicles, stations and streetscapes are designed, built and operated so that they are easy to use for all.”

Accessible transport campaigner Doug Paulley said Network Rail’s decisions were “a disgrace”, and that he was now considering taking legal action over the Copmanthorpe plans.

He said its approach “puts to bed the idea that physical inaccessibility on the railway is due to ‘19th century architecture’.

“They’re building new inaccessible structures in 2023. This isn’t due to legacy.”

He added: “Once again, disabled people and our access needs are treated as totally unimportant.

“It is transparent that access has not been any serious consideration in developing this bridge, and it is such a massive insult. I am utterly enraged.

“This must not be allowed to happen.”

Another accessible transport campaigner, Sam Jennings, said the comment by Haines, which she spotted on his Linked In account, “confirms that while disabled people are tax-paying members of the public, we are deemed lesser right from the top down.

“This is why there is such an issue with disability discrimination – it’s cultural, from the top down in the rail industry, when chief executives celebrate inaccessible design and then the industry pushes back so hard when challenged.

“Public transport is for the public. We are all taxpayers (regardless of our incomes) and we should all have access to public infrastructure and services.

“Anything less than this is discrimination.

“The rail industry needs to realise it’s not the 1970s anymore – the world has changed and we all have a right to access transport and live our lives freely without being othered and excluded and #DisabledByTheRailway.”

Tony Jennings, co-chair of a rail accessibility panel, and a member of the Campaign for Level Boarding, said it was important that Network Rail was pushed on the issue, “else they may persevere with inaccessible design, which will exclude disabled people for decades, isn’t fit for purpose and is totally unacceptable”.

He said: “As a mobility scooter-user, I find it incredulous Network Rail are not adhering to their own inclusive design principles.”

Network Rail claims its designs follow principles such as putting people “at the heart of the design process, ensuring they can use the railway safely, easily and with dignity”, that it “acknowledges diversity and difference and is responsive to people’s needs”, “offers choice where a single design solution may not work for everyone” and “provides buildings and environments that are convenient and enjoyable for everyone”.

Jennings said: “Regrettably, they are treating equal access as an afterthought and are simply not listening to disabled people or recognising they too enjoy the countryside and that all terrain mobility aids exist.

“There are 50 accessible Miles without Stiles routes in the Lake District National Park that I enjoy.

“Why are disabled people’s equal access requirements being ignored in the Network Rail inclusive design process, resulting in social exclusion?”

Adrian Betteridge, from Wokingham walking and cycling group WATCH, who told DNS about the Wokingham plans, said: “It’s an appalling decision by Network Rail to try and build a new bridge at great expense which is unusable by anyone who may have difficulty with steps.

“They are choosing to ignore their own corporate documentation which recognises the importance of accessibility to make a small saving, on a bridge which they claim will be in place for the next 120 years.

“Wokingham Borough and Town Councils are both willing to facilitate and contribute towards an accessible bridge, and it’s good that Network Rail have engaged in discussions about this, but they have yet to make an unequivocal statement that they are equally committed.  This kind of behaviour belongs in the past.”

Network Rail declined to explain how installing inaccessible new footbridges complies with the government’s Inclusive Transport Strategy.

It also declined to clarify its chief executive’s social media comment, or to confirm that it believes it has no duty to improve access when replacing an inaccessible bridge, how it justifies this position, and how many new inaccessible bridges it is planning to install.

But a Network Rail spokesperson said: “Network Rail is a big, responsible company that must follow current legislation and is reviewing current proposals for new footbridges.

“The new ‘flow bridges’ will have a fully accessible version before any roll-out of the production model.

“At the moment we have one prototype installed to test proof of concept.”

A Department for Transport (DfT) spokesperson declined to say if the government was concerned about the series of inaccessible bridges Network Rail was building.

But he said: “Public bodies are required to take due regard of the needs of people who share protected characteristics, including disability, under the public sector equality duty.”

DfT has also made it clear that the rail industry has a legal obligation to meet current accessibility requirements whenever it installs, renews or replaces infrastructure and that it will work with the Office of Rail and Road and take enforcement action if these standards are not met.

16 February 2023

 

 

Campaigners to quiz Paris 2024 on disabled fans’ safety after Champions League ‘disgrace’

A disabled-led charity is to write to organisers of next year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris to raise concerns about the safety of disabled visitors, following a damning report into last year’s UEFA Champions League final.

An independent review into the “disgraceful” events around last May’s final between Liverpool and Real Madrid at the Stade de France found that failings by football’s European governing body UEFA and French authorities caused “suffering for many fans” through severe congestion and almost turned into a “mass fatality catastrophe”.

But the Stade de France is also due to host next year’s athletics events at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as the Olympics rugby sevens and the two closing ceremonies, while the stadium will also be hosting 10 matches, including the final, at this year’s Rugby World Cup.

Level Playing Field (LPF), the disabled-led charity which represents disabled supporters in England and Wales, told Disability News Service yesterday (Wednesday) that it would write to the organisers of both the Rugby World Cup and Paris 2024 to seek reassurances.

Owain Davies, LPF’s chief executive, said: “Like any situation where a negative experience happens, there is rightly a fear will it happen again.”

He said LPF will ask the organisers of both events to “learn from the unfortunate events in May 2022”.

The independent review (PDF), published this week, cleared Liverpool fans of responsibility for the events before, during and after last May’s final, even though they had previously been blamed for the dangerous levels of congestion by UEFA, French ministers and others.

French police used tear gas and pepper spray on locals and football supporters near the ground, and “failed to protect supporters from widespread street violence in the vicinity of the stadium”, the review found.

Many disabled fans attended the game, and among those giving evidence to the review was Liverpool Disabled Supporters Association (LDSA), which provided “harrowing personal statements” from disabled supporters.

Among their concerns were a lack of signage about accessible gates and priority lanes, which meant disabled fans had to join the regular queues at the turnstiles, while there were also “multiple reports of stewards not being aware of accessible services at the stadium”.

The tear gas and pepper spray used by police in several areas outside the stadium affected many disabled fans, says the review report, with some ending up separated from their companions and “placed into extremely dangerous, vulnerable, and frightening situations”.

In his evidence, Ted Morris, LDSA’s chair, said: “In my opinion, it was only thanks to the restraint and actions shown by [Liverpool] supporters… that a major disaster and probably a death were averted. No one in authority helped our disabled supporters.

“The saddest thing about this is that our disabled fans have arrived in Paris to attend a football festival, but at that very moment, they are in the middle of a carnival of horrors, which will leave them with long-term mental scars.”

Daniel Seaman, who is blind, and his wife Kate, fled the ground before the end of the match and heard what they thought was a gun firing and witnessed bottles flying through the air.

They found themselves in an underpass which the police had blocked at one end, and then felt the crowd pushing against them from behind.

Kate Seaman told the review: “We both admitted afterwards that [the Hillsborough disaster] was all that was in our minds.

“We both had thoughts that we were not getting out of that underpass alive.”

Morris said the authorities had “treated disabled fans like animals” and the treatment they received “will be to the eternal shame of all those in authority who were there to protect us, they were responsible for our safety, but they failed.

“It was a complete dereliction of duty.”

LDSA has raised multiple concerns about the treatment of disabled supporters, including inadequate transport; police methods “caused severe distress to disabled supporters, leaving them fearing for their lives”; crushes and crowd surges “left disabled supporters fearing for their lives”; a “complete lack of accessible signage”; no trained accessibility stewards on the entrance gates; and accessible toilets that were unfit for purpose.

LDSA also said that on arrival back at La Plaine Stade de France rail station, French police “indiscriminately gassed, and pepper sprayed disabled Liverpool fans who had been running for their lives”.

LDSA said in its statement that the “heavy-handed approach of the Police is a stain on France, and it is only because of the exemplary behaviour of Liverpool fans that there wasn’t a loss of life”.

The review panel said it agreed with the conclusions drawn by LDSA, and was “sympathetic to the comments made”.

In addition to its wider conclusions about the event, the review said the service provision for disabled supporters “fell far short of that which should reasonably have been expected” and that “UEFA failed to adequately ensure the event met its obligations toward disabled supporters”.

It said that the “severity and magnitude of the negative experiences of disabled supporters” at last year’s final was “beyond the capacity of this review to fully assess”, and it was clear that “such failures and experiences are not isolated” to last year’s final.

The review panel also said that the “continuing failure” to meet minimum standards for disabled supporters showed the need for “an urgent dedicated review” to address the improvements needed ahead of future UEFA events, including this year’s Champions League final.

Davies told DNS: “We hope that the organizers of the upcoming [Olympics and Paralympics] and Rugby World Cup take the situation seriously and ensure that the recommendations outlined in the report are considered and there are suitable plans in place which reflect this.

“We expect organisers to give assurances which will build back confidence for disabled fans.

“We are pleased however with how much detail the independent report has gone into with the experience of disabled fans and worked closely with Liverpool DSA in gathering this insight.

“As a charity our mandate is to cover events in England and Wales. We have been involved in the event through Liverpool’s participation in the Champions League final.

“We will share official access information in the build up to the events for traveling English and Welsh Fans.”

A Level Playing Field spokesperson said earlier: “In the 21st century, we should not expect there to be a shortfall in the service provided for disabled supporters; there is – quite rightly – an anticipatory expectation bestowed on service providers, which means they are required to deliver an inclusive, reliable, but most of all, safe matchday environment.

“None of these requirements were met.”

Following last year’s final, Level Playing Field called on UEFA to take its obligations as a service-provider seriously.

It said UEFA now needed to ensure there was “clear and meaningful engagement with all stakeholders, including disabled fans, to deliver these going forward to ensure that there is never a repetition of the events we saw at the Champions League final”.

Ted Morris also gave evidence on behalf of disabled Liverpool fans at a hearing last June as part of an inquiry by the French Senate, where he highlighted the “shocking and, at times, terrifying experience of disabled supporters”.

The Senate’s report also cleared Liverpool fans of blame.

In a statement published this week, Morris said: “One of the lessons that must be taken from this report is that in terms of making European football accessible, UEFA has much work to do.

“We ask that they work with us and seek our expertise to address these injustices and give young disabled supporters from all corners of Europe hope that one day they can follow their football team in the same way that non-disabled children can.

“Equality and fairness should not be a fight; it must be a right.

“In 2023 and with the knowledge of the terrifying experiences disabled supporters experienced in Paris, this is not and should not be an impossible dream.”

16 February 2023

 

 

Neurodivergent parents ‘often blamed for behaviours of autistic children’, says report

Neurodivergent parents and single mothers are frequently blamed for the behaviours of their autistic children, and even subjected to safeguarding inquiries, when they try to seek support from services, according to new research.

The report, based on a survey of more than 1,000 families of autistic children*, shows a “very real fear” among neurodivergent parents about disclosing to social services and other professionals that they are themselves autistic.

The findings suggest that safeguarding procedures, which can even lead to the child being placed in care, or a criminal investigation into the family, are more frequently being taken against lone mothers and neurodivergent parents than other parents surveyed.

Some of the parents who took part in the survey said their children had died while in inappropriate placements.

The authors say the blaming of parents for the difficulties their children are experiencing at home or school is a “widespread phenomenon” and appears to be “a systematic way of dealing with parents seeking support” from school staff.

They say it has created “a climate of real fear among parent carers”.

The report, Parental Blame and the Pathological Demand Avoidance Profile of Autism, focuses on the experiences of parents with autistic children who are believed to have pathological demand avoidance (PDA), which “presents as an anxiety-driven extreme avoidance of everyday demands, and a need for control which permeates all aspects of daily life”**.

Many parents are blamed for their child’s refusal to attend school, are told to seek support with their own mental health because of their insistence that their child has PDA, or are accused of inventing or exaggerating their child’s needs, or of emotionally harming or neglecting their autistic child.

One of the authors of the report, Alice Running***, is an autistic woman and mother of two autistic children; the other, Danielle Jata-Hall, is the mother of three neurodivergent children.

Their research follows their own experiences of being “subjected to misaligned scrutiny and blame by their respective local authorities”.

Nearly nine in 10 (88 per cent) of those who responded to their survey said they felt blamed for some part of their child’s behaviour or lack of progress.

And more than half (53 per cent) said professionals supporting their child had raised concerns about their own mental health.

Many reported that they were consistently told by professionals that they were at fault for their child’s behaviours, with many parents told they were a safeguarding risk to the child.

The report found that this appeared to happen more often to single parents and those without a professional background.

One parent said: “Every time I raise an issue my child is having [or] request further support, the school directly reply with a safeguarding concern.”

A mother who responded to the survey said: “A teacher told the school my child was not autistic and that probably her mother was harming her.”

Another parent said: “I sent information to my child’s social worker who then turned it round saying I’m looking to label my child and cover up my abuse.”

Out of 1,016 respondents to the survey, 111 families (11 per cent of respondents) had been subjected to some element of formal safeguarding procedures which stated that they were at fault for their child’s behaviour.

These safeguarding procedures included child protection inquiries, children being placed in care, and even prosecution of the parents.

Of these 111 families, 64 were lone mothers, and 85 identified themselves as neurodivergent.

One said: “Dealing with the [special educational needs] team has broken us. All we want is provision which meets her needs, and we are treated as though everything is abuse… and not a basic right.”

Another said: “I feel as if they’ve pushed me to the brink… I started off being honest and transparent about all the difficulties… I wouldn’t tell them if my head was hanging off now.”

More than half of the parents and carers who responded to the survey themselves identified as neurodivergent, and of those who chose not to reveal that status to the professionals working with their child, three-fifths (59 per cent) said they would fear repercussions from those professionals if they did so.

Running and Jata-Hall say their findings show the need for improved education among professionals about both neurodivergent parents and autistic children with PDA.

Running said: “There have been some devastating stories shared with us.

“In some instances, mothers have had their children removed from their care, and in others, children have died whilst in inappropriate placements.

“There is a climate of fear amongst families with autistic-PDA children, with many being too scared to ask for the disability support their children are entitled to.

“Families are experiencing real trauma because of engaging with support services.”

*More than 90 per cent of respondents were from the UK; the authors also point out that, due to the survey design and how it was publicised, families who have been subjected to parental blame may have felt more motivated to take part than those who have not

**More than 98 per cent of respondents said they believed their autistic child had PDA

***Alice Running writes about autism, and blogs at www.theautvocate.wordpress.com, and her book, Helping Your Child with PDA Live a Happier Life, is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Danielle Jata-Hall blogs at www.pdaparenting.com and is the co-author of the children’s book I’m Not Upside Down, I’m Downside Up: Not a Boring Book About PDA

16 February 2023

 

 

Disabled citizens produce ideas for more accessible communities

Disabled people have developed a series of solutions to address the daily discrimination caused by the inadequate, inaccessible and unsafe infrastructure they face as they move around their communities.

Among solutions across nine key areas are calls for long-term funding to maintain and improve pavements; an end to pavement parking; and improved access to mobility aids.

These and other solutions are included in the new Disabled Citizens’ Inquiry report, the result of a six-month inquiry led by the walking and cycling charity Sustrans, in partnership with the disabled people’s organisations Transport for All (TfA).

The solutions to address barriers disabled people face when walking and wheeling around their local community were developed in two-day workshops of disabled people, and tested with experts, many of whom were also disabled.

Their ideas were then put through an Ipsos survey to nearly 1,200 disabled people across the UK.

Among other solutions they produced are improvements to walking and wheeling crossing points across roads and cycle paths; better engagement with disabled people around walking and wheeling policy and practice; and more accessible digital wayfinding and journey planning tools.

They also call for improved access to off-road routes such as canal towpaths, routes through green spaces and the National Cycle Network (which is looked after by Sustrans); and improved integration of walking and wheeling routes with public transport hubs.

And they say disabled people should have a choice to live within easy walking or wheeling distance of services and amenities, with the survey finding that 88 per cent of disabled people believe a planning system which ensures more essential services within walking or wheeling distance of where people live would help them to walk or wheel more.

One of the disabled people who took part in the workshops, Dennis Queen, from Manchester, said: “Although access to buses, trams and trains in Manchester has improved, nobody’s thought about how you get to them from your house.

“We need honesty and dialogue to understand that it’s not just about the accessibility of buildings and buses, it’s about how we get to them in the first place.”

Another of the workshop participants told the inquiry, which was funded by the charity Motability*: “You’ve got to take a whole approach.

“It’s one thing to set a flat fare [for buses] but if you can’t physically get to the bus stop because you’ve got a mobility impairment then service levels and everything else don’t matter.

“Your public transport journey starts the minute you […] leave your house.”

The survey found two-fifths of disabled people (41 per cent) often experience problems reaching their destination because of the accessibility of the environment around them when walking or wheeling, increasing to 55 per cent of those with mobility impairments or learning difficulties, 58 per cent of deaf or hard-of-hearing people, and 64 per cent of those who are blind or visually-impaired.

The survey also found that nearly one in six disabled people cannot access the mobility aid they need to walk or wheel, with disabled people of colour almost twice as likely (27 per cent) to be affected compared with disabled white people (14 per cent).

And more than half of disabled people (52 per cent) said the rising cost of living was affecting their ability to make essential journeys to places such as shops, healthcare services, education or work.

Caroline Stickland, TfA’s chief executive, said: “Transport for All’s role was to ensure that disabled people’s voices were at the heart of this ground-breaking inquiry.

“From co-designing the study, to facilitating pan-impairment workshops, to generating recommendations, disabled people were involved at every stage.

“Not only does this give the government a uniquely clear and actionable picture of what we as disabled people need to make walking and wheeling more accessible, but it also provides a blueprint for how our community must be engaged with every mode of transport going forward.”

Xavier Brice, chief executive of Sustrans, said: “Our report clearly demonstrates that understanding the barriers disabled people experience getting around their neighbourhoods is imperative in creating an equitable society.

“Putting disabled people at the centre of discussions about how we plan and create spaces where we can all move around easily and safely is vital.

“The UK government must listen and take action to create places planned around people, not cars.”

*The charity Motability is a Disability News Service subscriber

16 February 2023

 

 

Disabled people ‘at the heart’ of new accessible transport centre

Disabled people are “at the heart” of a pioneering new centre that will research and develop accessible transport solutions, its launch event heard this week.

The new National Centre for Accessible Transport (NCAT) aims to improve the accessibility and reliability of road, rail and air transport for disabled people.

Its research and agenda will be led by disabled people, and it aims to amplify the voices of disabled people in all its decision-making.

The project is led by Coventry University, alongside the disabled-led Research Institute for Disabled Consumers (RiDC), the charity Designability, innovation accelerator Connected Places Catapult, cross-party thinktank Policy Connect and engineering consultancy WSP UK.

They have been awarded £20 million over seven years by the charity Motability* to develop and run the centre, which is based at the university’s National Transport Design Centre.

The new centre aims to transform the sector’s understanding of disabled people’s experiences of transport, through carrying out research and developing accessible transport solutions.

Stephanie McPherson-Brown, a disabled postgraduate researcher at NCAT who is researching disabled people’s experiences of public transport, particularly those with reduced mobility, told yesterday’s (Wednesday) launch event: “I have never felt like I could take my independence for granted and it’s something that’s very important to me, but also comes with a lot of challenges.”

She said the impact of inaccessible transport affects not just getting to work, or school, or the hospital, but also the ability to socialise, see friends and “to be spontaneous just like everyone else”.

She said: “I live in Scotland, so there’s so much on my doorstep and it should be accessible to me to just say I’m going to be completely spontaneous today and go somewhere that I want to go.

“Those are the things that really help to improve things like social inclusion and to harbour a sense of self-esteem.”

She said it was important that the centre’s work was being led by disabled people.

She added: “I just feel I can’t actually describe how important this work is and the honour I feel to be a part of it, and also the excitement to just see it grow.”

Professor Paul Herriotts, NCAT’s director, told the launch event that there were “world-class people in user-centred design” at the university, and he added: “What we have found is that it is critical to put users at the heart of the design and engineering process.

“When we work with the end users from day one, and understand their needs and wants and abilities, and then work with them to co-create solutions, then we will have successful outcomes.”

RiDC, which specialises in inclusive research involving disabled consumers, will play a key role in ensuring that disabled people are at the heart of the centre’s work and shape “accessible transport solutions”.

This will include developing and managing a new Community for Accessible Transport, a pan-impairment panel of disabled people which will help set the centre’s agenda by providing evidence and insight through surveys, focus groups, testing, and research design.

Dr Phil Friend, chair of RiDC, said ahead of the launch: “We know, from our research and lived experience, how crucial travel is to being able to live independent and fulfilling lives.

“NCAT has been developed to ensure that it is disabled people themselves who advise on the solutions and services they need in this area.

“Our role in the coalition is to provide high quality research from the lived experience of disabled people – which will inform decision-making in UK government, industry and civil society.”

The disabled peer and accessible transport campaigner Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson said before the launch that it was a “really important endeavour”, and that she hoped it would “challenge the status quo and ensure disabled people have the same right to travel as everybody else”.

She said there had been some positive changes to inclusive transport in her lifetime, but it “has not gone far enough”.

Research by Motability (PDF) has found that disabled people make an average of 38 per cent fewer trips than non-disabled people – with an average of 20 journeys a week for non-disabled people, compared with about 12 for disabled people – with no reduction in this gap over the past decade.

Motability’s analysis shows that completely closing this gap for disabled people in the UK would deliver benefits worth about £72 billion a year.

Rachael Badger, director of performance and engagement at Motability, said: “While some progress has been made in terms of making transport more accessible, we want to see that gap closing, and we want to see change on a larger scale to make transport more inclusive.”

*Motability, the charity which oversees the company that runs the disabled people’s car scheme, is a Disability News Service subscriber

16 February 2023

 

 

Council must make ‘radical’ improvements to housing, after trio of cases

An ombudsman has called for “radical” improvements to a local authority’s housing policies after three cases in which it failed two disabled tenants and a child with a damp and mould allergy.

The Housing Ombudsman spoke out this week just a year after it published a special report into the same council, which called for action on a “myriad of issues” following concerns about complaint handling and a series of formal investigations.

The ombudsman has made five severe maladministration findings against Labour-run Lambeth council, across the three latest cases.

In one case, the parent of a child with a damp and mould allergy reported that mould had formed after a bathroom leak, but the council repeatedly failed to carry out the repairs.

The mould caused her child’s skin to crack and bleed due to an eczema flare up.

In the second case, contractors carrying out delayed ground-floor adaptations left the disabled resident without a functioning bath or shower for three weeks, while he needed buckets of water to flush away waste, and he and his son were left with no taps in the bathroom.

The third case saw a resident with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia left without heating and hot water for a “significant period” during the winter – exacerbating their pain – although it is not clear how long this lasted because of record-keeping failures.

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “It is horrific that time and again we hear that disabled people are living in uninhabitable housing.

“Where this is public sector or arms-length management housing, it beggars belief that local authorities are not keeping housing stock in fit repair and its conditions are actively exacerbating people’s impairments and poor health.

“Nobody should be living in damp or cold premises or premises with black mould.

“Councils need to place a higher priority on ensuring that tenants are safe in their housing.

“And national government needs to ensure that councils have the funding to do this.”

Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman, said: “The distress and inconvenience experienced by its residents was considerable, and some actions were disrespectful of residents and lacked empathy for the impact on them.

“It is critical for the landlord to make changes to prevent similar failings affecting other residents.”

He said there had since been “constructive and positive engagement” from the council’s senior leadership, but he added: “I recognise it will take time to embed change and expect it to continue to use the learning from our special report and these cases to radically improve services for residents.

“I also welcome the landlord’s response on its learning from these cases and the changes being made to improve its service.

“I would encourage other landlords to consider the learning the cases offer for their own services.”

Lambeth council said it had been “working intensively with the Housing Ombudsman over several months to resolve the issues he has raised with us.

“We are committed to tackling any issues raised, to ensure we provide the best possible service to all our tenants.

“In the three cases identified by the Housing Ombudsman today, we fully accept that the service we provided fell below our usual standards.

“We have apologised to the tenants for this and, in line with the judgement, we have paid compensation in recognition of the inconvenience and frustration these tenants have experienced.

“We have also resolved the original problems reported at each property.”

The council said it had “invested hundreds of millions of pounds in improving our council homes and estates in recent years” and would “ensure that we learn the lessons from these cases to improve the service provided to all tenants in the future”.

16 February 2023

 

 

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

GPs will be urged not to sign people off work in a bid to cut long-term sickness in next month’s budget, it is claimed. Insiders claim Jeremy Hunt and top officials are looking at ways to cut the number of people on long-term sickness following the Covid pandemic. But it has sparked alarm that people with conditions like Long Covid will be forced back into work when they are not well enough. According to The Telegraph, the Treasury and Department for Work and Pensions are investigating ways of driving down sickness figures, with 2.3 million signed off with long-term conditions last summer: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-hunt-planning-tell-gps-29226709

A disabled woman says she feels imprisoned and forgotten after care staff shortages led to her losing her independence. Anna Trotter, 35, was told she would be moved to a care home for two weeks as a temporary measure. Yet over four months later she is still there. Anna had been living at home with the help of domiciliary care workers who visited her four times a day for half an hour each time. The agency contracted by the NHS to provide the care workers found it was financially unviable, due to the lack of other service-users in the area: https://news.sky.com/story/woman-says-she-feels-imprisoned-after-carer-shortage-forces-her-into-care-home-12808891

A stroke survivor was threatened with court action after refusing to pay a £3,185 homecare bill, as he alleged he received as little as 10 minutes care on visits supposed to last 45 minutes. Adrian Robson took a stand over the care arranged by North Yorkshire County Council which he says left him uncleaned after using the toilet and has caused his wife to all but give up work to care for him. The case comes amid growing concern about England’s strained care system: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/09/he-was-still-dirty-stroke-survivor-fights-homecare-bill-over-visit-lengths

The lives of disabled employees are at risk due to a lack of knowledge on evacuation procedures in the workplace, a disabled campaigner has said. Sarah Rennie called for clear government guidance and codes of practice for businesses to ensure the safety of their mobility-impaired employees as well as site visitors. Her comments came after the findings from a survey of UK businesses suggested a lack of awareness and preparation for the evacuation of mobility-impaired members of staff: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/government-grenfell-tower-west-midlands-high-court-b2281606.html

16 February 2023

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 07:43
Apr 082022
 

The managed migration, or Move to UC as it is now called, is the process by which claimants of legacy benefits will be moved onto universal credit even if their circumstances have not changed.  It is a very risky move as it involves a wide range of claimants, notably disabled people claiming Income-based Employment and Support Allowance.  The DWP has recognised these risks in the 2019 UC Programme Board Members documents released by DWP thanks to John Slater’s perseverance[1]:

“The overwhelmingly common thread running through these themes is a concern that, in moving people over from legacy benefits, they will fall between the cracks and suffer hardship as a result. This stems from two primary worries:

  • That DWP will send letters that claimants will ignore or not understand and no-one will be ready to support them and;
  • That when claimants fail to act on a ‘notification’ from DWP, their benefits will be stopped and they will be made vulnerable or more vulnerable as a result” [2]

Lately there have been some very worrying developments in this area. We learnt that the DWP’s Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2022 remove the 10,000 migration cap and the requirement for scrutiny of the managed migration[3].

This has been a concern for the Social Security Advisory Committee:

The Chair noted that, while the Committee was content with many of the proposals, it had identified some concerns – in particular on the effect of regulation 9 which removed the 10,000 cap on migration notices – on which it intended to write to the Secretary of State, together with some potential mitigations for her consideration. The Committee would await a response to those concerns before completing the statutory scrutiny process”.

And

The proposed regulation 9 has the effect of removing the cap on the number of migration notices (10,000) that could be issued to existing claimants on legacy benefits and the associated Ministerial commitment to report back to Parliament before proceeding further. The main conclusion from our scrutiny of these regulations was that there is a need to consider further the potential consequences of regulation 9, and we would encourage you to retain the cap”. [4]

 Meanwhile in 2021, a new tranche of UC guidance has been deposited in the House of Commons library, and the document “safeguarding” had the following sentence removed from previous guidance: “Universal Credit has a responsibility to ensure that anyone who accesses our service and benefits can do so safely”[5]

Finally, the following has to come to light in the past few weeks.

First the DWP has confirmed that the 2019 Prime Minister Implementation Unit’s (PMIU) report: How effective is support for vulnerable Universal Credit claimants? will stay redacted[6].

This document was supposed to identify the gaps in support for vulnerable people, the remedial actions and how this work was now being taken forwards. This was first covered in November 2021 by DNS [7]

What was not redacted in the report was the decision/recommendation.

“Decision / Recommendation 7.  (UC) Programme Board is asked to note and comment on the report and support the joint work to progress the recommendations moving forwards. We seek Programme Board agreement to task the Complex Needs Steering Group with tracking and implementing the recommendations of the PMIU report” [8]

 Keep in mind that this document was written in October 2019. On the 22 March 2022, Labour MP Karen Buck asked the following question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 28 April 2021 to Question 185273, if she will place copies of the (a) agendas, (b) papers and (c) minutes of meetings of her Department’s Universal Credit Complex Needs Steering Group in the House of Commons Library.

A reminder here that in its 2019 report, the PMIU and the UC Programme Team was asking the UC Programme Board’s agreement to task the Universal Credit Complex Needs Steering Group with tracking and implementing the recommendations of the PMIU report (which have all been redacted).

The answer from DWP to Karen Buck is mind-blowing.

“The departments Complex Needs Steering group was disbanded in 2019, any documents relating to it have been destroyed in line with DWP document retention policy”. [9]

In summary, a report written in October 2019 evaluating the effectiveness of support for vulnerable Universal Credit claimants was almost totally redacted, except for its recommendation that the UC Programme Board agree that the tracking and the implementation of the PMIU report was tasked to a Complex Needs Steering Group which was disbanded in ………2019.  And this at the time when the managed migration with all the risks associated for vulnerable claimants would have started if it had not been for Covid.

Was the Steering Group already disbanded when the PMIU report was written and the meeting took place, or was it disbanded between October and December 2019, just after the meeting?  Who took the decision and who knew about it?

And if the Steering Group was still in existence at the time the report was published, was there enough time to implement the (redacted) recommendations within 2 months?  It is impossible to know as all the documents related to the Steering Group were destroyed.

There are a certain number of clues as to why this is happening.

  • From the 2019 UC Board papers, we know that the DWP miscalculated the number of legacy benefit claimants to be moved to UC. Their number was much higher than forecasted and the decision was taken to extend the managed migration until end of 2024. This had obvious cost implications.There are no reasons to think that the pandemic changed this situation. Although the end of 2024 deadline has been maintained, the number of legacy benefit claimants being moved onto UC is not capped anymore, which means that the migration towards UC can be done more speedily and without scrutiny of the consequences, in order to limit the costs.[10] [11]

Let’s not forget either that the current status of the UC programme is still Amber, and that the above measures might also have been required to protect the already very shaky business case.

  • Reputational risks: The UC Board papers show that their members are well aware of the reputation of UC among legacy claimants and of their reluctance to claim it. Although the DWP will initially adopt an approach aimed at convincing claimants to claim UC, it recognised that for some claimants, benefits will need to be stopped in order to force them onto UC. The lack of scrutiny in that case, is essential to prevent the migration to be stalled by concerns about negative consequences, especially for the most vulnerable claimants. “We understand from evidence that some claimants will not move without stopping legacy benefits but we want to understand how far we can go with the “who knows me” model to avoid this as far as possible”.  [12]

Finally, some of the issues can be attributed to the UC Senior Responsible Owner :

  • His ideological inability  to recognise structural flaws in the UC system,
  • His unwillingness to accommodate the access needs of those who are unable to navigate it,
  • and his contention that critics of UC focus too much on the hardest to help, who for him account for a minority, while the majority of claimants benefit, means that the needs and safety of vulnerable claimants are unlikely to be met during the managed migration, and that risks associated to the managed migration are unlikely to be recognised. [13]

In conclusion, what we are seeing here, is the incremental removal of safeguards for people who need the highest protection. While most working claimants on UC are able to adjust their behaviour to a drop in income by working more hours or finding a better job, and to navigate the complexity of the UC system, disabled people on legacy benefits will be totally reliant on the money they receive from the government, subjected to a harsher regime with a highest level of scrutiny and they will receive the support that the DWP deems necessary, rather than as a response tailored to their individual needs. The removal of safeguards and the lack of transparency in how this migration is managed show the direction of travel.

 

For a summary of all the issues pertaining to DWP difficulties to identify and support properly vulnerable claimants, refer to this FOI request and its associated request for internal review[14]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] https://depositedpapers.parliament.uk/depositedpaper/2283670/files?page=1

[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1064459/ssac-minutes-8-december-2022.pdf (see Annex D)

[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1064459/ssac-minutes-8-december-2022.pdf (see Annex D)

[4] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1064459/ssac-minutes-8-december-2022.pdf (see section: Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2022)

[5] https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2021-0349/126_Safeguarding_v3_0.pdf

[6] https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/question/139261/universal-credit

[7] https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-blanks-out-entire-report-on-support-for-vulnerable-universal-credit-claimants/

[8] https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2021-0836/54H-UCPB_22-10-19-Paper7a-How_Effective_is_Support.pdf

[9] https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/question/147023/universal-credit-complex-needs-steering-group

[10] https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2021-0836/30B-UCPB_16-07-19-Paper1-_Final_PB_Mins_25_June_2019.pdf (see section SRO update)

[11] https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2021-0836/39B-UCPB_24-09-19-Paper1_-_Final_PB_Mins_16_July_2019.pdf (see UC Plan Update)

[12] https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2021-0836/7G-UCPB_16-04-19-Paper6-Move_to_Universal_Credit_Update.pdf (point 19)

[13] http://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2021-0348/47_B_Paper1_UCPB_Minutes_210219.pdf

[14] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/how_effective_is_the_support_for#incoming-2000449

 

 Posted by at 19:31
Mar 032022
 

New concerns over equality watchdog as it scraps disability committee
The equality watchdog has secretly decided to scrap its committee of disabled advisers, without attempting to consult on the move with disabled people and their organisations, Disability News Service (DNS) has learned.
The decision by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and its failure to consult with disabled people’s organisations over the move, will place a further question-mark over its prestigious “A” status as a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI), awarded by the United Nations.
There are also questions over whether it carried out an equality impact assessment of the move to scrap the disability advisory committee (DAC).
If it failed to do so, it may have breached its duties under the Equality Act, despite its position as Britain’s national equality body.
The committee’s terms of reference state that its work will end on 31 March 2022, but it has already had its term extended once, and the commission could have extended it again.
Its work is being discontinued at a time of increased concerns about attacks on disabled people’s rights, and when the UN is preparing for a public examination of the UK government’s progress in implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
At last July’s meeting of the committee, members made it clear that there had been “significant regression” in disabled people’s rights under the UN convention.
EHRC has made no public announcement on why it decided not to extend the life of the committee, which was set up five years ago “to bring disability expertise to inform and advise the Commission’s decision making across all its work”.
DNS only learned of the decision when reading the minutes of last July’s meeting of the committee on the EHRC website.
Its final meeting will take place next week, on 8 March.
Several members of the committee approached by DNS this week failed to respond to questions.
But Simone Aspis, a DAC member, said she was concerned at the loss of the committee.
She told DNS that the committee’s role was even more important “given disabled people have experienced marginalisation as a result of COVID-19 and the continuing cuts to disabled people’s rights.
“They are the most disadvantaged group of people.
“How is the EHRC at a strategic level going to be able to move things forward without a consistent voice of disabled people?
“I am very disappointed by the handling of this decision.”
Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), said ROFA had “many concerns” about the decision to scrap the committee, the commission’s “only structural engagement body with disabled people”.
He said it appeared to be “a strange move when other public bodies are embracing co-production”.
But he also highlighted “wider concerns about the independence and effectiveness of the EHRC and its ability to protect the human rights of disabled people”.
He said: “Successive Conservative-led governments since 2010 have slashed their funding, destroyed capacity to take effective legal action and have made political appointments to key positions.”
He said ROFA had previously had “good engagement and regular meetings” with EHRC’s lead staff on disability, but these ended about four years ago.
He also pointed to the commission’s failure to act on mounting evidence of links between the Department for Work and Pensions and the deaths of disabled benefit claimants.
Harrison said: “It is our opinion that the EHRC is no longer independent of government or an effective human rights body.”
Rachel Perkins, the committee’s chair, declined to comment on how she thought the loss of the committee would impact on disabled people, and why she and the committee had not spoken out on its closure.
EHRC had refused to say by noon today (Thursday) if it had carried out an equality impact assessment of its decision to scrap the committee, why there had been no consultation over the move with DPOs and disabled people outside the committee, and why it had failed to state publicly that the committee was being scrapped.
But an EHRC spokesperson said in a statement: “We consider the impact on equality and good relations in all our decision-making, in line with our public sector equality duty.
“Our disability advisory committee is a time-bound committee, which was designed to strengthen our understanding of disability rights.
“The terms of reference for the disability advisory committee, which are published on our website, have always made clear that the committee was a time-bound structure.
“It was extended to support the delivery of our 2019-2022 strategic plan.
“Disability, to date, has been the only protected characteristic with this dedicated advisory function.
“Stakeholder engagement with other representative groups has taken place via less formal structures.”
She added: “Thanks to the excellent work carried out by the committee, supporting us on a number of key achievements such as the Mental Health Act, the National Disability Strategy and the social care inquiry, we now feel better equipped to take forward the work it has been assisting with, and to bring engagement with disabled people in line with our wider practices.
“Under our 2022-2025 strategic plan, we remain committed to improving engagement with stakeholders and will be making a formal commitment in due course to our continued engagement with disabled people.
“We very much look forward to continuing work that preserves the legacy of the disability advisory committee.”
3 March 2022

Hundreds of disabled parents lose out over universal credit ‘financial blackmail’
The government has been discriminating against hundreds of disabled parents who have been told they cannot claim vital financial support for their babies’ nutrition unless they transfer onto universal credit, NHS figures have revealed.
Disability News Service (DNS) has obtained the figures from NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), and they show that hundreds of disabled benefit claimants are being deprived of support worth hundreds of pounds a year – purely because they have not yet transferred onto universal credit.
DNS reported last month how a disabled mother-of-two accused the government of discriminating against claimants of legacy benefits*, after she was told she could only claim support through the Healthy Start programme if she agreed to transfer onto universal credit.
Allie Bennett-Cox, from Winchester, said that she believed the government was trying to force disabled people to switch to universal credit through “financial blackmail”.
The Healthy Start scheme provides vouchers for milk, fruit, vegetables, pulses and vitamins for pregnant women and parents with children aged up to four if they are claiming certain income-related benefits.
But the scheme only applies to pregnant mums receiving income-related employment and support allowance (ESA) until the moment they give birth, at which point they are no longer eligible for the vouchers, despite inaccurate information about eligibility on the government’s Healthy Start web page**.
Disabled mums must then move onto universal credit if they want to continue to receive financial support with their baby’s nutrition.
The NHS figures obtained by DNS show that more than 600 pregnant women who were receiving ESA were also receiving Healthy Start vouchers in December 2020.
But not a single ESA recipient with a child under four qualified for vouchers in December 2021, or indeed in December 2020.
Although many disabled parents who would in previous years have been receiving ESA are now eligible for Healthy Start because they are claiming universal credit, hundreds of others have not moved onto universal credit, often because they believe it would leave them worse off.
Those still on ESA are being prevented from receiving vouchers worth £442 a year for each child up to the age of one, and £221 for each child aged between one and four.
It appears to be part of the government’s continued push to force disabled people off legacy benefits such as ESA and onto universal credit, which could lead to them receiving a lower rate of benefits.
Last month, junior health minister Maria Caulfield told Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) did not know how many parents were affected by the decision not to allow claimants of legacy benefits access to the Healthy Start scheme.
Foxcroft said this week: “The Conservative government’s continued discrimination against parents in receipt of legacy benefits is immoral.
“It is unacceptable that they are effectively being blackmailed into transferring onto universal credit.
“It is also deeply concerning that ministers claim to hold no data on the number of parents who are affected by this, yet the NHS Business Services Authority has been able to obtain this information.
“This shows the government’s lack of respect for disabled people and the additional barriers they face. Proper support for disabled people is long overdue.”
Bennett-Cox said this week that it was “hard to know where to begin to explain my dismay and frustration at how the situation is being dismissed by the government”, and that the figures showed again how the government was “so content to leave disabled people and particularly women behind”.
She said: “If you don’t think it will eventually be you they’ll leave behind, you’re wrong.
“Some of us have absolutely nothing left, and still they cut.
“There’s a shocking complacency amongst the public and an attitude of ‘as long as it’s them and not me’, as though further disadvantaging needy children doesn’t have a ripple effect.”
A DHSC refused to explain how it justified its continuing refusal to allow disabled parents on income-related ESA to claim Healthy Start vouchers once their child had been born, and why Caulfield had been unable to produce the figures when NHSBA had been able to do so.
DHSC has previously suggested that the difference in treatment of ESA and universal credit claimants was due to historic legislation, and that the department kept the eligibility criteria under review.
It said again this week that it was reviewing the information about Healthy Start eligibility held on the government website to ensure it was accurate, more than a month after it was first alerted to the inaccuracy.
Research by DNS shows the scheme was introduced by the Labour government in 2006, to replace the Welfare Food Scheme that was brought in during the Second World War.
No changes in eligibility appear to have been made at the time, other than extending Healthy Start to all pregnant women under 18.
But the government’s legislation webpage also suggests that eligibility was extended by the Conservative government to many claimants of universal credit in 2016, although apparently not to those on income-related ESA.
The NHSBA figures show that the total number of individuals on the scheme with a child under four fell from about 270,000 in December 2016 to about 240,000 in December 2020 and again to about 206,000 in December 2021.
*Legacy benefits are those that are gradually being replaced by the new universal credit system
**The official NHS Healthy Start website has the correct information
3 March 2022

Citizens Advice silent over DWP gagging clause in £21 million agreement
Two national advice charities have refused to say if agreements they signed with the government to provide support to universal credit claimants contain gagging clauses that might prevent them publicly criticising the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
DWP announced in January that Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland would receive more than £21 million in funding to extend their agreement to provide support to people making a new claim for universal credit by another year.
When social welfare activist Frank Zola managed to secure copies of the original agreements they signed in 2018, they showed that both charities had agreed to sign gagging clauses that prevented them bringing DWP “unfairly” into “disrepute”.
By signing the documents, it meant Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland could not take “any actions which unfairly bring or are likely to unfairly bring [DWP’s] name or reputation and/or [DWP] into disrepute”.
But DWP has now rejected a freedom of information request by Disability News Service (DNS) to see the new grant agreements, claiming that they are “commercially sensitive”.
Both charities this week refused to say if the new agreements contained a similar gagging clause to those they signed in 2018.
They insisted in 2019 – when the existence of the gagging clauses emerged – and again this week that nothing in the grant agreements would prevent them speaking out when they wished to do so.
DNS reported in October 2018 how Citizens Advice refused to criticise DWP over four deaths linked to universal credit, just hours after their original £51 million funding had been announced at the Conservative party conference.
Disabled activists who spoke out in 2019 were highly critical of the decision to accept money from the government while agreeing to sign a contract that limited their ability to speak out against DWP policies.
One of them, Dr Jay Watts, said in 2019 that it was “simply bad psychology to argue that dissent on government policies which cause such human rights violations won’t be muted at best by the inherent and often unconscious desire not to bite the hand that feeds”.
Another, Rick Burgess, of Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts, said then that the clause would be “catastrophic for CA’s integrity and for people who need defending from the DWP, and for open democratic oversight of government policies”.
He said this week: “The [CA] leadership have followed a tragic route of degraded accountability and transparency, which is common and deliberate when government contract corporate charity to deliver public services.
“By hiding behind ‘commercial sensitivity’ the DWP make the Citizens Advice Bureaux accomplices in ongoing welfare abuse.
“Bureau workers should demand new leadership with integrity.”
DWP refused to comment this week on its failure to release the grant agreements.
Citizens Advice refused to say if its new agreement with DWP included the gagging clause.
But a spokesperson said: “Our top priority is to support those who come to us for help.
“We’ve given advice on universal credit to more than half a million people since the pandemic began.
“We use these frontline insights to continue to campaign for changes to the benefits system, ensuring it works better for people we help.
“Nothing in the Help to Claim grant agreement prevents us from continuing to raise our evidence publicly about universal credit.”
She said that decisions on publishing government contracts “are made by the government”, and she added: “Citizens Advice does not oppose the publication of any information in the DWP grant agreement that is not commercially sensitive.”
She said the charity also had a number of other grant arrangements with the government to provide services like the Witness Service and Pension Wise which “do not compromise its independence”.
Citizens Advice Scotland also refused to say if its new agreement with DWP included the gagging clause.
Derek Mitchell, its chief executive, said: “Citizens Advice Scotland would never sign an agreement which would prevent us speaking out on behalf of people we represent.
“Nothing in this grant agreement stops us from raising concerns about the impact universal credit is having on the people who turn to us for help.”
He said the charity “extensively campaigns” on universal credit, and had called for the £20 per week uplift to be retained, had criticised sanctions and had called for extensions to the work allowance, as well as raising concerns about the five-week wait for the first payment for new claimants.
3 March 2022

Thinktank launches disability politics report without revealing its own Tory links
A new disability policy thinktank has launched a report that calls for action to tackle the under-representation of disabled people in politics, but without revealing its own close links to the Conservative party.
The Disability Policy Centre (DPC) describes itself as an “independent” thinktank, without admitting that all three of its founding directors are closely linked to the party.
Both of the authors of the Breaking Down Barriers report – DPC directors Celia Hensman and Chloe Schendel-Wilson – currently have roles within the Conservative party, but neither of those positions are mentioned in the report.
Hensman fails to make any mention in the report of her current role as an executive of the Conservative Disability Group, or her past role as manager of Richmond Park and North Kingston Conservatives, or indeed any links to the party.
Schendel-Wilson mentions in the report that she was previously head of outreach for the Conservative party, but she does not say that her current role is as co-founder of the party’s Abilty2Win campaign, which is designed to help more disabled Conservatives into elected office.
DPC’s third director was Mustafa Tariq Mohammed, whose company Genix Healthcare runs a string of dental clinics, and who donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative party between 2013 and 2019, either personally or through companies he controls.
He resigned as a director in January, a few weeks after DPC’s links to the party emerged.
DPC refused this week to say which individuals or organisations fund its work, but Hensman said in a statement that DPC “value openness and transparency and will always continue to be so”.
Hensman said that neither she nor Schendel-Wilson were “hiding our membership of any political party, and like many others in the third sector who are involved in a political party, this does not preclude our ability to run a cross-party organisation”.
The DPC report includes a supportive comment from the disabled Labour peer Lord [David] Blunkett, who calls for investment in “practical and necessary measures, engaging and changing attitudes”.
But a spokesperson for Lord Blunkett told Disability News Service yesterday (Wednesday) that he had not previously been aware of DPC’s close links with the Conservative party, that he would “always encourage transparency” to “avoid suspicion of hidden agendas”, and that he was “concerned” about DPC’s lack of transparency.
She said that he would have supported the policy paper if DPC had been transparent about its connections with the Conservative party because “disability rights must, and should, transcend party political allegiances”.
But he declined to say if he regretted supporting the policy paper in the light of DPC’s failure to be transparent about its political connections.
Pauline Castres, a disabled activist and policy expert on disability, climate and global health, who has previously been critical of DPC’s lack of transparency, said: “A think tank that presents itself as independent must be able to fully disclose how it’s funded, especially when its founding members are so close to a political party.
“If the DPC really ‘values openness and transparency and will always continue to be so’ then they need to walk the walk, especially when they are so close to a political party whose record on disability rights is very poor to say the least.”
The report was launched this week with support from the minister for disabled people, Chloe Smith, who described it as “thought-provoking”.
The DPC report appears to mirror many of the findings of a government-funded report – Barriers to Elected Office for Disabled People – which was published last August and found that disabled people in England and Wales faced a “multitude” of barriers across the different stages of the political process, from activism and considering running for office, to the selection and election processes, and post-election.
Last year’s Barriers to Elected Office report conducted in-depth interviews with 45 disabled people who were MPs, former MPs, local councillors, prospective parliamentary candidates, local candidates, and those who had considered standing for election or had tried to get selected, for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, the Green Party, and as independents.
The long-awaited report was commissioned in December 2018 by the Government Equalities Office and published alongside the National Disability Strategy (NDS).
The new DPC report makes repeated positive references to the government’s NDS, without mentioning that it has been declared unlawful by the high court.
It also includes a lengthy section praising the government’s Disability Confident employment scheme, without highlighting that it has been widely criticised for its limited impact on increasing the number of disabled people in work.
DPC says it carried out a survey for its report, as well as interviews and group discussions.
Of those surveyed, 100 per cent agreed that political parties do not do enough to ensure that disabled people have the same opportunities as non-disabled people, while 100 per cent also agreed that the government was not doing enough to “plug the gap of the extra financial implications that are burdened onto disabled people” who wish to seek election at local or national level.
But Hensman had failed by noon today (Thursday) to say how many people took part in the survey, and how many of them were disabled people.
She said only that there had been an “overwhelming” response to the research, with “contributions from over 70 individuals”, and that there was participation from members of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP and Green parties, as well as independents.
Among the DPC report’s recommendation is for an “extensive review” of access in the Houses of Parliament, and a similarly “extensive review” of the accessibility of council buildings across the UK.
It also calls on the government to reinstate a funding scheme for disabled candidates for political office.
The government has already promised in its National Disability Strategy to introduce a new scheme from next month for disabled people seeking political office.
Successive Conservative-led governments have previously refused to set up a permanent fund.
The short-lived Access to Elected Office Fund (AEOF) was scrapped in 2015 and eventually replaced three years later with the temporary EnAble fund in response to a legal action taken by a trio of disabled politicians who warned that the failure to reopen AEOF breached the Equality Act.
AEOF had only been set up in 2012 following Liberal Democrat pressure on their Tory coalition partners; it funded disability-related costs for candidates in parliamentary and other elections, before it was closed by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election.
The EnAble fund ran from 3 December 2018 to 31 March 2020.
The DPC report also calls on political parties to report annually to the minister for disabled people on the measures they are taking to break down barriers to engagement for disabled people; carry out internal reviews on how to include and promote disabled members; and promote accessible campaigning methods.
3 March 2022

Government’s ‘unacceptable’ refusal to extend rights deadline after access failure
More than 40 disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have signed a letter to the justice secretary to ask why he waited until 12 days before the end of a consultation on the Human Rights Act to publish an “easy read” version.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) finally produced a document that it said was in easy read on 24 February, just 12 days before the consultation on the future of the act was due to end.
Disability and human rights organisations say the new document – a shorter, text-only version of the consultation – is not a genuine easy read document, and that it is “insufficient to the point of being insulting”.
They have also criticised the government’s failure to provide an audio version of the consultation document.
They have called on MoJ to extend the deadline to allow people with learning difficulties 12 weeks from the date when a “proper easy read version” is eventually published to respond to the consultation.
The consultation period is due to end on Tuesday (8 March).
The government has said it is committed to replacing the Human Rights Act with a new bill of rights, but disabled people have previously warned of the risk that the government’s bid to replace the act could be used to water down protections.
The human rights organisation Liberty described the latest proposals in December as a “blatant, unashamed power grab from a government that wants to put themselves above the law”.
The government’s proposals include plans to “restrain” the imposition and expansion of legal obligations on public bodies to protect rights, and to make it harder for people to challenge the government and public bodies over injustices.
The consultation document makes it clear that the government’s proposals are “far-reaching” and claims that they will “restore common sense to the application of human rights in the UK”.
Among the DPOs to have signed the letter – which has been coordinated by Liberty – are Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance, Disability Rights UK (DR UK), Inclusion London, Disability Sheffield, and People First (Self Advocacy).
Bethany Bale, DR UK’s policy and campaigns officer, said: “The fact that this consultation wasn’t made available in accessible formats until less than two weeks before the deadline is an unacceptable failure to uphold the public sector equality duty, as set out by the Equality Act.
“But more than that, it’s a clear and concerning message to disabled people that the government doesn’t want to hear our voices on this issue.
“We can assume from previous and current policies that whatever Human Rights Act reforms are implemented, disabled people will be disproportionately impacted.
“For a group whose rights are often already not met, it’s crucial that the government hold meaningful consultation with disabled people and DPOs on these proposed reforms.”
Martha Spurrier, Liberty director, said that to publish the easy read version of a “complex and hugely important consultation” with just 12 days left was “insulting” to all disabled people and meant it was now “virtually impossible” for many disabled people to respond, including those with learning difficulties who may need to arrange extra support to access and respond to the document.
She said: “This is typical of a government that is desperate to push through these plans without a proper and inclusive conversation, having already completely ignored the findings of a nine-month-long independent report.
“I urge the justice secretary to extend the deadline so that all disabled people have a full 12 weeks, not 12 days, to respond to this consultation that will have a huge impact on their basic human rights.”
Labour, the Greens and the Scottish National Party all criticised the government’s access failures.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said: “It’s staggering that the UK government thinks it’s OK to exclude disabled people from fully participating in consultation about the Human Rights Act.
“Human rights are precious and affect each and every one of us – the deadline needs to be extended so disabled people’s voices can be heard.”
The open letter to MoJ (PDF), sent this week to justice secretary Dominic Raab, says: “There was no reason for the consultation to be launched before provision was made that would enable everyone affected to take part in the process.
“There is certainly no reason why disabled people should now have only 12 days – or less – to respond to proposals that will have a direct impact on their lives.”
The letter adds: “Even with an easy read version, people with learning difficulties will need support to respond, which takes time to arrange and execute.
“Refusing to extend the deadline is refusing to enable people to take part.”
The MoJ says on its website that it is still “working with suppliers” to provide a proper easy read document.
MoJ told Disability News Service yesterday (Wednesday) that an audio version of the consultation document would be published this week, less than a week before the consultation period ends.
It also suggested that the reason for the delay in publishing the easy read version was that it had been let down by its suppliers
But it refused to say why ministers were not extending the deadline to take account of the delays in producing accessible versions, and whether it believed this was a breach of its Equality Act duties.
An MoJ spokesperson said: “We are working urgently to address delays caused by supplier issues and have published an interim version but apologise for the wait for a fully accessible document.”
3 March 2022

Child sexual abuse inquiry calls for tougher regulation of residential special schools
A major investigation by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has called for tougher inspection and oversight of residential special schools, after hearing how some teachers exploited their positions to groom and abuse disabled pupils.
A report on the investigation, which also examined sexual abuse that took place at residential specialist music settings and other schools, says it highlights “shocking and horrific” cases of abuse.
The report says many of those in positions of authority and responsibility had not been held to account for their failure to halt and prevent the abuse, while many perpetrators had not been brought to justice.
It says that disabled children are three times more likely than non-disabled children to experience sexual abuse.
But the report, which examines abuse that took place in England and Wales, says there have been relatively few convictions for sexual abuse of children in residential special schools because of their difficulties in disclosing the abuse and providing evidence.
It also warns of the “limited” advocacy services for disabled children in England and Wales, despite the importance of disabled children “having access to individuals independent of their schools who can listen to them and advocate for them”.
The report says this issue “has been raised a number of times before”.
When asked whether independent advocacy for disabled children needed to be looked at again, Dame Christine Lenehan, director of the Council for Disabled Children, told the inquiry: “I think it’s been looked at again, and again, and again in the last 20 years.
“I think the honest answer is that people won’t resource it effectively because they don’t see it as important enough.”
Victims and survivors of sexual abuse have told the inquiry that the combination of their impairments and their schools’ distance from their parental homes had made them particularly vulnerable.
The report also says that local authority oversight of the residential special school sector is “not sufficiently robust”.
Local authorities for the areas where residential special schools are located “sometimes lack information on these schools and the needs of their pupils”, while those councils that have placed disabled children in schools in other parts of the country “do not always visit pupils regularly”.
The report says that the size of the residential special school sector fell from 7,600 pupils boarding in residential special schools in England in 2010 to fewer than 4,000 pupils in 2019, largely because more children were attending local schools.
It says there is “broad consensus” between Ofsted – the education and care watchdog in England – the Care Inspectorate Wales, the Welsh government and Dame Christine that “changes to inspection and oversight of residential special schools were needed”.
Among the report’s recommendations, it calls for residential special schools in England and Wales to be inspected against tougher standards.
It also calls for an urgent review of relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) for children with special educational needs and disabilities in both mainstream settings and special schools in England and Wales.
And it says the Department for Education, covering England, and the Welsh government should reintroduce a duty on boarding schools and residential special schools to inform the relevant inspectorate of any allegations of child sexual abuse and other serious incidents.
Professor Alexis Jay, the inquiry’s chair, said: “Day and residential schools play a key role in keeping children safe from harm, but despite 20 years of enhanced focus on safeguarding they are not as safe for children as they should be.
“This must change.”
3 March 2022

Ministers break national strategy pledge by asking non-user-led charities to join taskforce
Ministers have broken a pledge made in their National Disability Strategy to set up a taskforce of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) that would help them access more government contracts, by allowing non-user-led charities to join the group.
The strategy pledged last July that the Cabinet Office would create a “Disability Commissioning Taskforce of disabled people’s user-led organisations to improve disability organisations’ access to government contracts”.
But information released to Disability News Service by the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act shows that at least three of the members of the new taskforce are organisations that are not run and controlled by disabled people.
Whereas DPOs such as Breakthrough UK, Disability Positive, Equal Lives and Disabled Motoring UK have been invited to join the taskforce, so have two of the largest non-user-led charities, Leonard Cheshire and Mencap.
Leonard Cheshire already has an annual income of about £150 million, while Mencap’s was more than £230 million in 2020-21.
Mencap’s business development manager Mark Capper was present at the taskforce’s first meeting in January, as was Leonard Cheshire’s chief executive Ruth Owen, although she is herself a disabled person.
Ministers have also allowed the British Association for Supported Employment (BASE) to join the taskforce.
BASE describes itself as the “national voice for providers of specialist employment support”, with members including councils, colleges, charities, providers of segregated employment, and charities.
Lynne Turnbull, chief executive of Disability Positive (formerly Cheshire Centre for Independent living), said she would be asking the government why non-DPOs were invited to the first meeting and to restrict future meetings solely to DPOs.
She said that DPOs often report how public bodies are commissioning private providers that do not represent disabled people and how this can “threaten our very existence”.
She said: “We were disappointed that despite the commitment from government for this taskforce to be ‘of disabled people’s user-led organisations’, meeting invitations had been widened to include national disability charities.
“However, I am pleased that the DPOs present were able to use the opportunity to reinforce the importance of co-designing services with disabled people and their representative organisations, and highlight some of the challenges that disabled people’s organisations face.”
Ben Reed, chief executive of Equal Lives, another of the DPOs that attended, said: “I was surprised to see certain large non-user-led providers put on an equal footing as DPOs.
“It would be interesting to know more about the process of how organisations invited were chosen to participate.”
A Cabinet Office spokesperson refused to explain how the government justified breaking its commitment in the national strategy.
But he said in a statement: “The majority of the Disability Commissioning Taskforce are disabled people’s user-led organisations (DPULOs).
“It is critical that the taskforce brings together a range of perspectives which is why members are also from organisations that work with DPULOs.
“The taskforce will work with the voluntary, community and social enterprise crown representative, Claire Dove, to identify and understand the barriers disability organisations face when trying to secure public sector contracts, and then propose solutions.”
The National Disability Strategy has already been declared unlawful by the high court, because a national consultation carried out while ministers were preparing the document was also found to be unlawful.
And in January, DNS revealed that at least six of the actions the government promised in the strategy would be carried out by the end of 2021 had not been completed, including action on tackling disability hate crime, the accessible housing crisis, disability employment and how the government engages with disabled people.
3 March 2022

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
A ground-breaking academic study examining whether benefit sanctions are linked to claimant ill-health, including mental illness and suicide, has been halted after ministers reneged on a longstanding promise to release sanctions data: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/mar/02/dwp-blocks-data-for-study-of-whether-benefit-sanctions-linked-to-suicide
A mother who starved her disabled daughter to death has been jailed for nine years and seven months. Debbie Leitch, 24, who had Down’s syndrome, died at her home in South Shore, Blackpool, on 29 August 2019. A post-mortem examination found she died of neglect and severe emaciation with extensive scabies skin infection: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-60507814
A woman has been left to sleep in her wheelchair several nights a week and remain in bed for the rest of it due to a lack of social care in her local area: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/28/sussex-woman-hove-forced-to-sleep-in-wheelchair-care-staff-shortage
Regulations requiring care workers to be vaccinated against Covid are being lifted from 15 March in England: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60575519
Prominent figures who have dyslexia have accused ministers of putting up more barriers for those with the condition, after proposals that would see anyone failing GCSE maths and English barred from securing higher education loans in England: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/26/student-loan-ban-will-hit-dyslexic-people-hard-says-benjamin-zephaniah
A man who can’t walk or speak fears losing his adapted car midway through a high court battle over his disability benefits: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-man-who-cant-walk-26352110
3 March 2022

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 Posted by at 22:25
Mar 032022
 

#CostOfLivingCrisis
#BYOB
Join Peoples Assembly for the second day of national Action on Saturday 5th March 2022 for actions across the UK highlighting the appalling cost of living crisis.
Disabled people have for many years been horrendously impacted by rising food costs, energy costs, social care charging, cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) Cuts to Universal Credit (UC) and benefit cuts and plunged further into poverty.
Many disabled people are having to find up to £200 per week for rising social care charges, unable to either afford to heat their homes or eat and now barely surviving or dying.
We demand a fully funded social care system, paid for by general taxation, free at the point of need. Please join the campaign against social care charging.
Please support the the National Day of Action on the Cost of Living Crisis on Saturday 5th March 2022 across the UK.
Details of the London Demo
If you live in London and wish to take part, the London demo will now be at Parliament Square, (moved from Downing Street)
Please Bring Your Own Bills (BYOB)
1pm
Parliament Square
London
SW1P 3BD
Nearest accessible London Underground station is Westminster
Jubilee Line is accessible from Platform to street level (station has lifts)
But If you can’t join the national, regional or local demonstrations on the cost of living crisis you’re shielding and unable to participate in street demos and wish to be included in the campaign and have your voice heard, please share your personal story of how you’ve been impacted by the increasing cost of living, it could be rising social care costs, rising energy costs, food costs, the rising costs of equipment you need to support you.
Screen readers: Meme Reads The Cost of Living Crisis. We Can’t Pay. Further Action – join us on the streets London 1pm Parliament Square Saturday 5th March
Full details the PeoplesAssemblyorg.uk
please send us your personal testimonies of how you’ve been affected by the increasing costs of everything.

 Posted by at 22:08
Sep 032021
 

Link: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/09/Universal%20Credit%20-%20HRW%20Letter%20to%20MPs%20-%20September%202021.pdf

Letter from Human Rights Watch to UK Parliamentarians regarding impending cut to social security support

2 September 2021

Cut to Universal Credit would breach UK’s international human rights obligations

I am writing to urge you and your fellow Parliamentarians, on your return to the House of Commons on 6 September, to use your influence to help stop the proposed cut by the government on 6 October to social security support of £1040 per year (£20 per week) to Universal Credit (and Working Tax Credit).

If the government were to proceed with the proposed cut, it would be in violation of its international human rights obligations, in particular the binding International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, signed by the UK in 1968 and ratified in 1976, which sets out the rights to an adequate standard of living and to social security.

Cutting the basic rate of support to people living on low incomes, many of whom are already in work, by more than £1000 per year would leave many in a position where the government’s social security system cannot guarantee their human right to an adequate standard of living. In July, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation assessed this to be the UK’s “biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security since World War II.” Analysis the same month by the Institute for Fiscal Studies of recent government data has shown that for the average recipient of social security, this amount would represent 12 per cent of what they are paid as “entitlements,” and for about a quarter of all social security support claimants, it would be more than 20 per cent cut to entitlements.

According to the latest official data, the number of people receiving Universal Credit doubled from 3 million in March 2020 to 6 million in March 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic’s economic impact made itself felt. As of 8 July 2021 there were 5.9 million people (or 5 million households) receiving Universal Credit; almost half (44 per cent) are households with children. These data do not include Northern Ireland.

The Trussell Trust and Independent Food Aid Network have both warned of growing demand for food aid during the pandemic and set out concerns about the effect of the impending cut on demand for their services. Citizens Advice estimates that 75 per cent of people receiving an uplift would not have enough money to cover daily costs if the cut were to proceed, and projects an increase in the number of people on low incomes in debt.

The announcement of a £20 per week increase (to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit) as a Covid-19 pandemic related “uplift” in April 2020 was a welcome relief for those surviving on inadequate levels of social security support, which had diminished in value for a decade. Human Rights Watch research published in May 2019, alongside the work of many others, has documented how the inadequacy of social security support, scaled back since 2009, had left increasing numbers of people in need of food banks.

For the approximately 3 million people already receiving Universal Credit prior to March 2020, the removal of the first increase in benefit levels in real terms in a decade would represent a cut to their social security support. For the approximately 3 million people receiving Universal Credit for the first time since the pandemic started, the current social security support level has been the status quo since their entry to the benefits system, and a removal of £1040 per year is a clear cut.

Recent constituency level analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation projects that, in 413 parliamentary constituencies, at least one in three working-age families will be affected directly by the cut.

Cutting up to £1040 per year from social security support would be retrogressive. A policy debate centred on rights, fairness, and justice – whether that is about “levelling up” or “building back better” – should focus on the necessary steps to ensure a well-functioning and adequate social security support system that provides beneficiaries a level of resilience that permits them to withstand day-to-day economic pressures, as well as systemic shocks like the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The proposed cut in October 2021 would do precisely the opposite.

In fact, rather than cutting this support, greater priority should be given to ensuring the up to 2 million people yet to enter the Universal Credit system and still receiving “legacy” benefits, including people with disabilities and long-term health conditions, are guaranteed a commensurate increase to their level of social security support.

International human rights law makes clear that cuts, even where a government argues that they are unavoidable, should not proceed where they would cause violations of people’s human rights— including the rights to an adequate standard of living and social security. Any cuts must also satisfy a stringent six-part test set out by the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In any event a government deliberately choosing to significantly retrogress its protection of basic rights including the rights to an adequate standard of living and to social security will be violating those rights.

Evidence of the harm that will be done is copious, including in research produced by Child Poverty Action Group, Citizens Advice, Feeding Britain, Independent Food Aid Network, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Policy in Practice, Save the Children UK, Trussell Trust, Turn2Us, and Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, among others (see appendix). Many, if not most, of these documents have been communicated directly either to the relevant government departments at the time of their publication, or are submissions to or reports produced by parliamentary inquiries.

 Ignoring all this evidence and proceeding with the cut, with the justification that it is too “difficult to isolate the specific impact of one policy” on poverty is unacceptable. Reports that the government is not disclosing its internal impact assessment of the cut, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, are equally worrying.

The six-part test requires that, when proceeding with cuts, a state: show a compelling state interest; demonstrate that it has exhausted all alternatives; ensure that the cuts are non-discriminatory; ensure the decision is temporary, necessary, reasonable and proportionate; give opportunity to those most likely to be affected by the policy to participate genuinely in the decision-making process; and ensure a minimum social protection floor.

The decision by the government to proceed with the planned cut will cause deep harm and does not satisfy all these criteria.

We urge you to use the period immediately following the resumption of Parliament to make the government think again. There is still time to act now to prevent the increase in poverty and queues for aid at food banks that will result from this retrogressive move.

Sincerely,

Yasmine Ahmed

UK Director

Human Rights Watch

Enc. Appendix of relevant documents

Appendix

The list below sets out some key recent documents setting out the case or making clear evidence-based recommendations against reducing Universal Credit to pre-pandemic levels. The documents listed underscore, from various policy perspectives, the potential harms (or failure by government to properly analyse potential harms) of the proposed cut, increasing public support for the government not to proceed as it plans. They also serve to document the many instances in which evidence about the potential impacts has been drawn to the attention of the government.

(Documents listed in date order, most recent first)

  1. Joint letter from devolved governments to Work and Pensions Secretary, signed by Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government (Scotland), Minister for Social Justice (Wales) and Minister for Communities (Northern Ireland), 30 August 2021
  1. Independent Food Aid Network, “Food poverty set to worsen as September’s Universal Credit cliff edge approaches,” (Blog), The BMJ, 26 August 2021

 

  1. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “Universal Credit Cut – impact by constituency,” (Briefing), 26 August 2021

 

  1. Save the Children UK/Opinium, “Almost Half of Universal Credit Claimants Don’t Think They Can Live on £20 Less Each Week,” (Survey), 17 August 2021

 

  1. Trades Union Congress, “Universal credit cut will hit millions of working families and key workers,” (Blog), 23 July 2021

 

  1. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “UK heading for the biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security since World War II,” (Press Release), 23 July 2021

 

  1. Child Poverty Action Group, “Universal Credit: What Needs to Change to Make it Fit for Children and Families?,” (Report and Summary Briefing), 21 July 2021

 

  1. Joint letter from Westminster, Holyrood, Senedd and Stormont Committees, signed by chairs/convenors of Social Justice and Social Security Committee (Holyrood), Work and Pensions Select Committee (Westminster), Committee for Communities (Stormont), and Equality and Social Justice Committee (Senedd), 20 July 2021

 

  1. Letter from the Poverty Alliance to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions regarding a refusal by the DWP to respond to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act about the impact of the £20 Universal Credit cut, 19 July 2021

 

  1. Policy in Practice, “Autumn of income shocks: the impact of removing Covid support,”

 

(Reports , see “Report 1: Impact of Covid on caseloads and costs” and “Report 2: Impact of removal of Covid support and rising housing costs”), July and August 2021

 

  1. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “Our social security lifeline: Is it strong enough?”, (Report), 16 July 2021

 

  1. Institute for Fiscal Studies, “The expiry of the Universal Credit uplift: impacts and policy options,” (Research Note), 15 July 2021

 

  1. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “A Minimum Income Standard for the United Kingdom in 2021,” (Report, and related Summary Findings), 14 July 2021

 

  1. Independent Food Aid Network, Feeding Britain, University of York and Living Wage, “Secure work and a secure safety net – a new role for the labour market and social security in preventing the need for charitable food aidv,” (Briefing), 8 July 2021

 

  1. Fabian Society, “Going with the Grain: How to Increase Social Security with Public Support,” (Report/Survey), May 2021

 

 

  1. Resolution Foundation, “In need of support?: Lessons from the Covid-19 crisis for our social security system,” (Report) 29 April 2021

 

  1. Zacchaeus 2000 Trust (Z2K), “Z2K’s response to the Work and Pensions Committee’s inquiry into the DWP’s response to the Coronavirus outbreak,” (Briefing), 26 April 2021

 

  1. Tory Reform Group & One Nation Conservatives, “Pathway to Reform,” (Policy Position) April 2021

 

  1. Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, “RCPCH calls on Government to extend the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit,” (Press Release; see also BMJ Opinion blogs by the RCPCH President and RCPCH Officer for Health Improvement), 18 January 2021
  2. Zacchaeus 2000 Trust (Z2K), “Z2K’s response to the APPG on Poverty’s call for evidence into the impact on poverty of maintaining the £20 uplift in Universal Credit,” (Briefing), January 2021

 

  1. All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty, “The impact on poverty of not maintaining the £20 uplift in universal credit and working tax credits, and of not extending the uplift to legacy and related benefits,” (Inquiry Report), January 2021

 

  1. Disability Benefits Consortium, “How the Government has continued to prop up a two-tier welfare system by ignoring 2 million people during this pandemic,” (Blog), 2 December 2020
  2. Turn2Us, “Weathering the Storm: How Covid-19 is eroding financial resilience,” (Report) November 2020

 

  1. Citizens Advice, “Life on Less than Zero,” (Report), October 2020

 

  1. Independent Food Aid Network and Feeding Britain, “Hunger and the need for food banks between March and September 2020,” (Briefing), October 2020

 

  1. Trussell Trust, “Long Haul Ahead: The impact of Covid-19 on food banks in the Trussell Trust network,” (Report; see also related policy paper by NIESR for the Trussell Trust projecting demand for food banks, and key survey findings), September 2020

 

  1. Turn2Us, “Submission to the Comprehensive Spending Review”, (Briefing), September 2020

 

  1. House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, “Universal Credit isn’t working: proposals for reform,” 2nd Report of Session 2019–21, HL Paper 105, July 2020, Conclusions and Recommendations 26-27

 

  1. House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, “Universal Credit: the wait for a first payment,” Third Report of Session 2019-21, HC 204, October 2020, Paragraph 122
  2. Disability Benefits Consortium, “DBC letter to Secretary of State on emergency Covid-19 measures,” (Open letter), 27 March 2020

 

 

The above is not intended as an exhaustive list. Inclusion in this appendix should not be taken to constitute endorsement by Human Rights Watch of the entirety of a document’s contents or all aspects of its policy position.

 Posted by at 20:34
Sep 022021
 

Reblogged from Public Law Project website: https://publiclawproject.org.uk/latest/dwp-agrees-to-waive-hardship-payment-debts-after-successful-judicial-review/ 

Following a successful judicial review brought by PLP’s client last year, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) confirmed that it has a discretion to waive hardship payment debt and has changed the guidance issued to work coaches and other DWP staff. The case has settled and the DWP’s consent order can be read here.

The DWP has now written an open letter to PLP explaining how Universal Credit (UC) claimants can apply for recoverable hardship payments after a sanction, and the process by which claimants can request that hardship payments are waived. A summary of the main points is below.

Summary

The important points from DWP’s letter are in bold, with PLP’s additions in italics:

  1. When a sanction is imposed the DWP should inform the individual of the details of the sanction(s) in a letter uploaded to the UC journal, along with the option to claim hardship payments. If the individual thinks the sanction is wrong, they can request a mandatory reconsideration from the DWP. If that is unsuccessful, the claimant can appeal the DWP’s sanction decision to the tribunal. There is guidance on challenging a sanction from Citizens Advice and Mental Health & Money Advice
  2. A claimant that receives a sanction can apply for hardship payments by calling the UC helpline. On the call, the DWP official will ask about the individuals’ living costs, so the individual should make a note of these in advance. The individual will need to explain why the sanction has made it hard for them to meet their basic needs (such as food or utilities costs) and what they have done to find other sources of financial support. Citizens Advice have published useful guidance on getting a hardship payment.
  3. Hardship payments are recoverable (meaning the DWP can ask for them to be repaid), and when a claimant applies for a hardship payment the DWP official will ask them to agree a ‘declaration’ that they will repay it once their sanctions are lifted. If  a claimant’s application for hardship payments is refused, this decision can be challenged by making a mandatory reconsideration request to the DWP. 
  4. Once the claimant’s sanction has ended the DWP will take steps to recover the hardship payment by making deductions from the individual’s UC. However, importantly, DWP does have a choice not to recover hardship payments. This choice applies in all cases, including where the individual’s sanction has been subsequently overturned, for example following mandatory reconsideration or a tribunal appeal.
  5. If the claimant cannot afford to repay the hardship payment they can ask DWP for the deductions to be reduced and / or request that the hardship payment be waived in full. This is not affected by the fact that the claimant has agreed a declaration that they will repay the hardship payment.

Getting hardship payment debt waived

PLP has produced a note on how to request waiver of hardship payment debt and what to do if the DWP refuses.

Claimant Committment

If you claim benefits or work with benefit claimants, take a look at our Claimant Commitment micro-site to help ensure that your Claimant Commitment is tailored to your individual circumstances. Getting the claimant commitment right can reduce the likelihood of unfair sanctioning.

 Posted by at 14:27
May 012021
 

Cell Site Simulators/CSS (aka IMEI/IMSI catchers, Dirtboxes, Stingrays etc)
and Police ‘Phone Data Extraction: digital stop and search’

If you are attending a protest or think you could end up being a bystander to one you might want to consider not taking any mobile phone with you, or more pragmatically you could take a basic 2G [Footnote 1] or more capable 4G/5G disposable ‘burner’ phone [Footnote 2], including using a pre-paid SIM card and if needed a top-up voucher, all bought with cash and never do so in conjunction with a shop ‘loyalty card‘. [Footnote 3]

Attending a Protest?
Do not bring your primary phone to a protest, instead, buy a prepaid, disposable phone
Enable ‘Airplane Mode‘ and Turn off: location services and your prepaid device before going home or anywhere that might reveal your identity
Use an ‘off-line’ maps for navigation (try map.me)
Take photos & videos with the screen locked
More excellent tips and hints in ‘Attending a Protest‘ – Print pocket guide (PDF)

 

Remember: just placing a new SIM card into a phone, does not stop the phone itself from being traced or monitored. This is because SIM cards have an IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) and the phone itself has a unique IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity/model and serial number), both of which are transmitted to mobile phone base stations/cells towers to authenticate users and can both be intercepted by Police IMSI Catchers/Cell Site Simulators. See item below: ‘[A] Cell Site Simulators/CSS and why take a ‘burner’ phone to protests?’ for more details.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Besides IMEI and IMSI, smartphones also have additional unique identifiers, such as google’s Android ‘Device ID‘ and Apple’s iOS “device-level ID“. Apple’s iOS also has a unique ‘ID for Vendors (IDFV)’ and a ‘Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA)’ similar to Android’s ‘Advertising ID‘. All of these additional unique identifiers are shared with google and apple’s respective app developers to enable persistent tracking and targeted advertising/profiling. See item below: ‘[D] Caution and due diligence’ for more details.

Android user? Use this app to discover many of your device(s) unique indentifiers.

 

Digital and mobile phone self-defence

For in-depth information, check out these EFF resources:

for more UK focused resources visit the websites of the Open Rights Group and Privacy International for Cell Site Simulators/CSS specific information and Police ‘Phone Data Extraction: digital stop and search’ and Cyber Kiosks by the Information Commissioner’s Office and Police Scotland.

Top Tips: For smart-phone users, encrypted message apps like Signal and email service Tutanota are suggested. [Footnote 6] Or consider the decentralised P2P Briar App (Android) via F-Droid, which has messaging, private groups, forum and blog functions and can be used with Tor (anonymity network) or Bluetooth or a shared WiFi network when internet access is not available or use presents a risk, if you want to communicate but not share your phone number or email address.

Having a mobile phone on one’s person is very common place these days and many people cannot manage without them, especially smart-phones. However, smart-phones combine the power of an always-on computer, often with high resolution broadcast quality photo, video and camera functions, internet access and website browsing, a pager/sms/text, mobile phone and additional location related functions like GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi and embed no choice privacy invasive applications (apps) and apps users can install, which leads to them containing vast amounts of data, often of a very personal and sensitive nature.

The use of ‘mobile phone extraction’ [MPE] tools enables police forces to download
all of the content and data from people’s phones.
 This can apply to suspects, witnesses
and even victims – without their knowledge
(including easily recovering ‘deleted‘ content and data)
Phone Data Extraction: digital stop and search‘ – 2020

Related: Podcast on Extraction and article: Police unlocking your online data cloud “goldmine”

 

 

Email is very very important

Traditional email services from likes of gmail, yahoo and outlook are by default an inherently insecure way to communicate, share ideas and files and should be avoided.

However, in recent years tutanota.com and protonmail.com have introduced very easy to use end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) email services, so if Alice emails Bob only they can read them (the ends). These providers E2EE email services are designed so they have no access to users account content and are unable to give law enforcement account access and only retain minimal details of users.

I would then ask you to register a free and secure email account with Tutanota.com
as using an ordinary email is not a secure way to share personal information…
Both of us using such a system is essential for Email Counselling and
gives peace of mind that your privacy and confidentiality can be maintained

https://intunecounselling.co.uk/email-counselling

Therefore it is highly recommended you set up a tutanota.com and or a  protonmail.com account and you should very explicitly and proactively ask everyone you expect to or do communicate with by email to also set up an account with either or both. Both providers offer free account options, tutanota offers the cheapest premium account and also offer a way to communicate with non tutanota users, using E2EE emails, by use of a pre-shared password option and this function is offered to it’s free account users.

If you host your own website, tutanota also offers an end-to-end encrypted contact form option.

—————————————————————————————————————————
If you have general questions about this ‘phones and protests’ post, please set up a new Tutanota email account and then send your query from it to dpac@tutanota.com or use https://dpac.uk.net/contact/ (not recommended)
This email address is under the sole control of DPAC and is strictly for ‘phones and protests’ queries only.

—————————————————————————————————————————

More detailed information below:

[A] Cell Site Simulators and why take a ‘burner’ phone to protests?
[B] But I want to take my smart phone with me to protests?
[C] What about the Police taking my phone to view it’s content?
[D Caution and due diligence
[E] Further reading and videos

[F] Examples of intercepted/leaked text messages, mobile phone calls and data/records

[A] Cell Site Simulators/CSS and why take a ‘burner’ phone to protests?

Police, Prison, Immigration, Military and Security Services use fixed, portable and wearable technology that can simulate mobile phone base stations (Cell Site Simulators/CSS) [Footnote 4]. A CSS can have capabilities that can be passive and or active. On a basic level they can indiscriminately capture the unique IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) linked to a phone’s SIM card(s) and the associated phone’s unique ‘International Mobile Equipment Identity‘ (IMEI/model and serial number of the phone), as these are used to authenticate users/subscribers/account holders on mobile networks, which can be then used to identify and locate the phone and user(s) and the social networks and people the user engages with so they can be monitored/tracked live or on a retrospective basis. IE: The Where, When and Who.

“Signs of IMSI catchers — also known as stingrays or cell-site simulators
— were found at several locations in the British capital, including UK parliament,

a peaceful anti-austerity protest, and the Ecuadorian embassy
VICE News Investigation Finds Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London‘ – 14.1.16
Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones‘ – ‘Phone Hackers: Britain’s Secret Surveillance

It is possible to identify a phone’s actual number (MSISDN – Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Number) by use of a silent call or silent text, by knowledge of a specific IMEI/IMSI. [Footnote 5]

This technology can also be used to more actively intercept and read, alter or block SMS/Text messages, listen in on live or recorded voice calls (eavesdropping) and capture/store internet traffic that passes through a CSS, they can be used for other purposes like denial of services (jamming) and distribution of malware to compromise a phone or network(s) it’s connected to. More active and intrusive use of CSS often involves interception of a phone’s traffic which can be made easier if they use weak 2G security protocols or by forcing a phone to downgrade it’s 3G, 4G or 5G connections to 2G [Footnote 1], but this does not mean 3G4G and 5G protocol phone transmissions cannot actively intercepted, especially by State actors, noting:

Unlike the UK, France and the Netherlands are permitted to “tap streaming data” and use it in evidence”
Dutch accuse UK of ‘damaging confidence’ by disclosing details of EncroChat police collaboration‘ – 15.4.21

CSS alone does not give physical access to a phone or data at-rest on it, just telephony transmissions and data which passes through a CSS (some times called a ‘man in the middle attack‘), that level of physical phone/device intrusion in this context is called ‘equipment interference/EI’ and the aforementioned silent calls and silent text [Footnote 5] maybe be considered EI.

There are projects like Seaglass,  FADe and ‘SITCH: Open Source Cellular/CSS Counter-surveillance‘ aimed at discovering and countering CSS use, with one example of apparent discovery being at the House of Commons/Westminster.

Whilst CSS can intercept and store encrypted internet data that passes through them, this does not mean they are able to break the end-to-end (E2E) encryption of cross platform message apps like Signal [Footnote 6] and the  Tutanota email and calendar service, nor the encryption used when using likes of banking websites via a phone’s browser and or financial apps.

[B] But I want to take my smart phone with me to protests?

Many people use smart-phones and installed apps to help with personal safety and to visit locations and use services that are accessible to disabled people. Therefore to mitigate against the worst aspects of CSS you could use E2E encrypted email app services like Tutanota and the E2E encrypted message app Signal. [Footnote 6]

Some other mitigations often suggested are: switching off one’s smart phone when attending protests, putting it into ‘Airplane Mode‘ or placing it in a metal container or bag (a Faraday cage) to block all phone transmissions (Telephony, App and Internet Traffic, WiFi and Bluetooth).

An additional option is to use smart-phone’s ‘full disk encryption‘ (FDE) option and encryption of any added memory card in addition to a password protected screen (finger print, iris or facial recognition protection not recommended especially against State actors), as well setting options that allow a phone’s camera/video and emergency call facilities to be accessible when the screen is locked, which can include any contact number assigned for emergencies.  It is also possible to have a locked screen show emergency and medical info for use by the user, ambulance or medical services and show contact details for legal and arrest advice services and to be able to make emergency calls, to numbers decided by the user. (again whilst the screen is locked)

[C] What about the Police taking my phone to view it’s content?

 

The use of ‘mobile phone extraction’ [MPE] tools enables police forces to download
all of the content and data from people’s phones.
 This can apply to suspects, witnesses
and even victims – without their knowledge
(including easily recovering ‘deleted‘ content and data)
Phone Data Extraction: digital stop and search‘ – 2020
Related: Podcast on Extraction and article: Police unlocking your online data cloud “goldmine”

Police services use technology and Cyber Kiosks for mobile phone extraction (MPE) for physical analysis of a phone, to view or copy it’s content, including contact lists and phone call history/logs, app data, account log-in credentials, photos, videos texts and content of message and email apps.

Police Scotland has created online content that explains it’s Kiosk use, as well as a video.

For more details on MPE, the ICO has produced an Investigation Report: Mobile phone data extraction by police forces in England and Wales.

This is another reason why not taking any mobile phone to protests is a good idea or taking a ‘burner’ phone is less problematic than taking one’s own or any smart phone.

A bystander or protestor’s phone could be seized for MPE if they are arrested, or because they are suspected of an offence or on a opt-in consent basis if they are connected to an offence as a witness, victim or complainant.

Unfortunately there is little oversight or consistent guidance or codes of practice on use of MPE, but CPS does have a guide to “reasonable lines of enquiry” and communications evidence.

[D] Caution and due diligence

Whilst there is wider disclosure of MPE and Cyber Kiosks compared to CSS, there is little in the Public Domain about actual use of either directly associated to protesting in the UK. Even so, individual campaigners and the organisations they work for/with and protest organisers in particular should not only consider the risks they would be exposed to via them being subjected to MPE but all the others that could equally be exposed by Police access to their phone(s) data or via use of CSS. Activists and bloggers should also consider formally becoming a Journalist and joining the National Union of Journalists, as this could help provide legal ‘protection of sources‘ and themselves, it might also be helpful to make it explicit you are acting as Press when attending a protest.

Remember: if you are the subject of a Police/Law Enforcement investigation, they may just seek ongoing online access (assuming lawful authority) to your smart-phone’s integrated Samsung,  Apple/iOS/ – iCloud and Google-Android operating system account(s) log-in credentials and to your installed apps accounts (gmail, Twitter and Facebook etc) ‘data cloud‘ by use of  ‘cloud extraction technology‘, without any need for any ongoing physical access to your phone.. For instance, if you use a Weather App it is likely to be uploading/streaming phone location data constantly to the app’s remote server. Listen to this Podcast and read the report on the ‘Goldmine’ of your phone’s data-cloud contains, or this ‘the secret tech that lets government agencies collect masses of data from apps‘ (PDF) long-read.

The Human Rights Act and other legislation like the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office appear to offer some safeguards or checks and balances. However, when using a ‘burner’ phone or unregistered pre-paid SIM could mean some safeguards are weakened, or do not apply, as the phone or SIM could be said to have no direct relationship to an identifiable individual (natural person). This last sentence is purely speculative, but could give further reasons not to take any phone to a protest, or should prompt you to read the surveillance self-defence guides sign-posted earlier.

Due to present and increased risks of terrorism at likes of Parliaments, Courts and places that enable public gatherings, which are often the places of protests, it would seem reasonable to consider that CSS are deployed at these and other sensitive locations, possibly on a permanent basis. As a point of comparison, consider how widespread Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) is in use within the UK by Law EnforcementLocal Authorities and private entities like Car Park providers and Service/Petrol Stations, let alone being integrated into CCTV, alongside Facial Recognition technology being in greater use by PolicePrivate companies and via Social Media.

The Police can refuse to disclose it’s use of CSS and other means of surveillance on the grounds of National Security, equally other Public Authorities and Private Companies can say they cannot disclose information when it
could compromise the prevention and detection of crime. Therefore the full scope of how mobile phone use can ascertained or traced back to a user is only based upon what is in the Public Domain.

[E] Further reading and videos

 

Videos

[F] Examples of intercepted/leaked text messages, mobile phone calls and data/records

 

Footnotes

[1] A good reason not to take any phone and especially a cheap ‘burner phone’ to a protest,
is that they often only use weak 2G security protocols that are easy to break by CSS.

Nokia 105 – £17.95
“2G network capability”

‘Weakness of 2G mobile phone networks revealed’
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161021094836.htm

[2]  https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=burner+phone
Or disposable if affordable.

[3] If you do buy a pre-paid SIM card, try not to use the one’s that require the setting up of an online account before you can use/activate it, like GiffGaff, such SIMs can be identified by the fact that the phone number is not displayed when inserted into a phone and not printed on the SIM card holder at time of purchase. Also consider buying a SIM card that already includes usable credit, instead of having to buy a top-up voucher, a card purchased that includes a data allowance may also include credit for voice and texts.

It is beyond the scope of these comments to suggest informed pre-paid SIM card and phone purchase options or cover potential questions and issues. But if you consider you, or the people you know or networks you work with are at risk of CSS or MPE and you have a need to safeguard yourself and others, please consider purchase of SIMs months before you may use them or before the date they or a top-up voucher could expire as cash purchase could be linked back to CCTV footage archives or shopkeeper testimony of the places they are bought at. Use, purchase and activation of a SIM card or phone will also involve retention of phone base station timed specific location data, so be mindful this could also be used to trace back to the identity of the user.

Electronic Point of Sale/Till/Self-Checkout technology and software exists that can overlay purchasing/receipt data with CCTV recording, as well as recording the serial number of items purchased so it can be cross-referenced with a bar-coded till receipt to assist with refunds, returns, device guarantees and to prevent fraud, which may also include database recording a phone’s ‘International Mobile Equipment Identity‘ (IMEI/model and serial number of the phone) and SIM card/IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) whether or not shown on a till receipt. The Recipero mobile device intelligence and data aggregator is also used to monitor and record sales of secondhand phones. For: anti-fraud, insurance claims, phones leased/rented or sold as part of a mobile carrier contract or through finance/loans and to “monitor stock in real-time for many high-street retailers, warehouses and other distribution facilities” for theft and loss prevention. “Recipero offer a full suite of solutions, from providing automated pre-loss/theft property registration, to integration with POS [Point of Sale] and in-store trade-in systems, right though to active stock monitoring that can provide early warning of stock leakage and logistical losses”

Basic CCTV and ANPR (Automated Number Plate Recognition) data retention examples: LidlCCTV 31 days & ANPR “6 years” by ParkingEye . ASDACCTV 14 to 60 days ANPR 120 days

Essentially all of the comments above are aimed at helping people gain or retain a better level of anonymity, which is not easy in the digital age we live in today, but in many ways now far more important against the backdrop of UK plans and global attempts to undermine rights of protest and UK efforts to fundamentally weaken/backdoor encryption.

[4]  “IMSI catchers are intrusive surveillance tools whose use remains unregulated.
They are often deployed in secret, without a clear legal basis”
https://privacyinternational.org/report/3965/imsi-catchers-pis-legal-analysis

Police secrecy over ‘IMSI-catcher’ mass surveillance of mobile phones
Following an [FOI] tribunal ruling, constabularies in England and Wales can refuse to confirm or deny whether they use mass surveillance devices, known as IMSI-catchers (CSS) to monitor people’s location, phone calls and text messages
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252485535/Police-secrecy-over-IMSI-catcher-mass-surveillance-of-mobile-phones
> Tribunal decision (PDF) https://informationrights.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/DBFiles/Decision/i2576/Privacy%20International%20EA.2018.0164%20(18.02.20).pdf + Reporting https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3925/information-tribunal-decisions-re-imsi-catchers-loss-transparency-and-why-we-will

Description of a IMSI Catcher (PDF) https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/Silke%20Holtmanns%20Witness%20Statement%20-%20readacted.pdf
via https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3925/information-tribunal-decisions-re-imsi-catchers-loss-transparency-and-why-we-will

“Our cell catcher can be configured to include an IMSI catcher, IMEI catcher”
https://cryptome.org/isp-spy/l-spy.pdf

“The IMEI is automatically transmitted by the phone when the network asks for it”
https://cryptome.org/isp-spy/le-tel-spy.pdf

Authorities finally confirm stingray use in the UK—in Scottish prisons
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/stingray-use-in-the-uk-details-scotland-prisons/
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=scotland+imsi+prison+use

The Feds Are Now Using ‘Stingrays’ in Planes to Spy on Our Phone
https://www.wired.com/2014/11/feds-motherfng-stingrays-motherfng-planes/

[5]  Silent Call
In terms of Global System for Mobile Communications/GSM interception, a silent call is a call originated from the GSM Interceptor to a specific IMEI/IMSI, in order to make correlations between IMEI/IMSI and MSISDN (Mobile Subscriber Integrated Services Digital Network-Number, which is actually the telephone number to the SIM card in a mobile/cellular phone). By using the silent call, an GSM Interceptor can find out a certain phone number allocated to a specific IMEI/IMSI. Silent calls are a result of process known as pinging. This is very similar to an Internet Protocol (IP) ping. A silent call cannot be detected by a phone user.
https://github.com/CellularPrivacy/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector/wiki/glossary-of-terms#silent-call

Silent SMS
https://github.com/CellularPrivacy/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector/wiki/glossary-of-terms#silent-sms

MSISDN vs IMSI: What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter for Mobile Identity?

[6] Tutanota E2E encrypted email and calendar services are highlighted, as it has a good free option and a low cost paid version (€12 euros) and has a facility to send encrypted messages to non Tutanota email addresses and organisations can embed an E2E encrypted contact form on their own website. You can compare other similar email services online.

The ‘Signal‘ cross platform message app uses end-to-end (E2E) encryption by default for text messages, voice calls, photos and file sharing and crucially it collects no data from phones and the Signal server only stores the users phone number, ‘and it makes no attempt to link it to their identity‘. Signal is the most privacy protective by design, evidenced by this report on a Court Order/Subpoena and gag order, for user data and account content disclosure: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/fbi-demands-signal-user-data-but-theres-not-much-to-hand-over/

“I use Signal every day. #notesforFBI (Spoiler: they already know)”
https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/661313394906161152

There are other message apps like Whats App (that uses the Signal E2E protocols), Facebook Messenger and Telegram* and you can compare them online or with the comparison chart below:
(*”Warning: Telegram is not end-to-end encrypted by default” – “WhatsApp’s flaw allows stalkers to track you easily” – “Facebook’s controversial WhatsApp update may be ‘abusive exploitation’ of data, says regulator“)

Acknowledgement

This post has been informed by the work of Cooper Quintin from EFF.

 

 

 Posted by at 12:40
Mar 182021
 

Boris Johnson spends £2.6 million on media facilities… with an inaccessible stage

The prime minister is facing questions over why he authorised spending of £2.6 million on creating a new Downing Street media briefing room which has a stage that is inaccessible to wheelchair-users.

Photographs emerged this week which showed a raised stage – accessed by steps – where the prime minister’s press secretary will deliver daily televised briefings to the media.

The pictures show that Downing Street failed to ensure step-free access to the platform.

Disability News Service confirmed yesterday (Wednesday) that the stage is not step-free and that anyone with a mobility impairment who needed to address the media would have to use a removable ramp.

It is thought likely that the facilities will eventually be used by ministers, the prime minister and senior civil servants, as well as on a regular basis by Boris Johnson’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, a disabled crossbench peer and wheelchair-user, said yesterday: “A removable ramp is yet another bolt-on adaptation because nobody assumes there will ever be a disabled wheelchair-using prime minister.”

She said the failure “sends out a clear message that, yet again, disability access is an afterthought”.

She added: “We know that this briefing room platform will be used be civil servants and press secretaries, so yet another assumption that they will be fully ambulant.

“When will this discrimination by indifference end? It’s just not good enough. Are we really still that invisible?”

Deborah King, co-founder of Disability Politics UK, said the failure showed that “disabled people are not thought of as equals in the political decision-making process” and that disabled civil servants and politicians were being “systematically excluded from politics”.

She pointed to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the UK has ratified and which guarantees disabled people the right to participate in political and public life “on an equal basis with others”.

The government appears to be arguing that there was not enough space to provide permanent step-free access to the stage, although that appears unlikely from the photographs, originally published by ITV News.

Asked this week if the image of an inaccessible platform sends a message that disabled people are still excluded from, and are not welcome within, high political office and senior positions in the civil service, a spokesperson for the prime minister refused to comment.

The failure to ensure step-free access to a government facility that will be seen daily around the world has echoes of Downing Street’s continuing refusal to ensure a wheelchair-accessible front entrance to 10 Downing Street.

But it also comes as the government continues to sit on a report that is expected to expose the barriers faced by disabled people in accessing elected office, and the discrimination they face at the hands of political parties.

That report, commissioned by the Government Equalities Office, was completed in December 2019 but has still not been published.

Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the new media briefing room will finally ensure that televised government briefings will include a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter on the stage.

Although the government will ensure there is BSL interpretation for the briefings, it is not clear whether this will continue to be provided through the BBC News Channel’s in-screen interpreter or, as demanded by BSL-users, through an on-stage interpreter.

Both Baroness Campbell and Deborah King highlighted the importance of having an on-stage BSL interpreter.

18 March 2021

 

 

Anti-protest laws are an attempt to silence us… and we must resist, say disabled activists

Proposed new anti-protest laws pose a threat to free speech and are an attempt to silence and control protesters, disabled activists have warned.

Disabled people who have taken part in protests organised by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and the Extinction Rebellion climate change movement spoke out this week after the government published its new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill.

The 307-page bill, which began its progress through parliament this week, with MPs voting in favour of the draft legislation at its second reading, includes measures that have been branded an attack on the right to protest.

Among the many parts of the bill to have already caused alarm is section 59, which would impose a prison sentence of up to 10 years on protesters whose actions put a person at risk of “serious annoyance” or “serious inconvenience”.

Disabled activists fear that many of the anti-austerity and climate change demonstrations and direct action they have taken part in over the last decade would now see them being convicted and even imprisoned.

Bob Williams-Findlay, who took part in the major Extinction Rebellion protests in London in October 2019 as part of the XR Disabled Rebels group, and in many DPAC actions, said the bill was “without doubt one of the most authoritarian pieces of legislation to go before parliament”.

He said: “It is a threat to democratic process, free speech and our right to defend ourselves and our planet.

“Disabled and nondisabled people alike must unite in opposition to this attempt to silence and control us.”

He said XR Disabled Rebels had experienced a “foretaste of this iron fist policing” in 2019, while DPAC has also experienced “heavy-handed tactics”.

He said: “Of course these measures are seeking to deter us, frighten us and criminalise us, but we will not cower, allow bullies to disable or curtail human rights.

“We will not go quietly into the night; we will roar like lions, take to the streets again when possible to resist and to defy.”

Dennis Queen, who has taken part in numerous direct actions as a DPAC activist and previously with the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network, said the measures appear to be “designed to shut down anything at all that might inconvenience anyone.

“All protests annoy somebody; at the very least, they annoy the powerful targets.

“Annoyance to the public was a factor before and had to be proved to convict. But not risk of annoyance.

“I can see it is true, having been charged under the common law for public nuisance, that this was a tight law and it was hard to convict people for unnecessary, subjective things, like peaceful protest.

“Changing this law puts all public resistance at risk, even just vigils.

“As a nonviolent civil disobedience protester, I have come to expect police treatment like that at Clapham Common last weekend.

“But women holding peaceful vigils do not expect this, nor should vigils like theirs be criminalised. Under this law change, we would see more of this, for less and less.”

Queen was charged and then cleared for her part in a DPAC anti-austerity protest in Manchester in October 2017, during the Conservative party conference.

She and others had held up city centre tram services outside the conference, but she was cleared* of causing public nuisance partly because she was able to show the court that some of the passengers had left the tram and joined them on the protest.

John McArdle, co-founder of the grassroots group Black Triangle, who has also taken part in numerous protests, said: “Can you imagine how easy it would have been to arrest, charge and convict us on all the demos we’ve done using this new legislation?

“This is effectively a ban on the right to peaceful protest, in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights (PDF).

“It’s the biggest attack on civil liberties since the end of World War Two.

“Britain can no longer be considered to be a free and democratic society if this bill passes in its current form.”

Sandra Daniels, who has taken part in both DPAC and XR Disabled Rebels protests, said the measures showed the government was “trying to silence minority groups”.

She said: “The government’s actions and how they have treated disabled people with the austerity cuts, and throughout the pandemic, only pushes us to fight back as we have nothing to lose.”

She added: “I’m not a disabled activist out of choice, but by necessity.”

Michael Bosley, another member of the XR Disabled Rebels group, said he believed some of the protest clauses could discriminate against disabled people.

He said that those with mobility impairments “might be more likely to be viewed as being ‘annoying’, a ‘nuisance’ and would have greater difficulties with inflexible start and stop times.

“The policing of the Sarah Everard vigil showed the police have no awareness or sensitivity when policing demonstrations; something we’ve previously experienced when the Met police impounded accessible toilets and ramps during the XR demos in 2019.

“So as disabled people, we are again at risk of having our rights to speak, to assemble and to protest still further restricted.”

Another XR Disabled Rebels member said the bill would increase the targeting of neurodivergent people.

They said: “Non-neurotypical behaviour at peaceful protests will be criminalised.

“Lack of medical facilities and support in UK custody and prisons will be enough to terrify disabled activists and stop them protesting at all, especially while COVID is still around.”

Mary-Ellen, who has taken part in numerous protests, including many DPAC actions, the 2019 Extinction Rebellion protests in London, and TUC and NHS protests, said she was “extremely concerned” by the government’s plans.

She said: “If our right to protest is taken away from us, then how do we fight a government that is already killing us off through the benefits system and the pandemic?

“The one thing we have is to be able to protest and to be able to draw people’s attention to it by closing streets, by closing bridges and by standing outside parliament.”

She added: “If the right to protest is taken away, it will result in even more human rights violations and deaths being hidden from the public and the silencing of dissent and our rights to justice, transparency and accountability.”

A spokesperson for DPAC Cambridgeshire and Essex added: “Disabled activists have been proudly causing ‘serious annoyance’ to governments that systematically deny us the right to liveable lives for decades, and we will continue to do so.

“Disabled protesters are already targets of state surveillance, with some of us having had benefits cut or removed for protesting poverty and discrimination under Tory austerity, as well as other injustices such as the climate crisis.

“Increasing police powers to repress dissent is a transparently authoritarian attempt to escape accountability for state violence of all kinds.”

*She says she was “expertly defended” by Robert Lizar Solicitors

18 March 2021

 

 

Outrage over left-wing media website’s Singer interview

Outraged disabled activists have criticised a left-wing media organisation for publishing an interview with a philosopher who has repeatedly advocated killing disabled babies, and for failing to challenge him on his views.

Novara Media’s video interview with Peter Singer focused on his position as one of the best-known animal rights philosophers, and almost completely bypassed his views on disabled people.

When Singer’s views were briefly touched on by Novara co-founder Aaron Bastani, there was no effort to challenge him on his past statements.

Instead, Bastani asked him to respond to the “controversy” and “criticisms that you’ve had from people around disability activism and so on”, but he failed to challenge Singer on any of the disturbing statements he had made in the past.

Singer repeated some of those statements.

He told Bastani that “parents of children with severe disabilities and poor prognoses should have the option of ensuring that those children do not live, that they die rapidly and humanely”, which he described as “a proposal”.

But Bastani made no response to this and made no attempt to question this “proposal”.

Anger at the interview, both the decision to publish it and the way it was conducted by Bastani, was led by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which said it had caused “justifiable outrage”.

DPAC is set to meet with Novara today (Thursday) “in order for our members, especially those with learning difficulties, to express their dismay, hurt, and political objections to how the interview was conducted”.

Andy Greene, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said Bastani had allowed Singer to continue “without interruption, without rebuttal, without being challenged or asked to provide evidence for claims and assertions he made.

“No attempt was made to hold Peter Singer accountable in a conversation that began with the premise that disabled children’s lives were worth less than others.”

He added: “Unfortunately, there’s nothing ‘new’ or ‘different’ about Novara Media in the eyes of many disabled people now. Only more of the same old same old.

“The same old narrative. The same old rhetoric. The same old failings.”

Another DPAC activist, Lucy Burke, said: “If you are someone who needs support in daily living, if you are someone who may not be able to engage in wage labour, if you are someone whose life is characterised by a strong difference, then, for Peter Singer, you are better off dead. (And everyone around you is better off too.)

“It is deeply upsetting that left-wing media organisation such as Novara would make a decision to interview Singer without acknowledging or challenging these eugenicist views.”

For the last 40 years, Singer’s views on disability have shocked and angered disabled activists and allies across the world, and have led to repeated controversies over his various appointments, interviews, publications and speaking engagements.

As a strict utilitarian, Singer has previously made it clear that he believes some disabled babies should be killed after birth, including those with haemophilia, spina bifida and Down’s syndrome, because he has said they are lives “not worth living”.

He has argued: “When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed.

“The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second.”

Singer has also suggested that, if it had been his choice, he would have wanted his mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, to be given a lethal injection in the last months of her life.

And more recently he has suggested that it might not be wrong to rape a person with learning difficulties and high support needs if they do not have capacity to consent to sex.

A DPAC spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that prior to this incident Novara had consistently failed to take up advice from individual DPAC members concerning the importance of acquaintance with the social model of disability and the particular form of oppression that disabled people face.

“This led to a situation where Singer was given a platform to express views that encourage division and hate without challenge, and at a time of rising hostility towards disabled people and the explicit devaluing of disabled people’s lives that has characterised the pandemic – which we are still living through.

“Either the interviewer lacked even the most basic understanding of why Singer’s views are problematic for disabled people or he chose not to deploy those arguments.

“It is important that we challenge the exclusion and marginalisation of disabled people and all the more frustrating when we have to do this among those who consider themselves to be progressive.”

Novara refused to answer questions about the interview from Disability News Service (DNS), including why the organisation thought it was right to give a platform to Singer, why he was not challenged more rigorously on his views by Bastani, and what message the decision to interview Singer sent to disabled vegans and vegetarians.

But a spokesperson said: “We take the fact we’ve caused hurt to disabled people very seriously, so we certainly reject any insinuation that we sought to capitalise on Singer’s notoriety.

“As we’ve made clear, Singer’s views on disability are not those of Novara Media.

“We have a meeting scheduled with DPAC members later this week to hear their concerns and wouldn’t wish to comment further on editorial discussions before then.”

He also pointed DNS to a Novara statement, which said that Singer’s views on disability “are not those of Novara Media” and that it was “currently discussing the matter in line with our internal processes as a matter of priority”.

The statement said: “We take the fact that we have caused hurt to disabled people very seriously.

“And we acknowledge that criticisms of the decision to air this interview were made in good faith, and sit within a wider context of both Novara Media’s shortcomings on commissioning and publishing content on disability and the heinous assaults which have been waged against disabled people over the course of the pandemic.”

18 March 2021 

 

 

Regulators face call to act over figures linking COVID deaths with health system

Disabled campaigners are calling on two regulators to investigate concerns raised by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that many of the deaths of disabled people during the pandemic could be linked to discrimination within the healthcare system.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) are both refusing to say if they will act on the concerns, despite signing a new joint agreement to “safeguard the rights of people who use or work in health and social care services in England”.

ONS said last month that it “cannot rule out the possibility of remaining explanatory factors” for the increased risk of death for disabled people during the pandemic, such as “access to and pathways through the healthcare system”.

It said that the evidence it had produced “warrants further investigation”.

Since those comments last month, Disability News Service (DNS) has published further figures which show an even higher increased risk of death from COVID for disabled people aged between 30 and 69, compared with non-disabled people in the same age group.

ONS has confirmed that – after adjusting for health conditions and other factors – more-disabled women* aged between 30 and 69 have been 60 per cent more likely to die from COVID-19 than non-disabled women in the same age group.

More-disabled men aged between 30 and 69 have been 37 per cent more likely to die from COVID – after adjusting for health conditions and other factors – than non-disabled men in the same age group.

The new memorandum of understanding between EHRC and CQC “outlines how both regulators will improve co-operation and the exchange of information between them on equality and human rights issues”.

And it states that they will “take a joint approach when necessary, to make sure health and social care providers uphold their responsibilities under equality and human rights law”.

But when asked if they would therefore now take action to investigate the ONS concerns, in accordance with their new memorandum of understanding, both EHRC and CQC refused to make any such promise or even to say they would consider an investigation.

Among disabled campaigners calling for CQC and EHRC to act this week was Mitch Coles.

Last summer, Coles was one of many people with neuromuscular conditions who were told by their NHS trusts that they could not be sent new anti-bacterial filters for their ventilators because they were needed for patients with COVID-19.

But he has told DNS that he also spent most of last year fending off attempts by his specialists for him to have a “do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation” (DNACPR) order placed on his medical file, even though he had not been asked such a question since 2012, when he had made it clear he did not want a DNACPR on his records.

It was only at a recent face-to-face appointment, his first for more than a year, that he was able to address the issue in depth and secure an apology from his specialist for the way the request had been presented to him and other neuromuscular patients during the pandemic.

He said there was “without a doubt” a link between the ONS figures and the healthcare system.

The reviews by doctors of the DNACPR decisions of many disabled people last summer was, he said, “a way to convince people like me that it was OK to save the healthy people, but not ourselves.

“Simply put, when push comes to shove, we are shoved aside, even though I contribute to society the same as anyone else, and in some cases even more so.

“If the need for ‘further investigations’ has been recognised by ONS, which it has, then these investigations need to be thoroughly carried out.

“It shouldn’t be our job to push EHRC and CQC for this to be undertaken, but unfortunately it will have to be, which is often the case.

“The CQC and the EHRC shying away from investigating potential serious failures highlighted by the Office for National Statistics should be no surprise to anyone who has been following media coverage throughout the pandemic.

“The inadequate treatment of disabled people has been prolific from the very beginning.

“Nobody wants to face the music, but it’s about time that they do.”

Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of the disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives, said: “If anything has highlighted the breakdown of democratic checks and balances to ensure the accountability of government policy and policymakers, it is COVID-19.

“The latest instance of this is the disproportionate numbers of deaths of disabled men and women as a result of the pandemic, highlighted by the detailed data produced by the ONS.

“Sadly, two of the key organisations with responsibility in this area, the CQC and EHRC, have so far refused to respond effectively to this evidence.

“This is massively important. We urgently need to know what is happening.

“If we are to deal effectively with the next pandemic, we need to maximize the learning from this one to safeguard disabled people it is still putting at risk; its ongoing threats from new variants, etc, and the continuing harm from long COVID.

“Disabled people’s own organisations should at last be recognized as key players in this emergency and funded accordingly.”

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “I’d love to be able to say that lack of action from EHRC and CQC was a shock but obviously it isn’t.

“They are both utterly and totally ineffectual and as far as providing any protection for disabled people’s human rights – even their right to life – they may as well not exist.”

When asked about the ONS call for “further investigation”, CQC refused to say if it would take such action.

Instead, it stated that it had previously raised concerns about access to care for people with learning difficulties; that it was looking at access to services for people with learning difficulties and autistic people; and that it will be reviewing how health and social care providers work together in local areas to provide services for people with learning difficulties and autistic people.

EHRC reiterated its call for the government to carry out a review into the disproportionate deaths of disabled people during the pandemic, and said the ONS figures were “further evidence of the severe impact of coronavirus on disabled people”.

It said: “To mitigate risk as we continue to navigate a path out of the pandemic, it is imperative that government undertakes a review into the disproportionate deaths of disabled people, ensuring it takes their views and experiences into account.”

But neither CQC or EHRC mentioned links between the ONS figures and the health system, or the concerns expressed by ONS and its call for further investigation.

Neither of them suggested that they would carry out this “further investigation”.

Meanwhile, CQC has today (Thursday) published a review of how DNACPR decisions were made during the pandemic, a piece of work commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care.

It found more than 500 DNACPR decisions put in place since 17 March 2020 “had not been agreed in discussion with the person, their relative or carer”.

The true figures will be far higher because this number is based on responses from only about 2,000 of the 25,000 adult social care providers CQC approached for information.

The report says this “presented a risk of inappropriate decision making and a risk of unsafe care or treatment”.

It also says that 119 of the 2,048 adult social care services that responded to its information request felt that people in their care had been subject to blanket DNACPR decisions – where such decisions are applied unlawfully to groups of people – since 17 March 2020.

The report says CQC found a “worrying picture of poor involvement of people using services, poor record keeping, and a lack of oversight and scrutiny of the decisions being made”.

It adds: “Without these, we cannot be assured that decisions were, and are, being made on an individual basis, and in line with the person’s wishes and human rights.”

Although the review found the pressure of responding to the pandemic had had an impact on how DNACPR decisions were made, the issues raised in the report “pre-date the pandemic”, CQC said.

*ONS examines the impact on those who described themselves as disabled people in the 2011 census, either by saying they were “limited a little” (less-disabled) in their daily lives or “limited a lot” (more-disabled)

18 March 2021

 

 

Disabled workers ‘have had to choose between lives and livelihoods during pandemic’

Disabled workers have had to choose “between their lives and their livelihoods” during the pandemic, because of employers’ failure to provide them with the reasonable adjustments they are entitled to by law, union activists have heard.

The annual TUC disabled workers’ conference heard several speakers call for urgent action to strengthen enforcement of the Equality Act so that individual disabled people do not need to take legal action to secure their right to reasonable adjustments.

Some called on the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to urgently review its Equality Act employment code of practice to make it clear how quickly a reasonable adjustment should be provided by an employer.

Amy Bishop, from the Prospect union, said a survey by the Business Disability Forum in 2019 found almost a fifth of respondents had waited over a year for reasonable adjustments to be put in place, with eight per cent waiting over two years.

She told the online conference that neither the Equality Act nor the associated code of practice gave any guidelines for how long this should take, and that strengthening the EHRC code of practice “should be easier to achieve” than changes to the act itself.

Mark Anthony Bastiani, from the Communication Workers Union, highlighted that disabled people had accounted for six in 10 COVID-related deaths.

He said: “How many lives could have been saved if there had been a reasonable adjustment in from the start?

“We saw companies not willing to allow our members to work from home at the start, members afraid if they did not come in to work they could lose their job, lose pay or be put onto the furlough scheme and lose money, just because there was no reasonable adjustment in place.”

He called for laws that are “enforceable from day one” and protect disabled workers requesting a reasonable adjustment.

Uday Pandya, from the shop workers’ union USDAW, said: “Getting reasonable adjustments and hanging onto them has always been an uphill struggle for disabled workers.

“The pandemic has made the struggle even harder.

“I am glad that TUC, backed by unions, are pushing for the EHRC to amend and strengthen the guidance so that we can hold managers and employers accountable.”

In a statement issued before the conference, the TUC disabled workers’ committee warned that some employers had treated putting reasonable adjustments in place as a “trivial matter”.

The committee said: “It is not. It is of great importance to individuals and to disabled workers as a whole.

“In the pandemic, getting and keeping reasonable adjustments appears to have become even harder for disabled workers and could force even more out of the workforce.”

Deborah Leigh, from the National Education Union, told the conference last Thursday: “The ask here is the enforcement of reasonable adjustments in a timely manner… a reasonable adjustment is not reasonable until it is implemented in a reasonable time.”

Graeme Ellis, from UNISON, was another to call for EHRC to “urgently” review and “comprehensively” update the code of practice, which he said should include examples of how long workers should be expected to wait for a reply to a reasonable adjustment request, and how long they should have to wait for an adjustment to be put in place.

He said that a UNISON survey of disabled members before the pandemic, in 2019, found two-thirds had been turned down for some or all the reasonable adjustments they needed at work.

Even when the employer said yes, 23 per cent waited a year or more for the adjustments to be put in place.

Ellis said: “Decades of wasted disabled people’s potential as we get chased through sickness absence and capability procedures, just because we can’t get a change to our hours, some IT software, or a decent office chair.

“And it’s the reason there is a disability pay gap. We end up on the lower rung of the pay scales because we do not get the adjustments we need to enable us to shine and to progress in our jobs.”

Rachel O’Brien, Inclusion London’s policy and public affairs officer, told the conference that the pandemic had shown that “reasonable adjustments that were once a pipe dream for disabled people, dismissed by employers as not possible or realistic, are in fact both possible and necessary”.

This included the move to home working, which she said had “greatly benefited many disabled workers”.

But she said Inclusion London had also heard of disabled workers “at increased risk from coronavirus, who cannot work from home, being forced into work under the threat of redundancy” and so have “had to choose between their livelihoods and their lives”.

She said the problem with reasonable adjustments was how to enforce them, thanks to a “toothless” Equality Act which “relies on individual disabled people who have been discriminated against making a case against, in this instance, their employer”.

O’Brien called for a national regulator and enforcement of reasonable adjustments “that does not rely on individual disabled people taking legal action”.

Austin Harney, from the PCS union, criticised the Civil Service’s “draconian” sickness absence policy.

He said: “During the COVID-19 crisis, employers’ ability to make reasonable adjustments on time in the Civil Service has been appalling.

“Many employees have been forced against their will to go into work, particularly in the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions.”

Harney also warned that the number of employees in the Civil Service with a physical impairment was falling because of the government’s “cuts agenda impacting on reasonable adjustment support”.

Elane Heffernan, from the University and College Union, said: “Now more than ever I think it is crucial that we get a much stronger, much clearer and more enforceable right to get the adjustments that we need to be able to work.

“Without adjustments we are one ableist boss away from all of us joining the unemployment queues and having to live on benefits.”

Lynn Degele, from the National Union of Journalists, told fellow disabled workers: “Knowing my rights has meant I could focus on my work and wellbeing without the distraction and worry about how I would do that work.

“By normalising reasonable adjustments, we can make clearer to employers and disabled workers what is possible.”

Janine Booth, from the RMT transport workers’ union, said that reasonable adjustments were only ever “Plan B”.

She told the conference: “Plan A is an accessible workplace. We want disabled workers to be able to access work without having to ask for barriers to be removed because those barriers are no longer there.

“It’s far better for a workplace to be made as accessible as possible than for a disabled worker as an individual to have to ask for an adjustment.”

In a second statement published before the conference, the disabled workers’ committee said: “For years disabled workers were told by employers that working from home as a reasonable adjustment was just not feasible.

“Members were told home working wasn’t their employers’ policy. They were told home working just wasn’t likely to be adopted.”

The committee pointed to a UNISON survey on homeworking during the pandemic, which found that almost three quarters (73 per cent) of disabled workers were more productive or just as productive working from home.

The statement added: “When asked why they said the reasons for increased productivity included a reduced impact on pain and fatigue due to less commuting and ability to work more flexibly with additional breaks or later start times.

“For over a year, employers have enabled homeworking where they have said in the past it was not possible.

“We have seen it can work and it is possible. We must ensure disabled workers who want to work from home as a reasonable adjustment can do so.”

18 March 2021

 

 

Pandemic backlog means PIP claimants could lose support while waiting in queue

Claimants of disability benefits who successfully overturned decisions at tribunal are being told their support could be cut off, because of a shortage of assessment professionals and a backlog of claims caused by the pandemic.

Claimants of personal independence payment (PIP) who previously secured fixed-term awards at benefit tribunal hearings are being told their payments will stop if their new PIP claim has not been approved by the time their award ends.

This means that claimants who have followed Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) instructions as they approach the end of their award could still find their PIP payments cut off.

This is apparently not affecting those with similar awards who did not need to go to a tribunal to secure the benefits they were entitled to, as many of this group have had their awards extended by DWP because of the pandemic, say welfare rights advisers.

This means the government is effectively “punishing people for having asserted their right to a fair hearing in court”, according to one welfare rights expert.

Disabled people who receive PIP following a fixed-term tribunal award are being told there is a large backlog of claims because of a shortage of assessors, with many nurses, paramedics and other healthcare professionals having returned to the NHS to help with the coronavirus crisis.

They are also being told that if PIP assessment providers Atos* and Capita are not able to complete their assessments and pass their recommendations to DWP by the end of their fixed term, their payments will automatically stop.

One disabled woman who has contacted Disability News Service (DNS) has described how she was forced to appeal to the tribunal three years ago, after a dishonest assessment report by an Atos healthcare professional.

Among a string of inaccuracies, the assessor wrote that Anna** was able to make cheese on toast, even though she had been told during the assessment that the last time Anna had tried to cook something she ended up wandering off and setting fire to the cooker.

In April 2018, the tribunal overturned a DWP decision that was based on the report, and increased Anna’s award.

In late January this year, as the end of her fixed-term PIP award approached, DWP told Anna to make a new claim, which she did a week later.

But she became increasingly anxious as the end date approached.

She and her husband were eventually told by an Atos adviser that many of its assessors had returned to the NHS because of the pandemic, and that there was now a lengthy backlog in dealing with claims.

A DWP adviser told her husband that her payments would cease in April if Atos did not manage to assess her before the three years expired, and that his carer’s allowance would also cease at that time.

Because of financial struggles when she was younger, including being homeless and pregnant in her late teens, Anna said that any form of financial insecurity can trigger significant mental distress.

She said: “I do find any threat of financial security incredibly distressing, as it brings me back to those times.

“I am terrified and horrified at even the sniff of going back to the prospect of homelessness for my husband and 11-year-old child that lives with us (my 23-year-old thankfully has his own place and is happily secure).”

Anna is the second PIP claimant to have told DNS how Atos informed them of a backlog of claims because of staff returning to the NHS to help with the pandemic.

DNS has been unable to clarify the situation with DWP, despite a lengthy email exchange, partly because Anna does not want the department to know that she has spoken to a journalist about her case.

But Finn Keaney, welfare rights team lead for Mind in the City, Hackney and Waltham Forest, said: “The DWP’s decision to allow their own decisions to ‘roll over’ whilst insisting on fixed end-dates where the award was made by a tribunal is arbitrary and causes a great deal of hardship for many disabled people.

“The government should not be punishing people for having asserted their right to a fair hearing in court, but that is exactly the effect that current policy has.

“The COVID-19 pandemic already disproportionately impacts disabled people, and the resulting short-staffing and delayed assessments at Atos/IAS is leading to many people facing months without their PIP payments through no fault of their own.

“I would urge the department to change their current approach of ‘one rule for some, one rule for others’ and correct this broken policy.”

Ken Butler, welfare rights adviser with Disability Rights UK, said he had dealt with a similar case to Anna’s, in which DWP refused to extend a PIP award from a February 2021 expiry date that had been set by an appeal tribunal, despite the disruption caused by the pandemic.

They had been told that it would be likely to take some months to assess her claim.

In December, Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, appeared to tell Labour’s Apsana Begum that DWP was “automatically” applying extensions of PIP awards caught up in the pandemic crisis, including those made by tribunals, although it was not clear exactly which cases he was referring to.

Butler said the Child Poverty Action Group had even drawn up a template letter threatening DWP with judicial review for those affected by the issue.

He said: “This problem should simply not be happening.

“Especially as the minister for disabled people told MPs three months ago that it wasn’t.

“PIP claimants should straightforwardly have their tribunal awards extended if the DWP is not able to process renewal claims before they expire.

“They should not have to be put in the position of using a proforma letter CPAG has devised to threaten the DWP with judicial review before it sees sense.

“Or having to ask their MP to contact the minister to ensure the DWP implement its own policy.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “We always aim to make an award decision as quickly as possible and are treating as a priority advance claims, where a person’s previous fixed term award has ended.

“Where a person is found to still be eligible for PIP their award is backdated to the point they claimed, so no one loses out financially.”

But DWP appears to be disputing that claimants with tribunal awards are being treated differently, although the department had not been able to clarify its position by noon today (Thursday).

An Atos spokesperson declined to say if there was a substantial backlog of PIP claims that needed to go through the assessment process, and if there was a shortage of PIP assessors caused by staff returning to the NHS during the pandemic.

But he said in a statement: “In common with health services everywhere some changes and disruption have been experienced as a result of the pandemic.

“As part of our overall strategy we are working closely with the DWP to increase capacity.”

Capita declined to comment on whether it was also experiencing staffing problems.

*Atos delivers its PIP assessment contracts through Independent Assessment Services, a trading name of Atos IT Services UK

**Not her real name

18 March 2021

 

 

Scotland could be set for ‘ground-breaking’ move on UN convention

Disabled people in Scotland could be set for “ground-breaking” improvements to the “protection, progression, and promotion” of their human rights, after their government pledged to incorporate the UN disability convention into Scottish law.

The promise came as the Scottish government accepted the 30 recommendations made in a report by the National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership.

Among the taskforce’s recommendations is to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) – as well as three other UN human rights treaties – into Scots law, although it recognises that there would have to be a “progressive” realisation of these rights.

Inclusion Scotland, the national disabled people’s organisation, said the measures were potentially ground-breaking.

But it warned that their introduction would depend on the outcome of May’s Scottish parliament elections, and the detail of future legislation.

Heather Fisken, Inclusion Scotland’s director of policy and research, said: “Disabled Scots have been calling for full and direct incorporation of the convention for years.

“This is ground-breaking stuff, and it signals greater protection, progression, and promotion of our human rights.

“It should mean that disabled people will have rights across all the convention articles, including the right to independent living.

“We would want to see services and support on tap, not on top, to support us to enjoy our rights to full and equal participation in our communities in ways we chose ourselves.

“We will be calling on the new Scottish government to ensure that disabled people and our disabled people’s organisations are closely involved in the development of the bill and that this happens as early as possible in the next parliament.

“Delay is not an option, the time for action is now.”

Dr Jim Elder-Woodward, chair of the Scottish Independent Living Coalition, said that any new law must also be “effective at all levels of government and within private, third sector and public sector organisations”.

He said: “At the moment these sectors do not always operate cohesively.”

Scotland’s equalities secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, who co-chaired the taskforce, said that, if the SNP wins power again in May’s election, a new bill would be introduced in the new parliament’s first session that would incorporate the UN treaties into Scots law.

She said: “A multi-treaty human rights bill of this nature, that will also contain a range of other rights on the environment, older people, and access to justice, is unprecedented and will make Scotland a world leader in human rights.”

UNCRPD is currently not incorporated into UK law, or that of the devolved governments.

This means that its protections, including article 19, which provides a right to independent living, are not legally binding in the UK, although they can influence UK court decisions.

18 March 2021

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 20:33
Mar 122021
 

Train company pays £17,000 after repeatedly leaving disabled woman stranded

A disabled woman who was left stranded on trains and station platforms more than 30 times by a rail company has been awarded compensation of £17,000.

Southern admitted repeatedly failing to deal ­­with the discrimination Sam Jennings was facing, even after senior managers met with her and disabled campaigner Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson in the House of Lords in January 2020.

Jennings, who was initially encountering the access issues while she was running her own flower stall at Norbury station in south London, tried again and again to persuade Southern to address its failings.

She first encountered problems within days of using a powerchair for the first time in August 2018, and soon began recording every incident on her mobile phone.

She told Disability News Service that, as a new wheelchair-user, the access failings she was experiencing felt like a “baptism of fire”.

She said she felt disabled by the attitude of Southern staff, and she would hear staff phoning colleagues and telling them: “There’s a wheelchair down here complaining.”

Others would just tell her it was not their job to help her.

She would find herself left on the train when she was trying to make her way to work at Norbury, or while heading to hospital appointments.

Despite her insistence that staff always phone ahead to her destination station, there would frequently be no-one there to assist her off the train when she arrived.

She was often forced to block the doors with her feet or her chair until fellow passengers could find a member of staff.

After months of access failings, and despite the House of Lords meeting, she finally decided that she would have to take legal action.

Southern has now agreed to pay her £17,000 compensation and to make several “specific commitments” on access.

She said she was “really excited” when she first heard of the settlement, but then she “cried for ages”.

She said: “Last night was the first time I realised that I feel vindicated for being so determined. I cried my eyes out. It hit me: how dare they do this to me.”

She said she had initially not wanted to involve lawyers because she considered some of the Southern staff were friends, after working with them for years, and she was convinced they would resolve the problems.

But a week after the House of Lords meeting, when she faced a particularly serious failure by staff at Clapham Junction, she realised that Southern “had not learned a thing” and she would need to involve lawyers.

She said: “The problem persisted because there is a culture at Southern of not giving a f***.

“There is no humanity there and they have been allowed to get away with it. It’s about attitudes and there is no accountability. They knew they would never get in trouble.

“From the beginning, I thought if I was one person encountering this many fails, how many disabled people are at home too terrified to go anywhere?”

She has already used some of the compensation to buy 10 new kettles and six microwaves for a local foodbank, while she is also buying herself a new foldable electric wheelchair.

She said: “No-one sets out to get involved with litigation and I saw legal action as a last resort.

“It wouldn’t have cost them a penny if they had listened to me.”

Among Southern’s pledges, it says it will investigate and record any failure to provide assistance, and it will provide disability equality training to all station staff by the end of July.

It also says that all relevant staff have been told how they need to call ahead to a destination station to ensure assistance is provided, with support from a new internal phone directory app.

Extra staff have also been deployed to help with assisted travel at Clapham Junction station, where Jennings encountered many of her problems.

Despite those pledges, Jennings said she was “not at all optimistic” that there will be real change.

But she said she hopes her legal victory will empower other disabled people to take similar action.

She said: “I want people to feel empowered to make a complaint because they are never going to stop otherwise.”

Her lawyer, Carrie Clewes, from the disabled-led legal film Fry Law, said Jennings had attempted – and failed – to resolve the case on many occasions before taking legal action.

She said: “Despite having Lady Tanni Grey-Thompson fighting her corner and calling a meeting at the House of Lords with Southern’s leadership team, again her requests and needs were ignored and [she] continued to have access issues.”

Even after Southern accepted its failings, and made some changes, she continued to experience access failings in the weeks leading up to the legal settlement, said Clewes.

She said that Southern “had no choice but to accept that they didn’t have the matter in hand, despite their assurances”.

Clewes said she hoped the case would help Southern realise its failings and implement the necessary changes.

She added: “If the claimant has had so many failings in one small part of the rail network, just how many of the disabled community are experiencing the same failings across the entire network?”

Chris Fowler, Southern’s customer services director, said in a statement: “We know we can do better and we are grateful for the discussions we have had with Ms Jennings which have helped inform how we can continue to improve.

“We take this feedback extremely seriously and it has been used to strengthen our accessibility strategy, which is already delivering significant improvements across our rail network.”

11 March 2021

 

 

Legal action launched over ‘blatant discrimination’ of DWP’s £20-a-week uplift

Two disabled people have launched a legal action against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over its failure to offer recipients of so-called legacy benefits the same £20-a-week benefit increase given to those on universal credit.

They and hundreds of thousands of other disabled people were outraged when chancellor Rishi Sunak again failed to provide them with the same benefit “uplift” that was first handed to universal credit claimants at the start of the pandemic last March.

Instead, Sunak used last week’s budget to extend the uplift to those on universal credit for another six months.

This means that an estimated 1.9 million disabled people will continue to miss out on the £20-a-week payments.

The two campaigners have secured legal aid for their claim for judicial review of the failure to extend the uplift to those on the out-of-work disability benefit, employment and support allowance (ESA).

They are arguing, through legal firm Osbornes Law, that the government’s decision has unlawfully discriminated against them as disabled people, under the European Convention on Human Rights.

One of the two claimants has requested anonymity, but the other, Philip Wayland, from Essex, told Disability News Service (DNS) that he believes the failure to extend the uplift was “blatant discriminatory policy”.

He said: “Their claim is ‘we have put our arms around the most vulnerable people’, when they have categorically not done that.

“After 10 years of it, that is what pushed me into it, because I have had enough.

“It was an accumulation of the last 10 years, feeling as though we were being treated as second-class citizens, of years of feeling ignored and treated badly.”

He said he believed that the government was deliberately withholding the uplift from disabled people to try to force them to move onto universal credit and its stricter regime of conditions and sanctions.

Wayland, who has been receiving ESA for the last 10 years, is set to receive an annual inflation-linked increase of just 65p a week in his ESA next month.

Both the Commons work and pensions committee and DWP’s own social security advisory committee have called on DWP to extend the uplift to those on legacy benefits.

And last week, as part of its #20More4All campaign, Disabled People Against Cuts delivered mail bags full of the testimonies of disabled people to DWP, the Treasury and 10 Downing Street, describing the financial struggles they had faced during the pandemic.

Many of them wrote of their “soaring food costs”, including the extra costs of needing to have food delivered during the pandemic, and how they have “to choose between eating and heating”.

One said: “I would be able to bathe more and have my heating on. And be able to eat three times a day instead of two times.”

Another said simply: “On chemo… need to eat properly.”

Wayland said he was appalled when he heard Therese Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, tell an MP this week that she did not even ask Sunak to extend the uplift to those on legacy benefits.

Coffey told the SNP’s Marion Fellows to encourage people on legacy benefits to “go to independent benefits calculators to see whether they would automatically be better off under universal credit (UC)” rather than waiting to be moved across to UC by DWP in the next few years.

Early in the crisis, Coffey had argued that extending the uplift to those on legacy benefits like ESA and jobseeker’s allowance would risk the “safety and the stability of the benefit system”.

Only last week, DNS reported how it was branded “vexatious” by DWP for trying to secure a key unpublished document that could finally show how many disabled people are expected to lose out in the move to universal credit.

The most recent DWP equality impact assessment, published nearly a decade ago, in November 2011, suggested that the number of disabled households gaining financially from universal credit would be at least matched by the number losing out (with about 800,000 households in each group), with disabled people who are out of work particularly likely to lose out.

By noon today (Thursday), the Treasury had still not been able to explain last week’s decision not to extend the uplift to those on legacy benefits.

A DWP spokesperson said the department could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings, but he pointed to the comments made by Coffey on Monday, and similar comments by fellow DWP minister Will Quince, who said the uplift had been introduced “to support those facing the most financial disruption due to the pandemic”.

11 March 2021

 

 

Pandemic ‘has exposed the shadow of eugenics’, TUC conference hears

The “shadow of eugenics” is hanging over the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, disabled trade unionists have been told at their annual conference.

Speaker after speaker at the annual TUC disabled workers’ conference spoke of how government decisions – and the actions of doctors – had exposed entrenched discrimination and abuse of disabled people’s rights.

Many of those who spoke yesterday (Wednesday), on the first day of the two-day conference, highlighted how official figures showed disabled people had accounted for six in 10 COVID-related deaths.

Natasha Hirst, from the National Union of Journalists, said the figure in Wales was even higher, at 68 per cent of COVID-related deaths in the early months of the pandemic.

Hirst told the online conference: “Our exclusion is driven by political and social attitudes. We are not valued.”

She said the UK government had been warned by the UN’s disability committee in 2017 that its violations of disabled people’s human rights had caused a “human catastrophe”, but it had failed to act.

She said: “The UK government was warned, they were given solutions, but they dismissed them all. This is the consequence.

“When governments deprioritise us, so do employers and service-providers, and everybody else.

“We have experienced how easily in a crisis our human rights are discarded… they are not our rights if they are snatched away when we need them most.”

Lucy Burke, from the University and College Union (UCU), said it was clear that the lives of disabled people were being lost because of “deeply entrenched discrimination”.

She said: “Nothing tells us more about the profound systemic ableism that blights people’s lives and life chances than the fact that doctors have to be reminded not to deny critical care to disabled people simply because they are disabled.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the human rights abuses experienced by disabled people in this country.

“The right to life and to adequate healthcare are fundamental rights that we are seeing persistently violated.

“The pandemic has also enabled non-disabled people to openly talk about the rationing of critical care and about lives that are and apparently are not worth saving or living.”

Dave Allan, the disabled members representative on the TUC’s general council, and co-chair of its disabled workers’ committee, said: “Disabled people have been forced to pay the price for government failings, often with our lives.

“The government were looking into herd immunity [at the start of the pandemic], while other governments were locking down their borders.”

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, was another who referred to the suggestion that, early in the pandemic, the government had discussed a possible “herd immunity” strategy that would allow the virus to sweep across the country almost unhindered, in a bid to protect the economy.

She said the government had been slow and “resistant” to ordering a lockdown in the early days of the crisis.

She told the conference: “There was all that talk about herd immunity, survival of the fittest is what that says to me, and I think again we have to be honest, in this conference of all conferences, that the shadow of eugenics hangs over the whole debate, that some lives are cheaper than others.”

She pointed to the “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders placed on the files of people with learning difficulties.

She said: “If that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what does.

“But it is ugly, it is obscene, and I think it needs calling out, because never again should we be in this position where people’s lives are put on the line because of their disability.”

Elane Heffernan, from UCU, told the conference that the actions of the government and doctors had highlighted and increased the discrimination faced by disabled people.

She said: “Whether it was the disdain for the lives of working-class people that we see in the herd immunity or the failure to protect us from the eugenics of the medical model that we see in the DNR notices… for disabled workers, the pandemic has deepened the prejudice and inequality that we face at work every day.”

11 March 2021

 

 

Disabled workers ‘have had rights repeatedly breached during pandemic’

Disabled workers have had their rights repeatedly breached during the coronavirus pandemic, the annual conference of disabled trade unionists has heard.

The TUC disabled workers’ conference heard how disabled workers had been forced by employers to risk their lives by attending work, while others had had to fight for employers to make reasonable adjustments for them during the pandemic.

One delegate told the online conference yesterday (Wednesday) that millions of disabled workers were now at risk of redundancy, disadvantage and harassment.

Sian Stockham, a care worker from the public services union UNISON, said a disproportionate number of disabled workers had died from COVID-19 during the crisis.

She said: “This may be because we have been forced to go to work despite the risks, with some employers failing to protect our health and safety.”

She said this included those working with people dying of COVID in care homes.

She said: “Many haven’t had a risk assessment and the provision of [personal protective equipment] has been totally inadequate.

“We have had reports of workers forced to use the same single-use disposable mask for days.”

But she added: “I don’t want us to go back to normal, not if it means disabled workers will still have to struggle to get the reasonable adjustments they need, or if it means care workers are too scared to stand up for their rights to work.”

She said UNISON was calling for “the strongest rights to reasonable adjustments” for disabled workers, and for the right to work from home.

Nikki Fitzsimmons, from the shop workers’ union USDAW, said disabled workers had been “at the sharp end of discrimination and injustice before the pandemic” but the resulting crisis had made this even worse.

She said: “Millions of disabled workers are at risk of redundancy, disadvantage and harassment.

“Thousands of us are fighting for reasonable adjustments to be put into place, but thousands more are working with their unions to right these wrongs and stop them from happening in the first place.”

A food retail manager for 17 years, she was sent home to shield at the start of the crisis after being told she was clinically extremely vulnerable to the virus.

But after three months at home on full pay, she was demoted from manager to general assistant, with her weekly hours cut from 36 to 17 hours, and her take-home pay halved.

She said: “I lost my position, a huge part of my earnings and my confidence.”

In the autumn, she was told to return to work in a petrol filling station and repeatedly had to self-isolate as colleagues tested positive for the virus, before being asked to shield again when the government’s advice changed.

She said: “I’m still at home on statutory sick pay, topped up by 17 hours a week on contractual pay.

“My experience as a disabled worker in this pandemic is not unique, I’m sure of that.”

Elane Heffernan, from the University and College Union, said she could not name a single employer in further and higher education who had “addressed the needs of disabled members at the start of the first lockdown, or even the second or third, actually”.

Claire Stewart, from the NASUWT teachers’ union, told the conference: “Now is the time for unions to remind employers of the fact that a failure to make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers, including adjustment to redundancy criteria and procedures, is a form of unlawful discrimination.

“We must demand that government takes steps to ensure that disabled people are not unlawfully targeted for redundancy and that those who want to work are appropriately supported to do so.”

Ann Galpin, from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), co-chair of the TUC’s disabled workers’ committee, said lobbying by the NUJ and other unions in the creative industries had failed to prevent disabled freelancers being excluded from the government’s income support scheme for self-employed workers.

She said this had “left many of our disabled members without enough income as their work dried up”.

And she said an NUJ survey in January had revealed that eight in 10 disabled members who responded had not had the reasonable adjustments they needed organised through their workplace since the start of the pandemic.

Dave Allan, representative of disabled members on the TUC general council, and Galpin’s co-chair on the disabled workers’ committee, told the conference that – a year on from the start of the pandemic – many disabled workers were still working from home without the reasonable adjustments they needed.

He said: “We have heard that, a year on, some disabled workers are still working off ironing boards or without the specialist software they require. This is not acceptable.

“Workplace protections under the Equality Act have not changed under the pandemic.

“Employers need to meet their legal duties and put in place the adjustments workers need to do their jobs.

“Our members should not dread going into work because they believe they are being set up to fail.”

But he also said that there had been a “home working revolution” for disabled people, even though they had been told for years that this was not possible, and that this “must not fade away when the pandemic is past”.

Allan said that employers must “put in place and keep in place members’ reasonable adjustments, including home working, and we must ensure home working is at the worker’s request and not the employer’s demands”.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said disabled workers who were having to shield from the virus should have the right to furlough – where the government pays a portion of their monthly wages if there is no work for them to do during lockdown – and not rely on “the whim of their employer”.

O’Grady said that “they have the right as a worker to protect themselves and make that judgement themselves”.

She also called for all workers to have the right to work from home.

She said: “We’ve shown that it can be done. Give it to workers as a right. Or let’s claim that right for ourselves.”

In a statement issued ahead of the conference, the disabled workers’ committee pointed to official figures which showed that redundancy rates had been 62 per cent higher for disabled workers than their non-disabled peers.

The committee said other figures showed disabled workers were overrepresented in insecure work, while they were “bearing a disproportionate burden in keeping the country running during the current crisis… working long hours to keep shelves stocked, hospitals clean and goods delivered to those who can’t leave their homes”.

It called on the government to take measures to protect disabled workers, including banning zero hours contracts, guaranteeing all workers employment rights from day one of their employment, bringing in mandatory reporting by employers on their disability pay gap, and ensuring that disabled people are not unlawfully targeted for redundancy.

Earlier, tributes were paid by the conference to Seán McGovern, who until his death last May had co-chaired the disabled workers’ committee.

Allan said he had been “one of the true heroes of both the trade union movement and the disabled people’s movement, and he effortlessly brought the two together”.

He said: “He was a tireless champion of disabled people.

“His passion, dedication and strategic insight will be sorely missed, and so will his sense of humour, his flawless style, and the grace with which he conducted himself.”

O’Grady said McGovern had been “a good friend” and a “kind and decent man”, but also an “incredibly principled and inspirational champion for disabled workers”.

11 March 2021

 

 

Disabled peer secures victory over government on domestic abuse bill

A disabled peer has inflicted a heavy defeat on the government over its refusal to extend the rights of disabled survivors of domestic abuse through new legislation.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell secured cross-party backing for her amendments to the government’s domestic abuse bill when they were debated during its report stage on Monday.

The amendments mean that measures in the bill cover abuse not just by family members and partners but also paid care workers and personal assistants, and friends and neighbours who carry out unpaid caring duties.

The bill includes measures to create a statutory definition of domestic abuse, to establish a domestic abuse commissioner, and to place a duty on local authorities in England to provide support to survivors of domestic abuse and their children in refuges and other safe accommodation.

A vote on one of the amendments proposed by Baroness Campbell was won by 318 votes to 234, with the other two accepted by peers without a vote.

Despite the vote, the amendments will still need to be approved by MPs when the bill returns to the House of Commons*.

In all, 13 cross-party peers spoke in favour of the amendments proposed by Baroness Campbell, with only the Home Office minister Baroness Williams speaking against them.

Baroness Campbell told fellow peers that to deny disabled people protection from the new legislation would be “wholly unjust and discriminatory”.

She said that the “vast majority” of carers were “caring, compassionate and utterly loyal” but that in a small number of cases this was not the case.

She said: “Domestic abuse is not limited to family members or sexual partners. Disabled people of any age can be abused by those on whose care they rely.

“These relationships often involve an imbalance of power and are just as susceptible to abuse as those between family members or partners.”

She said she remembered a “haunting” example of abuse brought to her when she was chief executive of the National Centre for Independent Living.

A disabled man without speech, who used a communication board, had told her how it was “regularly removed from reach so that his carer was not interrupted”.

She added: “He was too afraid to complain because, as he put it, of the ‘likely consequences’.”

She said evidence “clearly demonstrates that such abuse continues today”.

Another disabled crossbench peer, Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson, who has helped lead the attempts to amend the bill, said: “Including this here will help with the wider understanding of the scale of the abuse against disabled people, but it is also important for the individuals who are experiencing it, if and when they seek support.

“I worry that, if disabled people are not included in this legislation, they will fall through the net of reporting and of subsequent support and it will push them into greater peril.”

She joined Baroness Campbell in praising the lobbying efforts of the user-led organisation Stay Safe East, which works with disabled survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, hate crime and other forms of abuse.

She added: “Given the significant number of disabled people impacted by domestic abuse, it is imperative that the amendment be accepted.”

The disabled Liberal Democrat peer Baroness [Sal] Brinton also backed the amendments.

She said: “The problem with private care at home is that often it is not visible at all. That is why these amendments are so important.

“The bill needs to understand that the relationship between disabled people and their personal carers is akin to the familial and relationship definitions used elsewhere in domestic abuse legislation.”

The disabled Conservative peer Lord Shinkwin praised the “practical, common sense set of amendments”.

He said the government needed to ensure that disabled people are “equally protected from abuse in the domestic setting.

“That equal treatment needs to be based on a simple recognition that disability, especially when an impairment makes a disabled person reliant on the carer or personal assistant, also makes them vulnerable to domestic abuse by their carer or personal assistant.”

But even though no peer spoke against the amendments, Baroness Williams insisted that they “would have detrimental effects on the overall understanding of domestic abuse and the complexities of the familial and intimate partner relationships that domestic abuse is understood to encompass”.

She said they would mean the legislation would “include a much wider range of connections within health and social care settings, which are covered by other legislation, and would confuse the meaning of domestic abuse”.

And she said it would mean “diluting and stretching the focus of the domestic abuse commissioner”, while the government would have to “reset and reassess much of the work we are doing to prepare for implementing the bill and developing a new domestic abuse strategy”.

Baroness Williams said that protection from the kind of abuse raised by Baroness Campbell was offered by existing legislation, such as the Care Act 2014 and the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

Baroness Campbell said she was “deeply disappointed” by the minister’s response, which suggested the government “simply do not understand the nature of domestic abuse experienced by disabled people”.

She said the amendments would not dilute the bill but would strengthen it, “because it will include those who are, at this moment in time, being domestically abused because they rely on another human being for their care”.

She said: “It is not comfortable to think about the domestic abuse of disabled people within the intimate setting of the home – but it takes place.

“Acknowledge it we must, and we must develop a solid way to address it.”

Baroness Campbell had said earlier: “So often when disabled people fight for their civil and human rights, we are told that our demands would open the floodgates to unmanageable litigation.

“It has happened at every stage of the campaign for disability rights legislation. This is not the place to repeat that exercise.”

After the debate, she told Disability News Service: “I would like to urge the Commons to seriously consider the inclusion of disabled people and carers in this flagship domestic abuse bill, when it comes to them at the end of the month.

“Members of the Lords have carried out thorough consultation with disability groups, instructed an opinion from highly specialised disability discrimination and social care lawyers endorsing the intent of my amendments and garnered cross-party support.

“Surely this should be taken very seriously by MPs. It’s up to them now.”

*Other amendments proposed by Baroness Campbell were debated last night (Wednesday) and would have made similar changes in relation to controlling or coercive behaviour under the Serious Crime Act 2015. But she withdrew them because of the risk that they would jeopardise another amendment that she and Baroness Grey-Thompson supported and which the government had backed. Because of the government’s refusal to back her amendments, she said she had “no alternative” other than to “vey sadly” withdraw them.

11 March 2021

 

 

Law change will allow Deaf jurors… after two decades of campaigning

A leading Deaf campaigner has welcomed the government’s “long, long overdue” announcement that it will finally change the law to allow Deaf people who use British Sign Language (BSL) to serve on juries.

David Buxton has spent a decade campaigning and lobbying ministers and other parliamentarians to persuade them to change the law.

Now the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office have announced that their new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill includes measures that will allow profoundly deaf people to sit on juries in England and Wales for the first time.

The measure is part of a bill that ministers say will “crack down on crime” and “keep our streets safe”, and which includes controversial measures on the right to protest, but which also includes measures they say will produce a “smarter, fairer justice system”.

One of those measures is to allow BSL-users to serve as jurors, after more than two decades of campaigning by Deaf people.

Common law rules currently ban the presence of a “stranger” in the jury deliberation room, but this will now be changed, with the bill introducing measures that will allow a BSL interpreter into the room.

Under the changes, interpreters will have to sign a confidentiality agreement that states their obligation to remain impartial and not pass on any discussions that take place in the jury room.

The Ministry of Justice said the change would open up jury service to more than 80,000 BSL-users across England and Wales.

Buxton, a former chief executive of the British Deaf Association (BDA) and now chief executive of the disabled people’s organisation Action on Disability, has been campaigning and lobbying ministers since 2011 to make the change in the law.

He said he was “very pleased” that the government was finally acting.

He was part of a Ministry of Justice working group that discussed the issue during the 2010 coalition government, which led to a promise to review the legislation after the 2015 election.

But no action had been taken by 2017, when Buxton himself was called up for jury service.

When he attended the court and said that he was Deaf and would be able to take part using a BSL interpreter, he was informed that he was not required.

He later launched a claim against the government for a judicial review of the ban, but he agreed to his legal action being put on hold after the Ministry of Justice said it would look into the matter further.

By the following year, no progress had been made, so he began lobbying parliamentarians and the government.

Jeff McWhinney, his predecessor as BDA chief executive, had himself been told by a crown court judge in 1999 that he could not serve as a juror because the law prevented him bringing an interpreter – a “13th person” – into the jury room.

The Labour government also said it was considering a change in the law at the time.

Buxton said this week: “It’s now 2021, and finally, a new day dawns with this change to common law enabling Deaf sign language users to be part of the justice system.

“This is long, long overdue but very welcome.”

He praised those who had supported the campaign, including his solicitor Louise Whitfield, as well as Professor Jemma Napier, Matthew Banks and Linda Richards, and he also thanked justice secretary Robert Buckland.

But he stressed that the legal change was only “one more small step towards our goal of a British Sign Language Act in order to achieve true access and equality”.

Buckland said: “Disability should not be a barrier to people carrying out this most important civic duty.

“I am delighted we can open up jury service to many thousands more people and ensure our justice system becomes as accessible and inclusive as possible.”

11 March 2021

 

 

Peterloo memorial branded ‘million-pound embarrassment’ after latest access failure

A memorial to the victims of the Peterloo massacre has been branded a “million-pound embarrassment” after Manchester City Council failed again to suggest a way to make it fully accessible to disabled people.

One disabled activist told an online public meeting that the Peterloo memorial, unveiled in August 2019 for the 200th anniversary of the massacre*, was “a folly which shames Manchester and opens the city up to derision and mockery”.

She branded it a “physical manifestation of inequality, exclusion and prejudice”.

The council promised in August 2019 to make the memorial accessible, following a grassroots campaign led by disabled activists furious at the decision to fund a monument that was designed to be used as a speaking platform but was completely inaccessible to many people.

This week, the council admitted that it had made mistakes in failing to give enough “time and consideration… to the original concept design and the emerging accessibility issues as the plans evolved”.

The council suggested at last week’s meeting that its preferred option was now to close the memorial to the public for all but one day every year, and then install a temporary ramp on that one day that would allow those with mobility impairments to reach the top level.

The meeting, organised by the council, heard from several disabled activists who have campaigned for the memorial – which was designed to be used as a platform for speakers and demonstrators, mirroring those who spoke during the protest in 1819 that led to the massacre – to be made accessible.

Dr Morag Rose, an artist, activist and lecturer in human geography at the University of Liverpool, told the council that a temporary ramp one day a year “stigmatises and blames disabled people for your failures”.

She said Peterloo had become “a symbol of working-class struggles, of the fight for equality, participation, democracy and inclusion” and that it was “beyond irony” that the memorial instead “embodies inequality, exclusion and segregation”.

She said: “Shame on everyone who failed to notice, or failed to listen or failed to speak up when we told you a flight of steps was an insult and a mockery.

“Shame on all who colluded or hoped the problem would go away. It has not. We have not.

“During the pandemic, disabled people have been made abundantly aware that our lives are perceived as less worthy than others.

“We knew it in our bones already, of course, but public discourse has made this more blatant than ever.

“The memorial as it stands embodies the belief that disabled people are not worthy, do not matter. It reminds us of that prejudice every time we encounter it.”

And she said it was “a folly which shames Manchester and opens the city up to derision and mockery” and was a “physical manifestation of inequality, exclusion and prejudice”.

Flick Harris, chair of Manchester Disabled People’s Access Group, said this week that she and other disabled campaigners wanted the council to look at other options, such as a permanent “glazed” ramp that would look less intrusive than other access solutions.

She said: “Their proposal is to have a horrible ramp which obscures everything but only have it there as a temporary ramp for one day a year and then close it for everybody for 364 days a year.

“We are all against it. It is ridiculous. We recognise the importance and the value of the memorial, but because the design is so inaccessible they are going to have to make modifications to the design to make it accessible to everybody.”

She said the council must also address the lack of accessible information around the memorial.

Dennis Queen, a committee member of Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, said the memorial had become a “million-pound embarrassment” and that the council’s solution of one-day-a-year access “just feels wrong”.

She said: “Disabled people in Manchester have been campaigning for access to the city for 40 years.”

She said disabled people “got creative and found solutions” when faced with inaccessible public transport in the 1980s, and they could do the same again now.

She said: “We don’t want to stop other people using it.

“It was going to be something that the city could be proud of, but now it has become a big embarrassment to us and the council.”

A Manchester City Council spokesperson said: “The purpose of the meeting was not to present people with a fait accompli but to update them on where this issue was up to, including some of the challenges around solutions, and to hear their views and ideas.

“We will now take these away and further reflect on potential solutions. At this point, no decisions have been taken.”

Asked about the reaction to the “one-day-a-year” solution, he said the council “recognises the views which were strongly expressed on this matter by some of the attendees of the meeting and will take them on board as we consider the way forward”.

He said the council had learned lessons from its past mistakes and was using them to “inform current and future projects” and “ensure inclusive design is at their heart from the outset and that all of our disabled residents, visitors and workers can experience the city accessibly and on equal terms.

“We acknowledge the frustration that despite our best endeavours, and those of architects working on our behalf, it is has not yet been possible to come up with a satisfactory solution for the Peterloo Memorial given where we are with the project.”

He said the council had not gone back on its word to make the memorial fully accessible, but had yet to find a solution.

He said: “We have carefully considered seven options for a permanent ramp or lift but due to the constraints of the site none have proved feasible.

“Each would have either had an overbearing impact, obscuring the details of the people who died, or required the permanent use of a significant amount of extra land owned by Manchester Central** and used during major events there.”

*On 16 August 1819, paramilitary and military forces attacked more than 60,000 peaceful pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters in Manchester, which led to 18 deaths and an estimated 700 serious injuries, in what became known as the Peterloo Massacre

**The memorial is situated outside the Manchester Central conference centre

11 May 2021

 

 

Errol Graham family hope to appeal ‘baffling’ ruling on DWP benefit death

The family of a disabled man who starved to death after his benefits were wrongly removed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) hope to appeal a court’s “baffling” ruling that it was “reasonable” to take such action.

The high court last week rejected a claim that DWP had acted unlawfully by not making further enquiries about Errol Graham’s mental health before it cut off his employment and support allowance (ESA) in October 2017.

It also rejected the claim that DWP’s safeguarding policy was unlawful.

The judicial review claim was brought on behalf of the family by Alison Turner, the fiancée of Graham’s son.

Graham had missed a work capability assessment (WCA) and had failed to respond when DWP tried to contact him by phone and in person, while he had cut off all ties with his family, who had no idea that his benefits had been removed.

DWP went ahead and stopped his ESA without trying to contact his family or public bodies, even though he had been receiving incapacity benefit, and then ESA, for many years as a result of enduring mental distress.

Turner’s lawyers had argued that it was unlawful to expect claimants like Errol Graham to show they had “good cause” to miss a WCA or fail to complete an ESA questionnaire, and that DWP should change its safeguarding policy to ensure that it did more to look into cases where claimants with significant mental distress were not engaging with them.

The court heard that DWP had now changed its policy so that its decision-makers must consider contacting a next-of-kin or other agencies, and must hold a case conference, after two failed safeguarding visits to the claimant’s home.

Errol Graham’s family believe much more still needs to be done.

But the judge, Mr Justice Bourne, said this was “a significant improvement to the policy”.

He added: “It should help to prevent tragic outcomes like that of Mr Graham, though I cannot say what if any effect it would have had in his case.”

He also said in his ruling that DWP had not been aware that Errol Graham had been sectioned in 2015.

The judge said it was “reasonable” for a public body in DWP’s position to be “satisfied on the basis of the enquiries made that it possessed the information necessary for its decision”, and that it was lawful for DWP to place the burden of proof on the claimant.

He added: “It conducted the inquiries which it considered reasonably necessary to find out whether there was a ‘good cause’ for his failure to attend the assessment, and Mr Graham sadly did not engage at all.”

He dismissed the family’s judicial review claim.

Turner said she had been “stunned” by the ruling.

She said: “It’s almost blaming Errol for his own death.”

She said DWP should have contacted the police to carry out a welfare check on him when it heard that he had not been engaging with his GP surgery.

She said: “They would have found Errol and I don’t doubt they would have sectioned him.

“People are saying the judgement doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t. I just find it extremely baffling.

“You can’t expect Errol to understand what was being asked of him. He wasn’t going to open those letters.

“He was sectioned [in 2015] because he wasn’t deemed safe or capable of caring for himself.”

She added: “I am hoping there is enough to go for an appeal. The law is there to protect people, not put them at risk.”

Errol Graham’s body was discovered on 20 June 2018 when bailiffs arrived at his Nottingham council flat to evict him for non-payment of rent.

When his body was found, he weighed just four-and-a-half stone, there was no food in his flat and no credit on his gas or electricity meters, while an unsent letter to DWP was found which pleaded: “Please judge me fairly.”

Tessa Gregory, a partner at the family’s solicitors, Leigh Day, said: “We are deeply disappointed by the judgment which fails to ensure the DWP takes simple steps to protect the lives of vulnerable benefit claimants.

“We are considering an appeal and Errol’s family will continue to fight for a welfare system that supports rather than endangers lives.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “Our sincere condolences remain with Mr Graham’s family.

“While we welcome this judgment, we continue to work to improve the service that we provide to our most vulnerable claimants.”

11 March 2021

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 09:41
Feb 252021
 

 Government questioned over ‘unforgivable’ failures on vaccine priority

Three separate user-led groups have questioned the government’s “unforgivable” failure to ensure that disabled people with underlying health conditions are treated as a priority for the COVID-19 vaccination programme.

They fear that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of disabled people in England may have been unfairly left out of the group treated as the sixth highest priority for receiving a vaccine.

People in group six are supposed to be those aged 16 to 64 with health conditions that put them at higher risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19.

They should be a higher priority for a vaccine than those without such health conditions who are under the age of 65, while all those seen as clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) are in a higher priority group.

One open letter to ministers, which is due to be sent to ministers today (Thursday) and has been signed by more than 1,700 disabled people and allies, has been drawn up by the Women’s Equality Party’s (WEP) disability and long term health conditions caucus.

The letter says that millions of disabled people – many of whom have been shielding at home since the start of the pandemic – have been “left in the dark about their vaccination status”.

The #LeftOffTheList campaign letter adds: “Disabled and chronically ill people are being asked to put absolute trust in a system which left many of us locked inside without support in the early stages of the virus, which issued illegal blanket DNRs to learning-disabled people with no clinical justification and which at every stage has forgotten and omitted many of us whose lives are at greatest risk of the virus.

“The extraordinary speed of the UK’s vaccination programme has been fantastic – but we must not allow the system to fail those who need it the most.”

Another statement has already been sent to ministers, this time co-ordinated by Disability Rights UK and signed by 23 disabled people’s organisations and allies, but again raising concerns about disabled people who have been left out of priority group six.

Among other demands, it calls on the government and the NHS to ensure that everyone who has “a learning disability or who is autistic or has a cognitive impairment”, and all working-age disabled people living in residential accommodation or hospitals, are included in priority group six.

It calls on the government and the NHS “to recognise the enormous impact of coronavirus” on disabled people, to “respond more urgently” to protect them from the virus, and to meet their needs in more personalised and accessible ways”.

Meanwhile, the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) has also raised concerns about priority group six, which the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) has decided should include “those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or any mental illness that causes severe functional impairment”.

Akiko Hart, NSUN’s chief executive, warned that the way that this “broad but vague” definition was handled would be “down to individual services proactively reaching out”, local record-keeping, and how “any mental illness that causes severe functional impairment” is defined.

She said: “Our members have been in touch with us about concerns that this may be something of a postcode lottery in practice.”

She welcomed the inclusion in priority group six by JCVI, and work by partners such as Equally Well, which has produced advice on what to expect from the vaccination programme.

But she said NSUN was “deeply concerned that not enough disabled people at higher risk are being included in priority group six, and that not enough is being done to reach disabled people from racialised communities”.

The concerns came as the government attempted to dampen some of the anger about the number of people with learning difficulties who were not being treated as a high priority for the vaccine, despite new figures earlier this month from the Office for National Statistics which highlighted again how they had been particularly disproportionately affected by the virus.

Much of the anger followed high-profile concerns raised by DJ Jo Whiley, who was offered a vaccine before her younger sister, Frances, who has learning difficulties and is now recovering after being admitted to hospital with coronavirus.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced yesterday (Wednesday) that all people on their GP’s learning disability register would be invited for a vaccine as part of priority group six.

This was misunderstood by some commentators, campaigners and journalists to mean the government had extended priority status to all people with learning difficulties, but DHSC stressed that the move was designed to make the process “simpler and faster”, with priority remaining only for those with “severe and profound learning disabilities”.

Public Health England said the move should still mean that “at least 150,000 more people with learning disabilities will now be offered the vaccine more quickly”, although this is only a small proportion of the total number of people with learning difficulties in England.

Freya Papworth, co-chair of the WEP disability caucus, criticised the government’s decision to leave so many disabled people who are vulnerable to the virus out of priority group six.

She said: “With disabled people making up 60 per cent of COVID deaths, and young people with learning disabilities being 30 times more likely to die from COVID than other young adults, the fact that the government has left us off the vaccine list is unforgivable.

“Over 1,700 people have signed our letter in support of the campaign, many of whom shared their stories of shielding for over a year or witnessing their non-disabled carers vaccinated before them.

“We welcome today’s news that all adults on the learning disability register will be offered a jab more quickly in England, but we will not stop fighting for those with mild or moderate learning disabilities to be included, as well as those with chronic conditions such as asthma and ME.”

A DHSC spokesperson said: “This continues to be a hugely challenging period for disabled people, particularly those who are shielding, and we are committed to supporting them, their families and carers through this pandemic and beyond.

“Based on the advice of independent clinical experts at the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation we are prioritising people most vulnerable from this dreadful disease and this includes those with certain disabilities, including severe and profound learning disabilities, who are currently eligible to receive a vaccine.”

Meanwhile, the government has set out its “roadmap” out of the current lockdown for England.

Included in the document is a prediction that it will no longer be necessary for CEV people to shield beyond the end of March.

It says: “The Government will confirm advice and next steps nearer the time to keep Clinically Extremely Vulnerable people safe.”

But it also says that the government is “considering the long-term support” that CEV people might need, particularly those who cannot be vaccinated or do not receive a significant increase in immunity from the vaccine.

*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page

25 February 2021

 

 

Regulator fails to record key details from scheme sending COVID patients into care homes

The care regulator has admitted failing to track vital details about scores of care homes that are being allowed to accept patients infected with COVID-19, while older and disabled people not yet infected occupy other parts of the same buildings.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has so far approved more than 150 care homes and other care facilities to be “designated settings” that accept recovering hospital patients who are still infected with coronavirus.

But analysis by Disability News Service (DNS) of a sample of the first 117 designated settings to have been approved shows most of them are existing care homes where part of a building has been assigned to receive patients recovering from, and still infected with, COVID-19, while other parts of the building continue to be occupied by older and disabled service-users not yet infected with the virus.

Many such settings care homes over two or three floors, with one floor set aside for patients with coronavirus.

According to the programme, devised by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) last autumn to cope with an expected winter surge of coronavirus cases, some designated settings are “stand-alone units” where only service-users with the virus will be admitted.

But others are care homes “with separate zoned accommodation and staffing” for service-users with coronavirus, but other parts of those homes occupied by residents who are currently free from the virus.

The policy has been described as “abhorrent” by disabled activists, because it risks repeating the outcome of the scandal that occurred early in the pandemic, when hospital patients were discharged into care homes without being tested for COVID-19.

In a delayed response to a freedom of information request from Disability News Service, CQC has finally admitted that it has no idea how many of the designated settings it has inspected and approved have zoned accommodation.

This could make it harder for the care regulator to analyse how effective this type of designated setting has been in preventing infection of previously unaffected residents.

In the response, CQC said: “We do not have a set criterion for establishing or recording whether services are ‘stand-alone units’ or ‘zoned accommodation’, and we do not keep a central record of this.

“In each case the inspection report will contain a summary which will describe how the designated setting role is being delivered.”

Despite this lack of a “set criterion”, DHSC drew a clear dividing line between the two types of setting in a letter to social services directors (PDF) last October.

That letter said: “Emphasis should be on commissioning stand-alone units or settings with separate zoned accommodation and staffing.”

The DNS analysis of the first 25 care facilities in a list of approved designated settings provided by CQC suggests that 19 are clearly zoned settings; two are probably zoned; one is unclear; just two are clearly standalone; and one is probably a standalone setting.

This suggests that three-quarters (76 per cent) of designated settings are in zoned accommodation, and possibly as many as nine-tenths (88 per cent).

Among those analysed was a care home for up to 50 older people who need personal or nursing care, which had “identified the ground floor within the home to be the designated area”, which CQC said was self-contained and had en-suite facilities for each room.

Another was a two-storey care home for people over 65 who need personal or nursing care, where “the provider had adapted the top floor of the service and implemented safe infection control systems in line with current guidance”, with staff “deployed to work solely on the top floor of the service”, and “systems to ensure staff did not work in other health or social care services”.

A third home, for both younger and older disabled residents who need nursing or personal care, had, according to CQC, ensured that “isolation, cohorting and zoning had been successfully implemented across the service”, while CQC was “assured that this service met good infection prevention and control guidelines as a designated care setting”.

By 11 February, there were 157 CQC approved designated settings across 110 local authorities.

Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts (MDPAC) first raised concerns in September about the designated settings programme, after DHSC said in its adult social care winter plan that it was working on such a scheme with CQC.

An MDPAC spokesperson said: “Until we have disaggregated mortality data for care settings we will not know how bad a risk zoned care homes were, but the principle the government needs to understand is: your right to life is the same whether you live independently in your own home or if you live in a care home.

“If they cannot guarantee that right, we see it as further evidence of the need for independent living and separate dedicated COVID-positive care settings.”

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “The failure of CQC to keep important records about the use of care homes being used effectively as hospital wards is shocking.

“It is difficult to know what they are doing to safeguard disabled and older people during the pandemic but obviously very little.”

A spokesperson for the grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living said: “It’s very concerning that the CQC do not keep a central record of which care homes have ‘stand-alone units’ or ‘zoned accommodation.’

“This is vital public health information that the Department of Health and Social Care should make easily available.”

He said it was “troubling that disabled COVID patients may have been discharged into accommodation without knowing what faces them.

“Once again, the whole exercise has been rushed. Clearly, the government has learned nothing from their own pandemic preparations over the last 10 years, such as Exercise Cygnus**.

“Neither have they listened to disabled people, who have warned of the dangers of repeating the fatal mistakes they made early in the pandemic.”

CQC refused to say how it justified allowing so many zoned settings, and not keeping track of how many of those it approved were zoned or stand-alone settings.

CQC also refused to say if it would carry out analysis of the difference in safety between stand-alone and zoned settings since the scheme started.

Instead, it issued a statement from Kate Terroni, its chief inspector of adult social care, who said: “It is our role to ensure that proposed locations for the designate scheme, which is an initiative led by DHSC, are safe for people with a confirmed COVID-19 test result to be discharged into.

“By rapidly inspecting and, where appropriate, approving designated locations for COVID-positive people being discharged from hospital into care settings, we are working to help combat the spread of infection and increase the number of people who can access care by ensuing that people can be safely discharged from hospital.

“Our IPC [infection prevention and control] inspections provide an assurance, whether the designated location is standalone or zoned, that the correct infection prevention and control measures are in place to keep people safe.”

DHSC refused to say how it justified allowing so many zoned settings, and whether it was happy that CQC was failing to keep track of how many services it approved were zoned or stand-alone settings.

DHSC also refused to say if it would now carry out analysis of the difference in safety between stand-alone and zoned settings, and whether it stood by its overall policy.

But a DHSC spokesperson said in a statement: “Our priority is preventing infections and outbreaks in care homes while ensuring that residents receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

“Since the start of this pandemic, we have worked closely with the sector and public health experts to make sure discharges happen in a safe and timely way.

“We have provided clear guidance to support safe admission to care homes, and to embed the Discharge to Assess model*, with our efforts backed up with over £1.8 billion of funding.”

* https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/962885/Hospital_Discharge_Policy_1.pdf (PDF)

** An exercise commissioned by DHSC in 2016 to assess the UK’s preparedness for an influenza pandemic

25 February 2021

 

 

‘Why did it take disabled man’s death to lead to rail safety action?’ campaigners ask

Investigators who examined the death of a visually-impaired man who fell from a railway platform that had no tactile strip to warn him he was approaching the edge say only half of UK mainline stations have such markings.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) inquiry report found that the failure to fit the platform with tactile surface markings was a possible factor that caused the accident that led to the death of 53-year-old Cleveland Gervais.

Simon French, chief inspector of rail accidents, said the rail industry appeared to have “no coherent strategy for the provision of tactile strips, despite their obvious importance”.

Gervais, who used a mobility aid and travelled regularly by train, died on the evening of 26 February 2020 at Eden Park station in south-east London, after falling onto the track and in front of a train that was arriving at the platform.

The inquiry found that he had moved to, and along, and then fell from, the platform edge as the train approached, probably because he was unaware of how close to the edge he was.

The RAIB report found that the rail industry did not always “effectively” consider “safety-based justifications for platform edge markings” to help blind and visually-impaired passengers.

The report also found that the methods used by station operators to “manage risk” at the edge of platforms “do not include adequate consideration of the risk to disabled passengers”.

According to the Office for Rail and Road (ORR), Network Rail was responsible for funding and installing tactile surfaces near platform edges, although Network Rail appears to have disputed this in discussions with RAIB.

Network Rail subsequently funded the installation of tactile surfaces at the edge of station platforms throughout the region, including at Eden Park, which is managed by Southeastern Railway.

The report also warns that information about tactile surfaces at station platforms “is not made publicly available by station operators”, which means blind and visually-impaired passengers “may be unsure whether the platform they are on is fitted with tactile surfaces, which could increase their risk of falling from the platform”.

RAIB said that its research “suggests that visually impaired passengers who wish to travel by train are exposed to substantially greater risk at station platforms than the general population” and that “tactile surfaces are effective at reducing this risk”.

It added: “Despite this, the overall result of the railway’s current practices is a patchwork of different approaches and conflicting understanding about when tactile surfaces should be installed.”

It concluded that there was “a strong case for reviewing the current policy on the installation of tactile surfaces”.

Andrew Hodgson, president of the National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFB UK), said: “I would urge that tactile and visual markings should be installed at all stations as a matter of urgency.”

Sarah Leadbetter, NFB UK’s national campaigns officer, who was herself seriously injured trying to board a train with assistance in 2016 – although the incident was not connected with tactile markings – said: “I cannot understand why it has taken so long for these recommendations to be made.

“It is clear that all stations should have tactile markings and I am very alarmed to learn that there are so many still without this basic warning system.

“This could have been installed as a matter of urgency after the gentleman’s death last year and it makes me angry to think somebody had to die for action to be taken.

“It is also very clear that immediate improvements are needed to the assistance that is given for all disabled and vulnerable passengers at all railway stations.

“This includes all aspects of travel, including booking, assistance at the station, getting on and off the train and while on the train.

“I am more than willing to work with train operators along with my colleagues if they are willing to talk with us.”

Doug Paulley, a disabled campaigner, rail access expert and member of the Campaign for Level Boarding, said that what happened to Cleveland Gervais had been “utterly horrific”.

He said it only happened because Network Rail would not spend money to implement basic, straightforward, industry-accepted measures to improve safety for disabled people.

He said that reducing decisions on safety measures such as tactile surfaces to a “cost:risk:benefit ratio” was “foul and dehumanising”.

He said: “It is really great to see the RAIB so comprehensively dismantle this thinking. It isn’t academic, people’s lives are at risk.

“If Network Rail truly valued the safety of disabled people as they should, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Tony Jennings, co-chair of a rail accessibility panel and another disabled campaigner and member of the Campaign for Level Boarding, said it should not have taken the death of a disabled person “to get this on the radar”, and even now there was no apparent urgency from the rail industry.

He said: “We are an after-thought. It absolutely is life and death. It’s a lot more than an accessibility enhancement. You’re excluding visually-impaired people from travel.

“I was really shocked that there are so many stations that do not have tactile paving.”

He called for a cross-party agreement for “proper long-term funding on rail access and safety”, and a rolling programme of platform safety improvements.

Among its recommendations, RAIB says the Department for Transport (DfT) and Network Rail should create a “coherent policy” for establishing when tactile surfaces should be provided at the edge of station platforms.

It says the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) – which represents the companies that run Britain’s railways – should find ways to reduce the risk for blind and visually-impaired passengers using station platforms where tactile surfaces have not yet been installed.

It also says the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) – which is owned and run by the industry – should “develop processes to ensure that the rail industry has sufficient information, guidance and decision-support tools to fully address the safety risks associated with disabled people using the railway”.

And it says ORR should change its guidance for station operators, to make sure they publish information on whether the platforms they manage are fitted with tactile surfaces.

DfT, Network Rail, ORR and RDG all accepted RAIB’s recommendations.

Rail minister Chris Heaton-Harris said the government wasfully committed to improving safety and accessibility at stations across our rail network”, and was “working with Network Rail on a plan for the roll-out of tactile surfaces on platforms, and will be making it absolutely clear to the industry that we expect them to prioritise installation whenever work is carried out”.

Network Rail said there was “a lot of important learning in RAIB’s report and we will work with industry colleagues to implement the recommendations”.

ORR said it welcomed the recommendation to use its Accessible Travel Policy guidance “as a vehicle to improve the availability of information on tactile surface at stations across the UK”.

RDG said it would “work closely with rail companies, RSSB and disability experts to work out the best way to make train travel safer for blind and visually impaired passengers, while supporting the Department for Transport and Network Rail to implement improvements”.

Southeastern said it continued to “work closely with all relevant parts of the railway and the regulator to ensure that our stations and our trains are as safe and as accessible as possible for everyone, and that all recommendations are implemented”.

25 February 2021

 

 

Ministers silent after sitting on report on discrimination in politics for more than a year

The government has sat for more than a year on a report that is set to expose the barriers faced by disabled people in accessing elected office, and the discrimination they face at the hands of political parties.

The report, commissioned by the Government Equalities Office, was completed in December 2019 but has yet to be released.

Mary Griffiths-Clarke, a disabled politician who fought the north Wales seat of Arfon for Labour at the 2017 general election, and who contributed to the report, said she was not surprised it had not been published.

But she said: “I’m really disappointed opposition parties are not pushing for its publication.

“Sadly there doesn’t appear to be an empowering political voice in any party for disabled people right now.

“I believe this is because there is a fundamental perception that disabled people do not have the capacity to be good leaders and bring about change.

“This attitude needs to shift because it’s outrageously wrong and offensive.”

She added: “This could not be more pertinent as we approach leaving lockdown and a post-COVID crisis era, when so many thousands feel the affects of virally acquired disability and the impact of a long-neglected NHS and social services.”

The government has also been sitting on an evaluation report on the temporary EnAble fund that was set up – following the closure of the short-lived Access to Elected Office fund – to support disabled people with the extra costs they face in trying to become local councillors, MPs and mayors in England.

Ministers are refusing to reopen the EnAble fund – which was closed last year – with only two months to go until local council, mayoral, London Assembly and Police and Crime Commissioner elections on 6 May.

This leaves disabled people seeking election in England without financial help to pay for the extra-impairment related costs they face, such as British Sign Language interpreters and assistance with transport.

Griffiths-Clarke said that disabled people had never needed an access to elected office fund more than they do now.

She said: “It can enable the delivery of practical solutions based on lived experience, more ideas and better solutions.

“Parking access to elected office is a tragedy and a missed opportunity to really make a difference. Society is poorer for not having disabled voices heard.”

Disability Rights UK (DR UK), which administered the EnAble fund on behalf of the Local Government Association, wrote to the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, on 18 December, to ask him to reopen or replace it.

It has been told by disabled candidates that knowing the fund was there had encouraged them to stand for election, and that they had had to rely on goodwill and the availability of volunteers if they wanted support from their own political party.

The letter said: “The shocking under-representation of disabled people in Parliament and local government shows that positive action is required. Leaving it to political parties just isn’t working.”

It called for “urgent action” before the May local elections, but it has yet to receive a reply from Tomlinson.

Both Scotland and Wales now have their own funds to provide financial support for disabled candidates for elected office, other than those seeking election to the UK parliament.

This means that disabled candidates for elections to both the Welsh parliament and the Scottish parliament on 6 May will be able to seek financial support for their extra costs, while candidates for the elections in England will not.

Last month, Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith, in response to a written parliamentary question from Mike Amesbury, suggested the government would not set up a new fund, telling the Labour MP that the government “has been clear that the responsibility for supporting disabled candidates sits with political parties”.

She did not explain which organisation was expected to fund the extra costs of independent disabled candidates.

Dr Elizabeth Evans, co-author of the report on barriers to elected office, and a reader in politics at Goldsmith, University of London, said she had been told that the two reports “have been signed off and that they are waiting for a publication date”, but she could not comment further.

The Cabinet Office was asked to comment on Monday morning but had not done so by noon today (Thursday).

25 February 2021

 

 

Claim that government reduced the disability employment gap is wrong, experts tell MPs

The government has made no progress since 2010 in closing the disability employment gap, MPs were told yesterday by academics.

Ministers have long bragged about their success in reducing the difference between the proportion of disabled people and non-disabled people in work.

They have frequently quoted Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, which appear to show disabled people becoming increasingly likely to find work in comparison with non-disabled people.

The apparent success has come despite a decade of government austerity policies and allegations of a hostile environment created by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Last July, the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, said in a written answer to Labour’s Margaret Greenwood that the latest figures showed that “the employment rate gap had closed from 33.8 percentage points to 28.6 percentage points in just six years”.

But now two leading academics working in the area of disabled people, employment and out-of-work benefits have told the Commons work and pensions committee that this apparent progress was likely to be simply the result of more people describing themselves as disabled people when surveyed.

The committee was hearing evidence for its inquiry into the disability employment gap.

Professor Melanie Jones, professor of economics at Cardiff Business School, and a member of the Disability@Work group of four academics, said there needed to be a measure of “prevalence” and an understanding of why it was rising.

She said: “If you look at the proportional changes in the disability employment gap, and the prevalence of disability, as we have done, what we see is the combined measure, actually those two things net each other out.”

Ben Baumberg Geiger, a senior lecturer in sociology and social policy at the University of Kent, said it was important to have a disability employment gap target, but it was also important to have a “better definition of disability” so the target “rewards success rather than failure”.

He said: “If you don’t have a sensible measure of what disability is, then your target does the worst thing a measure could possibly do, which is it will look like things are getting better if they are getting worse.”

He added: “If you use a very simple alternative measure that both Melanie and I have suggested, there has been no progress since 2010.”

Disability News Service (DNS) first reported this evidence last October.

DNS reported then how a Disability@Work briefing note by Professor Jones and her colleague Professor Victoria Wass showed how the percentage of working-age people describing themselves as disabled in the ONS employment figures had risen from 16.5 per cent to 19.7 per cent between 2013 and 2020.

They said in the note that they believed this increase was because increased public awareness and acceptance have led more people to “recognise and acknowledge that they have a health condition and/or that it is limiting”.

They showed that, once the increase in the rate of people describing themselves as having an activity-limiting impairment was taken out of the ONS figures, the disability employment gap actually rose slightly between 2013 and 2020, while it fell significantly under the last Labour government, between 1998 and 2009.

They concluded: “The prevalence-corrected measure suggests all the narrowing in the [disability employment gap] from 2010 is accounted for by the expansion in disability prevalence and not by any reduction in underlying disability employment disadvantage.”

25 February 2021

 

 

Two flagship DWP disability jobs schemes slated in front of MPs

Two of the government’s flagship disability employment schemes have been heavily criticised by a pair of disabled campaigners in a parliamentary evidence session.

The Commons work and pensions committee was hearing evidence for its inquiry into the disability employment gap, the difference between the proportions of disabled people and non-disabled people in work.

Among those giving evidence yesterday (Wednesday) were Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, and James Taylor, executive director of strategy, impact and social change for the disability charity Scope.

Hadi told the committee that she loved the Access to Work (AtW) scheme – which funds workplace adjustments such as support workers and travel costs – and could not have worked without it.

But she said she hated the way it was run.

She said that securing support from AtW had felt like a “battle” in recent years, “as if I have to prove something, like I’m not the expert, apparently, on my needs”.

And she said that disabled people were often “just brow-beaten” by DWP civil servants working on AtW.

She said: “There’s a sort of feeling that you’re trying to get something you’re not entitled to.

“There are far too many forms, there’s far too much bureaucracy, they are not quick, they haven’t moved with the times.

“I have got really nothing to say in terms of praise for the way it is administered.”

She added: “I don’t know if it’s an attitudinal thing or a managerial thing, but the impact for a disabled person is that it makes a good scheme difficult.”

Hadi said she had heard of employers “walking away” from the scheme.

She said: “Some of us want to work for small employers and Access to Work would be vital because we want to come to that as equal members of the staff group, not with the employer thinking we cost more.”

But she said there was a sense from AtW that disabled people were “taking the piss” and “that you’re not being truthful and that you don’t know about your own needs.

“I have been using AtW for 30 years so I think I know what I need from it.”

Later in the session, Taylor was critical of the government’s Disability Confident scheme.

The much-criticised scheme aims to encourage employers to “think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people”.

But Disability News Service revealed earlier this month that DWP had announced that the personal independence payment section of its contractor Capita had been awarded membership of the top level of the Disability Confident scheme just as a coroner was implicating the company in the decision of a young disabled mum to take her own life.

And four years ago, DWP declared itself a Disability Confident Leader just days before being found guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of the UN disability convention.

Taylor told the committee yesterday that while Disability Confident was a “very good scheme at… promoting disabled people in the workplace, it has actually had a very limited impact on the number of disabled people in work.”

He said the scheme had been viewed as “too reliant” on self-assessments by employers of “how well they are actually doing at employing disabled people”.

And he said that anecdotal evidence Scope had heard from disabled people working for Disability Confident employers “has suggested that their employers have not been particularly supportive of them, despite being signed up to the Disability Confident scheme”.

Earlier in the evidence session, Hadi told the committee that she was growing “quite tired of [DWP] saying they don’t know what works” when it comes to disability employment.

She said: “We are in 2021 now and they have had an awful long time to find out what works.”

She said it was not “rocket science”, and that what worked was providing disabled people with personalised support and providing it quickly.

She said: “I don’t really know what they are waiting to find out.

“I think we do know what works and if they talked to disabled people, if they had personalised support, they would see the results.

“It desperately needs more funding and then things will work.”

25 February 2021

 

 

Government’s 2016 welfare reforms ‘had devastating impact on disabled people’

Government welfare reforms introduced in 2016 have had a “devastating” impact on disabled people and others in low-income households over the last five years, according to a new report by a group of MPs and peers.

The report (PDF) by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Health in All Policies, which draws together research from numerous sources over the last five years, was described this week as “stark” and “hard-hitting”.

It focuses on the impact of five key measures within the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, including cuts to the benefit cap; freezing certain benefits for four years; and cuts of almost £30 a week to disabled people placed in the work-related activity group of employment and support allowance (ESA).

The report says that the “disproportional, negative” impact on disabled people and children was “reprehensible”, and it adds: “The increase in social-security driven poverty has been mirrored by a deterioration in our health status as a country, one of the few advanced economies where since 2018 life expectancy has been flatlining.”

It concludes that the act has pushed many low-income households into poverty, and has caused increased debt, rent arrears, food-bank use, homelessness, and a negative impact on mental health.

It also says that the treatment of benefit claimants by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) often leaves them feeling worthless and even “dehumanised”.

Ellen Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, told the report’s online launch event: “The APPG has succeeded in producing such a stark report that cuts through the spin and selective use of figures that have too often been used to disguise the true impact of welfare reform and it presents a very hard-hitting portrait of Britain today.”

She said the report showed that the “more disabled you are… the harder you are hit” by the measures in the act.

Clifford, co-chair of the Commission on Social Security*, pointed to one of the new report’s key recommendations, for the government to extend the £20 a week rise given to universal credit claimants during the pandemic to those on “legacy benefits” such as ESA.

She said that many of those refused the uplift were disabled people who have seen their spending rise sharply during the pandemic, through having to pay for essentials such as personal protective equipment for their personal assistants or for online deliveries of food.

She said: “At DPAC we think we urgently need to pressure the government into extending that to legacy benefits.

“There’s no question that the failure to do so has been deeply detrimental to disabled people’s health.”

On Monday (1 March), DPAC is holding a day of action as part of its #20MoreForAll campaign, which includes asking supporters to email their MP to tell them why it is important that the uplift is extended to legacy benefits.

It is also hosting a survey on the impact of the failure to extend the uplift.

Among its recommendations, the all-party group repeats calls from the disabled people’s movement, and many others, for an assessment of the cumulative impact of the government’s cuts and reforms on disabled people.

It also says DWP must change its culture “from one that is perceived to ‘dehumanise’ claimants to one that trusts, supports and enables claimants” and must “develop systems and practices… which identify and support vulnerable claimants at all stages of their application and claim”.

And it repeats calls for the Equality and Human Rights Commission to launch an inquiry into the deaths of benefit claimants between 2008 and 2020 that have been linked to DWP’s actions.

Disabled activist Rick Burgess told the launch event that it was also crucial to consider, when examining the impact of the government’s welfare reforms and cuts, what it was like to be “an oppressed group” that has been subjected to “democide or social murder, particularly during the pandemic, when we are 60 per cent of the deaths”.

He said: “I would like people to understand there needs to be some process of truth and reconciliation.

“We cannot simply stop oppressing people, we have to acknowledge that was done, and reparations have to be made, because it’s about respecting people who you have dehumanised in the past.”

Debbie Abrahams, chair of the all-party group and a former Labour shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “Our report shows there is strong evidence from several sources that the cuts in social security support have contributed to increasing poverty and financial hardship in low-income households which has particularly affected the poverty levels of children and disabled people.”

*The Commission on Social Security was launched in 2019 to develop a new social security system, in which claimants would be treated with dignity, trust and respect. All of its commissioners have lived experience of the benefits system

25 February 2021

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 16:37
Feb 182021
 

 ONS suggests NHS disability discrimination may have increased risk of COVID deaths

Official figures have provided the first statistical evidence to suggest that unfair practices or discrimination within the NHS may have caused disabled people to be at a higher risk of death from COVID-19 during the pandemic.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has told Disability News Service that the evidence it has produced “warrants further investigation”.

Despite that comment, three key regulators – the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) – have refused to say if they will investigate the ONS concerns.

ONS says its figures show that – after allowing for other factors, such as people’s underlying health conditions, or whether they live in a care home or in a less affluent part of the country – there is still a “smaller but statistically significantly raised risk of death” from COVID-19 for disabled people with higher support needs.

But it also says that it “cannot rule out the possibility of remaining explanatory factors” for the increased risk of death for disabled people, such as “access to and pathways through the healthcare system”.

It also says that an “important part” of the raised risk of dying from COVID-19 faced by disabled people is because they are “disproportionately exposed to a whole range of generally disadvantageous circumstances compared with non-disabled people”.

Throughout the pandemic, disabled people have raised concerns about discriminatory treatment within the health system that they say has put their lives at risk.

This has included discriminatory guidance issued by health bodies on who should receive priority for intensive care treatment during the pandemic; an NHS trust telling people with muscular dystrophy it was keeping their ventilator filters for COVID patients; GPs writing to disabled patients to ask them to agree to sign “do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation” orders; the failure to provide shielding information in an accessible format; and discriminatory NHS England guidance on hospital visitors.

Disabled human rights experts said the new ONS figures were “deeply troubling”, and they called for urgent action to assess whether discrimination – whether direct or indirect – in the health system has played a part in the increased risk of death.

Dr Marie Tidball, coordinator of Oxford University’s Disability Law and Policy Project, said: “Clearly more urgent work needs to be done to assess what factors caused this risk and whether disabled people’s access to healthcare and public health information have had a role in the elevated unexplained risk for these groups.

“The government can no longer shirk its responsibility to produce an inclusive response and recovery plan to identify any barriers which remain to accessing adequate healthcare and must produce a set of actions to halt the scale of deaths amongst disabled people.”

Mike Smith, former disability commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and now chief executive of the east London disabled people’s organisation Real, said: “They can do all the explaining away that they like, but this shows disabled people are more likely to die for reasons unrelated to health conditions.

“The unadjusted numbers are so bad in part because disabled people are more likely to be living in circumstances, such as poverty or poor housing, that made them more vulnerable.

“Even after their adjustments, you are still 40 per cent more likely to die if you are a disabled woman. This is simply not acceptable.”

He stressed that the figures did not prove that the extra risk was caused by direct or indirect discrimination in the health system, but he said that this possibility had to be investigated urgently and he was not sure why no-one seemed interested in doing so.

He said: “As someone who is in the ‘moderately vulnerable’ group, I have been extra careful not to catch COVID when cases were rising higher because I did not trust a pressured health system not to make adverse judgements on my quality of life if I was not in a position to speak up and self-advocate.”

He added: “This isn’t just about potential discrimination in health access, this is about our fundamental right to life being upheld under the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

“There should be national outrage about this.”

Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of the disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives, said it was “increasingly looking from the official evidence that disabled people have been hit significantly and died disproportionately – but for reasons other than just their health status or objective health risk.

“It is difficult to discount the likelihood of discrimination being a factor in them suffering so badly as a result of both COVID-19 and resultant government policy.

“The fact that the ONS after careful investigation is left concluding that disabled people have faced ‘a statistically significant’ raised risk of death is deeply troubling.

“The figures for people with learning difficulties are particularly worrying.”

The ONS figures are included in a new report published last week, which again confirms that about three-fifths (59 per cent) of COVID-19-related deaths* during the pandemic have been of disabled people.

Most of the mainstream media focused on this figure, which has not changed since the first ONS report on the deaths of disabled people during the pandemic last June.

But the new figures also show a “smaller but statistically significantly raised risk of death” for disabled people with higher support needs, once ONS had taken account of pre-existing health conditions, as well as other factors such as the type of accommodation the person lived in, their poverty level, and the part of the country where they lived.

It is the first time that ONS has tried to adjust its figures on COVID-related deaths of disabled people for the impact of underlying health conditions, and to adjust them separately for factors such as where the person lived.

The figures show that more-disabled** women were 40 per cent more likely to die from COVID-19, and more-disabled men 10 per cent more likely to die from COVID-19, once all these other factors had been accounted for, compared to non-disabled women and men.

But it is also the first time ONS has produced figures showing the heightened risk of death from COVID-19 faced by people with learning difficulties.

For those with a “medically diagnosed learning disability”, both men and women were 70 per cent more likely to die from COVID-19 than people without such an impairment, once all the various factors, including underlying health conditions, had been adjusted for.

ONS also found that, of all the factors that have increased the risk of death for someone with learning difficulties, the most significant was living in a care home or other communal setting.

An EHRC spokesperson refused to say if the ONS comments about the health system were a concern, and if it believed there was a need for an investigation.

But it repeated its previous calls for a review into the disproportionate deaths of disabled people.

The spokesperson said: “These figures are further evidence of the severe impact of coronavirus on disabled people.

“To mitigate risk as we continue to navigate a path out of the pandemic, it is imperative that government undertakes a review into the disproportionate deaths of disabled people, ensuring it takes their views and experiences into account.”

CQC also refused to say if the ONS comments about the health system were a concern, and if it believed there was a need for an investigation.

A third regulator, NICE, also refused to say if the ONS comments about the health system were a concern, and whether it would take any action.

It claimed the issue was “not within NICE’s remit”, even though the regulator says on its website: “NICE’s role is to improve outcomes for people using the NHS and other public health and social care services.”

The Department of Health and Social Care refused to say yesterday if it was concerned by the ONS suggestion that unfair treatment in the health system may have contributed to increased death rates of disabled people, and whether it would take any action to investigate these concerns.

But a DHSC spokesperson said: “It is clear COVID-19 disproportionately impacts certain groups of people, including those with specific health conditions and disabled people, and we will take all necessary steps to ensure that we are best able to protect and support them.”

*The report looks at COVID-related deaths between 24 January and 20 November 2020 of people in England aged between 30 and 100

**ONS examines the impact on those who described themselves as disabled people in the 2011 census, either by saying they were “limited a little” (less-disabled) in their daily lives or “limited a lot” (more-disabled)

***For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page

18 February 2021

 

 

DWP records ‘show Tomlinson is either a liar or a fantasist’ over engagement claims

Government records have shown that the minister for disabled people significantly misled fellow MPs about his supposed engagement with a network he and his fellow ministers set up to hear disabled people’s “real lived experiences”.

The newly-published records of ministerial meetings show that Justin Tomlinson had not attended a single meeting of a new network set up to hear from disabled people across England, even though he told a Commons committee how “rewarding” he found those meetings.

Tomlinson told members of the Commons women and equalities committee last September how much he enjoyed “stakeholder engagement” and said he must have been “lonely in a former life” because he spent a “significant proportion of [his] working week” meeting with disability organisations.

He then told the committee that ministers had set up the regional stakeholder network, which began work last April.

He told them the network was set up “so that all voices, particularly of all sizes of disability organisations, can share their real lived experience and help us improve our policies and our communications and I find it a very, very rewarding part of my role”.

The first meeting of one of the nine regional networks was on 11 June 2020 and over the next three months there were five such meetings.

But the new records of external meetings attended by work and pensions ministers show that Tomlinson had not attended a single network meeting by the time he spoke to MPs on the committee, despite his comments.

Although he did not explicitly state that he had attended any of these meetings, his comments strongly suggested that he did so regularly and that he enjoyed doing so.

He has already faced questions over his praise for the network’s contribution because, at the time he was speaking to the committee, only two of the nine networks had even held their first meeting.

But the new records now provide even stronger evidence of how he misled the committee.

Caroline Nokes, the Conservative chair of the committee, and herself a former work and pensions minister, refused to comment on the new evidence.

But Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said: “This is yet more evidence that the government appears to prefer to spend time and energy pretending to engage with disabled people and DDPOs* than actually doing it for real.

“As the disproportionate impact of COVID on disabled people hits the headlines again, it is nothing less than shocking that we have a minister for disabled people and a government who at every turn appear to choose cynical window-dressing exercises over real consultation. This is simply not acceptable.”

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “There doesn’t really seem much else to say about Justin Tomlinson other than he appears to be either a liar or a fantasist. Either way he is a disgrace as minister for disabled people.”

Mark Harrison, of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), said Tomlinson’s actions did not surprise him in what was now “a post-truth world”.

He said: “I suppose nothing surprises me in relation to Tomlinson. He is first and foremost a Tory employment minister, and secondly a minister for or against disabled people.”

When there is any chance of him being held to account, he cancels meetings, as he did with the last two meetings of the government’s new Disabled People’s Organisations Forum, said Harrison.

He added: “He’s the archetypal smooth operator. He’s Teflon. Any criticism just slides off. He’s not bothered by it.”

The evidence of Tomlinson’s misleading comments to the committee have emerged as his Disability Unit is putting the finishing touches to the government’s new disability strategy, amid widespread concerns about the repeated failure to engage with disabled people’s organisations in line with its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (see separate story).

The new records also show that, in the three months from the beginning of July to the end of September – while disabled people were bearing the brunt of the coronavirus crisis (see separate story) – Tomlinson attended only 15 virtual meetings with “external organisations”.

Only six of those meetings included any disabled people’s organisations.

The records also show that Tomlinson did not attend a single meeting with an external organisation between 22 July and 7 September, presumably while he was on an extended holiday.

In the previous three months – April, May and June 2020 – he only attended 13 virtual meetings with external organisations.

A spokesperson for Tomlinson refused to comment.

*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations

18 February 2021

 

 

Audio recording option set to be introduced for all PIP assessments, says DWP

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has finally agreed that all disabled people being assessed for personal independence payment (PIP) will be able to have their face-to-face assessments recorded.

The promise has come in a letter to the Right to Record action group, a disabled-led group of campaigners in Barking and Dagenham, who have been meeting online every week for the last six months.

They worked with audio artist Hannah Kemp-Welch to collect testimonies of people who have applied for PIP, lobby MPs, and produce a radio programme to “creatively campaign for change”.

They have been pushing ministers to fulfil the government’s promise to ensure there is audio equipment in every PIP assessment centre, or if they could not do that, allow claimants to record their assessments using their mobile phones or other devices.

In one of the letters, they told Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people: “Members of our action group have given testimony of their overwhelmingly negative experiences of PIP assessments – specifying demeaning treatment and inaccurate written reports by assessors amongst other issues.”

They argued that the current rules that allow audio recording of PIP assessments force claimants to bring their own equipment, which must be able to produce two identical copies of the recording on audio cassette or CD.

They told Tomlinson that this presents “an insurmountable barrier” to claimants wishing to take advantage of their right to an audio record of their assessment.

Research in 2019 (PDF) by the International Disability Law Clinic (IDLC), based at the University of Leeds, concluded that not having audio recording available at PIP assessments was unlawful.

IDLC found that DWP’s “delay in honouring its commitment to put in place recording equipment” at every PIP assessment breached the Equality Act 2010, the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Now the action group has received a response from ministers which says audio recording should be available by the time DWP resumes face-to-face PIP assessments, which are currently “paused” because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

DWP has told its two private sector contractors, Atos and Capita, that all face-to-face PIP assessments will have to be recorded, although it seems that claimants will still have to request that their assessment is recorded, rather than it happening automatically.

In a letter written on behalf of ministers last week, a DWP civil servant says: “We have recently started working with both assessment providers… to find a suitable method of audio recording which we hope to have in place with the reintroduction of face-to-face assessments.

“This will remove the need for claimants to source a device which meets the required specifications to bring to their assessment as the assessment provider will record the assessment on the claimant’s behalf.”

Audio recording of telephone PIP assessments – introduced for some claimants during the pandemic – has been available through Atos since 21 September 2020 and through Capita since 30 November 2020, the letter adds.

Kevin Walton, a member of the action group, told Disability News Service (DNS): “I got involved with this campaign because I am fed up being called a liar by Atos Healthcare.

“I have had three PIP assessments and have had to go to a tribunal every time, all got overturned.”

He said that ensuring recording equipment was available for all PIP assessments “would be beneficial to everyone and stop unnecessary postponement and suffering for those claiming”.

He said: “We also need medical assessments from our own GPs, which will benefit all involved.”

Walton said that “too many people have been let down by this greedy government” and that it was time for disabled people “to take a stand”.

He said the project showed that disabled people “are able to make a difference and hopefully stop the lying private assessors”.

Another action group member, Carina Murray, said: “Collaborating with other individuals with similar experiences as myself – trying to navigate the brutal process of the assessment system of PIP – has been an empowering experience.

“It has enabled me to switch from the narrative of feeling like a criminal to a person who has valid legal rights to be heard in a fair and just manner, without fear of reprisal.

“Recording assessments will fill in the blanks where information gets missed, so our voices will be heard.”

She said the action group would also like claimants to have a “no equipment, no assessment” right, so if there is no working recording equipment on-site and available, the claimant would have a right to postpone their assessment without the risk of “punitive action” by DWP.

A DWP spokesperson declined to add to the letter sent to the action group, but he confirmed that “an opt-in system remains in place for the audio recording of both telephone and face-to-face assessments”.

Disabled activists have been campaigning for years to persuade DWP to make it easier for claimants to record their assessments, because of widespread concerns about the accuracy of assessment reports.

DNS spent months investigating allegations of dishonesty by PIP assessors in late 2016 and throughout 2017, hearing eventually from more than 250 disabled people in less than a year who said their assessment reports had been dishonest.

They told DNS that assessors working for Capita and Atos – many of them nurses – had repeatedly lied, ignored written evidence, and dishonestly reported the results of physical examinations.

Some disabled activists responded to the government’s continuing failure to deal with the dishonesty and inaccuracy of the PIP assessment process by launching schemes to lend expensive recording equipment to claimants so they could record their own assessments.

Liza Vallance, artistic director and chief executive of Studio 3 Arts, the non-profit organisation that commissioned Kemp-Welch, said: “This moment truly demonstrates the power of art as a vehicle for change.

“I’m so proud that Studio 3 Arts has played a part in making this happen – creating a space to hear from, and be led by, local people with experience of the PIP assessment system.

“As someone with a chronic condition and my own experience of navigating the system, I am personally honoured to be able to stand alongside Hannah and our group and say ‘we made this happen’.”

The commission is part of a wider Studio 3 Arts project that was funded by Barking and Dagenham council through its Connected Communities community cohesion project.

18 February 2021

 

 

Tomlinson faces third angry letter from DPOs over ‘shambolic’ national disability survey

Nearly 100 disability organisations and allies have called on the government to scrap its rushed, inaccessible, over-long and poorly-planned national survey of disabled people.

It is the third letter sent to ministers by disabled-led organisations in the last month to raise serious concerns about the national disability survey, while four disabled people are bringing a legal action that challenges its lawfulness.

Following mounting criticism, the government has already been forced to extend by two weeks – until 28 February – the time allowed for people to respond to the survey if they want their answers to influence its planned national disability strategy.

But the latest letter – due to be emailed to the Cabinet Office today (Thursday), and so far signed by nearly 100 disability organisations and allies – will only add to pressure on the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, over his handling of the survey and the strategy.

In the letter, they tell Tomlinson of their “deep concerns” about the survey, and they warn that it appears to breach the Equality Act and is not the result – as the government claims – of engagement with disabled people’s organisations across the country.

They want him to scrap the survey and replace it with a six-month period of “meaningful consultation and engagement”.

They also want Tomlinson to publish the strategy – currently expected this spring – in draft form for public comment before final publication.

Bristol Disability Equality Forum (BDEF) and National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFB UK) – the two disabled people’s organisations which drew up the letter – told Disability News Service this week that the flawed survey demonstrated the government’s attitude towards disabled people.

They said it showed that Tomlinson and fellow ministers did not really want to listen to disabled people and their organisations.

Among the access issues they have found with the survey are that many disabled people will not be able to fill it in – particularly in the middle of a pandemic – because they do not have access to a computer.

They also say it is “inaccessibly long”, and have counted more than 110 separate questions, while it is inaccessible to those who use screen-reading software, and the version of the Word document that can be sent out on request cannot be filled out on screen.

They said that even six weeks was not long enough to ensure disabled people have enough time to respond, while they were also critical of the failure to engage widely with DPOs about the design of the survey before it was released.

Daisy Holder, a BDEF trustee, said: “You want to fill it in and make a difference, but everyone is automatically being given the impression that their views are not important because they have been given such a short period of time and such an inaccessible form.

“The entire thing needs to be ripped out from the ground and rebuilt in a way that works.

“There is a feeling that none of this is a surprise. No-one is surprised that they do not actually want our views.”

Devaki Sivasubramanian, NFB UK’s general secretary, said: “The government should have given the construction of the form to somebody who knows the job.

“How do they expect a disabled person to respond so quickly? I don’t think they want to hear the true picture.”

On a scale of one to 10, she said she was “nine out of 10 angry and frustrated”, but she added: “I am giving the government just one point for deciding to come to us to do the consultation, but it is not a meaningful consultation.”

Andrew Hodgson, NFB UK’s president, said the “piecemeal” nature of how the survey had been handled implied that the government had “a pre-determined idea of what they want to hear”.

Laura Welti, BDEF’s chief officer, said: “It is going to be a national strategy that will determine what happens to disabled people’s lives over the next five or 10 years at least.

“The lack of consultation with disabled people indicates that this strategy is not really for our benefit.”

Sarah Gayton, NFB UK’s Street Access Campaign coordinator, said the survey had been “shambolic” and showed the government’s “sheer contempt” for disabled people.

She said: “This simply isn’t acceptable. There is a huge amount of anger and frustration out there. They have to withdraw it and start again.”

Sarah Leadbetter, NFB UK’s national campaigns officer, added: “They just don’t want us to be included or to speak to us or to get things moving on. They want us to stay in limbo.

“They are not involving us in society. It just makes me so angry, it’s unbelievable.”

A government spokesperson said in a statement: “The national strategy for disabled people will be published in the spring.

“The survey allows disabled people, carers and the wider public from across the UK to give their views on the important issues impacting disabled people.

“The survey adheres in full with digital accessibility principles and has been extended to ensure as many people as possible have their voices heard.

“This is only one element of our engagement, and we regularly consult with a wide range of people and organisations, including through workshops and cross-cutting groups, to ensure a wide range of views are taken into account in the strategy.”

18 February 2021

 

 

Guarded response to health and social care white paper

Disabled campaigners have given a guarded response to the government’s new health and social care white paper, with particular concerns about the continuing social care funding crisis and ministers’ failure to pledge proper co-production and engagement with service-users.

Much of the Integration and Innovation white paper focuses on the NHS, and on plans to ensure England’s health and social care systems become “truly integrated”.

The white paper’s themes are said to be “supporting integration, reducing bureaucracy and improved accountability”, with a bill based on its contents to be published later this year.

The key structural changes will be the establishment of regional integrated care systems (ICSs) to run the NHS in every part of England, alongside separate ICS health and care partnerships that will bring together the NHS, local government and other partners.

The white paper says: “Instead of working independently every part of the NHS, public health and social care system should continue to seek out ways to connect, communicate and collaborate so that the health and care needs of people are met.”

Although there are many references to social care in the white paper, key issues – particularly funding – are side-lined, with the white paper promising instead that the government will produce its long-awaited social care reforms later this year.

Among the social care proposals the white paper offers are measures to improve accountability of local authorities and service-providers, with new ways to monitor the quality of services and improve data collection, and changes to enable “person-centred models” of discharging patients from hospital.

There is also a new duty for the Care Quality Commission to assess how local authorities deliver their adult social care duties, with the potential – eventually – for the health and social care secretary to “intervene” if a local authority fails to meet those duties.

Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary, said the proposals would allow professionals to “operate seamlessly across health and care without being split into artificial silos that keep them apart”.

Because of its focus on the NHS and other pressures, few disabled people’s organisations have produced a position on the white paper yet, but the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) and Disability Rights UK (DR UK) have given initial responses to Disability News Service.

Mark Harrison, from ROFA, said he had “real concerns” about integration because it involved two systems “run by non-disabled professionals who have no commitment to putting disabled people at the heart of it”.

He said: “There are no disabled voices in the NHS because there is no room for it.”

He said that social care “pays lip service” to hearing disabled voices, and then ignores what they say.

He said: “Partly this is because of austerity cuts imposed by central government, but also because the concept of service-user involvement and voice are stuck in the 20th century. It’s not meaningful co-production.”

He pointed to two examples of local authorities that were taking part in meaningful engagement and co-production with disabled people: Hammersmith and Fulham council in London and the Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel.

But Harrison said: “I can’t see an example of that in the NHS and in 99 per cent of local authorities around the country.”

He also pointed to the human rights violations over the last decade caused by the re-institutionalisation of thousands of people with learning difficulties and autistic people.

He said he did not believe that the white paper would reverse this because one of the primary causes was the loss of local, community-based and preventive services that offer options to support people to live independently in the community.

Fazilet Hadi, DR UK’s head of policy, said: “Bringing health bodies and local authorities together to plan services across local areas and tackle inequalities is a laudable aim, however without genuine co-production with disabled people at the heart of the reform, and without increased investment in social care, there is a danger that this will just be a shuffling round of the deckchairs.”

She added: “It’s positive to establish partnership boards that enable health bodies and local government to plan services across their patch, and to bring health bodies together to shape health provision.

“The sharing of customer data could also result in more personalised services.

“However, as we all know, structural change is not enough.

“We currently have a social care system which is chronically underfunded, and which is not free at the point of delivery.

“We also have incredibly long waiting-lists for NHS treatments and NHS staff diverted to deliver the ambitious vaccination programme.

“Without any proposals on the table to address the under-funding of social care or deal with the backlog of NHS treatments, it is hard to get excited about the health and care white paper.

“It is also difficult to believe that just bringing statutory bodies together will inevitably result in better population health planning, increased coproduction and engagement with discriminated against groups or greater focus on reducing health inequalities.”

The government originally promised that a social care green paper would be published by the end of 2017, and then July 2018, before delaying it to the autumn and then the end of 2018.

After missing the December 2018 deadline, it was delayed until “the earliest opportunity” in 2019, before health and social care secretary Matt Hancock told MPs it would be published by April 2019.

In July 2019, as he became prime minister, Boris Johnson announced in Downing Street that the government would “fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared”.

But the party’s 2019 general election manifesto offered only future discussions with other parties to build a “cross-party consensus” on reform.

Now the white paper says the government has “committed to bringing forward proposals this year”.

18 February 2021

 

 

Campaigners seek urgent support for amendments to domestic abuse bill

Campaigners are seeking “urgent” support for their attempt to increase the rights of disabled survivors of domestic abuse through new government legislation.

They say time is running out to secure support in the House of Lords for two key amendments to the domestic abuse bill, changes they believe will make a crucial difference to the lives of disabled survivors.

The Lords begins debating the report stage of the bill on 8 March, with the draft legislation having already been approved by MPs.

Lobbying efforts are being led by the London-based user-led organisation Stay Safe East, which works with disabled survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, hate crime and other forms of abuse.

This week, it has written to other disabled people’s organisations, women’s organisations, charities and peers, to try to build support for the two amendments.

One of the amendments would remove from law the existing “carer’s defence”, which allows a family member or partner accused of abuse to claim they were acting in the disabled person’s best interests.

Ruth Bashall, chief executive of Stay Safe East, said: “If this landmark piece of legislation is to protect disabled victims as well as non-disabled victims, we must ensure that abusers are not provided with a clause to claim ‘best interests’ as justification for abusing us.”

The other amendment would expand protection for disabled people so that measures in the bill cover abuse not just by family members and partners but also paid care workers and personal assistants, and friends and neighbours who carry out unpaid caring duties.

Bashall said: “Every year, disabled people are victims of abuse by paid and unpaid carers or personal assistants with whom they have a close relationship but are not family members, and there is very little legislation to protect us.”

This second amendment has already secured significant cross-party support – including from at least five Tory peers – when it was debated in the Lords last month.

The efforts in the Lords are being spearheaded by the disabled crossbench peers Baroness [Jane] Campbell and Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson.

Baroness Campbell has helped coordinate a legal opinion on the second amendment by leading social care and discrimination barristers Paul Bowen, Catherine Casserley and Steve Broach, and disability law expert Professor Luke Clements.

They have concluded that failing to include the second amendment in the bill is likely to discriminate unlawfully against disabled people under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Stay Safe East is now calling on fellow campaigners to contact members of the House of Lords and MPs to call for their support for the two amendments, to share its social media posts on Twitter and Facebook, and to sign its petition.

18 February 2021

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 19:31
Feb 122021
 

 Government’s pandemic failings have led to ‘bleak picture of marginalisation’

The government’s continuing failure to address the harm caused to disabled people during the pandemic has led to “anxiety and hardship” and a “continuing bleak picture of marginalisation”, according to user-led research.

In a new report, Inclusion London says that “loss of control, social isolation and feelings of dependency” and the “strain of making ends meet” have had a “devastating impact” on disabled people during the crisis.

The report calls for urgent action to address problems such as food poverty, financial difficulties, workplace discrimination, and access to medicine, COVID-19 vaccines and social care.

The Locked Down and Abandoned report – which documents disabled people’s experiences during the pandemic – says the problems have been “compounded” by a failure to engage and listen to disabled people and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

While the government insists it is protecting and supporting those in greatest need, it has instead introduced new laws, guidance and policies which have “actively undermined” disabled people’s “ability to protect ourselves and our rights to critical support”, says the report.

Disabled people “are struggling to understand their rights and what they should do and how to keep themselves safe”, with “fast changing, inaccessible and often confusing guidance” increasing their anxiety and distress.

Disabled women and disabled people from minority ethnic groups have been even more disproportionately affected by the pandemic and the measures taken to respond to it, says Inclusion London.

The report draws on results from a UK-wide survey of more than 550 people, as well as focus groups and workshops.

Many of those who took part said they had experienced reduced support due to high levels of staff sickness, cuts to care packages, and increased care charges.

Some saw their in-person support replaced by phone calls or their support hours cut, which stopped them leaving their homes.

Many complained about “inadequate” communication from their local council, with some reporting difficulties in securing advice or even any response at all, while some local authorities increased care charges, pushing disabled people further into poverty “and causing some to stop their care altogether”.

One respondent told Inclusion London last September: “I used to [have] 42 hours of care per week pre lockdown. I now only have one 15 minute telephone call per day.”

Another said last month: “I advocate for several service users, one had all hours removed for going out and was refused [their] request to have them back when lockdown eased.

“Even though she was desperate to get outdoors she could not without help so has been stuck indoors since March 2020, not shielding, but trapped due to so few care hours.”

More than four-fifths (81 per cent) of those who responded said they had experienced problems accessing healthcare.

One of those who responded to the survey said last summer: “I have no support. All promises made before leaving mental health ward have come to nothing other than assessments completed, but no actual practical support.

“I’m terrified and not coping, but no one can help.”

More than a third (37 per cent) of those who responded said they were experiencing employment and financial difficulties because of COVID-19.

And more than a third (36 per cent) said they were finding it difficult to access the community, including a continuing struggle to access food, with most services and support moving online, and changes to the built environment, such as street layouts.

Employers have failed to comply with the Equality Act and have often refused to make reasonable adjustments for disabled staff who are working from home, says the report.

And many disabled people shielding from the virus have been left “without a right to furlough and were pushed to take leave or accept woefully inadequate support” through statutory sick pay.

The high costs of food, medicine and utilities has also pushed disabled people into greater poverty, says Inclusion London.

One disabled person who responded to the survey said: “Society changed overnight and barriers increased hugely from food to PPE [personal protective equipment].

“Things I rely on like gloves and wipes have increased in price x4… There is no pathway through my GP or social services for this. I feel quite abandoned.”

Among its recommendations, the report calls for an independent inquiry to investigate the disproportionately high number of disabled people’s deaths from COVID-19.

And it calls for DPOs to be involved in all COVID-19 planning and recovery work at local, regional and national level.

Inclusion London also calls for urgent increases in social care funding that will enable dignity, choice and control for disabled people, with DPOs “fully involved in developing proposals for the reform of social care”.

And it says there should be “urgent action to ensure social security provides an adequate level of income protection”.

But it warns that its evidence of marginalisation is likely to underestimate its true extent as it has been unable to reach those who do not have access to the internet or are living in institutional settings.

11 February 2021

 

 

Secret report casts doubt on DWP’s ‘no duty of care’ claim

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been unable to explain why its secretary of state continues to insist that it has no legal “duty of care” to disabled benefit claimants, when one of its own secret reports states clearly that it does.

Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has repeatedly told MPs that her department does not have a legal duty to “safeguard” its claimants, and that such tasks are instead the responsibility of local agencies such as social services and doctors’ surgeries.

Her repeated denials have come following a decade of distressing cases which have linked DWP’s policies and practices to the deaths of disabled people, particularly those being assessed for employment and support allowance (ESA) and personal independence payment.

Now a secret report, probably completed in 2014, has shown a DWP civil servant discussing the department’s “ongoing Duty of Care” to claimants of incapacity benefit who were being reassessed for ESA.

It recommends a review of DWP’s “ongoing Duty of Care in relation to the identification and support of claimants required to participate in the IBR [incapacity benefit reassessment] Process, who as a result of a [redacted] may be vulnerable and have different or additional support needs.”

It continues: “When defined, the Duty of Care should be brought to the attention of all colleagues including those from Atos* who are involved in the IBR Process…”

The report also warns: “The risk associated with disregarding the possibility that some of these claimants need more support or a different form of engagement is that we fail to recognise more cases like [redacted], with consequent potential impact on the claimant.”

The references to the department’s duty of care are part of a heavily-redacted report written following an investigation by the department into a serious incident – probably a death – involving an IB claimant who was being reassessed for ESA.

The redacted report was one of 49 released to Disability News Service (DNS) by DWP following a protracted freedom of information battle that ended in 2016 with DNS winning an appeal to the information rights tribunal.

Despite the existence of the report, Coffey and her department continue to insist that there is no such legal duty of care.

Last September, Coffey told the Commons work and pensions committee: “I do not think it is the responsibility of DWP to have that statutory care duty.

“We are not the local councils, the social services, the doctors and other people who have that.”

Last week, she repeated the claim, telling the same committee: “We don’t have a statutory duty specifically relating to safeguarding.”

Her department has made the same claim in a freedom of information response to campaigner Amanda Hart, claiming that the “legal position is that there is no legal duty of care on the Secretary of State or her officials in the execution of their statutory duties”.

Last September, disabled campaigner Alison Turner accused Coffey of being “heartless” and “sticking her fingers up to all the families who have lost someone” because of DWP’s actions, after the secretary of state claimed the department had no duty of care.

Turner’s fiancé is the son of Errol Graham, who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed by DWP as a result of flaws in the work capability assessment process.

Turner said at the time that Coffey’s comments explained how Errol Graham and so many other claimants had died over the last decade, and why this “continues to happen to other people”.

She said: “People like Errol have died because of it, because of the department’s lack of care, its lack of concern for people’s safety.”

This week, Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, a member of the work and pensions committee, and the MP who has done most to hold DWP to account for the deaths of benefit claimants, said: “If this peer review report from approximately 2014 says DWP does have a duty of care, when did this change and why?”

She added: “It is quite staggering, given the direct delivery of essential services and vital income to vulnerable social security claimants, that the work and pensions secretary doesn’t believe that her department has a duty of care to these claimants.

“It is unconscionable that this duty isn’t recognised, particularly given the horrific deaths of vulnerable claimants over the last decade, and must be incredibly painful for the families of those who have died.

“But it also makes a mockery of the government’s stated commitment to address the DWP’s failings and ensure vulnerable claimants are identified and protected.”

Asked if Coffey could explain the discrepancy and say whether the position over whether the department has a duty of care had changed since 2012-14, a DWP spokesperson refused to comment.

*At the time, Atos carried out work capability assessments on behalf of DWP

11 February 2021

 

 

Disability Unit accused of ‘shameful manipulation’ over disability strategy note

The government has been accused of a “shameful manipulation of reality”, after its Disability Unit sent out desperate emails to its regional disability networks, begging for positive accounts of how its policies have improved disabled people’s lives.

The note was sent out by the government’s Disability Unit to the chairs of its nine regional stakeholder networks across England.

One leading disabled campaigner said this week that the gambit “smacks of desperation”.

The government’s note asks the network chairs: “We are looking for disabled people who would be willing to write up to 100 words about how they have achieved their aspirations, and if there has been a government policy that has supported them to do so.”

It was sent out as this week’s 13 February deadline approaches for disabled people around the country to respond to the government’s national disability survey if they want their response to influence this spring’s planned disability strategy.

Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of the disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives, said the note sent to the network chairs was “a shameful manipulation of reality”.

He said: “Only this government could choose a time when disproportionate numbers of disabled people are dying as a result of its disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic to ask disabled people to send in accounts of their successes to bolster its own appalling record on disability issues.

“Disabled people have faced rising barriers and challenges under this government, not least because of its welfare reform programme and cuts in social care and other services.

“But still, as we see from what we hear from members of Shaping Our Lives, even against these odds, we are still achieving, we are still contributing. But that’s too often in spite of government policy.

“If this government wants the truth then let it commission disabled people to carry out independent research on trends in our life chances.”

Mark Harrison, from the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), said the Disability Unit’s note “smacks of desperation”.

He said: “The fact that they are writing to the chairs of the networks asking for good news stories suggests to me that the feedback coming from surveys that are being filled out is not what the government wants to hear.

“They are putting a PR gloss on 10 years of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights and retrogression against most of the articles of the UN convention [on the rights of disabled people].”

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said she was “very concerned” about the note sent to the networks.

She said: “I’m concerned as a strategy isn’t about promoting good news stories, it’s about setting a new ambitious direction.

“Requesting positive stories hints that the strategy isn’t going to be focused on transformational change.

“The disability strategy should be focusing on the transformation of society, so that disabled people can live as equal citizens.

“Whilst an ambitious strategy should be built on whatever positives currently exist, the need for change is massive and has been underlined by the inequalities experienced by disabled people during the coronavirus crisis.

“We need a new legislative framework, funding for disabled people’s organisations, major reforms to social security and social care. These are the areas that the Disability Unit should be asking about.”

Lynne Turnbull, chair of the north-west regional stakeholder network and chief executive of the disabled people’s organisation Disability Positive, confirmed she was among network chairs who received the note from the Disability Unit.

She said it would not be appropriate for her to comment on the note, as chair of the regional network, but she said her organisation was happy to do so.

Jessica Tait, policy and communications manager for Disability Positive (formerly Cheshire Centre for Independent living), said: “As well as the request for stories being short notice, we are concerned that featuring these in the strategy may gloss over the less than positive experiences many disabled people have had with government schemes such as Access to Work.

“Clearly the strategy will recognise that government has the power to make things better for disabled people, but it shouldn’t seek to overstate the government’s previous successes, as this risks undermining the reason a national strategy is so needed.”

The government’s Disability Unit had not responded to a request to comment by noon today (Thursday).

Turnbull said her network has carried out research with nearly 400 disabled people in the north-west and had submitted it to the government to feed into its disability strategy, along with 34 recommendations.

She said that four key themes stood out as important to disabled people in the north-west.

One was the importance of the availability of advocacy to all disabled people who need it, for example to help them with problems with education, health and social care, benefits, housing and the justice system.

Another was to ensure the government increased funding for health and social care.

The third theme was the importance of a benefits system which was “based on need, fully supports the right to live an independent life and supports the idea that a person is disabled by a world that doesn’t meet their needs, not by their condition”, and which provides enough money for a person “to live a full life”.

The final theme was to ensure that “all government information and communication is in plain English, so that it is easy to understand, with easy read, British Sign Language, large print, audio, and braille available if needed”, as well as legal protection for British Sign Language “as a distinct language of the UK, and with an associated culture”.

Meanwhile, ROFA, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Inclusion London confirmed this week that they were backing a legal challenge to the survey, and its impact on the strategy, which is being brought by four disabled people.

They say there has been a lack of meaningful engagement with disabled people’s organisations, and disabled people have not been given long enough to respond to the survey if they want to influence the strategy with their answers.

A DPAC spokesperson said that having any future disability strategy drawn up from the survey results “would be a disaster for disabled people”.

She added: “Whole groups of disabled people like those living in residential care homes were just ignored and access for people with a learning difficulty, particularly during a pandemic, was utterly unacceptable.”

11 February 2021

 

 

Autistic activist tells MPs of ‘brutal… aggressive… sink or swim’ support system

A disabled activist has told MPs that the government’s failure to replace the broken system of crisis support means sectioning, detention and abuse in assessment and treatment units (ATUs) remains a constant threat to her and other autistic people.

Alexis Quinn described the system as “brutal… aggressive… routine-less, chaotic, sensory-charged warehousing”, which was often situated hundreds of miles from the autistic person’s home.

She appealed to cross-party members of the Commons health and social care committee this week to secure “real change” to a system that is “not fit for purpose”, and so prevent the need for the “retraumatising” and “endless” giving of evidence by survivors of abuse in ATUs.

She called on the government to prioritise community-based services and a “rights-based approach to help people in crisis” and end the privatisation of mental healthcare.

She was giving evidence as part of the committee’s new inquiry into the care received by about 2,000 autistic people and people with learning difficulties in secure inpatient settings, including the forceful use of restraint, seclusion and segregation.

She told the MPs that she had seen no improvement in ATUs since she was last detained about four years ago.

She said: “I don’t think anything’s improved at all and I think it can’t improve.

“The model of care is wrong. It’s reactive, it’s over-medicalised. Let’s remember we are not sick [so] why are we in hospital?”

Quinn told the MPs that “any kind of autistic reaction to a stressful life event… can and too often does result in sectioning” because of the failure to provide any community-based support for autistic people in crisis.

She described her ordeal in ATUs, including “not being treated quite as a human, being told constantly that I need to get better, from what I don’t know” and being “rewarded with star charts and fresh air if I managed to look normal, [but] confined to the indoors if my autisticness, my reaction to the environment, couldn’t be adequately masked that day”.

She also described being transported in cages, handcuffed, with her legs tied together, and being carried like a battering ram.

Asked to reflect on her time in ATUs, she said: “I reflect on closed doors, being hundreds of miles away from home, worried when the next sensory overload would come, triggered by a chaotic, sensory-charged environment that I had no choice to be in.

“I was constantly worried because I was just waiting for the next overload to come.

“It was always met with six to 10 men pinning me to the floor, pulling my pants down and injecting me with sedatives and then secluding me.

“I reflect on the lights that are shone through the window… in the door of the room that I slept in, every hour, and you wouldn’t believe that I missed that for a good few years, being woken up every hour by a torch. You just get so institutionalised.

“And I reflect on really how the system just doesn’t care about autistic people, how it silences you, makes you afraid, and that fear stays with you a long time, even now.”

She also spoke about the “routine criminalising” of autistic people who are charged with assault and criminal damage after “a meltdown” and are merely responding to being locked in a room “for days, weeks, months, years”.

Quinn said the system was “sink or swim” and those who cannot manage in the community have to go to hospital, where they end up being restrained because they are in “the most inappropriate place for autistic people”.

She said restraint was used “to ensure compliance, coercion, and, to be honest, to manage a larger ward environment which is usually understaffed”.

She added: “This isn’t restraint, this is manhandling, it’s abuse, and I think we need to start calling it that.”

11 February 2021

 

 

Frustration and anger at Labour’s new ‘tick-box’ roadshow plans

Disabled activists have spoken of their growing frustration and even anger with Labour’s failure to engage properly with user-led organisations, after the party announced a new roadshow aimed at hearing from individual disabled people around the country.

Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, is to hold 11 online events with disabled people across England, Scotland and Wales, starting next Friday (19 February).

The virtual roadshow follows a similar exercise that began five years ago and fed into the party’s 2017 general election manifesto.

But there was anger and frustration with Labour among disabled campaigners who spoke to Disability News Service (DNS) this week, both on and off the record, about the plans.

They fear the new events will be merely a “tick-box exercise” aimed at trying to show that Labour is listening to disabled people, while allowing the party to sidestep proper engagement with representative organisations.

They also pointed to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which makes it clear that governments (although not explicitly opposition parties) must “actively involve” disabled people in developing policies through engaging with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs)*.

In announcing the roadshow, Foxcroft said that it “kickstarts a four-year engagement programme” leading up to the next general election and that she wants to speak to “as many disabled people, charities, disabled [people’s] organisations, unions and other civil society organisations as possible”.

Among those speaking out this week was Ellen Clifford, a member of the steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), who described Labour’s move as “unbelievably arrogant and offensive” after years of work put in by disabled people and DPOs to agree priorities and policy solutions.

Her DPAC colleague Paula Peters said she was “really concerned that it’s a tick-box exercise which will achieve nothing” and will mean the party will be “glossing over real concerns disabled people have and ignoring them”.

Peters pointed to Labour’s continuing failure to speak out on crucial issues affecting disabled people, including the “catastrophic impact of austerity” that has led to the deaths of disabled benefit claimants such as Philippa Day and Jodey Whiting.

Mark Harrison, from the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), of which DPAC is a member, said he had “serious misgivings” about the roadshow.

He said ROFA, DPAC and others had made clear to Foxcroft, shadow women and equalities secretary Marsha de Cordova and Labour leader Keir Starmer at a meeting in December that “we didn’t need any more roadshows”.

He said: “Disabled people told the Labour party exactly what the issues were when the roadshows happened in 2016 and informed the development of the manifesto in 2017.

“They might need a little updating but what we need is proper co-production with the disability movement and DPOs around good policy-making for, with and by disabled people.”

He added: “They can pick any Tom, Dick and Harry off the street and they will get 1,001 views.

“If they want hundreds and thousands to sprinkle and decorate their cake then that is the way to go.

“If they are serious about implementing disabled people’s human rights in line with the social model and the UN convention they will engage with representative organisations of disabled people.

“The fact that they are going a different way is incredibly frustrating.”

Kathy Bole, co-chair of Disability Labour, agreed with the need for Labour to engage with DPOs.

She said: “While I would always be glad Labour is speaking to disabled people, the term roadshow evokes a bad feeling.

“We don’t need a roadshow, we need a constant dialogue. We need tangible change and it is overdue. We are growing weary of being overlooked time and time again.”

A Labour spokesperson told DNS: “Vicky and Labour are committed to ensuring that disabled people are not left behind as we emerge from the pandemic, and this includes talking to as many disabled people and organisations as possible.

“DPOs have a crucial role to play and we will continue to engage and consult them.

“Our priority is to continue working together to develop our policies to ensure that, when Labour is in government, we will deliver justice and fairness for disabled people after years of the Conservatives having the wrong priorities.”

Although he said that the results of the last roadshow “were written up into the last manifesto, which will be used as part of our policy development”, he had not clarified by noon today (Thursday) whether the notes and results collected from that roadshow would be used.

*The UNCRPD makes it clear that, when developing laws and policies relating to disabled people, governments “must closely consult with and actively involve persons with disabilities, including children with disabilities, through their representative organizations”.

It defines “representative organizations” as those that are “led, directed and governed by persons with disabilities”, a definition which the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities included in its general comment number seven, which was adopted in September 2018.

11 February 2021

 

 

Foxcroft defends Labour’s near-silence over death of Philippa Day

Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people has been unable to explain why she and her party have stayed almost silent about a young disabled mother whose death was linked by a coroner to fatal flaws in the disability benefits system.

Last month, the coroner highlighted 28 separate “problems” with the administration of the personal independence payment (PIP) system that helped cause the death of 27-year-old Philippa Day, from Nottingham.

The nine-day inquest uncovered multiple failings by both the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its private sector contractor Capita in the 11 months that led up to Philippa’s death in October 2019.

The coroner ended by telling DWP and Capita that he had decided to issue them with prevention of future deaths reports, which will force them to consider how to make changes to the PIP system to prevent further deaths of claimants.

But despite the rarity of such a decision – DWP has received only a handful of such reports from coroners over the last decade – senior Labour figures have remained almost silent.

Backbench Labour MPs like Debbie Abrahams and Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome have attempted to hold the government to account over the coroner’s lengthy findings.

Abrahams raised Philippa Day’s case in the main Commons chamber this week, the first time that had been done since the inquest ended on 27 January.

She told MPs: “Philippa’s was not the first death of a vulnerable claimant over the past 10 years, and I fear that it will not be the last.

“I am afraid that the response of the work and pensions secretary to my questions on this has not been good enough. There has to be an independent inquiry into these deaths.”

But Disability News Service (DNS) has been unable to find any mention of the party itself or its shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft, speaking out in the wake of the inquest, other than in a brief statement by the shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, on the day the coroner delivered his findings.

This statement made no mention of PIP or the coroner’s findings that linked systemic flaws with Philippa Day’s death, and found that these flaws were “the predominant factor and the only acute factor” that led to her death.

The party’s failure to speak out comes as many disabled activists are growing increasingly concerned at Labour’s refusal to speak out on key disability issues, such as the deaths of claimants that have been linked to DWP’s actions.

Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, told DNS there had been “silence” from Labour on the “catastrophic impact of austerity on disabled people”, such as the deaths of Philippa Day and Jodey Whiting, other than through the efforts of Debbie Abrahams.

She said the party had “forgotten” disabled people and had been silent on the impact of the pandemic and mounting concerns about the government’s forthcoming disability strategy and its planned green paper on disability benefits.

On Monday, DNS asked Foxcroft to explain why Labour had said so little after the inquest, what Labour thinks must be done to address the flawed PIP system, and how Philippa Day’s death adds weight to calls for an independent inquiry into deaths linked to DWP and the benefit system.

Yesterday (Wednesday), she provided the following statement: “The government needs to urgently learn the lessons from the tragic Philippa Day case and the coroner’s verdict.

“This must never happen again and the DWP has to act on the wider failings highlighted in the report.

“Labour has repeatedly raised concerns about PIP assessments and will continue to do so.”

11 February 2021

 

 

Clear gap between charities’ words and actions on disabled leaders, says research

There is a clear gap between the “words and actions” of the voluntary sector when it comes to including and recognising disabled people as employees and leaders, according to new research.

The research found that disabled people in senior positions across the sector often felt the need to hide their impairments if they wanted to be accepted as leaders.

And it found that disabled leaders were often frustrated at being “pigeonholed in disability-related roles and organisations”, and at not having the same career options within the sector as non-disabled people.

The low profile of disabled employees across civil society is low, but it is “even lower for disabled leaders in the sector”, says the research.

The two reports were commissioned by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO), and were co-authored by disabled activist Zara Todd – former chair of Inclusion London – and researcher Ellie Munro.

ACEVO had commissioned the two reports – Hidden Leaders and Accessing Leadership – in recognition that it should do more to help create a more disability-inclusive civil society sector.

ACEVO’s own data from 2019 showed that none of its 15 staff or 11 trustees identified as disabled people.

As part of the research, Todd carried out 10 in-depth interviews, with “numerous interviewees [speaking] of disability inclusion within civil society as aspired to but rarely delivered”.

One disabled leader told her: “You end up being typecast as to where you are and where you should be as a disabled CEO.

“At the start of my career I looked outside the disability space for work but didn’t get anywhere.

“As a disabled leader you are not seen as a whole person.”

Another told her: “I have powered through inaccessibility to make it seem like there’s no problem, masking and accommodating inaccessibility to the detriment of my own well-being.”

Todd and Munro said they struggled to find any disabled leaders in civil society who were not associated with work on disability.

They said: “The consequences of disclosure in the sector as it currently stands leave many disabled leaders feeling pigeonholed or trapped in working for organisations related to their identity.

“A number of our interviewees identified not being taken seriously outside of the disability space and not having their skills as leaders valued or recognised.”

They also found that disabled leaders are “rarely asked to talk about innovation, people management or managing governance structures” but instead they are asked to focus on “storytelling and talking about the barriers and solutions to the sector’s and society’s issues around diversity”.

The research also found that, of the 25 largest charities (by annual income), 10 of them did not mention disabled staff at all in their annual reports.

Of those 10, nine were members of the government’s much-criticised Disability Confident scheme, which is supposed to encourage employers to “think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people”.

Among the recommendations in Hidden Leaders are for charities to ensure they have “clear information available for staff around reasonable adjustments and the Access to Work programme”, and for larger organisations to collect disability data about their staff.

It also calls for charities to make it clear that they follow the social or human rights models of disability; to conduct reviews to ensure that all their policies and procedures are “anti-oppressive, non-exploitative and supportive of disabled people”; and to run events aimed at disabled people with additional protected characteristics, such as disabled people of colour or disabled women.

Among their recommendations for ACEVO, Todd and Munro say the organisation should create a network for grassroots leaders from marginalised backgrounds; and provide templates so member organisations can develop their own access and inclusion manifestos, and capture disability workforce data.

They also say ACEVO should co-produce materials with user-led organisations to help the sector and society “understand the difference between user-led organisations and ‘organisations for’ disabled people”.

Todd told Disability News Service: “One of the things that surprised me the most during the evidence gathering was how little the wider sector knows about the disability movement.

“Hopefully, by ACEVO championing the inclusion of disabled leaders, their talent and hard work will get the wider acknowledgement it deserves.”

11 February 2021

 

 

Post-COVID Scottish government ‘must look to rights and co-production’

Planning for a post-COVID Scotland must include a commitment to incorporate the UN disability convention into law, and fully involve disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), according to a leading Scottish DPO.

Announcing its own manifesto for the upcoming elections to the Scottish parliament, Inclusion Scotland said disabled people wanted to “go forwards to a more inclusive future”.

Its Rights and Renewal manifesto focuses on five key areas: incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into Scottish law; social care; equal access to education and jobs; using the Scottish government’s new social security powers to reduce the number of disabled people in poverty; and involving DPOs in decision- and policy-making.

One of the disabled people who spoke to Inclusion Scotland as it was drawing up its manifesto said: “I can see clearly that, as a disabled person, I count even less and have no rights compared to before COVID-19.”

Others spoke of cuts to social care, with one saying: “I have gone from 20 hours of care to zero. I am now bedbound completely because of this.”

Another spoke of how the pandemic had impacted disabled people in Scotland, saying that “inaccessible systems and processes were put in place without consulting disabled people”.

Among the policies Inclusion Scotland wants to see introduced by the next Scottish government is a new national social care support service “that recognises that social care support is a basic right and fundamental to participative citizenship, with a set of universal criteria coproduced with disabled people”.

It also wants to see the Scottish government use its devolved powers to top-up social security payments for families with one or more disabled parents or disabled children.

Inclusion Scotland’s chief executive, Dr Sally Witcher, said: “Disabled people have told us about the problems they face daily, both before and as a result of COVID-19, and what needs to change.

“Before COVID-19, disabled people were already some of the most marginalised and excluded in society.

“We were more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed or earn less than non-disabled people, and less likely to leave school with qualifications, because of the barriers and exclusion we face in our day-to-day lives.

“The COVID-19 crisis and responses to it highlighted this, aggravating existing inequalities and generating new ones, and putting the human rights of disabled people at further risk.

“Going back to the way things were before is not the answer. We don’t want to go back. We want to go forwards to a more inclusive future.”

Meanwhile, Inclusion Scotland has responded to a Scottish government consultation on draft regulations for adult disability payment (ADP), the new Scottish benefit that will replace personal independence payment (PIP).

ADP will be introduced for working-age disabled people in Scotland from spring 2022, for new claimants, with existing PIP claims gradually transferred from the Department for Work and Pensions to the new Social Security Scotland (SSS) agency.

In its briefing on the consultation, Inclusion Scotland said it believed there were currently 10 positive aspects to the new benefit, but also six areas where it had concerns.

Among the positive changes are that claimants whose award is reduced or stopped will be able to continue to receive the previous amount until the end of any reconsideration or appeal against the decision.

Another, it says, is that the much-criticised PIP assessment will be scrapped, with most decisions made using existing supporting information, such as GP records and social work reports, and “consultations” only carried out where they are the only way to obtain the information needed to make a decision.

But among Inclusion Scotland’s concerns is the decision to keep PIP’s rule which says that a claimant must be affected by their impairment on at least half the days in a month to be awarded points for a particular descriptor.

It is also concerned that the Scottish government plans to keep the controversial 20 metres rule that was introduced through PIP.

Disabled campaigners repeatedly warned in the years after PIP was introduced in 2013 that the decision to tighten a key eligibility criterion for the enhanced mobility rate – and therefore qualify for a Motability vehicle – from being able to walk less than 50 metres under disability living allowance to 20 metres under PIP had a significant and serious impact on disabled people’s independence.

Inclusion Scotland said it was also concerned that, according to the draft regulations, anyone with at least two years’ experience of health or social care work would be “qualified” to carry out an ADP assessment for SSS.

It said this could mean that “someone with no health qualifications and who has only been employed in relatively unskilled social care work for two years could be used… to carry out assessments”.

The ADP consultation closes on 15 March.

11 February 2021

 

 

Planning failure ‘meant government had to start shielding scheme from scratch’

The government’s failure to prepare for disabled people needing to shield from a pandemic meant they had to develop a shielding scheme from scratch at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the spending watchdog has found.

In a new report, the National Audit Office is broadly supportive of the government’s efforts to set up the shielding programme at the start of the pandemic for those in England who were considered clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) to the virus.

The report says the programme was “a swift government-wide response to protect clinically extremely vulnerable people against COVID-19”.

But it points out that the government was forced to develop the scheme “from scratch” because an exercise commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in 2016 to assess the UK’s preparedness for an influenza pandemic – codenamed Exercise Cygnus – did not consider how to identify and shield CEV people.

The government first told CEV people to shield themselves on 22 March 2020, and it developed a scheme to provide food, medicines and basic care to those who were shielding.

But the report says there was no way to quickly identify all those who needed to shield, largely because of the challenge of “extracting usable data” from different IT systems used by the NHS and GPs.

It also says that care homes were not given detailed guidance by DHSC on how to help their residents shield, because DHSC “intended that their care would be covered by the general COVID-19 guidance provided to care homes”.

About 45,000 of the 2.2 million people who ended up being told to shield were living in care homes and by 7 December nearly 4,000 of them (3,889, or 8.6 per cent) had died with COVID-19 recorded on their death certificate. NAO said it did not have comparable data for non-CEV people in care homes.

The report says the government’s communications with CEV people were “not always clear”, while charities “reported difficulties in getting detailed evidence and information from government”.

It found that 1.3 million CEV people were added to the shielded patient list and were therefore eligible for support through the shielding programme by 12 April 2020, but another 900,000 had to be added to the list between 18 April and 7 May.

The report also describes how a contact centre set up by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – through the outsourcing company Serco – tried to contact 1.8 million CEV people who had not yet registered for the scheme.

About 375,000 of the people could not be reached because of missing or inaccurate telephone numbers in NHS patient records, while another 440,000 declined to register for support when contacted, with many hanging-up or believing it was a nuisance call.

Details of those who could not be reached were then passed to local authorities to follow up.

NAO also says that about four-fifths of the more than 500,000 CEV people who received food boxes through the programme were satisfied with what they received.

DHSC has told NAO that it is unable to say if the shielding programme led to fewer deaths and less serious illness in CEV people, although it is “confident that shielding has helped to protect CEV people”.

Among the report’s recommendations, it says DHSC should ensure there is “easy, but secure” access to the necessary healthcare data for a future pandemic or civil emergency.

It also says that DHSC should establish “a robust plan on how to communicate clearly, quickly and consistently with CEV people to ensure that people are clear if they need to shield, why they need to shield, how to shield and the support available to them”.

And it says the government should review the effectiveness of the new national shielding service system, which was introduced for the second lockdown and should allow CEV people to register their needs more easily.

The report only examines the government’s performance up to 1 August 2020.

NAO concludes that it is “evident” that the various departments involved in the programme “actively considered lessons learned”, which they applied to shielding during the second lockdown from 5 November to 2 December 2020.

But repeated concerns reported by Disability News Service (DNS) after August last year suggest significant continuing problems.

In early October, DNS reported that shielders were having to rely on peer support and their own judgement to protect themselves from the pandemic, after despairing at the lack of clear government guidance.

Later that month, there was criticism of the government’s updated shielding guidance for its lack of detail and clarity, and the failure to announce new support.

The following month, there were concerns that the government had treated CEV people as “an afterthought” as new government CEV guidance was rushed out less than 24 hours before a new England-wide lockdown began.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “The shielding programme was an important response to support clinically extremely vulnerable people asked to shield.

“It provided support to many of those most at risk from COVID-19, and delivered food to just over 500,000 people.

“However, challenges pulling together data meant it took time to quickly identify those needing to shield, and therefore eligible for support.

“Government has learnt lessons from this programme and is better placed should this type of support be required again.”

NAO estimates that £308 million was spent on the shielding scheme by 1 August, including £200 million on food box deliveries, £34 million on the medicine delivery service, about £54 million by local authorities on basic care and other support to CEV people, and £18 million on the shielding contact centre run by DWP and Serco.

Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said: “Labour welcomes this report and we call on ministers to take appropriate action, including improved and targeted use of funds and improved access to healthcare data.

“The government has been too slow throughout this pandemic and it must learn the lessons to properly support those who are clinically extremely vulnerable.”

She had pointed out the previous day (Tuesday) in the House of Commons that government communication with CEV people had been poor.

Despite the NAO report, health and social care secretary Matt Hancock told her: “I am afraid I do not agree with the honourable lady one bit.”

He said DHSC writes “regularly” and “individually” to those who are shielding.

11 February 2021

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 10:37
Dec 222020
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, 21 December 2020 

Application submitted for second inquest into death of Jodey Whiting

The family of Jodey Whiting have submitted an application to quash the inquest into her death and seek a second inquest so that the role of the Department and Work and Pensions in the events leading to her death can be considered.

New evidence indicates that “acts and omissions by the DWP probably caused or contributed to Jodey’s death”, her mother Joy Dove argues.

The application for a fresh inquest was made at the High Court on Friday, 18 December and the coroner and Department of Work and Pensions have also been served with a copy of the documents.

Jodey, from Stockton-on-Tees, died aged 42 on 21 February, 2017. She suffered severe mental health problems and took her own life after having had her benefits terminated a fortnight earlier for not attending a Work Capability Assessment, leaving her with no source of income.

An inquest into her death held three months later concluded after just 37 minutes. The Coroner refused a request by Jodey’s mother, Joy Dove to consider the potential role of the DWP in her daughter’s death.

However, last month the office of the Attorney General gave Joy permission to apply for a second inquest after Leigh Day solicitors argued on her behalf that the original inquest was insufficient and that an Article 2 complaint Inquest is required.

The application explains that as a sufferer of serious and long-term physical and mental health issues, Jodey had been in receipt of benefits since 2006. She had a history of overdoses and had a mental health flag on the DWP’s system due to concerns that she would be at mental health risk if her benefits were terminated.

For several years Jodey received higher-rate ESA, given to vulnerable claimants who suffer from physical or mental conditions which limit their ability to work. The DWP acknowledges that withdrawing benefits from such claimants is likely to put them at significant risk. Jodey was assessed by the DWP as requiring the higher rate given the severity of her conditions. It is argued the DWP are aware terminating ESA is liable to deprive vulnerable individuals like Ms Whiting of the means to survive and exposes them to significant distress and anxiety.

The decision two weeks before Jodey’s death to terminate her ESA was seriously flawed and was contrary to the DWP’s own safeguarding policies in a number of respects, states the application. The decision caused Jodey very considerable distress and left her with no other source of income. All matters Jodey’s family say must be investigated in a second inquest.

Six weeks after Jodey’s death, the DWP overturned the decision to terminate her ESA.

The application to the High Court is supported by an independent case examiner’s report, which was produced after Joy complained to the DWP, and is highly critical of the DWP’s handling of Jodey’s ESA claim, including identifying several breaches of its own policy.

Jodey’s family also obtained the opinion of an independent Consultant Psychiatrist, Dr Turner, who concluded:

“there was likely to have been a causal link between the DWP failings  . . . and Jodey’s state of mind immediately before her death”.

Joy Dove’s application argues:

  • The first inquest involved an insufficiency of inquiry as a matter of common law
  • There was an insufficiency of inquiry under the investigative duty imposed by Article 2 ECHR
  • Fresh evidence is now available which may reasonably lead to the conclusion that the substantial truth about how Ms Whiting died was not revealed at the first inquest
  • It is in the interests of justice for a second inquest to take place into how Ms Whiting died; and
  • A different conclusion is likely.

Joy Dove said:

“I believe my Jodey would still be here today if it had not been for the way she was treated by the DWP. It was heartless and cruel and a breach of their own rules to treat Jodey in the way they did. They knew she was vulnerable, but they took no notice of her pleas for a home visit for a WCA and then just cut off her ESA. It was too much for her to bear. I think they must be made to answer for their actions towards my daughter.”

Leigh Day partner Merry Varney said:

“Jodey’s family are asking the High Court to order a fresh inquest into Jodey’s death so that their concerns about the impact on Jodey of failings by the DWP in their handling of her ESA claim can be fully and fearlessly investigated in a public forum, in a manner in which they can participate.

“Since the first Inquest Jodey’s family have learned how the DWP did have safeguards in place yet failed to implement these, despite Jodey’s mental and physical ill health and how her request was for a home visit was simply ignored. It is hoped that both for Jodey’s family and other individuals vulnerable to similar treatment by the DWP that the High Court will agree it is necessary in the interests of justice and on human rights grounds for the first narrow inquest to be quashed and a second inquest take place to consider whether Jodey’s death was caused or contributed to by the DWP.”

ENDS

Note:

Documents relating to the application are available on request

Joy Dove is available for interview

For further information call Leigh Day press office at pressoffice@leighday.co.uk

Maxine Wolstenholme, Media Relations Manager

 

Leigh Day Building C (Man 35), Central Park, Northampton Road, Manchester M40 5BP

Tel: 07775 713725 Fax: 020 7253 4433 DX 53326 Clerkenwell

 Posted by at 10:40
Dec 182020
 

Prime minister must abandon ‘reckless’ COVID Christmas plans, say DPOs

Disabled campaigners have made a last-minute appeal to the government to abandon its plans to relax rules on socialising over Christmas, as fears grow that this will cause a sharp rise in coronavirus infections and many thousands of deaths.

Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), user-led grassroots groups and disabled peers spoke out as the prime minister refused yesterday (Wednesday) to change his plans to allow household mixing in England at Christmas.

The calls for Boris Johnson to think again were backed by the editors of the British Medical Journal and the Health Service Journal, who called on the government to “reverse its rash decision”.

In a joint editorial, they warned that Johnson was “about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives”.

Their call for the public to “mitigate the impact” of this expected third wave by being as careful as possible over the next few months was echoed by disabled campaigners.

The grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said the government’s refusal to alter its policy on Christmas COVID rules was “unforgivable”.

Mark Williams, from BRIL, said: “We understand that families want to be together at Christmas, but why was it announced so early that restrictions would be removed for five days, when cases were not going down at the time, and have risen ever since?”

A BRIL spokesperson added: “They have failed to make sure people can safely have support and visits from families, personal assistants and advocates in care homes, hospitals and mental health wards.

“Failed to provide accessible information. Failed to involve disabled people in policy decisions.

“But, instead, they have dreamed up a dangerous and confusing ‘Christmas Bubble’ policy.”

One BRIL member said: “They are trying to please too many people. In January, when the hospitals are full, Johnson will put the blame on the public.”

The BRIL spokesperson said: “To carry on with this policy, seemingly to deflect from their repeated failures, is unforgivable.”

Jumoke Abdullahi, communications and media officer at Inclusion London, said: “The government’s reluctance to forgo plans to relax COVID restrictions over the Christmas period will likely put disabled people at greater risk and place an even greater strain on already overstretched health services.

“The government has a duty of care, especially during a pandemic that has claimed so many disabled people’s lives, to ensure the safety of people in the UK.

“We urge the government to reconsider their position, as placing this responsibility onto individuals will likely create confusion and potentially lead to more avoidable deaths, as infection rates are rapidly rising.”

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said the government’s “current stance feels way too reckless”, and that it needed to rethink the rules “to strike a better balance to allow for limited social contact and protecting lives”.

She said: “The government’s stance that multiple households can travel distance in a compressed timeframe, often on public transport, and mingle for five days, sounds like a recipe for superspreading.

“There is a desperate need for some of us to socialise. Many disabled people have been shielding. Many of us have been in isolation, separated from loved ones for the best part of a year now.

“The impacts on mental health from prolonged isolation are profound. And yet two thirds of all deaths have been those of disabled people.

“An extremely careful balance needs to be struck to permit limited social contact without costing more lives.”

Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of the disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives, was another to call on the government to change its mind.

But he also said the pandemic had shown that people pay for their politicians’ failings and that “the least powerful pay with multiple interest”.

He said that the political decision that people in England could celebrate Christmas “flies in the face of the evidence and good sense”.

He added: “Almost a year on from the first showings of the virus, as a result of appalling political and policy failings, the only ray of hope the UK has is the introduction of a workable vaccine.”

The Disability Union called on the government to “admit that current restrictions are not enough to prevent a dangerous rise in infections, to immediately cancel the relaxation of restrictions over Christmas, and to conduct an urgent review into the tier system to establish how we can use targeted use of increased restrictions to flatten the curve as soon as possible”.

George Baker, founder of The Disability Union, pointed out that disabled people made up three-fifths of the deaths from COVID-19 “so rising infections put disabled people at a disproportionately higher risk”.

He said: “Many disabled people are still shielding and will be unable to celebrate with their friends and family regardless of restrictions, so The Disability Union asks that as many people as possible stay home in solidarity with those of us who cannot risk contracting the virus.

“We are not simple statistics or numbers on a screen, we are your friends, family and loved ones – staying home this Christmas could save our lives.”

Kathy Bole, co-chair of Disability Labour, said she believed the government’s actions on Christmas were “reckless” and could result in another period of lockdown.

She said: “I agree with the medical advice. The numbers are rising quickly. From the disabled folks I know, most are staying in shielding just as a precaution.

“In the USA, the numbers are showing that cases rose exponentially due to the Thanksgiving weekend where people seem to have disregarded warnings not to travel and to wear masks.

“I believe that this doesn’t bode well for our Christmas relaxation of rules.”

Baroness [Celia] Thomas, the Liberal Democrat disabled peer, said: “I think the government should do everything they can to reduce the risk of disabled people becoming seriously ill, and the NHS being overwhelmed over Christmas, and into the New Year.

“If this means toughening the guidance, they must do it.”

She added: “The last thing disabled people want is for all the shielding they have had to endure this year to be thrown away for a few unguarded days over Christmas which might overwhelm the NHS.”

Piers Wilkinson, from Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts (MDPAC), said: “MDPAC thinks the government is playing politics with our lives – for capitalism.

“COVID-19 is not taking a winter holiday and neither is the susceptibility to it of disabled people, of all ages.

“Many of us have had to self-isolate since March and this will continue over the winter.

“Muslim, Hindu and Jewish people have all had to endure lockdowns during their festivals due to COVID-19.

“On that basis, and as a disabled people’s organisation that welcomes people of all faiths and none, MDPAC doesn’t see any special reason for this Christian holiday to be exempt.

“We appeal to the wider public to support us by doing what they can to reduce the spread of COVID-19 all year round – whatever tier people are in.”

The crossbench disabled peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson said she would like the government to be more restrictive over Christmas, but she said she feared that, even if it did, many people would ignore those rules.

She said: “I think the best chance is for people to look at their own behaviours and realise the impact they will make, which could be influenced by disabled people and DPOs.”

She said that “being allowed to mix doesn’t mean that you ‘have’ to mix.

“I just hope that people will be really sensible and think about the long-term consequences [of their actions over Christmas].”

So far, just one disabled people’s organisation, People First (Self Advocacy), has not called for the government to change its position.

Andrew Lee, director of the organisation, said: “I don’t think the government should abandon the plans to relax the rules over the five days.

“People should take responsibility to stay safe and make their own decisions about who they meet up with, taking into account who is in the high-risk categories.”

He called on the government instead to stop “continually changing levels of restrictions”, which he said was “confusing and potentially dangerous, whether it’s Christmas or not” and had left people with learning difficulties “confused, frightened and isolated”.

17 December 2020

 

 

Call for action over ‘scandal’ of benefit claimant suicides ignored by DWP

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is failing to investigate the suicides of hundreds of benefit claimants every year, despite the vital lessons it could learn from such inquiries, new analysis of official figures suggests.

In more than five years, DWP has carried out secret internal process reviews (IPRs) into just 69 suicides of benefit claimants.

But analysis by Disability News Service (DNS) of Office for National Statistics (ONS) and DWP figures suggests there could have been as many as 750 suicides of working-age benefit claimants in 2018 alone, and possibly even more.

DWP’s own guidance says it should carry out an IPR every time it hears of a suicide of a benefit claimant, even if there are no allegations that its actions contributed to the death.

Although the DNS analysis* is based on rough estimates, and has not been verified by ONS or DWP, it strongly suggests that ministers are missing out on learning the lessons from hundreds of cases every year when benefit claimants have taken their own lives.

Reports stretching back over the last decade have shown how such deaths have often exposed how DWP policies and practices failed to protect disabled claimants in vulnerable situations.

Earlier this month, in the latest such case, an inquest heard how an autistic man took his own life six days after being told to attend a “fitness for work” assessment, despite DWP being repeatedly warned that its actions were making him suicidal.

In February, a National Audit Office (NAO) report revealed that DWP did not have a robust way in which it could learn of suicides of benefit claimants, and often had to rely on being informed by claimants’ families or the media.

The NAO report said DWP had only launched nine IPRs since March 2016 as a result of being contacted by coroners, who carry out inquests into every death suspected of being a suicide.

Anita Bellows, a researcher with Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “Had DWP been serious about monitoring deaths of claimants by suicide, it would have put into place a system ensuring the systematic reporting by coroners of such occurrences.

“It is the DWP’s responsibility to ensure that government policies do no harm.

“The DWP should not rely on local or national press, bereaved families or coroners’ discretion to highlight the deaths of claimants by suicide, and it should proactively look for cases (meaning people) whose deaths the benefit system can have contributed to.

“That is what a responsible and accountable government’s department should do. That it has not been done is a scandal.”

The grassroots user-led group Recovery In The Bin (RiTB) said that its members “know from bitter experience that the state protects itself from blame in harm and deaths, whether it is DWP or healthcare inpatient settings”.

It also said it believed that the coroner system was “not fit to find responsibility” for deaths, although it hoped that a helpful Court of Appeal ruling last year would lead to “more findings against the abusive DWP regime”.

An RiTB spokesperson said: “We also wish more medical professionals were more ready to accept the role of both harm caused by healthcare and the hostile environment fostered by the DWP in people’s distress.

“At present it does feel to us that the UK state wants us dead and is taking measures to bring our deaths about.”

Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, who has campaigned for years to address the deaths of social security claimants and DWP’s safeguarding failures, called for an investigation into the DNS figures.

She said: “It is very worrying that when we compare the actual number of claimant deaths by suicide reviewed by the government’s Department for Work and Pensions – 69 over five years – to the estimated number that DNS has calculated from publicly available data – 750 a year – there is a huge difference warranting investigation.

“After years of unacceptable obfuscation and delays, the failure of the government to act to address the deaths of claimants must be clear to all.

“I once again call for a full, independent inquiry into these deaths and the part played by our woefully inadequate social security system.”

A DWP spokesperson refused to explain why so few IPRs had been undertaken into suicides of benefit claimants; whether the department agreed that it should carry out more such reviews as a way of learning more lessons and saving more lives; and what action it would take to ensure that it is told of as many suicides of claimants as possible.

But she said in a statement: “We have strengthened the quality and recording of data on our internal process reviews to improve the service we provide to all our claimants.

“Our absolute priority is to ensure that people continue to get the support that they are entitled to.”

*DWP told the National Audit Office in a report published in February that there had been 69 IPRs after suicides since 2014-15 (PDF); in 2018, according to ONS, there were 4,542 suicides of men and women (and children) aged between 10 and 64; DWP says there were 6.8 million people claiming working-age benefits in February 2019, while ONS says the working-age population of UK was 41.3 million people in the February to April 2019 period. This suggests that there could have been (approximately) 750 suicides of working-age benefit claimants in 2018

**The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind, SOS Silence of Suicide and Rethink

17 December 2020

 

 

‘Vast majority’ of important government COVID information ‘is inaccessible to BSL-users’

The “vast majority” of important COVID-19-related information provided by the UK government is not accessible to users of British Sign Language (BSL), a new investigation has found.

A report on the investigation will be submitted by lawyers for BSL-user Katie Rowley as part of her claim for a judicial review of the UK government’s failure to provide a BSL interpreter at two televised briefings with health experts during the autumn.

The judicial review claim is due to be submitted today (Thursday), with the hope that it will be “expedited” and heard by the end of next month.

Rowley’s lawyers believe the government breached its public sector equality duty under the Equality Act, and that it failed to make reasonable adjustments for BSL-users.

The televised briefings took place at 10 Downing Street, on 12 October, which focused on how the NHS was preparing for the next phase of the pandemic, and on 21 September.

The government claimed in a letter to Rowley’s lawyers last month that it met its duties under the Equality Act because the information was available live through subtitles and was also published on the government’s website.

Rowley is pregnant, lives alone, and has underlying health conditions, which make her particularly vulnerable to COVID-19; she has also had 11 previous miscarriages and is anxious to protect her unborn child.

She has been told she will not be allowed to have a BSL interpreter present during childbirth, so she has been trying to understand the medical and scientific information about COVID-19 and its implications, and the government’s response to the pandemic.

But she was unable to understand the two televised health briefings because there was no BSL interpreter.

She has also been excluded from other COVID-19 information provided by the government, including written guidance on pregnancy, local alert levels and for those, like her, who are self-employed.

It has left her, according to a pre-action legal letter sent to the Cabinet Office in October, feeling “confused, frightened, isolated and vulnerable”.

She told Disability News Service (DNS): “I am very disappointed that the government believes it’s okay for us Deaf people who rely on BSL to have to ‘go and find’ information that is readily available to our hearing peers.”

She said that prime minister Boris Johnson and his government “should be setting an example to the nation” by providing accessibility and equality.

She said: “If we get COVID it’s his fault for [the information] not being accessible but even worse if we die from it it’s his fault.

“I’ve seen and read so many conflicting messages and it doesn’t make sense to me, so how on earth can I make the right choices for myself and my unborn son?

“It’s 2020. Why are we fighting for something that should be automatically done? Why are we the last ones to get the messages?”

The new report was commissioned by discrimination law experts Fry Law as part of the ongoing #WhereIsTheInterpreter campaign for an on-platform interpreter at government COVID-19 briefings, led by Deaf campaigner Lynn Stewart-Taylor.

The report, by consultancy Open Inclusion and Heriot-Watt University*, found that government provision of accessible information to Deaf people for whom BSL is their first language was so poor that many of them have been forced to turn to social media.

It concluded: “The vast majority of important information provided by the UK government relating to COVID-19 and its impacts on society has no BSL interpretation.”

It also found that most of the written information provided by the UK government requires a reading level of at least year nine (ages 13-14), while information in areas such as education and childcare, and coronavirus restrictions, requires a university-level reading ability.

Chris Fry, the disabled founder of Fry Law, said this was “patently unacceptable” to Deaf people, for many of whom English is a second language.

A survey of 42 BSL-users from England and Wales for the report found that more than three-fifths (64 per cent) said they had felt worried about their health and safety because of the lack of accessible government information about COVID-19.

Nearly three-fifths (58 per cent) relied instead on non-government sources to find BSL translations of government information, while more than three quarters (77 per cent) of those who responded said they had found it difficult, very difficult or impossible to find government information on rules and responsibilities concerning lockdown and social interaction.

And 90 per cent of respondents said they wanted all government briefings to have a BSL interpreter (organised by the government) embedded live on all channels when aired on television.

One of the Deaf people interviewed for the report said they were “just totally disappointed with this government. It feels like they don’t care about deaf people.

“When they are asked why they cannot provide access they come up with ridiculous excuses like social distancing.”

Another said: “If there was an emergency announcement, how would we know?”

Stewart-Taylor told DNS: “One of the key findings said 90 per cent of BSL signers who responded want all government briefings to have a live BSL interpreter (organised by the government) embedded on all channels when aired on TV.

“That’s what we have been fighting for for nine months since we, the BSL Deaf community and organisations, have been requesting this, and still nothing changes from the government.

“We have now got the evidence and I do hope that the government will listen to their sign language citizens and take action. We want to be safe, and sign language saves lives.”

The Where Is The Interpreter? campaign dates back to March, when concerns were first raised among Deaf people about the lack of BSL interpreters for the government’s daily COVID-19 briefings.

Despite a letter to the prime minister, drafted by Fry Law and signed by a string of Deaf people’s organisations and allies, the problems persisted.

The solution offered by the prime minister was to provide an in-screen interpreter and only on the BBC News Channel, but with no live interpreter alongside those delivering the briefings.

This solution was seen as “inaccessible” and “tokenistic”.

By the end of April, more than 260 “frustrated and angry” Deaf people had instructed Fry Law to seek a judicial review of the government’s failure to provide any BSL interpreter at the first five COVID-19 government television briefings in early March.

Those cases remain live and “contested” in the county court.

In October, Stewart-Taylor and fellow Deaf activist Mark Hodgson walked from Gloucester to Downing Street to draw attention to the government’s “callous and heartless” refusal to provide an interpreter at the coronavirus TV briefings.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said the government could not comment on Rowley’s judicial review claim as it was an ongoing legal case.

*Here is a brief summary of the report in BSL

17 December 2020

 

 

Court ruling ‘shows systemic discrimination’ within ‘vile and horrendous’ asylum system

A high court ruling has demonstrated the systemic disability discrimination within the Home Office’s asylum support system, say disabled activists.

The high court this week rejected the Home Office’s argument that it was justified in discriminating against disabled claimants in the interests of immigration control.

And it found that home secretary Priti Patel had breached her public sector equality duty by failing to monitor the provision of accessible accommodation for disabled asylum-seekers.

She had claimed that she had no legal duty to do so.

The court found that there had been “huge delays” in providing AA, a disabled, terminally-ill asylum-seeker, with suitable accommodation.

At one stage, he was left street homeless and was forced to sleep on the streets near the renal clinic he had to attend for kidney dialysis.

Mr Justice Robin Knowles described how evidence provided on behalf of AA had shown that “the needs of disabled persons are insufficiently identified, information about those needs is insufficiently shared, and those needs are insufficiently addressed within the system that is being used”.

In a ruling welcomed by lawyers and activists this week as hugely significant, the judge also found that AA and four other destitute, failed asylum-seekers – all represented by solicitors from Deighton Pierce Glynn – were subject to unlawfully lengthy delays in providing them with accommodation.

At least three of the claimants, including AA, have since been granted leave to remain in the UK.

The judge found that Patel had breached her duty under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Immigration and Asylum Act to protect destitute people against inhuman and degrading treatment caused by homelessness.

The judge found that the Home Office had failed to monitor the contracts – worth £4 billion over 10 years – handed to private companies to prevent this, and that it had ignored evidence that the contracts were failing.

He concluded: “It is not possible to reconcile the delays with the monitoring that is said to be present and is described above [in his ruling]. There cannot have been proper monitoring.”

And he said that Patel had provided the court with inaccurate figures on the performance of the private sector contractors that provided accommodation for asylum-seekers.

Rebecca Yeo, a disabled activist and academic and member of Disabled People Against Cuts and Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living, who recently completed research for a doctorate on issues of disability and forced migration, welcomed the ruling.

But she stressed that the failures described in the ruling were not the result of a series of oversights but of “deliberate policies”.

She said the disabled people’s movement should welcome the ruling, but she argued with the judge’s conclusion that “there was no bad faith” by the Home Office and that the delay was “not deliberate, but it persisted and there was a choice not to do more about it”.

Yeo said: “We would question this assumption. The denial of services and support to asylum seekers is indeed deliberate.

“The outsourcing of provision to profit-making companies is also deliberate.”

She said there was also a need to contest the judge’s call for “cooperative, constructive, collaborative engagement”, because that in itself could not be a remedy “while the wider objectives of the asylum system remain uncontested”.

She added: “The access needs of asylum-seekers are routinely ignored, and the asylum system is inherently disabling.

“The disabled people’s movement has very relevant experience challenging the disabling impact of inaccessible services and support.

“We cannot allow the needs of disabled asylum-seekers or any other person to be regarded as additional costs to be reduced in the interests of profit.

“We must ensure that the lives of each and every disabled asylum-seeker is valued as highly as that of any other human.”

A BRIL spokesperson added: “While we hoped that this judgement would go further, it is very significant for disabled asylum-seekers, and for organisations supporting disabled people and asylum-seekers more widely.

“We welcome and applaud the work of the legal teams and the refugee rights organisations involved.

“It is a scandal that people seeking asylum so often have to fight for housing and support.

“As the evidence highlighted in this case shows, the Home Office often delays provision of safe and accessible accommodation, putting them at risk of ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’, such that the asylum system itself is disabling.

“And, as the evidence highlighted in this case shows, the Home Office often delays or fails to provide safe and accessible accommodation.

“As disabled asylum seeker and activist Manjeet Kaur [who died earlier this year] said, ‘…they’ve tested with asylum seekers and that’s what they’re going to test with the rest of the people in this country. So it’s not a fight for asylum seekers, for immigrants or for citizens. It’s a fight for all of us, and we should stand together.’”

Esther Leighton, co-founder of the disabled-led campaigning organisation Reasonable Access, said on Twitter: “This is a chink of light in hard times; disability discrimination can’t be justified on grounds of ‘immigration control’.

“The ‘asylum’ system is vile and horrendous, but it’s even more vile and horrendous to disabled asylum seekers than it is to non-disabled ones.”

The Home Office refused to say if the ruling showed there was systemic inequality and disability discrimination within the system, and that it needed urgent reform.

But a Home Office spokesperson said in a statement: “The government takes seriously its legal obligations under the Immigration and Asylum Act to provide support including accommodation to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute and to failed asylum seekers who have a barrier to their departure from the UK and who would otherwise be destitute.

“We are fixing our broken asylum system to make it firm and fair.

“We will seek to stop abuse of the system while ensuring it is compassionate towards those who need our help, welcoming people through safe and legal routes.

“We will consider the judgment carefully, including whether or not to further appeal.”

17 December 2020

 

 

Legoland agrees sweeping changes after leaving disabled five-year-old ‘humiliated’

A children’s theme park that forced a disabled five-year-old to leave his wheelchair and prove he could walk – twice – before he was allowed to use a ride, has apologised and agreed to make sweeping changes.

The owners of Legoland Windsor have apologised to Sebby Brett and his family for the way he was treated in September 2019, and they will now ensure that up to 10 of its rides are now more accessible to disabled visitors.

The theme park will also introduce new staff training, redraft policies and pay compensation and legal costs, after reaching an agreement with the family’s lawyers, discrimination law experts Fry Law.

The visit to the park had been intended as a treat for Sebby after he had undergone four operations in seven months.

But before he could enjoy the Ninjago ride, which he had been particularly excited about, a member of staff forced him to demonstrate how he could walk three steps, blaming health and safety requirements.

He managed the test, while holding on to one of his parents’ hands, but it caused him “considerable discomfort”.

After he had seated himself on the ride, a supervisor then asked him to leave the carriage and repeat the test, again in front of a waiting queue of customers.

His parents say he was left “humiliated”, had asked them why the staff would do that to a disabled person, and told them it was “so hard and upset me”.

The family, from Gloucestershire, later found out that the reason for the test was that the emergency exit contained three steps, which could easily have been adapted with a ramp.

They concluded that Legoland’s policies were discriminating against disabled people and that most of its rides were inaccessible to people who could not walk unaided, and so they contacted Fry Law.

As part of the agreement between Legoland and the Bretts, announced yesterday (Wednesday), the requirement to be able to “walk unaided for 10 metres or more and/or climb stairs” will be removed immediately from Ninjago and two other rides, and is likely to be removed from another seven rides by the end of March.

Sebby and his family will also be invited for a VIP return trip, while a Lego model of Sebby, his sister Lottie and their parents will be added to one of the displays, with a duplicate set given to Sebby.

He will also be given £1,000-worth of Lego, and another £1,000-worth to give to an organisation of his choice, while £5,000 will be donated to a charity of his choice.

His mum Jo said the family were “over the moon”, and she praised the company for reaching an agreement “so early into the legal process”, and “for being prepared to look again at their policies and for making such a massive positive change both on behalf of all of us, and on behalf of thousands of other families” and without impacting the experience for non-disabled visitors.

But she said the agreement was “just the start”, as other theme parks “need to follow their example”.

Karen Glassey, operations director for Legoland Windsor Resort, said Sebby’s visit “fell well below the high expectations we set ourselves”.

She said: “I am determined that we learn from this experience and that we continue on our journey to ensuring that our rides, attractions, shops and hotels can be enjoyed by as many guests as possible.

“Guest feedback is extremely important to us and I’d like to thank Sebby and his family for taking the time to tell us about their experience.

“We are already in the process of reviewing our staff training and how we communicate ride restrictions and accessibility to guests before they arrive and on the day itself.

“We have invited the Brett family to be a part of this review and I look forward to their valuable input.”

More than 27,000 people have so far signed the family’s petition calling for change from both Legoland and other theme parks and leisure attractions, and for them to make reasonable adjustments for disabled children, both through considering access on new rides, and adapting older ones.

A parliamentary debate held last month and secured by the family’s Conservative MP, Siobhan Baillie, heard of examples of similar humiliation faced by disabled children at other attractions across England, such as Alton Towers, Thorpe Park and Blackpool pleasure beach.

17 December 2020

 

 

Disabled people ‘have survived pandemic rights attacks with resilience’, says activist-peer

Disabled people’s equality and human rights have been “deeply undermined” during the COVID-19 pandemic, a disabled activist and peer has told an annual lecture.

But Baroness [Jane] Campbell also told the online audience for the annual Caroline Gooding Memorial Lecture that disabled people had survived the pandemic with “resilience, ingenuity and collective action”.

She said she had been left “bewildered, astonished and terrified” by the pace of change to disability and wider civil rights, because of the pandemic, Brexit and other cuts and reforms in recent years.

And she said the rights of disabled people had become “very easy targets” for the government in the era of austerity.

The annual lecture was set up as a memorial to the disabled lawyer and activist Caroline Gooding, who played a leading role in bringing about the Disability Discrimination Act, and in then securing improvements to disability rights legislation.

Gooding was director of legislative change at the Disability Rights Commission throughout its eight years. She died in July 2014.

Baroness Campbell told the audience how the UK government had ignored guidance published in April by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on how to protect disabled people’s rights during the pandemic .

Instead, the government spoke of protecting “the vulnerable” and the NHS and stressed that most deaths were among people with underlying health conditions.

Baroness Campbell highlighted Office for National Statistics figures which showed that disabled people had made up at least three-fifths of COVID-related deaths in England and Wales.

And she said the “shocking” death rates of people with learning difficulties – those aged 18-34 are 30 times more likely to die than non-disabled people in the same age group – showed that measures to minimise the risk to them had been “ignored in national contingency planning with devastating effect”.

And instead of taking note of the UN advice to engage disabled people in its COVID-19 response, she said, the UK government had put “the vulnerables” on a shielding list, sent them guidance “without any means to follow it” and ensured they became passive, “othered” and “victims”, instead of treating them as “actively involved citizens”.

Personal assistants were left with no personal protective equipment, sourcing food became a challenge for millions of disabled people, and support was cut, leaving disabled people’s lives “in great danger”, while the situation for those in care homes was “even more treacherous”.

She told the audience: “This was not a human rights response to the government’s duty of care to its so-called ‘vulnerable citizens’.

“One began to feel there was little difference between being labelled ‘the vulnerable’ and ‘the expendable’.”

She also highlighted the widespread experiences of disabled people asked to agree to have a “do not attempt resuscitation” note placed on their medical records, and the use of an NHS-branded “COVID-19 decision support tool” that suggested that “frailty” scores would be used to enable doctors to decide whether a patient should be treated in intensive care.

But she said that disabled people had fought back and had gone “into overdrive”, through their campaigning networks, organisations and social media.

This included drawing up a statement signed by 160 disability organisations which reminded the government of its duty to “uphold the equality and human rights of disabled people”, and which led to a statement endorsing those principles from senior NHS figures.

It also led to NHS England setting up a working group, involving disabled people, that drew up a set of principles to guide clinicians on how older and disabled people should be treated during the pandemic.

She told the online audience: “This campaign… demonstrates the power of disabled people’s self-advocacy and our ability to challenge, with the support of allies, potential grave violations of the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act.

“The right to NHS treatment and, in essence, the right to life itself, was, in the early months, a small but significant achievement.”

She pointed to other ways in which disabled people have fought back during the pandemic, including the Deaf-led campaign demanding a British Sign Language interpreter for the government’s pandemic television briefings, and the campaign to persuade the government to switch off the Care Act “easement powers” that had been introduced through the Coronavirus Act.

Baroness Campbell told the audience that the examples she had given were “just a few examples of disabled people and their allies demonstrating astounding resilience in the face of both the virus and social injustice.

“Many haven’t survived, but we are surviving, as a movement, despite enormous barriers to our inclusion.

“Despite the threat from a deadly virus and despite an assault on our fundamental disability rights, disabled people have not been passive victims throughout this pandemic, and we won’t be in the future.

“Along with our allies, we have organised and fought from the very beginning of the pandemic.

“However, we are still at great risk. Our fundamental rights to live with dignity, respect and equality have been deeply undermined.”

The lecture was sponsored by the School of Law at the University of Leeds and co-hosted by the university’s Centre for Disability Studies and Centre for Law and Social Justice.

17 December 2020

 

 

Disabled people ‘should push for radical overhaul of society after pandemic’

Disabled people should resist the idea that life should return to “normal” once the pandemic crisis is over, and instead push to “radically overhaul” the way society is organised, according to a leading disabled activist and academic.

Dr Miro Griffiths said the UK government’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic – through its guidance and policies – had been to reinforce ideas of individualism and personal responsibility.

He said this had led to a “really worrying” relaxation and “easement” of central and local government duties to support disabled people, for example through measures introduced in the spring under the Coronavirus Act.

And he said he feared that this approach – removing duties and mandatory obligations – would prove to be the future of health and social care policy under the “neoconservative” agenda of the current and future Tory governments.

Griffiths, a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, a former government adviser and now a member of the equality watchdog’s disability advisory committee, was speaking during an online presentation on COVID-19 and disability hosted by the university.

He pointed out the “clear undertone of eugenicist ideals” underlying some of the state’s actions during the pandemic, including the misuse of “do not attempt resuscitation” forms that were placed on disabled people’s records without their consent.

He said: “On the one hand disabled people have been told, ‘do things for yourself on your own’… but at the same time there is a constant attempt to devalue or to question the worth of disabled people… and to judge their contributions as a way to determine whether they should or should not have access to support.”

He said the combination of a “punitive” social security regime, and other “violent and hostile” policies during the austerity years, the historical use of segregation, and the Coronavirus Act and other pandemic policies had provided a “really bleak picture” for disabled people.

There had also been a failure by the media to accept and analyse the social factors – such as how well-off they are, and their living and working conditions – that have helped cause the disproportionately high number of deaths of disabled people during the pandemic, he said.

But Griffiths said the pandemic had also shown how education, employment and other support could be provided more flexibly, for example through working or studying online, working from home, and taking advantage of new technology.

He said this showed the need to celebrate “the variance of human existence” and to provide more opportunities for people to engage with society that take account of this variation and their access requirements rather than forcing them to conform to a “preferred system”.

He added: “I don’t want to go back to normal.

“I want to go towards an idea of challenging those ableist notions of the ideal way of being self-sufficient… and recognising and celebrating the human variance.”

Such a “radical overhaul” of society would not just work for disabled people, he said, but for “a lot of different communities”.

And he said there was now an opportunity to “rethink the social contract between disabled people and the state” by pushing for a new human rights approach that recognised the intersecting types of oppression disabled people face.

17 December 2020

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 19:11
Dec 102020
 

 DWP staff repeatedly failed to follow suicide threat guidance, secret death reviews reveal

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff have had to be repeatedly reminded what to do when claimants threaten to take their own lives, following secret reviews into as many as six suicides linked to the benefit system.

The reviews suggest that a series of suicides between 2014 and 2019 were linked to the failure of DWP staff to follow basic rules that had been introduced in 2009.

Heavily-redacted documents released by DWP in response to a freedom of information request by Disability News Service now show that as many as six internal reviews into the deaths of benefit claimants have recommended that staff should be reminded of the department’s long-standing “six-point plan”.

The six-point plan instructs staff how to deal with statements by customers that they intend to self-harm or take their own lives, and, according to DWP, “offers a clear process outlining what staff should do in these circumstances”.

But the new documents show that DWP staff have repeatedly ignored the six-point plan, although the documents are so heavily redacted that it is not clear how significant a role this played in the deaths of individual claimants.

Much of the evidence comes from documents newly-released by DWP under the Freedom of Information Act.

These internal process reviews (IPRs, previously known as peer reviews) contain recommendations made by panels of senior DWP staff between January 2016 and March 2019 as a way of trying to learn lessons following suicides and other deaths of claimants, as well as other serious incidents linked to DWP policies and procedures.

The newly-released documents, together with reviews previously released, appear to show that DWP staff had to be reminded about the six-point plan on six separate occasions between 2014 and 2019*.

In one of the reviews, believed to have been published in early 2016, the panel includes a recommendation to remind staff in the local office “about the Six Point Plan”, which will be referred for “consideration of further action as it is a recurring theme”.

Despite this plea, there were apparently three further such recommendations in the next three years, with staff being reminded in one review that the “six point plan should be invoked without exception if a claimant expresses suicidal ideation”; another panel reminding “customer compliance officers that they should be aware of the local 6 point plan in offices they visit and put it into action as required”; and a fourth panel advising: “Further local awareness needed on the 6 point plan which was not fully followed.”

A previous freedom of information response from DWP showed that similar requests were made twice between August 2014 and January 2016.

On both those occasions, the author of the reviews called for DWP to “remind staff about the Six Point Plan” and pointed out the need to “embed” the plan in DWP procedures because the failure to follow the guidance was “a recurring theme”.

One of those reviews was likely to have been written in 2015, following the suicide of 31-year-old Faiza Ahmed, who died in November 2014, shortly after telling a jobcentre work coach that she had been “busy trying to kill myself”.

The work coach and his manager decided not to contact the emergency services, despite the six-point plan stating that staff should summon emergency help if a claimant declares an attempt to kill themselves and is “distressed, at serious risk or in immediate danger”.

DNS has previously reported on a small number of the reports published between April 2016 and June 2018, which revealed particular concerns about universal credit (UC) and the work capability assessment (WCA) process.

But the new batch of reports also reveals concerns about deaths or serious incidents linked to personal independence payment (PIP), as well as continuing concerns about UC and the WCA.

A key recurring theme with PIP is the failure of DWP decision-makers “to take all evidence into account” when deciding a claim, which is mentioned four times over the three years.

One panel concluded: “These issues have already been addressed locally and highlighted more widely as senior leaders continue to re-enforce the messages, that Decision Makers have the ability to return cases to the Health Care Provider if there is any doubt raised by their report and that they must consider all available evidence.”

A second panel produced almost exactly the same warning, pointing out that “senior leaders continue to re-enforce the messages, that Decision Makers have the ability to return cases to the Health Care Provider if there is any doubt raised by their report and that they must consider all available evidence”.

A third panel, which again followed either the death of a PIP claimant or a serious incident, repeated the message.

A fourth review, also believed to involve a PIP claimant, concluded: “The panel raised concerns about the quality of the decision making, but work is ongoing to remind decision makers of the need to take all evidence into account.”

Asked why its reviews keep making the same recommendations, year after year, following the deaths of benefit claimants, a DWP spokesperson said: “We are committed to continually driving forward improvements and learning lessons from cases.

“Internal process reviews are intended to scrutinise departmental process, and identify learning and improvements.”

*It is impossible to be certain whether there were five or six reminders in total, as DWP refuses to release the dates of each review

**The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind and Rethink

10 December 2020

 

 

House of Commons failed to act after disabled staff and MPs spoke out on COVID safety

The House of Commons refused to take any action after disabled members of staff, MPs and peers raised concerns about their safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed.

Members of the ParliAble network lodged the complaint in early October after it emerged that a Scottish MP had travelled to Westminster while experiencing COVID-19 symptoms*.

The complaint has only emerged through a freedom of information request by Disability News Service (DNS), which was submitted after three MPs accused colleagues of risking the lives of disabled parliamentarians and House of Commons staff by flouting COVID-19 safety measures.

DNS had asked the House of Commons authorities how many complaints had been lodged about the failure of MPs to obey COVID rules during the pandemic, for example by breaching rules on social distancing.

In its response, the House of Commons information rights and information security service said there had been 33 complaints between 2 April and 2 November.

Of those, 14 complaints were made by MPs, with another 13 from members of the public, and four from House of Commons staff.

The complaint from ParliAble was lodged on 2 October, and related to an MP “attending Estate with Covid-19 and the safety of disabled staff on the Parliamentary Estate”.

ParliAble – a network set up to support disabled MPs and peers, their disabled staff, and disabled staff of both the House of Commons and House of Lords – called in its complaint for the so-called “hybrid” parliament to be extended.

This is believed to refer to the need to allow more MPs to work from home during the pandemic, and to vote and take part in debates virtually.

But in response to the complaint, the Commons authorities merely explained the existing “safety protocols” to ParliAble, and told it to raise the issue with the leader of the Commons, the Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Rees-Mogg has been repeatedly criticised for failing to allow shielding or self-isolating MPs to carry out more of their parliamentary duties virtually.

It is not clear whether ParliAble passed on its concerns to Rees-Mogg.

The freedom of information response also details how members of parliament have made a string of complaints about fellow MPs, including their failure to wear face masks, the lack of social distancing in the Commons “tea room” and elsewhere in parliament, and the COVID-related risks caused by having to vote in person.

Several complaints made by members of the public related to the lack of social distancing by MPs in the Commons chamber, which appear to have been witnessed during television coverage.

Another complaint came from a member of House of Commons staff, who said an MP had breached social distancing rules while voting, while another staff member complained about an MP who appears to have held a “gathering” on a riverside terrace, and a third complained about an MP’s lack of social distancing when approaching Commons staff.

This week, Rees-Mogg’s office said it did not believe it had heard from ParliAble.

Asked if Rees-Mogg was concerned about the other complaints made about the actions of some MPs during the pandemic, a spokesperson declined to comment.

Asked if it shared the concerns of ParliAble, and those in the other complaints, and whether the authorities believed enough had been done to protect the safety of disabled staff and MPs on the parliamentary estate, a House of Commons spokesperson declined to answer.

But she said in a statement: “The priority is always to ensure that Parliament remains a COVID-secure environment for all who work here and, importantly, that Members of both Houses can continue to carry out their parliamentary duties.

“Both Houses intend to ensure that the latest rules, where relevant, are reflected within the Parliamentary Estate.”

ParliAble had not responded to a request to comment by noon today (Thursday).

*The SNP’s Margaret Ferrier had travelled from Glasgow to Westminster by train while awaiting a coronavirus test result, after developing symptoms, and then made the trip back to Scotland by train after she received notification of a positive result

10 December 2020

 

 

Coroner’s silence over DWP’s failure to give evidence to WCA suicide inquest

A coroner has refused to explain why the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to give evidence at an inquest which heard how an autistic man took his own life after being told to attend a work capability assessment (WCA).

Last week’s inquest heard evidence from a series of witnesses who described how DWP’s actions appeared to contribute to causing the death of 27-year-old Roy Curtis, who died in November 2018.

Disability News Service (DNS) can reveal that Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes who presided over last week’s inquest, also heard the inquest into the death of Stephen Carré nearly 11 years ago.

Following that inquest in 2010, Osborne became the first coroner to draw a link between the flawed WCA and the death of disabled benefit claimants, concluding that the decision to find Carré wrongly fit for work had been the “trigger” that led him to take his own life.

After that inquest, Osborne wrote a prevention of future deaths (PFD) report which called on DWP to make changes to the WCA system to prevent further such deaths.

That report did not emerge publicly until it was found by DNS in autumn 2015, and it has since helped to prove how the failure by DWP ministers to act on Osborne’s warning has led to many other such deaths.

Last week, nearly 11 years after Stephen Carré died, Osborne was in charge of another inquest which would again hear evidence of links between the WCA and the suicide of a claimant.

But he failed to ensure that any DWP civil servants gave evidence at the inquest into the death of Roy Curtis, despite a string of senior figures from social services, mental health and housing agencies giving oral evidence.

Those witnesses gave evidence which demonstrated how DWP’s failings had contributed to the decision of Roy Curtis to take his own life.

Curtis had cut himself off from his family in 2013 and changed his name from Ayman Habayeb. His family spent years trying unsuccessfully to track him down.

This week, his mother, Anabela Sousa, told DNS that the family were “surprised and disappointed” at the lack of DWP evidence at the inquest, although she stressed that they were also “very grateful for the coroner’s sympathy, fairness and being thorough throughout the hearing”.

She said that DWP had repeatedly failed her son, although she has been told that they had since changed their procedures.

Roy Curtis took his own life six days after being told to attend a “fitness for work” assessment, despite DWP being repeatedly warned its actions had made him suicidal.

The inquest heard last week how, in March 2017, he had handed over a letter from his partner at a WCA, which stated that the assessment process and the thought of having to prepare for work caused him to have “suicidal thoughts”.

The inquest also heard how he had drawn up a lengthy suicide note in autumn 2018, explaining that he had decided to end his own life because DWP had terminated his benefits, which meant he was “no longer able to pay rent or afford to eat”.

He was admitted as a voluntary inpatient to a mental health unit, where a mental health support worker wrote to DWP asking for the decision on his employment and support allowance (ESA) to be reviewed, including a letter from a consultant psychiatrist explaining that the thought of work made Curtis feel suicidal.

His benefits were reinstated and backdated, but just a month later he was sent a letter by DWP telling him he needed to attend another WCA.

This letter was generated by the DWP computer system “without a person checking on the circumstances of the individual”.

Curtis took his own life just six days later, Osborne concluded.

His ESA was stopped two months later after DWP officers made two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended the face-to-face WCA; on both occasions, the DWP officer noticed that letters alerting him to the visits were still in the mailbox along with other post.

DWP apparently made no further effort from January 2019 to check on his welfare or to contact other agencies, despite his history of mental distress and suicidal ideation.

His body was only discovered when a bailiff arrived to evict him from his flat, more than nine months after he had died.

But despite these facts, no DWP representative gave oral evidence to the inquest, and no statement from the department was read out by the coroner.

Osborne has so far refused to explain these omissions.

Asked if it was requested to submit any written evidence to the inquest, or if any of its civil servants were asked to give oral evidence, DWP refused to comment, other than referring DNS to last week’s statement in which a spokesperson said the department’s “thoughts remain with Mr Curtis’ family and friends at this difficult time”.

*The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind and Rethink

10 December 2020

 

 

Human Rights Act review ‘must not lead to weakening of disabled people’s rights’

A review of the Human Rights Act, announced this week by the government, must not be used as an opportunity to water down its protections, disabled human rights experts have warned.

Although the government said this week that the review was looking at the “structural framework” of the act, rather than the rights themselves, there are still concerns that it could lead to those rights being weakened.

There are also concerns over whether disabled people and their user-led organisations will be properly consulted on the review, after the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – which will run the review’s secretariat – told Disability News Service (DNS) that it was not yet able to provide any information about any public consultation that might be carried out.

The Independent Human Rights Act Review is expected to report as soon as next summer.

Among its tasks, it will consider whether the act “strikes the correct balance” between the roles of the courts, the government and parliament.

It will also examine whether the current approach “risks domestic courts being unduly drawn into questions of [government] policy”.

The Human Rights Act (HRA) incorporates the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic British law, and it came into force in October 2000.

Among the many rights included within the act that have been used to protect disabled people are the right to life; the freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment; and the protection from discrimination in relation to the other rights contained within the act.

Four years ago, an earlier government assault on the act caused outrage, after it announced plans to replace it with a new British bill of rights.

An MoJ spokesperson at the time said: “Make no mistake, the Human Rights Act will be repealed and replaced by a bill which will protect our fundamental human rights, but also prevent their abuse and restore common sense to the system.”

These plans were later dropped.

The government’s new approach appears less confrontational and less of a threat to the act itself, but it is still causing alarm among human rights experts and campaigners.

Mike Smith, the former disability commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and now chief executive of the east London disabled people’s organisation Real, told DNS: “It’s fine to review the effectiveness of the Human Rights Act, but it’s important not to use this as an opportunity to water it down just because the government hasn’t liked some of the decisions of the courts.

“All they have done is apply the law protecting individuals’ human rights against poor decisions by others. Rights are hard-won, and easily lost.”

He added: “When I was at the EHRC we often used the Human Rights Act to ensure disabled people got a just outcome, especially when they had not been ‘discriminated against’ under the Equality Act 2010.”

He said he hoped the review would also examine how the act could be strengthened.

This could include incorporating the rights laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into a reformed Human Rights Act, he said, particularly as an inquiry by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities found “grave and systemic violations” of the convention by the UK government.

Smith called for the review to “appropriately consult with and be informed by the views of disabled people, and reflect their ability to achieve the rights non-disabled people have on a day-to-day basis”.

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, said the review “risks the possibility of weakening disabled people’s already limited legal protections”.

She said: “The HRA helped disabled people challenge blanket policies in social care, discriminatory welfare benefits rules, some injustices in mental health and mental capacity laws.”

She said the act also allows for some scrutiny of government decisions.

She said: “The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the mistakes that can be made when the government is not appropriately challenged.

“We urge that any, and all, reviews and potential subsequent reforms fully protect the HRA and make its enforcement easier.

“The dignity and the safety of disabled people during and after this global health crisis must be ensured.”

Like Smith, Inclusion London called for the government to widen the rights that are protected by incorporating the UNCRPD into UK law, and called on the review panel to consult with disabled people and DPOs.

But the MoJ told DNS there was currently no information about any potential public consultation by the panel.

Asked about the review’s plans to consult with disabled people and their user-led organisations, an MoJ spokesperson said it would be for the panel to decide “how and when and who they consult with”.

She said: “They will consider how best to conduct this review. How they consult with people will be part of that. It’s for them to decide how to conduct it.”

The concerns came as more than 100 groups from across the UK – including Inclusion London, Disability Wales and the National Survivor User Network – signed an open letter to the prime minister and other UK political leaders, coordinated by the British Institute of Human Rights, which defends the Human Rights Act.

The letter, published today (Thursday) on Human Rights Day, highlights the COVID-19 emergency, and warns: “Human rights must not be an afterthought in times of crisis; human rights were born of disaster and must guide the Covid-19 response and recovery.”

And it adds: “Today, we stand together, proud of our human rights standards in the UK but worried that political rhetoric is again turning towards questioning our laws, with increasing concerns that people’s ability to seek accountability will be reduced.”

The HRA review panel of eight legal figures and academics includes the chair, Sir Peter Gross, a retired Lord Justice, and Baroness [Nuala] O’Loan, who carried out an investigation into human rights for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2009.

An EHRC spokesperson said in a statement: “The Human Rights Act protects the fundamental rights and freedoms of every person in the UK.

“Any review should ensure protections are effective, are strengthened where possible, are not undermined and are broadly understood and respected.”

Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, said: “Human rights are deeply rooted in our constitution and the UK has a proud tradition of upholding and promoting them at home and abroad.

“After 20 years of operation, the time is right to consider whether the Human Rights Act is still working effectively.”

10 December 2020

 

 

Evenbreak will help fill ‘massive gaps’ in job support after winning £125,000

A disabled-run social enterprise will be able to set up a national support service to help disabled people find jobs in the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, after fighting off competition to secure £125,000 in funding.

Evenbreak is one of 14 organisations that each received £125,000 from the Nesta Rapid Recovery Challenge, and it could still receive £350,000 more if it is one of the two eventual winners.

The new funding will allow Evenbreak – which only employs people with lived experience of disabling barriers – to set up a free support service, catering for both disabled people seeking employment and those already in jobs.

Among the support offered will be help with CVs, finding inclusive employers, seeking workplace adjustments, and securing funding from the Access to Work scheme.

Evenbreak, which was founded in 2011 by Jane Hatton and bases its services on the social model of disability, currently focuses on its accessible online job board, where inclusive employers can advertise their vacancies.

About 50,000 disabled candidates have registered on the job board, and about 30,000 of them are “actively engaged” with Evenbreak.

But Hatton said she had gradually realised that there were also massive gaps in the provision of “appropriate and relevant” support for disabled job-seekers.

She said: “We are constantly being approached by disabled candidates asking for support – whether help with CVs, with finding inclusive employers, with asking for workplace adjustments and so on.

“Up to now we have offered some generic online support, or signposted them to other organisations who offer such support.

“We were increasingly becoming aware that there are massive gaps in the provision of support, in terms of location, quality, eligibility criteria or relevance.”

Now she hopes the funding from the Nesta Rapid Recovery Challenge will help Evenbreak fill that gap, by providing free support which is “non-judgmental, not related to benefits, responsive to individual needs and realistic” and is delivered by careers professionals with lived experience of disabling barriers.

Hatton said the pandemic and Brexit had created fresh challenges.

She said: “There are likely to be far fewer jobs available following both COVID and Brexit, which is why it is more important than ever to ensure that disabled people – already disproportionately affected by any downturn in the economy – don’t get left behind this time.

“The new ways of working – more flexible working, remote working becoming more commonplace, the need to do things differently – mean that disabled people are generally premium candidates.

“Employers and disabled candidates themselves both need to realise that, and we will continue to help employers remove disabling barriers from their recruitment processes.”

In addition to the £125,000, Evenbreak will receive training and capacity-building support from the innovation charity Nesta, which is running the challenge.

Among the other 13 successful semi-finalists, announced this week, are a digital platform that shows low income, insecure and young workers the sources of income available to them through unclaimed benefits, grants and other financial support; and an organisation that supports young people in insecure or low-paid jobs to find roles in technology start-ups.

Six of the 14 semi-finalists will receive an additional £150,000 next May, with two final winners securing a further £200,000 in September 2021.

There were 148 entries to the competition, which aims to improve access to jobs and financial support for those impacted by COVID-19, by helping organisations reach more people in need.

Among those supporting Nesta’s challenge by contributing funding are the Money and Pensions Service, the Department for Work and Pensions and JPMorgan Chase.

10 December 2020

 

 

Hate crime and abuse ‘seriously under-estimated’, say mental health service-users

People with mental distress are not believed when reporting hate crime and abuse, despite experiencing serious assaults, victimisation and neglect, according to a new report.

Disabled academics who helped with the research that led to the report say that the extent of hate crime and abuse in mental health is seriously under-estimated.

The new report from the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) offers guidance to support those who have experienced abuse, victimisation and hate crime because of their mental distress or psychiatric diagnosis.

The guidance describes some of the sources of support that people with mental distress have found useful, and provides advice for those experiencing abuse, victimisation and hate crime.

It is based on the user-led Keeping Control study, which aimed to address a gap in knowledge about targeted violence, abuse and hostility against people with mental health problems.

Alongside the guidance, written by mental health service-user-researcher Dr Alison Faulkner, and also available in Urdu, Gujarati, Arabic, Bengali and easy-read, NSUN has released five short interviews.

In her interview, Dr Faulkner said: “I think that abuse and hate crime in mental health is something that is really under-estimated.

“It’s very hidden. People are often afraid to come forward and talk about it, and also they may feel that they are in some way to blame.”

She said there were many different experiences of hate crime and abuse, including physical assault, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abuse based on discrimination, institutional abuse, neglect and financial exploitation.

Some of those interviewed for the Keeping Control study spoke of the abuse they experienced while being treated in psychiatric institutions, including sexual abuse and abusive treatment, such as being forcibly treated under the Mental Health Act.

Dr Faulkner said: “Still there are people in the world who think that when you go into a psychiatric hospital you go in to be looked after, you go in to receive care, and that is something that this study has really blown apart.”

Dr Sarah Carr, a service-user-survivor-researcher who also worked on the Keeping Control project, said in her interview: “We found that people with mental health problems were at pretty high risk of experiencing disability hate crime.

“They are targeted because of their mental health problems or diagnosis or label.”

She said that many people did not report such incidents because they felt it was an “inevitable part of their life” or they did not feel they would be believed because of their mental health status, while they were also seen as unreliable witnesses.

They also felt that services would not help them if they reported what had happened.

Dr Carr said victims were often targeted in situations where they were vulnerable or powerless, such as on mental health wards.

She said: “We wanted to see change in services, change in practice, change in the way systems work, and we wanted to see social change in the way people with mental health problems are perceived and treated.”

Tina Coldham, a member of the expert advisory group on the study, said: “I’m in my 50s, I’ve grown up and I’ve got used to abusive comments, children would use some very unfortunate language, which now I would hope you don’t use so much in the playground, but you get used to it and accept it and don’t perhaps recognise it as hate crime.

“There is a tendency to sometimes internalise it, and not do anything with it, so another obstacle is that people will just hang onto it, and of course that is really corrosive to your sense of wellbeing.

“Another obstacle is how and where to report it, what sort of reception will I have if I do report it.”

She said she lives in Southampton, which has third-party hate crime reporting centres, which can help with that process.

She added: “Sometimes things happen to people in psychiatric hospitals, on wards, or in care settings, where the word care goes out of the window.”

Christine Khisa, a peer researcher and service-user, who was also involved in Keeping Control, said the project had given a voice to service-users.

She said: “I have been in a relationship where I have been physically abused. I was targeted as a consequence of my mental illness.

“I wasn’t even living with the individual but because of my vulnerabilities I was not listened to, I had no voice.

“I have even been on a ward where my partner has come to the ward… and he takes my money, he takes anything of value, and I’m just left there with nothing.

“And then he’s allowed in again, and I can’t even report it to staff because I’m the one that’s ill, I’m the one that’s vulnerable, I’m the one that needs help, I’m the one that needs care, I’m in that position.

“But if I do voice my concerns, when it does come to discharge, I’ve still got to go home to more of the same.”

She said it was vital to give people “the skills and the tools” to safeguard themselves, and to show them that “this is how you report it, this is who you go to, this is what you have to do, and this is what will take place, and this is how we will help you get through this”.

This information is “vitally important”, she said, and is sometimes “a matter of life or death”.

10 December 2020

 

 

Round-up: Unheard voices, a new manifesto for Wales… and Unlimited goes digital

More must be done to meet the needs of disabled members of the Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) community and to hear their voices, according to ground-breaking, user-led research.

The report concludes that disabled people from the GRT community are put off from trying to access the health and social care services they need by past experiences of discrimination.

This lack of services puts pressure on relatives and other community members to fill the gap in support themselves.

The research, which included surveys, interviews and focus groups across the UK, also found that service-providers were frequently reluctant to visit GRT sites, and that disabled people’s organisations often failed to “reach out pro-actively” to GRT communities.

And it highlighted the stigma felt about disability, particularly relating to men with physical impairments or experiencing mental distress.

Jason Smith, who is deaf, said: “There is a stigma around speaking out about disability.

“We’re a marginalised group within an already marginalised group. This can make it hard to get information or access to the support and things that can help.”

Among the report’s recommendations is for increased outreach by disabled people’s organisations to ensure people from GRT communities are involved in service and policy development.

The report concludes: “The present research project was innovative in that new ground was broken in opening up the discussion about disability within GRT communities, a discussion that now needs to be furthered within those communities and with outside health, housing and social care agencies.”

The project was led by the University of Worcester and the disabled people’s organisation Shaping Our Lives.

Becki Meakin, general manager of Shaping Our Lives and a co-author of the report, said: “This research provides a breakthrough in terms of directly hearing from disabled people and their living in GRT communities.

“It’s important we build on this work so they continue to have a voice on the issues that affect them.”

The report is the latest piece of research to come out of the five-year, £5 million Disability Research on Independent Living and Learning (DRILL) research programme, which is led by disabled people and funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.

Disability Wales marked the international day of disabled people by releasing a new disabled people’s manifesto, ahead of next spring’s elections to the Welsh Senedd.

Among its calls are for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) to be incorporated into Welsh law, and for disabled people’s history and discussion of the social model of disability to be included in the school curriculum.

Disability Wales also wants there to be mandatory disability equality training at all levels of government and other public bodies, and a disabled people’s organisation in every local authority area in Wales.

Other demands include action on disabled people’s participation in political life, on independent living, and on the disability employment gap, and to improve access to advice for those experiencing disability discrimination in the workplace.

The manifesto also calls for new accessibility standards for social housing in Wales to be developed in co-production with disabled people and their organisations.

Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales, said: “Disability Wales has been calling for the incorporation of the UNCRPD for a long time now and these findings show why.

“Many disabled people in Wales don’t feel that they are being listened to by those in power and are concerned that their rights are not on the agenda, let alone being protected.”

She said the process of drawing up the manifesto had “brought together disabled people from across Wales to give their views and talk about their priorities.

“It provides a vital tool for the next Welsh government to help influence and inform their programme and ensure that the rights of 22 per cent of the population are upheld.”

The government marked last Thursday’s international day of disabled people by confirming that it will increase spending on the disabled facilities grant (DFG) by £68 million next year.

The announcement of £573 million spending on DFG in 2021-22 – an increase of more than 13 per cent on 2020-21 and a huge increase from the £220 million provided in 2015-16 – was included in last month’s spending review.

DFGs are used to help disabled people fund adaptations to their homes, such as installing stair-lifts, wet rooms and ramps.

Kelly Tolhurst, the minister for rough sleeping and housing, said: “This grant can be literally life changing and lengthening, helping more people to live independently in their own homes.”

Helen Whately, the social care minister, said: “This grant will help hundreds of thousands of disabled people across England to live more independently in their own homes and improve their quality of life.

“I know this year has been incredibly difficult for disabled people in particular and I’m pleased that, on the International Day of People with Disabilities, we’re able to provide this additional funding.

“The disabled facilities grant is a really important part of our ambition to reduce health inequalities and support more people to live healthy, independent lives for as long as possible.”

The Unlimited disability arts programme has announced its first digital festival, which will take place next month.

The five-day festival, between 13 and 17 January, will feature dance, performance, comedy, film, talks, workshops and visual art, most of which has been commissioned by Unlimited.

Of 33 online events, 32 will be free, with another 16 events available on demand.

Alongside the digital programme, Unseen, logic-defying images on the subject of mental distress by artist Suzie Larke, will be exhibited outdoors at London’s Southbank Centre between 13 January and 28 February.

Among the highlights of the digital programme will be a broadcast of Artificial Things, which was filmed in a derelict suburban shopping centre, features disabled and non-disabled dancers, and explores the themes of human interdependence, strength, and vulnerability.

Among those who appear in the film is disabled dancer and actor David Toole, who died in October.

Another highlight is likely to be Here/Not Here, a film by the award-winning Deaf film-maker Bim Ajadi, which explores British Sign Language, Krump street dance, football and Visual Vernacular, a choreographed, poetic form of sign language.

Justin Edgar’s online exhibition, Reasonable Adjustment – The Disabled Armed Resistance Movement, a re-imagining of the disabled people’s direct action protests of the late 1980s, is one of the events most likely to provoke debate.

It features “artefacts” from the fictional Reasonable Adjustment movement, whose members are said to have bombed inaccessible train stations and laid siege to a benefits office.

The biennial festival was last held at the Southbank Centre in 2018, and was delayed this year because of the pandemic.

Unlimited was originally built on a successful disability arts programme which saw 29 pieces by disabled artists showcased during the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

A disabled people’s organisation has launched a new regional register of personal assistants (PAs) that it hopes will make it easier for disabled people to find PAs quickly during the COVID-19 crisis.

The register, run by Disability North, will be free to employers and PAs during the pandemic, and should help PAs who are currently not able to work because their existing employer is shielding work temporarily for other disabled people.

Disability North is based in Newcastle and covers the area from York to the Scottish Borders and across to Cumbria.

The disabled-led charity Wheels for Wellbeing has launched an updated edition of its Guide to Inclusive Cycling.

The policy document includes key recommendations for inclusive cycling, many of which have been included in new Department for Transport cycle infrastructure guidance.

It is the fourth edition of the guide, which was first published in 2017 and was the first policy document of its kind.

It includes case studies, technical recommendations, policy suggestions and links to relevant parts of the government guidance.

Isabelle Clement, director of Wheels for Wellbeing, said: “Just over three years since releasing the first ever Guide to Inclusive Cycling, it’s amazing to me that we’re already onto our fourth edition.

“The reason for this is that the world of cycling has been changing as people take note of and act on our recommendations.”

Cycling minister Chris Heaton-Harris said: “We will continue to support the delivery of cycle infrastructure which is safe and inclusive for disabled cyclists and pedestrians, and our work with accessibility groups such as Wheels for Wellbeing ensures we’re making use of expert knowledge to inform accurate and inclusive cycle design guidance for all.”

The disabled-led theatre company Vital Xposure has announced that actor, writer, director and activist Simon Startin will take over as its new artistic director in March.

He will replace the company’s founder, award-winning writer, director and activist Julie McNamara, who will be leaving to join the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, in Australia.

Startin, who has campaigned to increase the representation of disabled people on stage and screen, will join Vital Xposure as the company celebrates its 10th anniversary, and said he hoped to build on McNamara’s “outstanding” work.

He said: “There has never been a more important time for society to hear the voice of disabled artists, who have been living at the sharp end of human fragility and resilience long before the rest of the world woke up to it.

“There is an urgent need for disabled theatre-makers to proudly communicate not just the disabled experience but to take that perspective to universally question the times we live in.

“Under my leadership, the Vital Xposure commitment to hidden voices and social justice will continue to drive our work, but we will also begin to interrogate what participatory political theatre, led by disabled people, for the benefit of all, can achieve in the 21st century.”

Jonathan Meth, chair of the company’s trustees, said McNamara “uses her voice to speak for all those whose voices are unheard and whose stories are too often untold.

“That she can talk to anyone, as well as enable others to find their voices, belies the complexity and richness of her creative working processes – as theatre-maker, as a disabled artist and as advocate, activist and leader.”

10 December 2020

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 18:45
Dec 032020
 

Roy Curtis: Autistic man killed himself six days after latest ‘fitness for work’ demand

A disabled man took his own life six days after being told to attend a “fitness for work” assessment, despite the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) being repeatedly warned its actions had made him suicidal, an inquest has heard.

The death of 27-year-old Roy Curtis, who died on or about 18 November 2018, is just the latest over the last decade to expose DWP’s failure to protect disabled benefit claimants from harm.

The DWP actions that contributed to his suicide particularly mirror those that led to the death of Errol Graham, who starved to death earlier the same year after his benefits had been removed.

Just as with Errol Graham, the body of Roy Curtis – who was autistic and had significant experience of mental distress – was only discovered when a bailiff arrived to evict him from his flat, months after his benefits had been removed.

Curtis’s body was not discovered until seven months after his employment and support allowance (ESA) and other linked benefits had been stopped and nine months after he died.

Both Roy Curtis and Errol Graham had their benefits stopped after failing to attend a face-to-face work capability assessment (WCA), and without DWP speaking to them before ending their claim.

And both men had spent time as inpatients in mental health units, information which had been passed to DWP.

In another echo of Graham’s death, DWP stopped Curtis’s ESA in January 2019 after making two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended a face-to-face WCA.

On both occasions, the DWP officer noticed that letters alerting Curtis to the visits were still in the mailbox along with other post, according to a safeguarding adults review into his death that was published by the Milton Keynes Together Partnership (PDF) last week.

His housing association and the local social services department also attempted to contact Curtis (see separate story), but they and DWP did not communicate with each other.

The decision to ask Curtis to attend a face-to-face assessment, and then to remove his benefits when he failed to attend, was taken even though DWP had years of evidence of the impact of the WCA process on his mental health.

The safeguarding adults review said DWP had admitted that the letter telling Curtis he needed to attend the WCA had been generated by its computer system “without a person checking on the circumstances of the individual”.

DWP apparently made no further effort from January 2019 to check on his welfare or to contact other agencies, despite his history of mental distress and suicidal ideation. By then he had been dead for two months.

Representatives of Curtis’s housing association landlord, GP surgery, mental health trust and social services department were all questioned at length at this week’s inquest in Milton Keynes.

But despite repeated references by witnesses to the impact on his mental health of the loss of his benefits and the anxiety he experienced at the thought of having to work, and the apparent acceptance that being forced back into the WCA process triggered his suicide, no-one from DWP gave evidence to the inquest this week.

The inquest heard that DWP and its contractors had been told repeatedly of the harm that the “fitness for work” process caused to Curtis’s mental health.

In March 2017, Curtis had handed over a letter from his partner at a WCA, which stated that the assessment process and the thought of having to prepare for work caused him to have “suicidal thoughts”.

That letter warned DWP that Curtis was “not only an unsuitable person for any work environment but would be severely endangered by any finding that he was suitable for work or any work-related activities” and that “any such finding would put him at an immediate threat of suicide”.

Despite that letter, he was placed in the ESA work-related activity group, and the following year, on 15 August 2018, he was told his ESA was being removed completely because he had failed to turn up to a WCA in April 2018.

Curtis then drew up a lengthy suicide note in which he said he would end his own life on 19 September because DWP had decided to terminate his benefits, which meant he was “no longer able to pay rent or afford to eat”.

He said in that document: “I cannot be bothered to fight this anymore. I am out of energy. I only exist to do what I want to do; dealing with paperwork, making phone calls, and feeling anxious every day about whether I am going to be homeless are things I do not want to do.”

Before he could take his own life, police were alerted by an online friend and he was eventually admitted as a voluntary inpatient to the Campbell Centre, a mental health unit in Milton Keynes, on 13 September.

While he was an inpatient, a mental health support worker took on his benefit case and wrote to DWP asking for the decision to be reviewed, including a letter from a consultant psychiatrist explaining that the thought of work made Curtis feel suicidal.

His benefits were reinstated and backdated the following day, 5 October, and he was discharged from the Campbell Centre the same day.

But just a few days later he received another DWP letter, telling him he had been placed back in the ESA work-related activity group and would need to attend regular appointments.

He told a mental health professional from the acute home treatment team (AHTT) that work “made him stressed and anxious” and that he would rather die than have to work.

A month later, on 12 November, Curtis was sent a letter by DWP telling him he needed to attend another WCA, on 3 December.

Dr David Marchevsky, the consultant who had been in charge of his care at the Campbell Centre and had helped to have his benefits reinstated, told the inquest: “I didn’t envisage that the [DWP] were going to do the same thing and they were going to do it so quickly after the discharge.

“They were told the reasons he had been admitted. That information was given to them.

“I had no idea that was going to happen.”

The AHTT told Curtis to see his GP, who agreed on 15 November to write a letter to explain to DWP that he needed a home assessment, because he was worried that visiting the city centre assessment centre for the WCA would set off a severe anxiety attack.

Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes, said there was no evidence that he ever collected the letter from the surgery.

Dr Romi Babatunde, a partner at the surgery, told the inquest: “He identified his main trigger as the benefits and the expectation that he should work and that he should look for work.”

Osborne told the inquest that the letter he received from DWP in November “obviously caused Roy considerable anxiety and distress”.

The coroner said he believed that Curtis took his own life three days after the GP appointment, on or about 18 November 2018.

The housing association eventually issued an eviction notice in April 2019.

His body was discovered on 21 August 2019 when a bailiff arrived at his flat to evict him.

The inquest heard that a police officer who attended the scene had found a folder of letters with red letters scrawled across them, as if Curtis was “distressed” that his benefits had been stopped.

By the time his body was discovered, Roy Curtis had been dead for more than nine months.

Osborne concluded that he had taken his own life on or about 18 November 2018 and that it was “an indictment on all of us as a society in Milton Keynes that his body lay there undetected for so many months”.

Curtis had cut himself off from his family in 2013 and changed his name from Ayman Habayeb. His family spent years trying unsuccessfully to track him down.

Osborne told his family this week that he “deserves to be remembered for more than just the way that he died”.

The safeguarding adults review suggests that DWP’s safeguarding procedures have been improved since Curtis’s death.

Disability News Service reported in July how DWP had made changes that appear to have been influenced by the publicity in January and February this year surrounding Errol Graham’s death.

This appears to be confirmed by the safeguarding review, which says it was told: “Where DWP is unable to make contact with an individual after two ineffective safeguarding visits, additional checks will be put in place.

“The claim will not be automatically closed but escalated to a senior safeguarding lead who will liaise with the NHS, police and adult social care.

“Under the new guidance, ending benefit entitlement will become the last resort.”

DWP refused to comment on the circumstances of Roy Curtis’s death this week, and refused to say how it defended its actions, and whether it would be apologising to the family.

But a DWP spokesperson said: “Our thoughts remain with Mr Curtis’ family and friends at this difficult time.”

*The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind and Rethink

3 December 2020

 

 

Roy Curtis: Autistic man killed himself as council waited two months to begin ‘urgent assessment’

A coroner has criticised a local authority that waited more than two months to begin an “urgent” assessment of the support needs of a disabled man, who had taken his own life by the time the council eventually attempted to contact him.

Milton Keynes Council was told at an inquest yesterday (Wednesday) that it needed to make urgent changes to its social services department to ensure that no further lives were lost, following the suicide of Roy Curtis in November 2018.

His body was only discovered nine months later, in August 2019, when a bailiff arrived to evict him from his housing association flat for non-payment of rent.

Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes, was also critical of other public bodies, and the failure of those organisations to work together to plan his care before he was discharged from an inpatient mental health unit in October 2018.

The inquest heard repeated evidence over two days of how several agencies had failed Roy Curtis in the weeks and months leading to his suicide, including the council and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The inquest heard that he had taken his own life after being told by DWP to attend a “fitness for work” assessment, just weeks after receiving treatment for suicidal thoughts caused by having his benefits removed for missing another face-to-face work capability assessment (WCA) earlier that year (see separate story).

The inquest heard this week that Milton Keynes Council’s social services department had waited more than two months to attempt to contact Curtis to begin an “urgent” assessment of his social care needs.

Osborne told the inquest yesterday (Wednesday) that the failure to complete the social care assessment “resulted in a lost opportunity to assess his needs and to offer him support”.

That assessment should have been carried out while he was still a voluntary inpatient at the Campbell Centre, a mental health unit in Milton Keynes, said Osborne.

Curtis was discharged on 5 October 2018 from the Campbell Centre into the care of the acute home treatment team, also part of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWLFT), and soon afterwards into the care of The Grove Surgery, Netherfield, Milton Keynes.

But Osborne criticised the failure to carry out “effective multi-agency joint planning” before his discharge from the centre, and to carry out an adequate risk assessment.

The council’s mental health and autism social care team had received a request for an urgent social care assessment on 25 September – a request that had first been drawn up by a social worker on 13 September, the day he was admitted to the Campbell Centre – but it was only allocated by the council to an assistant social worker, and not until 26 November.

By this time, the coroner concluded, Curtis had already taken his own life.

Sarah Nickson, service manager for the council’s mental health and autism social care team, said the delay in allocating the case had been “completely unacceptable”, but that there had been “a high number of referrals that were awaiting allocation and our team was not fully staffed at that time”.

It was not until 3 December 2018 that the assistant social worker made the first attempt to reach Curtis, but only through letters and phone calls – which it later emerged were to the wrong number.

No visits were made to his flat, and one of the letters warned that if he failed to make contact by the end of the month, his case would be closed.

The case was eventually closed in January 2019 without a single visit being made to his flat.

Nickson accepted that there should have been at least a couple of visits to his flat, followed by a request to the police to check on his welfare.

Curtis had cut himself off from his family in 2013 and changed his name from Ayman Habayeb. His family had tried unsuccessfully for many years to track him down.

At the end of the inquest, Osborne read a statement issued by Curtis’s family, in which they blamed the council for his death.

The inquest heard that DWP had been told repeatedly about the impact that its fitness for work system had on Curtis’s mental health, and it knew that he had only recently been discharged from the Campbell Centre.

He had been admitted voluntarily to the centre in September 2018 after the police were alerted by a friend to a letter Curtis had posted online describing his plans to take his own life.

Dr David Marchevsky, the consultant in charge of his care at the Campbell Centre between 13 September and 5 October 2018, described him as “very polite, well-mannered and very pleasant” and “very intelligent and likeable”, with a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome.

He had previously been admitted to the centre in 2012.

He said he had been “upset and angry” that he had lost his benefits, so Dr Marchevsky decided to “work to get the benefits back”.

Once his benefits were reinstated, he said, Curtis was no longer “actively suicidal”, and could be safely discharged.

But just a month later, Curtis was sent a letter by DWP telling him he needed to attend another WCA, on 3 December.

He attended The Grove for an appointment with a GP on 15 November 2018 to request a letter to send to DWP to explain why he needed a home assessment, because he was worried that visiting the city centre assessment centre for the WCA would set off a severe anxiety attack.

Osborne said there was no evidence that he ever collected the letter from the surgery.

He said he believed Curtis took his own life three days after the GP appointment, on or about 18 November.

Dr Romi Babatunde, a partner at the surgery, said there was “no mention” in the patient’s notes of any attempt by the GP at that appointment to assess whether Curtis was having any suicidal thoughts, or of whether he later collected the letter.

The inquest also heard that the surgery had failed to follow up on his care after his discharge from the acute home treatment team.

Asked by the family’s solicitor, Sefton Kwasnik, whether, “with the benefit of hindsight”, the surgery “could perhaps have been more pro-active” in managing his mental health following his release into the surgery’s care, such as preparing its own management plan, Dr Babatunde said: “Yes, with the benefit of hindsight that is correct.”

He added later: “Yes, perhaps we could pro-actively have done a bit more.”

Curtis’s father, who was watching the inquest online, told the GP: “You could have saved this young man’s life. I hope your conscience is clear. I cannot be calm like everybody else. This is my family.”

The inquest also heard that the Guinness Partnership, the housing association that owned the flat Curtis rented, had failed to check on his welfare for several months after he stopped paying his rent, even though he had previously been living in supported accommodation.

Billie-Jade Mason, customer liaison manager for the housing association, said they had not been aware Curtis was a “vulnerable adult”.

She later had to apologise to the inquest after being informed that the housing association had been told by the council that Curtis had previously lived in supported accommodation when he moved into his flat in January 2016.

DWP had stopped Curtis’s ESA in January 2019 after making two unsuccessful visits to his home that month to ask why he had not attended the WCA.

On both visits, the DWP officer noticed that letters alerting Curtis to the visit were still in the mailbox along with other mail, according to a safeguarding adults review into his death that was published by the Milton Keynes Together Partnership (PDF) last week.

Osborne said he found it “remarkable” that “the complete lack of any communication from or with Roy didn’t spark a red flag or alarm bells with any of the agencies”.

He said he intended to send a prevention of future deaths report to the council because of its failures.

He said: “Referrals for adult social care assessments appear to me to be overly bureaucratic and are not being afforded the priority within social services that they so obviously require.”

The housing association eventually issued Roy Curtis with an eviction notice in April 2019.

His body was discovered in the bedroom of his flat on 21 August 2019 by a bailiff who had arrived to evict him.

By the time his body was discovered, Roy Curtis had been dead for more than nine months.

Osborne concluded that he had taken his own life on or about 18 November 2018 and that it was “an indictment on all of us as a society in Milton Keynes that his body lay there undetected for so many months”.

And he told the family of Roy Curtis that he “deserves to be remembered for more than just the way that he died”.

*The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind and Rethink

3 December 2020

 

 

Vaccine priority decision ‘is campaigning victory’, but concerns remain

The government’s decision to put some people with impairments higher on the list of “priority groups” to receive a COVID-19 vaccine has been welcomed as a victory for disabled people’s campaigning.

This week, the government announced that the first vaccine – produced by Pfizer and BioNTech – had been authorised for use in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

Yesterday, ministers announced that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine would begin to be rolled out next week across the country, although large-scale vaccination is not expected until the new year.

But they also revealed that those considered clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) to the virus would now be higher up the list of priority groups than previously suggested.

Furious disabled activists had previously questioned the decision to put disabled people seen as CEV far down the queue for a life-saving vaccine, even though three-fifths of COVID-related deaths have been of disabled people.

Under the previous list of priorities, older people in care homes and care home workers were to be first to be vaccinated; followed by over-80s and other health and social care workers; then the over-75s; followed by those 70 and over; and those 65 and over.

Only then would adults under 65 who were at high risk from the virus receive the vaccine.

But the new list of priorities means that those who are considered CEV will receive the same priority for a vaccine as those aged between 70 and 75.

Those aged 16 to 64 with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk from the virus will receive the vaccine after those aged 65 and over, and before those aged 60 to 64 with no such health conditions.

But there will currently be no increased priority for any disabled children and teenagers under the age of 16, even if they are considered to be CEV to the virus.

As the priority list stands, those under 16 who are CEV will have to wait until everyone 50 years of age and older has been vaccinated.

There are doubts over whether older care home residents will actually be treated as the highest priority for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, because the need to hold the vaccine at minus 70 degrees celsius means it will – at least initially – have to be distributed from hospitals.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, told Labour leader Keir Starmer yesterday (Wednesday) that there were “logistical challenges to be overcome to get vulnerable people the access to the vaccine that they need”, after he was asked about “the particular problems of getting the vaccine safely and quickly into care homes”.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, a crossbench disabled peer, who last week raised concerns about the previous priority list in the House of Lords, said she was “heartened” by the news that those defined as CEV would have a higher priority.

She said: “This change of heart came as a direct result of disabled people’s campaigning efforts to get the government to think again, after it was clearly bought to their attention that thousands of disabled people would most certainly die if they caught COVID-19 and should therefore be vaccinated at a higher priority.

“It’s a shame that disabled people had to mount such an exhausting campaign to get the government and its vaccine expert working groups to fully realise the extent of some disabled people’s extreme risk to the virus.

“Personally, I thought it was clearly evident. As did the British public, many of whom sent me tweets and emails of support for this campaign.”

Other disabled campaigners were more hesitant about welcoming the changes.

David Gillon said the new version of the priority list was an improvement, but only because of how it treats those in the CEV group.

He said: “This draft is better than the first one, but still seems to be allocating priorities on a finger in the wind basis.

“If there are hard numbers behind the low priority given to clinically vulnerable people and the even lower priority for clinically vulnerable under-16s, we’re still not being shown them.”

And he said there were still many anomalies with the priority list, including the failure to prioritise care homes for working-age adults.

Andrew Lee, director of People First (Self Advocacy), was last month among those raising concerns over “absolutely shocking” new figures from Public Health England which showed that younger people with learning difficulties in England were more than 30 times more likely to die from coronavirus than non-disabled people of the same age.

He welcomed the news of a vaccine and said: “This is something we’ve been talking about in our COVID-19 Support and Action group for self-advocates.”

But he added: “We are alarmed and angry about the high death rates of people with learning difficulties during the pandemic and the fact that they have not been widely spoken about.”

Lee said he and his colleagues were “encouraged” that adults with Down’s syndrome had been added to the CEV list and would now be at a higher level of priority for the vaccine.

But he added: “It is confusing to many of us, and somewhat discriminatory, to not include people with learning difficulties who do not have Down’s syndrome.”

At present the group of adults at higher risk from the virus – but not in the CEV group – includes those with “severe and profound learning disability”, but not others with learning difficulties.

Simone Aspis, director of Changing Perspectives, said the changes to the vaccine priority list were “not a substantial improvement”.

She said the Public Health England figures showed that people with learning difficulties should be “much higher up the list then they are at the moment”.

Aspis said the reason so many people with learning difficulties were dying from COVID-19 was not just because of underlying health conditions, but because “the support is not there to be tested or understand the lockdown regulations or to do the basic things like washing your hands… or make sense of social distancing”.

The grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said the news that care home residents now appeared to have moved down the priority list “due to the governments failing to plan how they would store and deliver the vaccine”, was “another unacceptable blow”.

It said the situation was also “not helped by frequent changes to the guidance”, with the definitions of “clinically vulnerable” and “underlying health conditions” varying and open to interpretation, while this was “particularly worrying for younger people with learning difficulties”.

A BRIL spokesperson said: “Will stressed GPs be forced to decide if someone qualifies as having a ‘severe or profound learning disability’ and can get the vaccination sooner, or that they will have to wait?”

He added: “There are concerns about already pressurised GPs being able to take on the responsibility for making sure people are contacted.

“With the best will in the world, there will be people not known to them who may be in the ‘clinically vulnerable’ groups, including people seeking asylum, travelling communities and homeless people.

“We have been contacted by disabled people raising very specific and important issues about reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act, and making sure that people, families and services are aware of the barriers people may face to being vaccinated.

“It is concerning that this knowledge and lived experience is missing from vaccination plans.”

3 December 2020

 

 

DWP refuses to publish information from secret reviews into benefit-related deaths

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is refusing to release recommendations made by its own secret reviews into the deaths of benefit claimants that have been linked to its actions.

The refusal to release the information from reports completed over the last 20 months is just the latest attempt by ministers to hide information that links the department with the deaths of disabled claimants of benefits such as employment and support allowance and personal independence payment.

The department has told Disability News Service (DNS), in a response to a freedom of information request, that it cannot release any information from internal process reviews (IPRs) completed between April 2019 and last month.

It appears to argue in the response that it is exempt from its duty to release the documents because every one of those documents is linked to the development of new government policy*.

But there will be suspicions that the refusal to release the documents is because DWP is anxious to avoid revealing any further evidence linking it with safeguarding failures that have led to the deaths of claimants.

DWP did reveal in its response that it completed 82 separate investigations into deaths and other serious incidents between January 2016 and March 2019.

The existence of secret DWP reviews into suicides and other deaths and serious incidents was first revealed by DNS in October 2014.

Most, although not all, of the reviews involve the deaths of claimants, while some examine serious incidents that did not lead to a claimant dying.

After DWP refused to release the reports in 2014, the information rights tribunal ruled in April 2016 that all information from the reviews that does not directly relate to the people who died should be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The tribunal case had been brought by DNS, and the ruling led to redacted versions of the reports being published for the first time.

DWP had argued at the time that it was prevented from releasing the information by section 123 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992**.

That argument was squashed by the tribunal, which said the department could release some information from the reviews, as long as it did not relate to individual claimants.

This led to the release of 49 redacted documents which revealed how the secret reviews had led to recommendations for improvements by the department after the deaths of claimants.

DWP is now arguing that releasing any of the IPRs from the last 20 months could interfere with the development of policy, although it has released IPRs from the previous three years.

It said in the response: “There is a public interest in greater transparency which makes government more accountable to the electorate and increases trust.”

But it adds: “There is also a public interest in being able to assess the quality of advice being given to ministers and subsequent decision making.

“On balance, DWP is satisfied that in this instance the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

DNS is seeking an internal review of the decision by DWP, but it is likely to have to appeal to the information commissioner.

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office said: “You should raise your complaint with the DWP in the first instance and if you’re not happy with how the complaint is dealt with, we might be able to help.

“We wouldn’t comment beyond that at this stage on a particular request response.”

A DWP spokesperson declined to comment on the decision.

*Under section 35(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act

**This states that a civil servant is guilty of a criminal offence by disclosing “without lawful authority any information which he acquired in the course of his employment and which relates to a particular person”

3 December 2020

 

 

Government’s disability strategy ‘must be grounded in UN convention’

Disabled activists have called on the government to ensure that its long-awaited disability strategy produces stronger anti-discrimination legislation and is grounded in the social model of disability and the UN disability convention.

They were speaking at an event hosted by Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft, that marked both UK Disability History Month (UKDHM) and today’s international day of disabled people.

Disabled campaigners from both within and outside the Labour movement said the government’s national disability strategy – now not expected to be published until next spring at the earliest – must be grounded in disabled people’s civil rights.

Nearly 200 people registered to attend the meeting.

But there were also messages for Labour, and its continuing failure to address the discrimination faced by its own disabled members.

Ellen Morrison, newly-elected as Labour’s first representative of its disabled members on its national executive committee, said the government’s strategy needed to be under-pinned by the social model of disability and ensure the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) was incorporated into UK law.

And she stressed that disabled people and their organisations, including the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance, had already carried out “really detailed work that the government could take forward if it actually wanted to engage with us as experts in our lives”.

But she said that Labour also needed to “get its own house in order first”.

She said: “We are currently in a vicious circle in our party where disabled Labour members can’t access Labour spaces or some can and face discrimination and we don’t have our own structures embedded in the party to self-organise.”

Setting up disabled members’ branches at a local level could provide the network needed to secure consensus within the party on what disabled people need, she said.

She said there was also a need to ensure that disabled people have a proper say in policy-making within the party, while pointing out that the Disability Equality Act Labour organisation had already produced a blueprint for the changes needed within a party “that has historically shut us out”.

But Morrison warned that any government disability strategy was “likely to disappoint us”, so she called for Labour to produce its own shadow version.

Richard Rieser, coordinator of UKDHM, said the “fundamental” change needed in the government’s disability strategy was to move from seeing “disability as a problem in the person” to seeing it as an issue in society.

He said all the main political parties paid “lip service” to the social model of disability, and the way to change that was through “strengthening the disability movement”.

He said oppression was “deeply rooted in our society so that when anything goes wrong, such as the COVID crisis, the cracks appear and we are seen as life not worthy of life”, which had been seen in the government’s “eugenicist approach” during the pandemic.

He said the human rights values of UNCRPD needed to be “embedded throughout society”, and he called for Labour to “take a strong position on this”.

He said the annual UKDHM began in 2010 because those organisations backing it realised that the Conservative-led coalition would “roll back the little gains we had made under the previous years”.

He pointed out that the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) – which had its 25th anniversary last month – was described at the time as “a leaky sieve rather than as a civil rights act”.

He said it was clear that the Equality Act – which incorporated some, but not all, of the DDA and subsequent legal improvements to the original act – needed to be developed.

And he pointed out that, more than four years ago, a House of Lords committee had recommended 55 improvements to the impact of the Equality Act on disabled people, which Labour should now be considering.

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said it was vital that the strategy was not just a series of “incremental tweaks” or existing departmental policies that the government will “repackage as a disability strategy”.

She said: “I would like it to be something that moves us on to the next stage of our journey to becoming an inclusive society for disabled people where we truly belong.”

She said the pandemic had “shone a spotlight on the inequalities we still face as disabled people” and had given the government “some really obvious clues on what needs to change”.

She said a DR UK engagement exercise had produced a series of demands from disabled people, including stronger anti-discrimination legislation, funding for disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), proper co-production and engagement with disabled people, a new social care system that “truly gives us empowerment, choice, control and connection” and a social security system that “enables us to flourish rather than a punitive one”.

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, said the disability strategy needed to produce “radical reform” and not just “tinker round the edges”.

She said there needed to be reforms that ensured the Equality Act “works for us, with the burden of enforcement shifted from us as disabled people to regulatory bodies and public bodies”.

She said there needed to be a social security system that “recognises the right to an adequate standard of living and does not subject us as disabled people to a punitive conditionality regime”.

Kotova also called for investment in DPOs, and “radical reform of mental health and mental capacity laws so that people who experience mental distress do not face serious human rights violations at the time when they need support the most”.

She backed the introduction of a National Independent Living Support Service and a legal right to independent living, rather than the current “oppressive, severely-underfunded system” which sees “a lot of money wasted on support in institutions where people are at greater risk of abuse and their life is at greater risk, as we have seen in the COVID pandemic”.

Marsha de Cordova, a disabled MP and Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, told the meeting: “What is needed is a human rights response and a human rights approach.

“The benchmark for this has to be the UNCRPD. The government are claiming to be doing a national disability strategy… to measure whether this is good enough is whether it is meeting the standards and requirements set out within the UNCRPD.

“I don’t hold out much hope and that is why Labour will have to lead the way on that.”

She said COVID-19 had “exposed and shone a light” on the injustices, inequalities and hostility disabled people have faced in the last few years.

3 December 2020

 

 

Labour apologises for inaccessible disability rights event

Labour has apologised after it admitted that a meeting held to mark the international day of disabled people was inaccessible to some disabled people.

The meeting was hosted by Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft, and aimed to gather the views of disabled people on what the government’s forthcoming national disability strategy should include.

Although the online event included British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters, there were no subtitles, which are vital for many disabled people, including those with hearing impairments who do not use BSL.

Yesterday (Wednesday), Foxcroft apologised for the access failure and said she was working to ensure it “does not happen again”.

Only last month, Ellen Morrison, Labour’s first elected representative of its disabled members on its national ruling body, called on the party to address the years of discrimination faced by its disabled members.

She said then that it was “very clear that Labour has deprioritised what disabled members need for a long time for both policy and access”.

Morrison repeated that message at this week’s event, telling her party that it needed to “get its own house in order”, and warning: “We are currently in a vicious cycle in our party where disabled Labour members can’t access Labour spaces or some can and face discrimination and we don’t have our own structures embedded in the party to self-organise.”

She pointed out that the Disability Equality Act Labour group had already produced a blueprint for the changes needed within a party “that has historically shut us out”.

Disabled campaigner and party member Lisa Egan left the online meeting on Monday when she realised there were no subtitles and so she would be unable to take part.

She told Disability News Service (DNS) afterwards: “No point staying where you’re not welcome.”

She said the failure to organise subtitles was “a very strong statement about who is and isn’t welcome”.

She had stated her need for subtitles on an access form she filled in before the event.

Foxcroft told DNS: “We really tried to make the event as accessible as possible, from asking attendees to let us know if they needed any adjustments, to having BSL interpreters at the event.

“In future, we will ensure all events are recorded and [uploaded] online shortly afterwards so people who are not able to take part can watch and contact me with any thoughts.”

She said she was keen to hear from anyone who was not able to engage in the event, and that “if even one person is not able to take part, that is one too many”.

She added: “I genuinely hope this doesn’t put anyone off accessing future events; we are planning on holding more on what a new deal for disabled people should look like.

“Ensuring disabled people’s voices are heard and holding the government to account on their future strategy is imperative.

“As shadow minister for disabled people, working with and co-producing policy with disabled people is the only way we can develop better policies to ensure we have a genuinely inclusive society.”

3 December 2020

 

 

Disabled advisors secure pledge from equality watchdog over DWP deaths inquiry

Disabled advisors to the equality and human rights watchdog have secured a promise that its planned inquiry into the work capability assessment (WCA) and its links with the deaths of benefit claimants is still a priority.

The promise came after the commission decided earlier this year to delay and “deprioritise” the inquiry because of the extra workload caused by the pandemic.

Disability News Service (DNS) has been told that members of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s disability advisory committee (DAC) secured a promise from the commission that the delay was not a “reduction in priority” for the inquiry, despite it being taken out of this year’s business plan.

EHRC has also agreed that the advisory committee will have input into the commission’s work to design the scope of the inquiry.

DNS only discovered the promise after the publication of minutes of a meeting of the committee that took place on 16 July.

Senior commission executives had made the decision to delay and “deprioritise” the inquiry in June without consulting its own board, or the DAC, and before the 16 July meeting.

The minutes of the 16 July meeting appeared to show that none of the 14 members of the committee who attended the online meeting had expressed any concerns about the commission’s decision that the inquiry would be “deprioritised” because of the coronavirus pandemic.

But after DNS approached committee members to ask why they had not spoken out, they produced a joint statement which explained why they had not done so.

They said committee members had “talked with the Commission both in and outside meetings, as it took decisions on re-timetabling of work in an extraordinary year”.

They added: “When they decided to put back the start of the inquiry into DWP decision making in order to focus on immediate COVID work we gained agreement that we would have input into its scoping and that this was a delay not a reduction in priority within the Strategic Plan.”

They said the commission had “re-scheduled work in the face of multiple emergencies and challenges” and they had advised the commission on a series of crucial COVID-related issues during 2020 as a result of the “multiple emergencies” disabled people have faced.

This includes blanket application of “do not attempt resuscitation” (DNAR) notices on disabled people without their consent; use of restraint and coercion in health and care settings; the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on disabled children’s education; and the need to protect and develop human rights protections as the UK leaves the European Union.

The advisory committee said it was “somewhat encouraged” by recent commission action on disabled people’s rights, including supporting successful legal cases, “calling out the unequal impacts of COVID, including on disabled people finding it difficult to get food, support and equal treatment”, and challenging discriminatory use of DNAR notices.

The statement was co-ordinated by committee member Liz Sayce and signed by her and 10 other committee members: Marc Bush, Helen Chipchase, Miro Griffiths, Fazilet Hadi, Professor Anna Lawson, Lord [Colin] Low, Rachel Perkins, who chairs the committee, Michelle Scattergood, Professor Nick Watson and Colin Young.

The commission was first approached in April 2019 by Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, a former shadow work and pensions secretary, with her concerns about the links between DWP and the deaths of claimants, and the wider impact of DWP policies on disabled people.

The watchdog eventually stated, in June this year, 14 months later, that “due to the pandemic we will not be able to undertake an inquiry in relation to the DWP this year”.

The EHRC decision not to carry out an inquiry this year was later presented to the DAC at its next meeting on 16 July, but the minutes of that meeting were only published last week.

According to the minutes, “members confirmed they had read the paper noting that… the Business Plan had been re-prioritised due to the pandemic, was being reviewed on a 90 day cycle and that a second re-prioritisation process was in train”.

Only last month, yet another death of a disabled benefit claimant linked to DWP failings emerged, with the family of Philippa Day describing how she left a note that “directly implicated” DWP in her death.

Philippa Day, who had agoraphobia, appears to have killed herself after hearing hours earlier that her repeated pleas for her personal independence payment assessment to be held in her own home had been rejected.

This week, DNS also reports on the death of Roy Curtis, in November 2018, after an inquest revealed close links between his suicide and decisions taken by DWP.

The last decade has seen a string of other preventable deaths linked to DWP’s failings – as with Philippa Day’s death, not only relating to the WCA – with the department repeatedly being told to correct serious, potentially-fatal flaws in its procedures and policies, and often failing to do so.

In addition to the death of Philippa Day, they include those of Errol Graham, Jodey Whiting, Faiza Ahmed, Michael O’Sullivan, Mark Wood, David Barr, Diane Hullah, James Oliver, Paul Donnachie, David Clapson, Stephen Carré, in January 2010, and countless others.

A five-year DNS investigation, published 12 months ago, provided strong and clear evidence that senior civil servants and ministers should face a criminal investigation for alleged misconduct in public office, as a result of decisions and actions taken from the early years of the 2010 coalition government.

3 December 2020

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 17:29
Dec 032020
 
The #UniversalDiscredit campaign this year brings together a call to councillors, a day of action, a facebook live event and a Christmas appeal. This is in response to the needs of its members and the communities we all live in.  Next April, the government plans to cut the benefit level for millions of families by ending the £20 increase to the standard rate of Universal Credit. On Thursday 9th December from 6-7.15pm we will discuss this online with Ros Wynne-Jones, Jonathan Reynolds MP, an anonymous claimant and assistant general secretary Steve Turner.
Unite Community NEYH has been putting out a few short videos

https://twitter.com/UniteNEYH/status/1334136204254732294?s=20
https://twitter.com/UniteNEYH/status/1333803870372261896?s=20
https://twitter.com/UniteNEYH/status/1333332480246550528?s=20
https://twitter.com/UniteNEYH/status/1333018046970138624?s=20

 Posted by at 14:14
Nov 262020
 

Government’s quiet confession: We must do more to protect disabled people from COVID
The UK government appears to have bowed to months of pressure from disabled campaigners and allies, after quietly revealing that it is considering taking “further action” to protect disabled people from the pandemic.
It comes alongside an admission that disabled people have been “disproportionately impacted” by COVID-19, alongside older people and those from minority ethnic backgrounds.
It appears to be the first admission from the UK government that disabled people – rather than those with certain underlying health conditions – have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 crisis and that it needs to do more to protect them.
There have been months of concerns raised about this disproportionate impact, with official figures showing that nearly 60 per cent of COVID-related deaths – and possibly more – were of disabled people.
This led to claims that the UK government had violated its obligation to protect disabled people’s right to life, and repeated calls for it to take action to address the disproportionate impact, as well as its repeated breaches of other disability rights during the pandemic.
In June, a Public Health England review of COVID-19 health inequalities analysed factors such as deprivation, ethnicity, occupation and health conditions but did not include a single mention of disabled people or disability.
And the government’s Disability Unit, led by the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, has remained almost completely silent during the pandemic, even though it was set up last year to “break down the barriers faced by disabled people”.
Last month, Disability News Service (DNS) reported that the unit had posted just one new announcement on its website in the previous six months.
Now, in its new COVID-19 Winter Plan – which describes how ministers will manage the end of the latest national lockdown on 2 December, and the steps they will take “to help bring life back to normal by Spring” – the government has revealed that it is “considering what further action is needed to protect disabled people”.
The admission – in a short paragraph on page 87 – comes in a section on “disproportionately impacted groups”.
The government had not provided further details of what options for further action it is considering by noon today (Thursday).
But the document adds: “It is especially important that the needs of people with characteristics that could put them at greater risk are fully considered and that the fullest efforts are made to engage them in the roll-out of rapid testing and vaccines.”
Only last week, DNS reported how “absolutely shocking” new figures showed that younger people with learning difficulties in England were more than 30 times more likely to die from coronavirus than non-disabled people of the same age.
Leading campaigners with learning difficulties said those figures provided further evidence of why many younger disabled people should be higher on the list of priorities for a coronavirus vaccine when one becomes available.
Furious disabled activists had questioned the “sickening” and “utterly bizarre” decision to put disabled people seen as extremely vulnerable to coronavirus far down the queue for a life-saving vaccine.
And yesterday (Wednesday), the crossbench disabled peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell, who herself is seen as clinically extremely vulnerable to the virus and has been shielding since March, asked a minister to justify that decision.
She said she was “concerned to learn that those under 65 in the clinically high-risk categories have been given a lower priority for the vaccine, knowing that 59 per cent of people who have died from the coronavirus have been high-risk disabled people”.
She also asked for the evidence that decision was based on.
Baroness Campbell highlighted again the concerns over the government’s apparent failure to protect disabled people during the pandemic, telling the minister: “Disabled people tell me that they have not felt shielded or protected throughout this pandemic, and this priority decision seems to confirm that belief.”
Lord Bethell, a junior health and social care minister, told her that the list of priorities for receiving a vaccine was only “interim advice” and may change when the government received the final data on how the various vaccines work.
He said a review was taking place “to see whether clinical factors should play a greater role in prioritisation”.
The new winter plan also says that the government is working to “improve the data” to help build a clearer picture of how COVID-19 “affects people with specific characteristics”.
And it says the government is spending “up to £25 million” to establish a network of “community champions” to “help those most at risk and hard-to-reach communities access and adhere to the latest Government COVID-19 guidance, and to give these people a greater voice in public health”.
The government had failed by noon today to provide further details on these measures and how they would support disabled people.
26 November 2020

Coffey announces 37p benefits rise, after PM announces £24 billion more for defence
Benefits for disabled people are set to rise by just 0.5 per cent next year, the government has announced, despite the increasing costs and cuts to support many of them are facing as a result of the pandemic.
The announcement by work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey means that someone in the work-related activity group of employment and support allowance (ESA) will receive a rise of just 37p a week from next April.
The same 0.5 per cent increase – in line with September’s inflation rate – will apply to personal independence payment and disability living allowance, but not state pensions, which will rise by 2.5 per cent.
The 0.5 per cent increase comes even though many disabled people have faced extra costs as a result of the pandemic, including having to switch to more expensive online food deliveries, and paying for personal protective equipment for personal assistants and care workers and extra cleaning products.
Coffey also failed again to extend the £20 a week uplift given to claimants of universal credit – introduced as a temporary measure in the early weeks of the pandemic – to those on ESA, jobseeker’s allowance and income support.
A petition to extend the payments has so far been signed by nearly 120,000 people.
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said: “The failure to provide an uplift for two million people shows government’s flagrant disregard for disabled people.”
The Disability Benefits Consortium, whose members include the National Survivor User Network, Inclusion London and DR UK, said that granting disabled people an additional 37p a week “has left us lost for words”.
Coffey’s announcement came as the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, delivered a one-year spending review that provides an extra £55 billion for spending on public services to tackle coronavirus next year, while the prime minister, Boris Johnson, had earlier announced an extra £24 billion in spending on defence over the next four years.
The spending review also saw an announcement of extra funding for local councils, including a repeat of last year’s £1 billion grant for social care and an extra £300 million social care grant, while also allowing them to increase council tax bills by up to three per cent to fund adult social care.
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Care said of the funding settlement: “While we are still examining the detail, it seems as if the fragmented short-term funding announced by the chancellor falls alarmingly short.”
The spending review also confirmed that the publication of the government’s long-awaited and much-delayed plans for social care reform would be delayed again, until next year.
There are also likely to be concerns within the disabled people’s movement at the announcement of £300 million for capital spending on “new school places for children with special educational needs and disabilities”, which is “almost four times as much as the government provided to local authorities in 2020-21”.
This funding will pay for new segregated special schools, and some mainstream places, with the Treasury confirming to Disability News Service this morning (Thursday) that it was “capital funding specifically for new school places for children with special educational needs (both in mainstream and special schools)”.
It is not yet clear whether this is on top of the government’s announcement in 2019, and confirmed in July, that it was creating more than 3,000 places in 35 new special free schools across England. Those schools are expected to open from September 2022.
The plans were greeted last year with anger by inclusive education campaigners, who condemned plans for new segregated institutions in every part of England.
The original announcement came 18 months after the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities was highly critical of the UK government’s record on inclusive education.
When the committee published its “concluding observations” on the progress the UK had made in implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in August 2017, it criticised the UK government’s approach, and the “persistence of a dual education system” that segregates increasing numbers of disabled children in special schools.
The spending review also saw the government announce £573 million in spending on the disabled facilities grant – which funds adaptations to disabled people’s homes – a significant increase of £68 million (more than 13 per cent) on 2020-21, and a huge increase from the £220 million provided in 2015-16.
And it saw £71 million for the Care and Support Specialised Housing Fund – which funds new accessible supported and specialised housing – which appears to be a fall of £5 million on the previous year, although the Treasury was not able to confirm this by noon today (Thursday).
26 November 2020

Meeting sees relaunch of ‘bold and brilliant’ independent living strategy
Disabled activists hope to build a new social movement that will campaign for a “bold and brilliant” national independent living service that would be available free of charge to anyone in England who needs it.
They used an online meeting to relaunch plans for a National Independent Living Support Service (NILSS) – drawn up by disabled people – which would meet the government’s obligation to ensure a right to independent living under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
Last night’s online meeting was organised by the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).
It comes against the background of repeated broken government promises to reform the crisis-ridden social care system, which yesterday (Wednesday) saw it delay yet again the publication of its proposals until next year.
NILSS would see a national service, running alongside the NHS, providing a universal right to independent living, with support provided free to those who need it, funded by general taxation, managed by central government, and delivered locally in co-production with disabled people.
Ellen Clifford, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, whose book examining the impact of a decade of government austerity measures, The War on Disabled People, was published earlier this year, said the NILSS vision was “bold and brilliant” and founded on “strong principles of social justice”.
But she said that disabled people had an “enormous mission of education” to show why something as “ground-breaking” as NILSS was necessary.
Clifford, who helped draw up the NILSS proposal, said that, despite the wide support for NILSS among disabled people and disabled people’s organisations and campaigns, it had been “hugely challenging” to persuade any politicians to “even just have a conversation with us about it. let alone expressing support for our ideas”.
Mark Harrison, from ROFA, who also helped draw up the NILSS proposal, said this week that it was “more urgent than ever” that the UK government “ends its war on disabled people” and meets its UNCRPD duties.
He said he hoped the meeting would build the foundations for a national movement that could realise the vision of “a different world where we are supported to lead equal and active lives”.
He told the meeting: “Ten years of austerity and cuts to social care have left many disabled people in poverty, without services, prisoners in their own homes, and some of us have lost our lives or had our lives cut short.”
Harrison said the pandemic had “accelerated this situation”, and he added: “I don’t believe there is any local authority in the country that is meeting its duties under the Care Act.”
He said successive Conservative-led governments had proved “impervious to statistics, evidence and UN conclusions and condemnations”.
But he also warned that the “jury is out” on the new leadership of the Labour party under Keir Starmer, which has so far failed to embrace the NILSS vision, despite its membership overwhelmingly backing the proposals at its party conference in 2019.
ROFA has so far failed to secure a meeting with Labour’s Liz Kendall, the shadow minister for social care, to discuss NILSS, even though she and the party’s shadow health and social care secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, have been engaging with “business vested interests, professional interests and organisations led by non-disabled people”.
But Harrison said he hoped Labour’s reluctance might be about to change, as ROFA yesterday (Wednesday) received an invitation to meet next week with Starmer, the party’s shadow women and equalities secretary Marsha de Cordova, and its shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft.
He said: “We hope that this is the beginning of a new relationship.
“But we really need Labour party policy to be driven by the NILSS vision and we need proper co-production with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations across the country.
“The jury is still very much out, and we will only be convinced if there is a commitment to that real coproduction, not just tokenistic consultation.
“As we always say, actions speak louder than words.”
Meanwhile, DPAC and the People’s Assembly Against Austerity will be co-hosting an event to mark the International Day of Disabled People on Thursday (3 December).
The evening of politics, conversation, music and comedy will celebrate Deaf and disabled people’s resistance “from austerity and welfare reform to COVID-19 and beyond”.
Speakers will include disabled performers and campaigners Cherylee Houston and Jess Thom (Touretteshero), Labour’s former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and Ellen Morrison, the newly-elected disabled members’ representative on Labour’s national executive committee.
There will also be comedy from Laurence Clark, and music from RockinPaddy and Rita Resistance.
26 November 2020

Tomlinson adds again to confusion over DWP’s single assessment plans
The minister for disabled people has added fresh confusion to the government’s planned social security reforms after apparently misleading a second parliamentary meeting about proposals to merge assessments for disability benefits.
Last year, the government confirmed it was pushing ahead with plans to test how it might be able to merge assessments for personal independence payment and “fitness for work” into one.
The government confirmed that it was “testing the feasibility of a single assessment for ESA/universal credit and PIP” in April 2019, only five days after Tomlinson dismissed the idea.
Now, 19 months on, Tomlinson has added to the confusion, and appears to have misled MPs for the second time by suggesting again that there are no such plans.
Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, had told a joint meeting of the all party parliamentary group for disability (APPGD) and the United Nations all party group, that many disabled people were concerned about the idea of merging the two assessments, because a single report could lead to the loss of both benefits.
She said: “When I was speaking to disabled people and disabled people’s organisations, there was quite a lot of fear over popping it all into the same assessment.
“Their worries and fears are that the system is set up to not give them the support they need… and therefore if there was only one assessment that would be it, and they would lose out on everything overnight.”
But Tomlinson told the meeting a few minutes later that he was bemused by the reference to a single merged assessment.
He said: “I am not sure what Vicky was talking about, single assessments… it’s not something we are looking to do.”
In fact, the policy was announced by the then work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd in a speech in March 2019, and then confirmed by Baroness Buscombe – at that time a junior work and pensions minister – in an answer to a written question on 29 April 2019.
Just days before Baroness Buscombe’s comments, Tomlinson had suggested to MPs that there were no plans for a single assessment, even though he was later contradicted by his own department.
DWP declined this week to clarify the current situation with its single assessment proposal, and whether Tomlinson would put the record straight and apologise.
But a DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “The government is committed to continuously improving the experience for customers.
“With the claimant’s permission we are exploring how we can better use evidence from previous assessments and obtain quality medical evidence to simplify the assessment process.”
Tomlinson also suggested at the all party parliamentary group meeting that he had put in an “ambitious” bid for funding from the Treasury to modernise the Access to Work system, which he said was outdated and used technology “that even Betamax turned down”.
And he said the forthcoming work and pensions green paper would strengthen the ability of disability benefit claimants to get the “supportive evidence” they need for their applications.
He said: “We know that if you have good quality evidence, your ability to access benefits will be quicker, it will be easier, and it is more likely to be right first time.
“So we have to do a lot more work with the NHS to get that consistency and speed into the system.”
He also said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) needed to go further in ensuring that advocates, both formal and informal, were involved in the complex process of claiming benefits.
Disability News Service (DNS) submitted a question to Tomlinson during the online meeting, asking for his views on DNS research which showed the government had breached disabled people’s rights 17 times in the first four months of the pandemic.
DNS asked him whether this was a record the government should be ashamed of, and what steps he had taken to address those breaches, but the question was not chosen to be put to him by the APPGD chair, the SNP’s Lisa Cameron.
26 November 2020

Minister told by human rights experts to end unacceptable education opt-out
A minister has been told by a former member of the UN’s disability rights committee that the government must end its unacceptable opt-out from the duty to ensure inclusive education for disabled children under the UN disability convention.
The demand from Diane Kingston also received support from the chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Rebecca Hilsenrath.
Since the Labour government ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009, successive Conservative-led governments have maintained a reservation against article 24.
This means the UK has reserved the right for disabled children to be educated outside their local community, while an “interpretive declaration” explains that the UK believes the convention allows it to continue to operate both mainstream and special schools.
Kingston and Hilsenrath were speaking at a joint meeting of the all party parliamentary group for disability (APPGD) and the United Nations all party parliamentary group, held to mark 25 years since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act, and attended by the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson.
Kingston was the UK’s representative on the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD) until December 2016.
She said the reservation was “just not acceptable” and “really needs to be removed”.
She said: “Every child with a disability must have the right to be educated as close to their home as possible in the mainstream with the right support.
“The millions and millions of pounds that are spent on segregated schooling for children with disabilities… we will never have a mainstream society if we don’t have mainstream schools.”
Hilsenrath noted a comment from Simone Aspis, from The Alliance for Inclusive Education, who also attended the APPGD meeting, that the “increasing numbers and expansion of segregated education” was “clearly in breach” of the government’s obligations under article 24 of the convention.
Hilsenrath said this was a “really important point to be flagged” and she said the UK was one of only two countries to have maintained a reservation under the UNCRPD.
She said: “We need people to start with the same educational opportunities as others or they are simply not going to achieve as much as others.
“This is a really important goal for us, it is one of our priority aims under our strategic plan.”
When questioned, Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, failed to comment on the right to inclusive education, and neither did Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, both of them focusing instead on the quality of support provided by schools.
The opposition of successive Tory-led governments to an inclusive education system dates back to the party’s 2010 election manifesto, in which it said its policy would be to “end the bias towards inclusion of disabled children in mainstream schools”.
Five years later, its general election manifesto boasted of how it had “created 2,200 more special schools places through our free schools programme”.
In 2017, the CRPD was highly critical of the UK government’s approach to inclusive education, and the “persistence of a dual education system” that segregates increasing numbers of disabled children in special schools.
Meanwhile, EHRC has called in a new report for the government to do more to safeguard the rights of disabled and other children and to protect them from the pandemic.
In a report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the commission said that school closures and “inequalities in home-learning environments” risked widening the gaps in attainment already experienced by disabled pupils.
It also warned of the challenges affecting the provision of special educational needs and disability (SEND) support in schools, with “staff shortages, social distancing rules and the need to concentrate resources on the health emergency resulting in local authorities reducing SEND provision and, in some cases, ceasing it all together”.
26 November 2020

Surgery tells woman at risk from COVID to pay £18 for shielding letter… and to pick it up in person
A disabled woman who is at significant risk from COVID-19 was told to visit her local GP surgery in person – and pay £18 – to pick up a letter that she can use to show supermarkets she is shielding from the virus.
Rowan Graham, who is registered blind and has long-term conditions that put her at higher risk from the virus, was told by the surgery that the letter could not be emailed to her and that she would need to pick it up in person, even though she and her husband are shielding from the virus.
She was then told that she could not collect the letter – which shows she is entitled to shielding services – unless she visited the surgery to pay for it in person.
Graham fears that many other disabled people could be in the same position and would not be able to afford to pay for a letter from their surgery.
She told Disability News Service (DNS): “I have no one in my household to take me [to the surgery] and no way to get there without putting myself at risk.
“It doesn’t cost £18 to send a letter, but my real problem is that they won’t release it without me going and paying for it personally.
“If there are others out there this is happening to, then it needs to stop.”
Although her husband already has a shielding letter – because he is blind and is shielding to protect her – and she had one from early in the pandemic in April, she believes she needs the new letter in case she is questioned about her need for a home shopping delivery or other vital services.
She is not seen as clinically extremely vulnerable to the virus, but she is in the group of those who can be put forward for shielding help by their GP.
The surgery at one point agreed to email the letter to her but then retracted the offer when she said she could not visit the surgery, and it refused to email it until she paid the £18 fee.
She stressed that she did not blame individuals at the Bramblehaies Surgery in Cullompton, Devon, who she said had provided her with excellent medical support, but that she was extremely concerned about the practice’s failure to make reasonable adjustments for her.
She said: “Some days I can barely walk at the moment and so I won’t be able to do the hour round trip on foot.
“I am frightened about taking a taxi and need some convincing it is a safe thing to do.
“COVID is hitting close to home now and I catch things easily – once caught, it can take me a long time to get over things.
“This isn’t about the money; I just would like the security of having that letter. I feel that I am in a precarious position without it.”
After DNS contacted NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to raise her concerns, the surgery launched an investigation, and yesterday (Wednesday) emailed the shielding letter to her and told her: “On this occasion we are providing it without charge.”
The surgery told DNS it was unable to comment because of patient confidentiality.
A spokesperson for the CCG declined to comment on the surgery asking Graham to attend in person to collect the letter.
But a spokesperson said: “There is no charge for letters to patients who are on the shielded list.
“Where patients are not on the shielded list but request a letter from their GP to describe their specific circumstances, it is up to individual practices to determine their approach to charges.
“We understand the practice has reviewed the specific circumstances of this case and has emailed the requested letter to the patient free of charge.”
Early in the pandemic, Graham and her husband, who is blind, secured thousands of signatures for a petition in which they called for more support with shopping for disabled people who had been forgotten in the government’s emergency COVID-19 measures.
They raised concerns then that it had become impossible to order food online from supermarkets because all the delivery slots were permanently booked, and they were left relying on the kindness of friends.
26 November 2020

Tanni tells BBC’s DDA event: ‘I’m over being patient on disability rights’
A disabled peer and retired Paralympian has warned that she has lost patience with progress on disability rights, and will scream in the face of the next person who tells her London 2012 changed the world for disabled people.
Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson told a BBC discussion event, held to mark the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), that it was right to celebrate the DDA, which was “amazing” and “a moment in time”.
But she said she turned 50 last year and was now “slightly over being patient”.
She told the online Reframing Disability event that that was partly because of the failure to ensure that all trains would be accessible by 1 January 2020, as the DDA had promised.
She revealed that a key moment for her came when she attended a meeting in January at which a representative of the public transport regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, told her: “You just need to be a bit more patient”.
She said: “The next person who tells me that [London] 2012 and the Paralympics changed the world for disabled people, I’m just going to scream in their face.”
She added: “My frustration for where we are now is that being a Paralympian is pretty much the only route through that [disabled] people are given as a career option.”
Her fellow disabled crossbench peer, Baroness [Jane] Campbell, said the DDA was a “watershed moment for disabled people like me”.
She said: “Before 1995, I remember the time when I was turned away from pubs, clubs, restaurants, in fact any public venue, on the grounds that I was in a wheelchair.
“We were living in what we called a physical apartheid. This made us feel totally like second-class citizens.
“After the DDA, people like me felt personally liberated because the state had finally recognised that we were systematically discriminated against by society.
“We knew that things wouldn’t change overnight, we knew it would take decades.”
And she said that, although it does not always “work smoothly”, she knows “the law is behind me”.
She added: “The Pandora’s Box is open, you will never be able to put us back in the box.
“That is what disability rights legislation gave us. It has liberated us as human beings.”
But she also revealed that she had been talking to Baroness Grey-Thompson in a House of Lords corridor last year when a male peer came up to the two wheelchair-users and said: “Oh, are you having a little race?”
When they told him they were just talking, he said, “Oh, that’s really nice,” and patted Baroness Campbell on the head.
She said: “I had not been patted on the head for probably 20 years. For once in both our lives we couldn’t speak, we were absolutely speechless.
“So, as a disabled woman, in a leadership position, in the House of Lords, I can tell you, Tanni and I, we come across attitudinal discrimination once a week… or once a month at least.”
Disabled journalist, actor and presenter Adam Pearson expressed his frustration about the way that disabled people are still being represented by the media.
He told the event: “Accurate representation stems from giving disabled people the power and the autonomy to tell their own stories, and at the moment systematically that isn’t happening.
“It is a lot of non-disabled people making decisions about disability and speaking for a community… and that’s when those horrible mistakes happen.”
He pointed to the previous week’s BBC Children in Need telethon.
He said: “I was chewing my arm off last Friday as they showed slow motion videos of disabled children with Coldplay’s Fix You in the background.
“I was asking myself, ‘Has anyone actually read the lyrics to Coldplay’s Fix You?’
“When you try your best and you don’t succeed… tears stream down your face… I will try to fix you.”
He said the imagery was “really damaging, almost archaic”.
He said he believed that this kind of representation was still happening because there were “no disabled people with positions of influence” at executive level.
He said: “People can consult with the disabled community all they want, but unless they listen to them and action it and take what they say seriously, we are forever going to be in a cycle where there is bad representation.”
TV presenter and campaigner Katie Piper highlighted the problems created by social media’s “obsession with perfection” that was in reality “unobtainable”.
She also pointed to the new film remake of The Witches, which sparked widespread anger and frustration among disabled people by, she said, giving the “angry”, “frightening” and “untrustworthy” witches no hair and no fingers, like many burn survivors.
She said: “While films like that are still coming out in 2020, we are socially conditioned not to trust those with burns and scars.”
Paralympian and campaigner Anne Wafula Strike said London 2012 had been “fantastic” but disabled people were still “fighting for those very basic rights, people are still fighting to have access to a toilet, people are still struggling to have access to filters they can use on their breathing machines”.
The leading US disability rights activist Judy Heumann, a former special advisor on disability rights to President Obama’s State Department between 2010 and 2017, said it was crucial to have disabled people in that kind of senior position.
She said that what was most important was to work with non-disabled staff to ensure they understood it was also their responsibility to ensure that disability was being “integrated”.
She said her role had also ensured that disabled people in the countries she travelled to were meeting US ambassadors and senior embassy staff to give them “a clear understanding of not only the discrimination that disabled people were facing but what role we could play as a US government in highlighting these issues”.
26 November 2020

Sia’s Music angers Autistic campaigners over ‘insulting’ choice of non-disabled actor
Autistic campaigners have described the decision of singer-songwriter Sia to cast a non-disabled performer to play an Autistic character in her new film as “insulting” and “demeaning”.
The trailer for Music, released by Sia last Thursday, has caused frustration and anger among Autistic people and other disabled campaigners after it emerged that the key role was being played by non-disabled dancer Maddie Ziegler.
There was further concern when they learned that Sia had sought advice about the film from the controversial US charity Autism Speaks – historically criticised by disabled people for its exploitative, damaging and offensive fundraising tactics and campaign goals – rather than Autistic people.
There were also doubts over Sia’s claim that she had auditioned an Autistic actor to play the part.
Sia said this actor had found the experience “unpleasant and stressful” and so she decided to cast Ziegler, which she said “felt more compassionate”.
But numerous links then emerged to comments Sia made in 2015 at the Venice Film Festival, when she announced that she would be making the film with Ziegler.
Autistic campaigners spoke out about the film this week to Disability News Service.
Autistic UK, which is run by Autistic people, said the incident showed that the community had again “been let down by those profiting from our neurodivergence”.
Kat Williams, a director of Autistic UK, said Sia “clearly didn’t expect the backlash she received from our community” after releasing the trailer.
She said: “If she’s researched as extensively as she claims, surely she’d have seen the plethora of information out there regarding representation? About the horrific Autistic employment rates? Our collective cry of Nothing About Us Without Us?
“Even if we’re being overly generous and accept that multiple years of autism research didn’t throw up even one article, her responses to the Autistic people who are rightly voicing their concerns on social media is, frankly, disgusting.
“Coupled with the pile-ons from her hordes of fans, the Autistic community has been damaged by her actions.
“No lessons have been learned. Attitudes are shifting at a glacial pace. The Autistic community deserves better.”
Emma Dalmayne, chief executive of Autistic Inclusive Meets, said: “It is insulting as an Autistic to see a neurotypical actor do a part that one of our community could have played.
“It feels intrusive and demeaning.”
She raised serious concerns about Sia seeking advice from Autism Speaks, which until 2016 included the search for a “cure” for autism in its mission statement, and which she said had stated that it was “looking into ‘solutions’ for autism” and fundraises for “research into prevention of us as Autistics existing”.
Another Autistic campaigner, Nicky Clark, said progress had been “painfully slow” since 2009, when she launched her Don’t Play Me Pay Me campaign, which called for representation of disabled talent on and behind the camera.
She said: “I think it’s disappointing that Sia chose not to employ an Autistic actor for her film because Autistic performers don’t lack talent, just opportunity.
“This week has been a real low point that I hadn’t seen since they chose a puppet to play an Autistic character on stage last year.”
She added: “To me the creative arts is best when it retains authenticity when you’re hoping above all to convey truth.
“It’s worth remembering and repeating that we’re as complex and multi-faceted as anyone else and our disability is usually the least interesting thing about us.”
Sia, who has spoken previously of her own long-term health conditions, including experience of mental distress, insisted this week on Twitter that she had cast 13 “neuroatypical people” to play other roles in the film and that it was “a beautiful film with meaningful intentions” and “does more good than harm”.
But The Disability Union (TDU) said that an Autistic actor should have been cast in the role.
It said it was “incredibly disappointed to see that, once again, disabled people have been completely sidelined in the entertainment industry.
“The disability community has been shouting ‘nothing about us without us’ for decades and, despite gestures of solidarity, we are evidently still ignored.
“As disabled people, we are not here for you to take pity on or to make you feel better. We are not inspiration porn.
“We are people who can represent ourselves and tell our own stories.”
TDU said that Sia’s response to the criticism – which saw her tell an Autistic actor who questioned why she and others had not been considered for the role that “maybe you’re just a bad actor” – had been one of “arrogance and dismissal”.
Autistic campaigner Edward Caplen, a volunteer with TDU, said: “I think the decision not to give the role to an Autistic actor was a bad one, their excuse that it would be too difficult to get an Autistic person to work with them is an ableist one and in some capacity Autism Speaks has been working with her on the film in some capacity, which the autism community view quite rightly as a hate group.”
He added: “Further to this I would also point out there was as far as I am aware no Autistic perspective in the writing room and I highly doubt this film will represent the true experience of non-verbal Autistic people, which often involves systemic restrictions on basic freedoms others know and enjoy.”
He said that Ziegler’s performance appeared to be a “very stereotypical characterisation of autism that will ultimately harm the Autistic community”.
Autistic advocate Emma Chapman said: “As Autistic people, we are rarely allowed to tell our own stories.
“What happens instead is that stories are told from the point of view of non-Autistic carers or loved ones.
“I’m sure Sia had good intentions but as an Autistic person it’s so tiring to have someone else tell your story, often in an offensive way, over and over again, without being given the chance to tell it yourself.
“And when we speak up about it, people get defensive and aggressive as has happened with Sia – she made some very cruel remarks to Autistic people who were trying to engage with her about the film.
“The best response would have been to listen and take on board the feedback from Autistic people rather than shut them down.”
Another Autistic campaigner, Laura McConnell, said: “I’ve worked with non-verbal Autistic and learning disabled children and young people since 2007, and I am Autistic myself.
“I recognised absolutely nothing in the way the character has been portrayed.
“What I did recognise was stigmas and misconceptions that are particularly damaging to the Autistic community.”
She added: “While her intentions may have been noble, by failing to engage with Autistic people in her research, Sia has scored a massive own goal and has turned what could have been a fantastic opportunity to spread autism acceptance into another vehicle to mock us.”
26 November 2020

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 Posted by at 19:49
Nov 142020
 

Some claimants have received a letter from DWP, similar to the one below, informing them that DWP has now begun reviewing PIP awards after suspending them because of the Covid 19 outbreak, and that their PIP awards have now been extended until 2022. A likely explanation is the backlog created by the suspension of PIP reviews. At this point, there is no information about ESA or UC claimants found having Limited Capability for Work, or Limited Capability for Work Related Activity, in terms of their claim’s review. Because it is impossible to find somebody Fit for Work without a face to face assessment, all ESA/UC claimants who did not meet the WCA descriptors determining their benefit entitlement (LCW or LCWRA) following a telephone assessment will need eventually to have a face to face assessment, so it is also likely that a backlog has already built up. We would like to know of any claimants who received a letter from DWP informing them of an extension of their (PIP or ESA/UC) claims, and of the duration of the extension.

 

Credit to @Heretoanywhere for the letter 
 Posted by at 16:34
Nov 122020
 

 Philippa Day: Disabled woman left note implicating DWP and its PIP failings in her death

A disabled woman, who apparently took her own life in despair at the way her benefits claim was being dealt with, left a note that “directly implicated” the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in her death.

Philippa Day, who had agoraphobia, appears to have killed herself after hearing hours earlier that her repeated pleas for her personal independence payment (PIP) assessment to be held in her own home had been rejected.

Her death is the latest in a long line of tragedies linked to the failings of DWP and its private sector contractors, and follows years of repeated promises by the department to learn from the deaths of other disabled benefit claimants (see separate story).

Months before she died, Philippa’s benefits had been slashed when she tried to move from disability living allowance (DLA) to personal independence payment (PIP), and she began to experience significant financial problems as her life spiralled out of control.

Mental health professionals who worked with her had told both DWP and its private sector assessment contractors Capita of the risk to her life caused by the problems with her PIP claim.

She had requested a home assessment in two PIP claim forms – one of which was lost by DWP – and in a phone call to Capita, with her community psychiatric nurse also twice calling Capita to say that she needed to be assessed at home because of her significant mental distress.

She appears to have taken her own life after receiving a letter telling her that she would not be allowed a home assessment and would instead have to visit a Capita assessment centre to test if she was eligible for PIP.

Her body was found the next day, 8 August 2019, by her sister and father at her home in Nottingham, with a copy of the letter lying on the pillow next to her body.

Her sister, Imogen, told Disability News Service: “The letter was placed deliberately on her pillow. She wanted us to know very clearly that it wasn’t our fault.”

Philippa spent the next two months in a coma, and died in October 2019, aged just 27.

Even while she was lying in hospital, Capita – which had been told she was in a coma – told the family that if she failed to attend the face-to-face assessment, her benefit claim would be cancelled and she would have to start again from scratch.

A few days later, about £4,000 in PIP arrears was deposited by DWP in Philippa’s bank account without warning.

Imogen said: “What’s so frustrating is that my sister knew she was going to die because of this. We had multiple conversations prior to her death.

“She told me that if this killed her, I had to advocate for her, I had to fight for her and fight for justice.

“She knew before she died that this was going to kill her.”

Philippa was the oldest of three siblings, and had been diagnosed with diabetes when she was very young, and later, after years of experience of significant mental distress, with emotionally unstable personality disorder.

Imogen said that her sister “had such a kind heart” and was “the most fantastic mother” to her young son, who is now five.

She said: “She would do absolutely anything for anyone. She was so passionate about helping and supporting other people.”

Her problems had started when she was advised to move from DLA – she is believed to have been on the lower rate of the care component – onto the new PIP, which has repeatedly been linked since its launch in 2013 with dishonest assessors and claimants wrongly deprived of their support.

Before her decision to start a PIP claim, Philippa and her family had been optimistic about the future, and she was hopeful of becoming a mental health support worker.

But the problems with her PIP claim – which led to her DLA being removed completely after her first PIP claim form went missing – saw her financial situation and mental health rapidly deteriorate, leading to a suicide attempt and two spells in psychiatric hospitals.

Imogen said that her sister, who is also believed to have been claiming jobseeker’s allowance, had had to fight for her “most basic rights” and had taken out payday loans, self-harmed and increasingly resorted to illegal drugs.

She struggled to collect all the written evidence she needed for her claim, and spoke to Imogen almost every day about her PIP application.

Although she received some DLA arrears from DWP in June 2019, the money went almost immediately to paying off debts, and she was told she would have to attend a face-to-face assessment in an assessment centre.

Her family knew she would not be capable of attending the centre because of her agoraphobia.

Philippa, known to her sister as Pip, became more angry and more depressed and considered cancelling her PIP claim.

Imogen said: “Pip felt that she was dehumanised, that her disabilities were ignored.

“She felt that they were pressuring her to kill herself, she felt that she didn’t matter because she was disabled.”

The day after receiving a letter telling her that her request for a home assessment had been rejected, her sister and father found her unconscious in her bedroom. Next to her body was the letter telling her she could not have a home assessment.

Imogen later found a note, titled “12.02.92 – 08.08.19” (the dates of her birth and her apparent attempt to take her own life), which said: “I’ve been so trapped for so long and then along comes the government who people would assume are there to help.

“Since January the 11th 2019 my benefits have been severely cut, this has caused me to get payday loans to simply live and that has escalated into a hole I can never get out of.

“Not just that having nothing has isolated me from the world, has effected my identity.”

A three-day inquest into her death is set to take place early next month, following a pre-inquest hearing last week.

Merry Varney, the family’s solicitor and a partner at Leigh Day, said: “We shall be supporting Pip’s family through the inquest process and seeking on their behalf a full and fearless investigation into whether the acts and omissions of Capita and the DWP caused or contributed to Pip’s death.”

She said the family’s concerns about the “devastating and foreseeable impact on Pip of the decisions made by the DWP and Capita” echoed those made by other bereaved families about the “serious and substantial consequences of failures in decision-making by the DWP and its agents”.

She said the coroner had heard evidence on why Philippa’s family were seeking an inquest that would look at the wider circumstances of her death and would allow the coroner to make “judgmental findings”.

Varney added: “The DWP and Capita, both with legal representation, argued against this and we await a decision from the coroner.”

Imogen said DWP had made serious errors with dealing with her sister’s PIP claim at every stage of the process.

Now she and the rest of the family are determined to fight for an end to the outsourcing of benefit assessments, for a complete overhaul of DWP policies and practices, and for those responsible for Philippa’s death to be held accountable for their actions.

Imogen said: “We need her son to know that we fought for his mother.”

Capita said it could not answer questions about Philippa Day’s death because of the ongoing inquest, but a spokesperson said: “We extend our deepest condolences to Philippa Day’s family over her tragic death.

“We are one of several parties assisting the coroner in relation to the inquest into these sad circumstances and we will continue to cooperate fully with this inquiry.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “Our condolences are with Miss Day’s family. As the inquest process is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.”

*The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind and Rethink

12 November 2020

 

 

Philippa Day: Sister says DWP must be held accountable for multiple deaths

A disabled woman’s sister who blames her sibling’s apparent suicide on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has called for ministers and senior civil servants to be held accountable for their repeated failure to learn from similar deaths.

Philippa Day had agoraphobia and left a note on her laptop that “directly implicated” DWP in her death because of the way it dealt with her benefit claim.

She appears to have taken her own life hours after receiving a letter refusing permission to have her face-to-face benefits assessment carried out in her own home, and telling her she would instead need to attend an assessment centre run by the private sector contractor Capita.

Her body was found the next day, 8 August 2019, by her sister and father at her home in Nottingham, with a copy of the letter lying on the pillow next to her body. She spent the next two months in a coma, and died in October 2019, aged just 27.

Her family have pointed to repeated promises by DWP to learn from the deaths of other benefit claimants linked to its failings, reported over the last six years by Disability News Service (DNS).

Philippa’s sister, Imogen, has researched some of those other deaths – including those of Faiza Ahmed, Jodey Whiting and Michael O’Sullivan – and believes they show that ministers and senior civil servants have failed in their duty to protect the lives of Philippa and other claimants.

Imogen highlights the repeated warnings made to DWP and its contractor Capita by mental health professionals – and Philippa herself – that her sister was at risk because of their actions.

Yesterday, the family of Jodey Whiting won a significant legal victory by securing permission from the solicitor general to ask the high court to order a second inquest into her death (see separate story).

Jodey’s family hope this will lead to a “full and fearless investigation into whether the DWP, and its flawed decision-making regarding Jodey’s benefits claim, caused or contributed to her death”.

As with Philippa Day, Jodey had had a request for a home assessment rejected, in her case relating to her claim for employment and support allowance.

The Independent Case Examiner concluded last year that DWP failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading up to Jodey’s suicide, 15 days after she had her out-of-work disability benefits stopped for missing a work capability assessment.

After Jodey’s death in February 2017, DWP said it was reviewing its procedures “to ensure this doesn’t happen again”.

Imogen also points to the case of Faiza Ahmed, who took her own life on 7 November 2014, several hours after telling a jobcentre work coach that she had been “busy trying to kill myself”.

The work coach failed to contact the emergency services after discussing Faiza’s written comment with a manager.

DWP ignored a coroner’s call for it to take action to prevent future deaths, following an inquest into Faiza’s suicide, and simply reminded its staff of existing guidance.

Imogen Day said: “Faiza died five years before my sister did and nothing was done, and they were very similar cases, with very similar circumstances, and no change was made that would safeguard my sister.

“It’s a systemic issue that is killing disabled, vulnerable people on a very regular basis.”

This year, DWP has also faced mounting questions over the death of Errol Graham, who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed.

His family have won the right to have DWP’s safeguarding policies examined by the high court in January.

Asked for her message to ministers and senior civil servants responsible for these failings and those that led to her sister’s death, Imogen said: “They will be held to account for their actions.”

An inquest into Philippa’s death will be held in Nottingham next month.

Capita said it could not answer questions about Philippa Day’s death because of the ongoing inquest, but a spokesperson said: “We extend our deepest condolences to Philippa Day’s family over her tragic death.

“We are one of several parties assisting the coroner in relation to the inquest into these sad circumstances and we will continue to cooperate fully with this inquiry.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “Our condolences are with Miss Day’s family. As the inquest process is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.”

*The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind and Rethink

12 November 2020

 

 

‘Sickening’ vaccine priority list ‘shows disabled people are disposable’

Furious disabled activists have questioned the “sickening” and “utterly bizarre” decision to put disabled people seen as extremely vulnerable to coronavirus far down the queue for a life-saving vaccine, when it eventually becomes available.

They have begun to speak out after the government announced that one vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, has been found to be more than 90 per cent effective in preventing COVID-19.

The vaccine has not yet been approved, but the government said that if and when it was the NHS “stands ready to begin a vaccination programme for those most at risk, as currently recommended by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), before being rolled out more widely”.

But the current advice by the JCVI shows disabled people at serious risk from COVID-19 are well down the list of priorities for a vaccine, even though three-fifths of COVID-related deaths have been of disabled people.

JCVI’s provisional ranking for priority for a vaccine means older people in care homes and care home workers would be first to be vaccinated, followed by over-80s and other health and social care workers.

The third group on the list of priorities is the over-75s, then those 70 and over, followed by those 65 and over.

But adults under 65 who are at high risk from the virus are only sixth on the list of priorities.

The disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell, who spent months shielding during the pandemic because she has spinal muscular atrophy and is clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) to the virus, is set to raise concerns about the priority list in the House of Lords.

She told Disability News Service that the list “does not seem right, as people like myself who are one of the most at risk of becoming seriously ill if I caught the virus are deemed a lower priority than somebody healthy aged 65 and over”.

She said: “I would put us alongside category two, personally.

“Obviously, I do not have a scientific evidence-base behind my view, however it seems common sense to me.”

She has now submitted a request to ask a “topical question” of the government in the Lords on why the guidance currently prioritises adults aged 65 and over, including those who are healthy, above high-risk adults under 65.

Disabled activist Lisa Egan was among the first to raise concerns about the JCVI document.

She said: “After more than 59 per cent of people who’ve died of COVID have been disabled, it’s sickening that the very highest risk groups aged under 65 will not be vaccinated until every single perfectly healthy person over 65 has been vaccinated.

“It’s especially heinous that only senior residents of care homes will be vaccinated initially rather than all residents.

“This is the government clearly stating that within the same environment, the older residents are worth protecting, but disabled residents under 65 can just die.”

She pointed out that those disabled people who are clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) to the virus are not being asked to shield from COVID-19, as they were in the first months of the pandemic – although they are still being “strongly” advised to stay at home, apart from taking exercise and for doctors’ appointments – which already puts them at greater risk.

She said the current plans show “exactly how disposable” disabled people are by being based on age rather than risk level.

Egan said it was the latest in a long line of attacks on disabled people’s rights during the pandemic, including the deliberate discharge of patients with COVID into care homes in the early weeks of the pandemic, which is believed to have caused thousands of deaths of older and disabled people.

Another disabled activist, David Gillon, said: “We know from the government’s own statistics that disabled people have borne the overwhelming brunt of COVID deaths.

“It’s utterly bizarre that the government’s vaccine task force is not proposing a prioritisation scheme based on clinical need and vulnerability, but as things stand a marathon-running 65-year-old is a higher priority for vaccination than an immuno-suppressed and ventilator-dependent 20-year-old.

“While prioritising care home residents and staff over everyone else is obviously defensible given the devastating death tolls many suffered during the first wave, the proposal to limit this to elderly residents, but not disabled younger residents confined to care homes due to the deficiencies in adult care, simply does not make sense, either medically or logistically.

“Explicitly specifying ‘older adults’ makes it clear that this was a deliberate decision, rather than… simply forgetting about disabled younger residents.”

Gillon pointed to a study published last month (PDF) by The Royal Society and The British Academy which noted the concerns with the JCVI recommendations, and proposed an alternative scheme that would give first priority to healthcare workers and second priority to care home residents and people with conditions that meant they were at “significantly higher risk”.

Implementing this alternative scheme, he said, “would be no more complex” than the one proposed by JCVI.

The Department of Health and Social Care had not responded to a request for a comment by noon today (Thursday).

*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page

12 November 2020

 

 

DDA 25 years on: ‘Phenomenal activism… but deeply flawed legislation’

Disabled campaigners this week celebrated the activists whose efforts helped lead to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), while highlighting the continuing flaws in equality legislation and the need to continue the fight for comprehensive civil rights.

They were speaking out on this week’s 25th anniversary of the introduction of the DDA, which was later replaced by the Equality Act 2010.

But many leading disabled figures spoke this week of the fundamental flaws in the DDA and the Equality Act, and of the need for a new push for rights, including through a new wave of peaceful civil disobedience.

Many of them accepted that the DDA was a “milestone” but pointed out that – a quarter of a century on – the UK was far from having equality and inclusion legislation that complies with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

Many also criticised the Equality Act for its reliance on individual disabled people taking legal action to enforce their rights.

And some highlighted the failure of the disabled people’s movement to recognise the intersectional discrimination faced by its own members, including black disabled people.

Disabled activists also said the 25th anniversary was a time to highlight how the COVID-19 pandemic had “starkly highlighted” the “deep structural inequalities in society”, and the government’s repeated failure to address the needs and rights of disabled people.

The disabled-led campaigning organisation Reasonable Access, which aims to empower disabled people to enforce their right to access, praised the “phenomenal” campaigners who helped secure the DDA with their direct action protests.

But Reasonable Access said the DDA and the Equality Act were not the “civil rights legislation disabled people campaigned for, need, and are entitled to”, and that the Equality Act remained “fundamentally flawed”.

A Reasonable Access spokesperson said: “Relying on individual disabled people to enforce the act through individual legal action against multinational and government organisations was always going to fail.

“There are too many ways an organisation can avoid legal liability and leave the disabled complainant with tens of thousands of pounds of costs for nothing. As a result, it hasn’t delivered equality.”

They highlighted how the pandemic had exposed the “wholesale disregard” of many public bodies for their Equality Act duty to promote disability equality.

The spokesperson said: “Enforcement has become more difficult, with less [legal] costs protection, closure of law centres and severe curbs on legal aid.

“This historic and historical piece of legislation isn’t fit for purpose and should be replaced with something more far-reaching and better enforced.

“Progress has stalled, and we believe there does need to be a fresh push for legal rights 25 years on.

“In the meantime, however, we’re intent on supporting people to enforce their rights as best as possible in the current flawed system.”

Disabled campaigner and access consultant Tracey Proudlock, who was involved in the direct action and other protests that called for disability discrimination legislation (particularly around accessible transport) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said the DDA was “a milestone in our history”.

But she said she was disappointed that, a quarter of a century later, “so little has changed for disabled people when it comes to some goods and services”.

She said that “many coffee shops, gyms, clubs and their toilets do not provide an inclusive welcome” while “considerable numbers of small to medium-sized businesses still have physical barriers at their premises and operators provide no other reasonable adjustments, leaving ordinary, everyday activities beyond the reach of many disabled people”.

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, was deeply critical of the DDA and the Equality Act, and the concept of “reasonable adjustments” that was key to both pieces of legislation.

She said: “Disabled campaigners should never have accepted anything less than a full bill of rights, as doing so has led to two useless pieces of legislation that can be ignored simply by the use and misinterpretation of the word reasonable.

“It seems the only way we will ever get our rights enshrined in law will be through more peaceful civil disobedience.”

Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said the DDA was a high-water mark in “shifting society’s perception of disability from a medicalised and individual issue to an issue of human rights, discrimination and exclusion”.

But she said it was “far from the full human and civil rights our movement demanded”.

And she said that, during the years of austerity, “all these advances in our inclusion and equality have been undermined, hollowed out or dismantled.

“We now have a mountain of evidence that shows retrogression across all our rights and areas of life.

“The global shock of the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly highlighted once again the government’s apparent complete disregard of the needs and rights of our community and the deep structural inequalities that have directly resulted in the huge number of disabled people dying from COVID.

“The silver lining is that this time of retrogression and targeted marginalisation has also been the time when our community has re-discovered campaigning and protest inspired by the direct action that brought about the DDA 25 years ago.

“We simply need to continue this necessary fight because we owe it not only to ourselves, but to those that we have sadly lost along the way.”

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said the DDA had led to some “practical changes to the physical environment”.

She said: “Public transport has improved its physical accessibility but there is still a long way to go.

“The accessibility of public buildings is a pick and mix.

“There is still a massive lack of on-the-ground awareness about what reasonable adjustments mean.”

She added: “Business still fails to employ disabled people equally as a default, fearing extended sick leave, rather than recognising the benefits of employing a diverse workforce which reflects its audiences and markets.

“Our government and justice systems and buildings are too often inaccessible.

“Information services do not take into account people who need information in plainer language or different formats.”

She said there was a need for a “new push on rights” and that the government’s forthcoming national disability strategy must “extend rights and make them easier to enforce”, and ensure the UNCRPD was incorporated into UK law.

Laura Welti, manager of Bristol Disability Equality Forum, said the DDA had initially supported disabled people and their organisations “to take some great strides forward in disability equality and human rights”.

But she said the situation over the last 12 years, since the Disability Rights Commission was replaced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, had seen “one step forward, two steps back”, including cuts to funding for disabled people’s organisations, cuts to social care, and the portrayal of disabled people as “benefit scroungers”,

Michelle Daley, director of The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE), was another to praise the activists who took to the streets in the 1980s and early 1990s.

She said: “I am thankful for the disability movement and every disabled person that joined in the protests and campaigned tirelessly for an equality act, the DDA.”

But she said: “While the act has brought about many changes, for example, placing duties on public services such as education around access, disabled people continue to be disproportionately under-represented in all areas of live.

“We have to continue the campaigning for equality law that is based on human rights. We need the UNCRPD and intersectionality in our laws.”

She said that government reports such as the Timpson Review of School Exclusion (PDF) found multiple intersectional issues, with the report finding that a disabled black boy from a disadvantaged family with an education health and care plan had a 58 per cent chance of receiving a fixed period exclusion at some point in his secondary school career.

Daley said: “These deep levels of inequalities in education experienced by disabled people will continue to be repeated until our laws address the injustice and inequality.”

Yewande Akintelu-Omoniyi, a member of ALLFIE’s Disabled Black Lives Matter group, said: “It is great to be able to celebrate the anniversary [of the] Disability Discrimination Act, especially all the disabled people that fought to make it happen.

“However, the disability rights movement needs to acknowledge that black disabled people can also experience discrimination based on race. Both inside and outside the movement.”

Dr Armineh Soorenian, another member of the group, added: “As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the DDA, it is paramount for the disability movement to recognise the silent and intersectional voices of its members.”

Andrew Lee, on behalf of the COVID-19 Support and Action Group, which is co-run by People First (Self Advocacy), said the DDA had been “a ground breaking piece of legislation and campaigning by self advocates with learning difficulties made sure our rights were included and recognised within it”.

But he added: “We were an after-thought then, and sometimes we feel like we are an after-thought now.

“It boils down to stigma and how we‘re perceived. Too often society doesn’t see us as having the same rights as others.

“People with learning difficulties often feel isolated and forgotten about, and cut off from society.

“Although our rights are enshrined in law, the law is inaccessible and unaffordable for us to use. We are also concerned that it isn’t always enforced.

“It’s about human rights and we are human beings. We will continue to fight for our rights to live full and independent lives in the way that we choose for the next 25 years and beyond.”

Dorothy Gould, co-founder of the new user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation*, said: “It was a huge tribute to unremitting efforts by disabled people that disability discrimination was finally recognised legally in the DDA.

“The act also contained important, if slowly implemented provisions. However, even then, there were specific issues for those of us given mental health diagnoses; to have our rights met under the act, we had to accept these diagnoses, that is accept the medical model on which they draw.

“Large numbers of us find this model totally inadequate for understanding mental distress and trauma which we experience.

“It is also closely linked with stereotypes of us as ‘out of our minds’ and so incapable, a risk to ourselves and others, and with mental health law which authorises detention in psychiatric hospitals and forced treatment, contrary to our rights under the UNCRPD.

“The situation remains unresolved even now; the Mental Health Act review recommendations themselves fall well short of the UNCRPD.”

Deborah King, co-founder of Disability Politics UK, said the DDA and the Equality Act “did not change the basic political situation which faces disabled people when they want to speak for themselves instead of having others always speaking for them”.

She said the government needed to change the law to achieve greater equality for disabled people and grant candidates the right to stand as job share candidates for parliament.

George Baker, founder of The Disability Union, said the DDA was “an incredible milestone in the quest for equality and inclusion”, although that quest was “still ongoing”.

He said: “Every day, The Disability Union is contacted by disabled people whose rights are being ignored, or are simply not covered by existing legislation.

“Due to the cutbacks on legal aid, it is now much harder to access justice.

“In many situations, people find the law becomes near irrelevant because it is so difficult to get it respected or enforced.

“The next steps in disability rights are to make access to justice under existing legislation available to all by ensuring compliance and redress, and to add needed legislation on key areas including independent living.”

*Liberation can be contacted via email at: Liberationrights@gmail.com

12 November 2020

 

 

Legal victory is step towards fresh inquest into Jodey Whiting’s death

The mother of a disabled woman who took her own life after her benefits were wrongly stopped has won a legal victory that could lead to a full examination of whether the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) caused her daughter’s death.

Jodey Whiting took her own life in February 2017, 15 days after she had her out-of-work disability benefits mistakenly stopped for missing a work capability assessment (WCA).

She had had a request for a home assessment turned down, and later failed to open a letter asking her to attend the face-to-face assessment, and so missed the WCA.

She had been ill with pneumonia and receiving hospital treatment for a cyst on the brain and had been taking painkillers which affected her ability to cope with correspondence.

The Independent Case Examiner concluded last year that DWP was guilty of “multiple” and “significant” failings in handling Jodey’s case, and that it failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading to her suicide.

Her mother, Joy Dove, believes DWP’s failings caused Jodey’s death and has spent more than three years fighting for justice for her daughter, and for a safer social security system that will prevent other deaths.

The original inquest in May 2017 lasted less than an hour and failed to investigate DWP’s potential role in her daughter’s death.

Now the solicitor general, Michael Ellis, has granted Joy Dove permission to ask the high court to order a second inquest into Jodey’s death.

The decision came in the same week that DWP faced allegations that its failings had led to the death of another disabled benefit claimant.

The family of Philippa Day told Disability News Service (DNS) this week that they believe her death was clearly linked to DWP failings, and the department’s repeated refusal to protect benefit claimants from harm (see separate story).

Philippa is also believed to have taken her own life, and like Jodey Whiting was refused permission for a home assessment.

Joy Dove told DNS last night that she had cried when her solicitor, Merry Varney, told her they had won this stage in their legal battle.

She said: “It has been a nightmare and it should never have happened. They are being found out now.

“They put her through torture. She shouldn’t have been put through that.

“I just want to carry on the fight for Jodey and for others.”

Asked why the legal battle was so important to her, she said: “Because my daughter’s death won’t be in vain and it’s going to help others and they are going to change the system.

“They promised to change it but there’s been a lot of cases since.”

She pointed to the deaths of Philippa Day, who died in August 2019, and Errol Graham, who died in June 2018 and whose family are engaged in their own legal battle with DWP over its safeguarding policies.

Dove said the solicitor general’s decision meant the family were one step closer to justice for her daughter and to holding those responsible accountable for her death.

She said: “It has been a nightmare but I want to thank the hard work of Merry Varney and all the team at Leigh Day and everyone who has been helping me with the Justice for Jodey campaign. This is a big step forward.”

Varney said the solicitor general’s decision was “very welcome”.

She said: “It is the first completed step in the long journey by Jodey’s family to seek a full and fearless investigation into whether the DWP, and its flawed decision-making regarding Jodey’s benefits claim, caused or contributed to her death.

“We must now apply to the high court and seek to persuade the court a fresh inquest is necessary.”

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said: “I can confirm the solicitor general has granted his permission for the family of Jodey Whiting to apply to the high court for a fresh inquest into her death.”

DWP had not commented by noon today (Thursday).

12 November 2020

 

 

Concerns growing over Rees-Mogg’s ‘shocking’ comments on shielding MPs

Concerns are growing over comments made by a government minister who told MPs shielding from coronavirus that it was their “duty” to return to the House of Commons, even though that could put their lives at risk.

One MP who has been shielding from the virus has described the comments of Jacob Rees-Mogg as “shocking” and said he had “offended every individual across the UK who is unable to go to work because they are at high risk from COVID”.

Concerns about his comments, and the safety of MPs who are clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) to the virus, have also been raised this week by both the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

There are thought to be scores of MPs who are shielding at home because they or close family members are in the CEV group.

Many of them will have been told of concerns, reported last month by Disability News Service (DNS), that fellow MPs are flouting social distancing rules in the House of Commons.

Last week, the government told people seen as CEV that they should work from home and should not visit their workplaces.

But it is still refusing to allow shielding MPs to play a full role in parliamentary proceedings, including taking part in debates on new bills.

Last week, Rees-Mogg rejected a request by Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, who herself has shielded during the pandemic because of a long-term health condition, to “commit to setting a good example” by allowing her and other MPs who are CEV to take part in debates remotely.

But Tory MP Mike Wood then asked Rees-Mogg that, as he had been “encouraged to lead by example during this lockdown… what example does he think it would set to those teachers and other key workers whom we are asking to go to work on the frontline if members of parliament decided that they could do just half their job elsewhere?”

Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons, told Wood that he had put it “absolutely brilliantly” and that MPs must “lead by example”, like the House of Commons cleaners and security staff.

He said: “We should be proud to be doing the same as them and working here physically.

“Duty may not be a fashionable word, but it is the right word to use. It is our duty to hold the government to account and to legislate, and to do that properly, we need to be here.”

Dr Philippa Whitford, who spent 33 years as an NHS surgeon and is shielding because of a long-term health condition, told Rees-Mogg last week that she took “great offence” at his suggestion that she was “somehow shirking my duty” by not attending parliament in person.

He declined to apologise.

This week, Dr Whitford told DNS that Rees-Mogg’s comments had been “shocking” and “offended every individual across the UK who is unable to go work because they are at high risk from COVID or has a vulnerable family member who is.

“It is also highly irresponsible suggesting such individuals should travel, in many cases, hundreds of miles on planes, trains and other forms of public transport just to get to work when provision to fully engage from home could easily be provided.

“Indeed, we saw earlier in the year the incredible work achieved by the House of Commons digital service to launch full virtual participation for MPs.

“The position of the UK government is untenable; they are actively excluding MPs who are at high risk from COVID and those who have a vulnerable family member at home, but they are also sending out a message that it is okay to exclude those who are vulnerable from the workplace.”

She added: “Full virtual participation must be restored for MPs to ensure those who need to be protected can still fully represent their constituents in parliament and to set the right example that when the default is to work from home that MPs, along with other workers, are not making journeys which are unnecessary and perhaps spreading COVID further around the UK.

“It is crucial that MPs are able to participate fully in all parliamentary business during the COVID crisis and as the EU transition period comes to an end.”

Concerns about the position in the House of Commons and the comments of Rees-Mogg have also received support this week from both EHRC and HSE.

An EHRC spokesperson said: “MPs who need to shield, self-isolate or who otherwise struggle to attend parliament in person should follow the same advice the rest of the country is being given.

“They should not have to put their health at risk to represent their constituents when such important decisions for our country are being made every day.

“Parliament should look very hard at how they can remain fully inclusive during the coronavirus pandemic, like many other workplaces, and allow these MPs to safely take part in the democratic process.”

HSE told DNS that it was “aware of concerns” about the safety of MPs.

Asked about the comments by Jacob Rees-Mogg and the reports of MPs failing to comply with social distancing rules, an HSE spokesperson said: “We are aware of concerns.

“While we have no jurisdiction at the Palace of Westminster, all places of work are expected to adhere to the government’s working safely guidelines.”

Rees-Mogg declined a second opportunity to apologise for his comments this week, but a government spokesperson said: “The government firmly believes that constituents are best served when parliament meets physically to the fullest extent possible.

“The House [of Commons] has agreed measures to ensure that members who cannot be in parliament physically can vote by proxy and participate in interrogative proceedings.”

The spokesperson said the government believed that the scrutiny of legislation was not as effective when MPs were not present in parliament in person, and that the government had taken significant mitigating actions to assist those MPs who cannot be present in person.

This included allowing them to take part in oral and urgent questions and responding to ministerial statements, to take part in select committees, and to vote via a proxy system.

But Rees-Mogg is refusing to make the changes necessary to allow them to take part online in debates on motions and legislation.

*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page

12 November 2020

 

 

DWP unlawfully blocked support for disabled students for seven years, says court

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) unlawfully prevented thousands of disabled students from trying to claim the benefits they needed to pay for essential living costs for seven years, a court has found.

In the latest in a lengthy line of blunders by DWP, the high court concluded that DWP had misunderstood the relevant law.

It found that the department had unlawfully rejected disabled students’ claims for universal credit (UC) without allowing them to undertake a work capability assessment (WCA).

Disability Rights UK (DR UK), which has been campaigning against DWP’s unlawful policy since 2017, has previously said that 30,000 disabled students could have been affected.

The court has now found that two of those students – Sidra Kauser, who is studying for a masters in psychology at the University of York, and JL*, whose identity has been protected by the court – should not have had their claims refused.

Claimants are generally not allowed to receive UC if they are in education, but there was an exemption to this if they already received attendance allowance, disability living allowance or personal independence payment (PIP) and had limited capability for work (LCW).

Both claimants receive PIP, but they and other disabled students had their claims rejected because DWP would only allow disabled students already found to have LCW to qualify for the exemption and apply for UC.

DR UK has previously described how, thanks to DWP’s refusal to allow her to apply for UC, Kauser was left with just £122 a month to live on, including the costs of food, clothes, travel and her social life.

Thanks to the court’s decision, Kauser and JL will now be allowed to undergo a work capability assessment to decide their eligibility for universal credit.

The judge, Mr Justice Fordham, ruled on the judicial review last month and found the department had been behaving unlawfully, but his decision was only revealed this week.

Piers Wilkinson, the last disabled students’ officer for the National Union of Students before the post was abolished this summer, said disabled students had known they would face “unfair access barriers” when universal credit was introduced seven years ago.

Wilkinson said DWP’s refusal to listen to disabled students had led to thousands of them being unlawfully barred from accessing support and the government being “made to listen through a costly, time consuming, and stressful legal case”.

They said: “It is clear the government’s priority isn’t saving money, but making disabled students jump through hoop after hoop to access our rights to support.

“It is imperative that the government publicly recognise the result of the court case, and apologise for the extra hardships they caused to the thousands of disabled students the government denied and ignored.

“The government must engage with and listen to disabled people’s organisations, and can’t be allowed to sweep this defeat under the carpet yet again.”

Ken Butler, DR UK’ s welfare rights and policy officer, said: “In over 30 years as a welfare rights officer I can’t ever recall before a DWP minister straightforwardly admitting they acted unlawfully, let alone over a seven-year period.

“The judicial review victory is significant and will hopefully lead to very many disabled students being awarded the universal credit they were wrongly denied.

“Given it acted unlawfully, the DWP should rightly carry out a review exercise to ensure that all such disabled students are identified.

“It should not be left to individual students to seek to challenge refused benefit decisions themselves.

“Unfortunately, the high court victory is a bitter-sweet one as the secretary of state immediately introduced new regulations to more effectively bar disabled students from universal credit.

“Let’s hope that the effect of these will also be cancelled out by a future legal challenge.”

Michelle Maher, from WOWcampaign, who spent time as a mature disabled student until she had to stop through ill-health, said the government was “putting education beyond our reach by numerous cuts to support”.

She said: “Denying disabled students universal credit for seven years demonstrates the difficulty disabled students have.

“I applaud the people who brought this case to court. It shouldn’t be needed, it’s another cut, another attack.”

She said disabled students had to fight for their rights at every stage over those seven years, facing cuts to PIP, employment and support allowance and disabled students’ allowance, as well as the closure of the Independent Living Fund.

Maher said the government had removed many disabled people’s chances to remove themselves from poverty “by blocking our pathways to qualifications”, which she said was “obscene” and “cruel”.

Despite the legal victory, disabled students making a new claim for universal credit will not be able to rely on the court ruling, as work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has already changed the relevant regulations.

She made the change to the regulations on 3 August, the first working day after she told the court she would not be defending the judicial review.

This means that, from 5 August 2020, DWP decision-makers are not required – as they would have been if the regulations had not been changed – to refer claimants for a WCA if they already receive attendance allowance, disability living allowance or PIP but have not previously been found to have limited capability for work.

Barristers Tom Royston and Ciara Bartlam, of Garden Court North Chambers, who represented the two students, advised other disabled students who could be affected by the old or new versions of the regulations to contact a welfare rights adviser.

They said they hoped Coffey would “urgently review” the past incorrect decisions.

And they said that disabled students who need UC in the future may be able to be referred for a WCA by claiming the contributory form of employment and support allowance, and then seeking universal credit once they have been found to have limited capability for work.

A DWP spokesperson said: “The department is currently considering the outcome of the litigation in relation to claims to universal credit by disabled students.

“The department has laid regulations to maintain the current policy for new claims.”

DWP said that disabled students can access support for fees and living costs through various student loans and grants, and that it was important that this system was not duplicated by universal credit.

DWP also said that the current policy allows claimants entitled to PIP or DLA who have already been assessed as having LCW to enter or remain in education, with the hope that this will improve their prospects of finding work in the future.

12 November 2020

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 

 Posted by at 15:59
Nov 052020
 

 Disabled people ‘treated as afterthought again’, as England heads into second lockdown

The government has treated disabled people who are at particular risk from coronavirus as an afterthought as the country heads into lockdown, just as it did in the early weeks of the pandemic, say campaigners.

Disabled campaigners spoke out yesterday as new government guidance for those seen as clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) to the virus was rushed out less than 24 hours before a new England-wide lockdown that began today (Thursday).

There are already concerns about the content of the guidance, its accessibility, its apparent focus on leaving support to over-stretched local authorities, and its reliance on supermarket deliveries to ensure that CEV people have access to food and other vital supplies.

There are also concerns about the financial support being offered to employed CEV people who are unable to work from home but are being advised to stay at home as much as possible and not attend their workplace.

The guidance says this group may be eligible for statutory sick pay, employment and support allowance, universal credit or the government’s job furlough scheme.

The new guidance “strongly” advises all those in the CEV group to stay at home at all times, unless for exercise or doctors’ appointments.

But it also says that those living with someone who is CEV can still attend work if they cannot work from home, and that children who live with someone who is CEV, but who are not CEV themselves, should still attend school.

Although the guidance suggests that local authorities will be responsible for ensuring access to support for those in the CEV group, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced just £32 million in new government funding to help local councils provide that support over the next month.

It also announced a new online service which will allow CEV people to request priority access to supermarket delivery slots or tell their council they need help.

And DHSC said that people with chronic kidney disease (stage five) and those undergoing dialysis, as well as adults with Down’s syndrome, were being added to the CEV list by the NHS because of “new evidence about groups more likely to be at risk of serious illness from COVID-19”,

But disabled campaigners have raised significant concerns about the government’s apparent failure to treat those in the CEV group as anything more than an afterthought.

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, told Disability News Service (DNS): “We welcome the guidance and the fact that the government is giving local authorities money for extra support for people who shield.

“However, we are yet to see how this support will work in practice.

“The timing of this guidance is irresponsibly late given the large increases in cases.

“Extra support should have been made available much earlier, since so many were already shielding. Yet again it feels like those who are shielding are an afterthought.”

She added: “It is also disappointing that the guidance does not mandate that shielders who work and cannot work from home must be put on furlough, so that they are not pushed into poverty by having to rely on statutory sick pay.

“It is also important to remember that many people really struggled to get on the government’s [CEV] list and it is really important to ensure those who shield, but are not on the list, get support as well.”

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “New shielding guidance has been digitally issued with only hours to go before lockdown.

“Well over two million people will be affected by this guidance, but a significant number of those need it in a non-electronic format.

“Given the rapid increase of infection rates and the fact that new conditions have been added to the list, it feels like the people who need the most support have been left to the eleventh hour.”

She added: “All shielders are urged to shop online and to get medicines delivered.

“We know that some supermarkets have changed the parameters of their priority deliveries for shielders, including increasing the cost of minimum spend – something those on lower incomes will struggle with.

“And unless things are very different to April, new shielders could be waiting a long time for their online shopping.”

She also raised concerns about those in the CEV group who have children.

She said: “For shielders with children, the guidance says that children should continue to go to school, which seems strange advice, given the minimum contact shielders should have with the outside world.”

The grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said its members “were now beyond being disappointed with the government’s responses and communication”.

BRIL highlighted how the prime minister had been unable to answer a question from Labour’s Stella Creasy on Monday after she had asked about a mum who is CEV but works in a supermarket and cannot be furloughed, and “is worried that if she shields again, she will lose her job, but if she does not, she will lose her life”.

BRIL said the government had then issued guidance apparently without versions in easy read or British Sign Language, and apparently so far only available to those with online access.

It added: “Publishing something called ‘Guidance on shielding and protecting people who are clinically extremely vulnerable from COVID-19’, when people are now being told not to shield, but basically to ‘be careful’, is not only confusing but potentially dangerous.

“The government and Department of Health and Social Care are fully aware of their legal duties to produce accessible information, but seem to either have learned nothing over the last eight months, or are just indifferent to the needs of disabled people.”

The BRIL spokesperson added: “Many disabled and chronically ill people were ‘missed off’ the original clinically extremely vulnerable or shielding list despite being at high risk.

“As a result, many people struggled to get on priority shopping lists, get support with collecting medication and faced additional anxiety.

“BRIL are being contacted by people who are really worried about ‘lockdown 2’ and the impact it might have on them and their families.

“Once again, disabled people, chronically ill people, organisations and charities at breaking point have been left to explain what is happening and fill in the gaps. Frankly, it is not OK to do this.”

Artist-activist Jess Thom said on Twitter that the government’s guidance was “last minute and impractical”.

She said it failed to say anything about access to personal protective equipment for those who can’t socially distance, Access To Work, the use of the furlough scheme by personal assistants, “family members in high risk occupations” and “shielders in risky home situations”.

Fran Springfield, co-chair of Disability Labour, who has left her home only four times – for medical appointments – since the beginning of March, said she was “very unimpressed” with the new guidelines.

She said she feared many CEV people will not secure the support they need, either through friends, family or their local authority, to ensure they can obtain the supplies they need.

She said: “Once again, this cruel and heartless government has failed to provide any real support for those who are most clinically vulnerable.”

She said she also feared that “compassion fatigue” had set in among volunteers since the last lockdown.

She said: “With winter coming and too many people having to make a choice between eating and heating, leaving clinically vulnerable people with no support can only end in needless and preventable deaths.”

Kathy Bole, her fellow co-chair, said she believed the new guidance was being sent out too late.

She said: “The government is still sending out mixed messages and it will be those least able to cope who will suffer.”

Disabled campaigner Fleur Perry, who has been shielding since March, said: “I’m glad that action has been taken to make sure that support is available to shielders, at least on paper.

“Whether the language is clear enough and the response from local authorities and businesses will be appropriate remains to be seen.

“Nothing will personally change for me, as I have been continuing to shield for several months. I look forward to the figures going down.”

Meanwhile, the UK government’s failure to treat disabled people as a priority, despite nearly three-fifths of COVID-related deaths so far being of disabled people, appears to be mirrored across the House of Commons.

After the prime minister delivered his statement about the new lockdown on Monday, 100 MPs asked questions.

Of those 100 MPs, 18 asked questions about the government’s furlough employment scheme, but – according to DNS calculations – only three asked questions about the protection being offered to those who are CEV or previously shielded from the virus.

There were 53 mentions of the word “business” or “businesses” during the two hour-plus session, but not one mention of “disabled” people or “disability”, while apparently only one MP (Labour’s Barbara Keeley) asked about social care.

5 November 2020

 

 

BBC’s disabled-led ‘benefit cheat’ drama causes anger and disbelief

Disabled activists have spoken of their anger and distress after the BBC broadcast a drama – starring one of the country’s best-known disabled actors – that they say mirrors years of deeply damaging government rhetoric about benefit cheats.

The BBC Four drama, starring disabled actor and campaigner Liz Carr, is part of a month-long season of BBC programmes marking the 25th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act.

Her monologue – one of the six-part CripTales series – was written by a disabled playwright, Tom Wentworth, and had a disabled director, Ewan Marshall.

Another leading disabled actor, Mat Fraser, was “curator” of the CripTales series.

Both Carr and Fraser have previously spoken publicly about the government’s welfare reforms and its treatment of disabled benefit claimants.

Carr’s monologue, The Real Deal, was the second episode in the CripTales series.

It features her character spying on a disabled neighbour who she believes is committing personal independence payment (PIP) fraud, and ends with her informing the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Nearly 10 years ago, in February 2011, Carr told fellow activists at a rally that disabled people “are not scroungers or frauds. We are not vulnerable or work shy.

“Our history is littered with disabled people being scapegoated, demonised, discriminated against and oppressed. It is also a history of disabled people fighting back against this.”

But in The Real Deal, Carr’s character is seen spying on her neighbour who she suspects of exaggerating his impairment in order to qualify for PIP, before being persuaded by the neighbour to exaggerate her own impairment for a PIP assessment.

Disabled activists who have spent years highlighting and fighting against the efforts of Tory ministers to paint disabled people as benefit frauds, fakers and scroungers, were horrified by the film.

Their concern and anger contrasted with widespread support and approval for the drama from the disability arts world.

Carr, Fraser and Debbie Christie, executive producer for CripTales, have all defended the episode, although Wentworth had not commented by noon today (Thursday).

They suggested to Disability News Service (DNS) that the episode intended to explore “moral ambiguity”, offers a critique of DWP policy and the “impenetrable” PIP assessment system, and provides a “rare comedic take on the hypocrisy that can be embedded in that PIP interview system”.

But disabled activist and advocate Rick Burgess said it had been “very distressing” to watch the drama.

He said: “As someone who has helped with numerous PIP claims at all stages, Real Deal will not help people and it may harm them.

“Scroungers are not the problem with PIP, they are a government and media created propaganda tool.

“This play appeared to have fallen for that lie.”

Disabled activist Andy Mitchell also said he felt “really uncomfortable” watching the CripTales episode.

He said: “The problem with PIP is PIP, not scroungers. It feeds into Tory ‘genuine disabled’ rhetoric that has caused untold harm for disabled people.

“It was a missed opportunity to tell a really important story that too many people go through on their own.”

Another activist, Paula Peters, said she felt “deeply saddened” and “angry” watching the drama, which she said sent a “very dangerous message”.

She pointed to the “horrendous distress” caused by being wrongly accused of benefit fraud, and she said that disabled people had died because of government “scrounger” rhetoric.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) said it had a huge amount of respect for Carr as a politicised disabled person and “as someone who has never lost her commitment to activism wherever stardom has taken her”.

A DPAC spokesperson also said the drama had highlighted key problems with the assessment system, including “how the whole process forces us to reduce ourselves down to the most difficult parts of our lives while dismissing our strengths”.

But she said that Carr’s monologue “not only replicated government rhetoric on scroungers, it reinforced the idea of the deserving (‘real deal’) and undeserving poor and also fed into the demonisation of the white working class with a two dimensional portrayal that Channel Five would have been proud of”.

Fran Springfield, co-chair of Disability Labour, said the drama was “incredibly disturbing”.

She said: “I really can’t work out what they were trying to convey, but whatever it was it sent a very dangerous message.

“This was very disturbing to watch. Not only did it buy into the false government rhetoric of fraudsters, but it missed an opportunity to show the real impact of PIP and the tragedies the DWP and the government constantly seek to diminish.”

Fraser told DNS that those who criticised the film had “somewhat missed the point” and that The Real Deal was “a satire exposing the not fit for purpose benefit and assessment system”.

He said: “An able bodied fraudster can scam the system easily, but a woman with genuine impairments is only able to get the support she needs, by being forced to play up to an ignorant and clumsy view of what a disabled person should be.

“Rather than playing like a recruitment [tool] for the DWP… to me it’s a savage indictment of them.”

But many other disabled people yesterday added their voices to the criticism.

One disabled activist, Mary*, told DNS that she felt “physically sick watching Liz Carr act out every single Tory scrounger rhetoric in the book”, and that the play was an “open invitation to make fraud reports”.

She added: “Its damaging, irresponsible and offensive. It’s not ‘dark’, funny or informative. Daily Mail readers will love it.”

She said the film was “an absolute gift to DWP”, and she added: “It hurts so much more when it’s one of our own who should know better. It’s such a betrayal.”

She added: “What upset me the most was a very dear friend in all honesty asking me, ‘Oh god, am I a fraud?’

“I had to reassure her that no, she is not. That broke my heart.”

Mary also passed on to DNS comments from a string of other disabled people, many of them with invisible impairments, in response to the drama.

One, a mental health activist and service-user, said it was “a real betrayal of all of us” and that those involved should be “ashamed”.

They added: “Assume all the people involved think they’ll never find themselves in a situation where they’ll be reported like this, otherwise why demonstrate how to report people and give the impression everyone on PIP is somehow not genuine because the DWP force people to humiliate themselves.”

Another, an electric wheelchair-user, was another to say that the film made them “feel physically sick”.

A long-term mental health service-user, activist and former chief executive of a charity, said the film was “undoing years and years of work by disability campaigners and activists to fight against the stereotypes of fakers in the Daily Mail and right wing press”, and described it as “grim grim grim”.

Another long-term mental health service-user said the film made them feel like they should take their own life, “like I wasn’t worthy of receiving PIP and a fraud.

“I felt really uncomfortable and freaked out about it. I know that I have some members of my own family and friends, that judge me for claiming benefits.

“I just wish I was invisible right now.”

A former mental health service-user said: “It uses this visibly disabled actor as a model for [a] deserving claimant.

“The fact this is produced by disabled people makes it worse. It shows the system means you have to act a certain way but then shows everyone is either playing to that or fraudulently acting that part.”

Another former mental health service-user said: “My concern is about the snitching on your neighbour angle which may be more socially acceptable in the time of coronavirus social compliance.”

And a former service-user said that promoting anonymous reporting of strangers and neighbours for “fraud” could impact people with invisible impairments.

They said: “We are living through terrible times with COVID-19 and are directed to report to the police those who are breaking the rules.

“Disabled people may also be vulnerable to the virus and the isolation of the restrictions.

“I can see how social compliance may extend to more benefits related reporting of people who may not appear physically disabled but suffer serious mental distress or hidden disabilities. The last thing we need right now is more division and persecution.”

Christie said the CripTales writers had been given a “totally open brief to write what they wished” about “issues that engaged them” and that the intention of The Real Deal was to “explore moral ambiguity”.

Fraser said the drama was about a “genuine claimant” who was unable to “get through the questioning hoops that a PIP assessment can bring, with all the stress, self doubt and shame, that can be involved in such an unfair setting”.

He said it showed how the actions of Carr’s character, who herself “agrees to act more disabled” than she is, further highlight the systemic flaws.

He said: “Rather than an advert for the DWP, it offers a criticism of it, and rather than play into the very worst of the scrounger rhetoric, it was a rare comedic take on the hypocrisy that can be embedded in that PIP interview system, with a serious twist at the end.”

Carr said the piece had intended to highlight the flaws in the system “dramatically and playfully – showing how impenetrable the benefit system is and the reality of how we have to perform and jump through hoops to gain our rightful entitlements”.

She said: “I knew the piece was controversial in having a disabled person report another disabled person – rather than suggest this as acceptable, my hope was that this would illustrate how deeply entrenched the ideology of individualism and competition are in all of us – even disabled people.

“It was of course not my intention to cause harm or hurt – I consider the roles I accept very carefully and thoughtfully and feel those of us with a profile have a responsibility to challenge.”

*Not her real name

5 November 2020

 

 

Disability Union ‘will build power and a national voice for disabled people’

A new independent user-led organisation – modelled on a trade union – is hoping to provide disabled people with a collective voice powerful enough to influence policy at a national level, while also offering them solutions to their disability-related problems.

The Disability Union, which launches officially on Monday, will concentrate at first on providing a problem-solving service for disabled members who face issues in areas such as housing, benefits or social care.

But the hope is that the union will eventually provide an “authoritative voice” for disabled people that is capable of influencing policy-making at a local, regional and national level.

The plan is to occupy a space that is not currently filled by grassroots organisations of disabled activists like Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and WOWcampaign on the one hand, and national disabled people’s organisations like Disability Rights UK (DR UK), The Alliance for Inclusive Education and Shaping Our Lives on the other.

The union is the idea of disabled campaigner George Baker, whose ambition is to create “the first democratic and campaigning union which fights for disabled people in the workplace, in the social care system and in society at large”.

He stressed that he did not want to replace organisations like DPAC and DR UK, but to provide something different and new.

Baker told Disability News Service: “What it’s about is building power for disabled people, giving us an influential voice to make sure we are not marginalised.”

He wants The Disability Union to be “the connective tissue that will bring the disability community together”, connecting disabled people “to all the support that is out there”.

Members and backers of the union already include prominent disabled figures, including Martyn Sibley, co-founder of Disability Horizons, campaigners Fleur Perry and Ellie Tait, and Jane Hatton, director of the user-led disability employment social enterprise Evenbreak.

Union membership – £4.99 a month for those who are on a low income or are unemployed or retired, or £12.99 for those in work on a stable income – is open to all those who self-identify as a disabled person, with the union’s work funded through these membership fees and funding for specific projects.

The long-term aim is to run the organisation democratically, like a union or political party, with meetings and decisions taken by members.

But in the early stages, as it builds membership, the union will focus on helping members with their disability-related problems – using peer support and advice – through its website and its Facebook page, and by phone*.

Baker said: “Disabled people share an awful lot in common. We share the same struggles and deal with the same people all the time.”

He said the union believed that nearly every disability-related issue “boils down to one of three things”.

The first is that disabled people “are not made aware of existing solutions because they are not connected enough to each other, or those solutions are not publicised enough”.

The second is that “where solutions are available, disabled people are not supported to access them effectively”.

Baker said: “This is particularly true with the benefits system, where applications are deliberately complex and are therefore only accessible to people who are particularly good at explaining their needs.”

The third is that, when social change is necessary, “there is no voice of authority that truly represents disabled people and can apply the pressure necessary to change policy or attitudes”.

He said: “The Disability Union exists to address all three problems so that we can finally have the power to secure the respect, influence and change we need.”

But he added: “We are not interested in replicating the work everybody else is doing. We just want to build on it and spread the word.”

The union is also working towards creating a “universal statement of disability”, which will provide a single document that asks a series of questions about how a person’s impairment affects them day-to-day, and what their needs are in different areas of their lives.

The long-term hope is that the government and other public bodies will accept this document instead of asking disabled people to repeatedly fill in complicated forms to secure the support they need.

Baker said the union “has to improve lives” because disabled people are often “treated in the most awful way for no reason”.

He said: “Campaigning is important, but actually people need help now. I want us to make a real difference as quickly as possible.

“I am confident that if somebody comes to us with a disability problem, we can find a way to resolve it.”

He added: “One of the criminal things is that there is tonnes of knowledge, but it is just not in one place. It is impossible to find it.”

The aim is for the union to have 500 members by the end of the year, and between 3,000 and 5,000 by the end of 2021.

Baker said: “After that, the sky is the limit. I want us to be the voice of change. The more members we have, the stronger the union is.

“My goal is to have an enormous number of members so we can start affecting policy decisions.”

*The Disability Union’s phone number is 0333 050 8046

5 November 2020

 

 

Disabled students call for strict new rules for universities that fail on access

A disabled students’ organisation has called for strict new rules on access to higher education, and – as a last resort – for universities to lose their licence to operate if they fail to meet them.

Disabled Students UK (DSUK), a grassroots organisation led and controlled by disabled students, spoke out after a new report exposed the “unhappy situation” and “undue pressures” facing disabled students.

The report by the independent Higher Education Commission, co-chaired by disabled peer and former home secretary Lord Blunkett, heard how many disabled students were unable to sit in lecture theatres, access learning materials, or secure the reasonable adjustments that had been set out in their support plans.

The Arriving at Thriving report said disabled students faced a “heavy administrative burden” in applying for the support they needed, and then being assessed and chasing up that support.

It said there was a “great deal of evidence” of problems with the disabled students’ allowance (DSA) system.

It also concluded that disabled students are often forced to interrupt their studies because of the “financial burden, a lack of support, and struggling to fully access their teaching and learning”, while the complaints process creates further barriers.

A survey carried out for the commission found that many disabled students were seen by staff and other students as faking or exaggerating their impairments, or just being lazy.

In 2018-19, there were 272,000 disabled students at English universities and colleges.

Among its recommendations, the commission calls on the government to create a new system to support disabled people from the classroom, through university and into the workplace, and to reform the DSA system.

And it says every university should appoint a senior leader to take responsibility for the experiences of disabled students.

Although the report includes evidence from students and universities in Scotland and Wales, its recommendations are aimed at universities, regulators and government bodies in England.

The report has been welcomed by DSUK, which described it as “an important first step toward increased equity”.

A DSUK spokesperson said: “The report suggests that a lack of training causes staff not to understand how to implement reasonable adjustments or make their teaching accessible.

“In line with our own experiences, the report details students being treated as if their conditions are not real, their symptoms are exaggerated, they are lazy or simply need to work harder.”

It said the report demonstrated that the “persistence of failures” in securing equality for disabled students since the Equality Act 2010 became law was due to “failures of oversight”.

DSUK welcomed the report’s call for the Office for Students (OfS) – the independent regulatory body for higher education in England – to do more to monitor disabled students’ access.

This includes recommendations for OfS to: ensure universities provide information about the training they provide staff on disability inclusion; research how universities are reducing the administrative burden on disabled students; and monitor the quality of disabled students’ experiences in higher education.

Universities have to submit access and participation plans to OfS, and cannot secure public funding or award qualifications to students without doing so.

OfS shares about £40 million a year between the universities it registers, depending on their predicted number of disabled students.

But DSUK wants OfS to produce “clear and transparent” rules around access – created in consultation with disabled students – that all universities in England will have to follow, with possible penalties for those that fail to comply to include financial fines or even deregistration as a university.

Phen Woolley-Gale, political outreach director of DSUK, said: “Many higher education providers claim that they do not have access to adequate funding to fulfil their legal obligations with respect to disabled students’ access.

“We want to see the OfS require proof of these claims.

“For those who are not able to prove that they cannot come up with the money, we want to see monetary penalties imposed in an amount that will make non-compliance the less financially beneficial choice for the provider.

“For those who are able to prove that they cannot come up with the money for accessibility, we want to see the OfS provide funding specifically earmarked for their needs in order to become compliant.

“We would suggest that this funding could be sourced from the penalties imposed on willfully non-compliant providers.

“Deregistration needs to be on the table, but it also needs to be a last resort.”

She added: “The body of evidence showing rampant non-compliance across the sector is already here and it is only growing; we will not tolerate more delays.

“It’s been 10 years since the Equality Act became law; disabled students have waited 10 years for regulatory bodies to follow through on their promises to put us first and ensure we have fair access to our education. We shouldn’t have to wait any longer.”

Chris Millward, OfS’s director for fair access and participation, said: “I welcome the insights from the Higher Education Commission report.

“We will discuss with the Disabled Students’ Commission (DSC)* how best to address the issues highlighted in the report, while continuing to regulate universities and colleges in a way that reflects their diversity of mission and students.”

A spokesperson added: “We intend to discuss the findings of the report with the DSC, which the OfS helped to set up specifically to advise on issues such as this – as such we are unable to respond to specific recommendations at this time.

“The DSC next meets in early December, after which we will be able to provide more information.”

*An eight-strong independent group set up by OfS, half of whose members are senior university figures, but which includes two representatives of disabled students

5 November 2020

 

 

Outrage over ‘eugenicist’ lockdown comments of itsu boss

Disabled campaigners have expressed outrage at the boss of a fast-food chain – and its PR agency – after he said he would prefer to sacrifice “a few thousand lives of very old or vulnerable people” rather than having another national lockdown.

The comments of Julian Metcalfe, founder and chief executive of itsu, were described as “cruel and dehumanising” and “a sign that eugenics is very much alive”.

Metcalfe told a newspaper last week: “Society will not recover if we do it again to save a few thousand lives of very old or vulnerable people.

“The young people of this country will be paying for this for the next 20 to 30 years.”

But itsu’s efforts to defend its chief executive also backfired, when its public relations agency, London-based Spider, refused to say anything other than claiming his comment was “taken out of context”.

Despite Disability News Service asking what context could excuse his comments, Spider refused to answer any emails or phone messages.

Metcalfe was also founder of Pret A Manger, but that chain hurriedly pointed out that he had not run the business for more than 10 years and that the company does “not agree with his opinion”.

There was widespread anger from disabled campaigners at his comments, and at Spider’s efforts to protect him from criticism.

A spokesperson for the Disability Caucus of the Women’s Equality Party – all of whom are disabled party members – said Metcalfe’s statement was “deliberately inflammatory and hateful towards disabled and older people.

“Disabled people have been subjected to this sort of violent, discriminatory abuse throughout the pandemic.

“It seems we are seen as either an inevitable, acceptable loss, or encouraged to go back to the days when we were hidden away in institutions.

“Whilst it is valid to be concerned about our economy and the negative impact a lockdown might have on society, it is possible to express those concerns without making cruel and dehumanising comments about disabled and older people.

“We need to be having constructive conversations about how we protect those who are more vulnerable to COVID-19, rather than furthering the divide by suggesting we are holding the economy to ransom.

“If our economic model cannot cope with the fact a significant portion of our population may need to be protected in a time of crisis, then we should be looking at alternative economic models.”

Anne Pridmore, a former chair of the British Council of Disabled People, said Metcalfe and Spider’s actions were “outrageous” and that they should be “taken to task”.

She said: “Julian Metcalfe obviously does not value elderly or disabled people.

“To suggest that disabled people don’t deserve to live and that their lives don’t matter is outrageous.

“May I politely remind him that 76 per cent of the 11 million disabled people in this country were not born disabled and if he is lucky enough to escape disability he certainly cannot escape old age.”

She added: “During this pandemic disabled people have been forgotten, many struggling to find any support from local authorities or even have easy access to personal protective equipment.”

Disabled activist Vikki Walton-Cole, who was also critical of Spider’s actions, said: “As a disabled person I was utterly horrified that Metcalfe publicly stated opinions which suggested disabled people’s lives weren’t worth saving.

“This view, which is being repeated over and over in society for the last 10 months, is a sign that eugenics is very much alive as a school of thought when disabled people’s lives are dispensable, especially when there is profit to be made.

“The excuse that this comment was taken out of context does not make this opinion any better.

“There is no context where disabled people’s lives are less important than others just by the fact a person is disabled.

“It is clear that Metcalfe does not want to apologise for his views or want the business of 20 per cent of the UK population.”

Disabled campaigner Susan Angel told Metcalfe via email that she was “utterly disappointed and annoyed” by his comments, adding: “Everyone should be thinking of each other, not how much money they will lose from profits off the back of everyone funding your business.”

Disabled campaigner and retired Paralympian Chris Channon, who has been shielding from the virus, said he was “disgusted” by Metcalfe’s comments.

He said: “A society can only be judged by the way it deals with its citizens – especially those at the bottom of the pile for whatever reason.

“Even if you’re lucky enough to get through life with a degree of ‘normality’ there’s always the risk of illness or accident to land you in the disability world.

“I would also like to say to people like Metcalfe that I have overcome much in my life to the extent that I have made useful contributions to people’s lives.

“I wish him a happy and healthy life and hope that he reflects on and retracts his rather stupid comments.”

5 November 2020

 

 

Burnham hides from scrutiny over ‘abhorrent’ COVID care home policy

Staff working for Greater Manchester’s mayor have repeatedly refused to say if he backs government plans that will see hospital patients with coronavirus discharged into care homes, even though he suggested to his own disabled advisers that he did not.

Andy Burnham has been widely-praised for his high-profile complaints about the lack of central government financial support for the north of England during local lockdowns.

He also told his own panel of disabled advisers that hospital patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 should not be discharged into care homes in Greater Manchester, although the panel said later that he had agreed to further discussions on the issue with senior officers.

But when Disability News Service (DNS) tried to confirm that Burnham’s policy was to fight the government policy – which disabled activists from Manchester have described as “abhorrent” – his office repeatedly refused to clarify his position.

The policy will see patients in England who are set to be discharged from hospital into a care home after a positive COVID-19 test result admitted first to a “designated setting”.

They will have to be cared for in this designated setting – which must be approved by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – until the end of their isolation period.

Although some of the designated settings will be “stand-alone units” where only service-users with coronavirus will be admitted, others will be care homes which have “separate zoned accommodation and staffing” for service-users with coronavirus and other parts occupied by residents who have not been infected.

The policy, drawn up by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and approved by CQC, has alarmed disabled activists because it risks repeating the outcome of the scandal that occurred early in the pandemic, when hospital patients were discharged into care homes without being tested for COVID-19.

That government failing was believed to have caused the loss of thousands of lives of older and disabled people.

DNS first asked Burnham’s office to confirm his position on the policy last Wednesday (28 October).

An initial response did not arrive until the following Tuesday (3 November).

A Greater Manchester Combined Authority spokesperson said in that statement: “We can confirm that at the recent Disabled People’s Panel meeting the mayor said that COVID patients should not be discharged from hospital directly into care homes if they are still infectious.”

But the spokesperson then suggested that some patients could indeed be discharged into care homes, apparently in line with the government policy, without clarifying whether Burnham was or was not supporting that policy.

When asked to clarify the mayor’s position, a spokesperson said the mayor’s office had “no desire to add to the statement”, while providing some further confusing background information.

A further DNS attempt at clarification produced further “background” information that again failed to produce a simple answer on whether Burnham backed the government policy.

The spokesperson then called DNS for another “background” conversation, before Kevin Lee, director of the mayor’s office, called DNS yesterday (Wednesday) morning.

Lee spoke at length “off the record”, and when he refused to promise to produce a written statement confirming what he had said, DNS asked him to produce a clear, on-the-record response to whether Burnham supported the government policy.

He refused to do so, repeatedly referring back to his office’s earlier statements, which DNS had already told him were not clear.

Shabaaz Mohammed of Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “The mayor did tell the disabled people’s panel that infectious people will not be put in care homes.

“Therefore [if that is the case] he doesn’t support government policy to return people who have COVID-19 to care homes.

“Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts are keen for his office and Greater Manchester to commit to that.

“We urge Andy to confirm formally that he is on the side of disabled people against the government’s deadly policy.

“Our demand, alongside disabled people across the country, is that only with a negative COVID test should people be discharged into care homes.

“Many residents died during the first wave; it must not happen again.”

A spokesperson for the panel said: “At last week’s meeting, as with all panel meetings, there was a frank and open discussion both between panel members and with Andy Burnham on a number of topics including care homes.

“The discussion at the meeting was productive, and it was agreed that we would continue this important discussion at our next meeting.

“The panel had the opportunity to raise its concerns around COVID and care homes, discuss the key issues, and have commitment from the mayor’s office that the required leaders would meet with the panel.”

Meanwhile, the Local Government Association (LGA) has made it clear that it supports the government policy.

Cllr Ian Hudspeth, chair of LGA’s community wellbeing board, said: “The use of ‘zoned’ accommodation is not new, and such accommodation is often used in care homes to successfully manage outbreaks of infection, particularly in winter.

“Councils, providers and CQC are working incredibly hard on the issue of this designated accommodation in relation to COVID-19 and many councils have identified accommodation for CQC to approve.

“These decisions should not be rushed and DHSC must listen to all concerns that councils and their partners raise to ensure the policy developed is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution, and reflects each area’s individual circumstances.

“We are clear that councils must have the flexibility to adapt to the needs of their residents, including ensuring an individual’s wishes on discharge are enabled and that the scheme builds on local arrangements.

“If these conditions are met and it is the best approach for the individual, then we are not opposed to the use of ‘zoned’ accommodation to minimise the risk of cross-infection.”

5 November 2020

 

 

Rees-Mogg accuses shielding MPs of ‘shirking their duty’ by working from home

A government minister has accused MPs who are disabled or are otherwise shielding from coronavirus of shirking their “duty” by refusing to come to the House of Commons to take part in debates during lockdown.

The comments by the leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, came despite his own government this week telling people seen as clinically extremely vulnerable to the virus that they should work from home and should not visit their workplaces.

His comments also came days after Disability News Service reported how some MPs were risking the lives of disabled parliamentarians and House of Commons staff – and those with long-term health conditions – by flouting COVID-19 safety measures.

Rees-Mogg was twice asked on Monday whether he would re-introduce rules to the House of Commons that would allow disabled MPs and others who are shielding from coronavirus to play a full part in the democratic process.

Since early June, virtual participation in the Commons chamber for shielding MPs who are working from home has been limited to asking oral questions and urgent questions and responding to ministerial statements, and they have been unable to take part in debates on motions and legislation.

Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, who herself is at heightened risk from COVID-19 as a result of a long-term health condition and is currently shielding, reminded Rees-Mogg that the government’s advice to clinically extremely vulnerable people was to stay away from their workplaces and work from home.

She said: “Will the Leader of the House commit to setting a good example and allow members such as myself to participate in debates and votes remotely, as we could at the start of the first lockdown?

“I know that he is reluctant to do that, but as the prime minister has said, we must make sacrifices to save lives.

“This is not just about keeping MPs safe; we must also consider everyone who works on the parliamentary estate.”

But Rees-Mogg told her that “the whole point of a debate is that there is a back and forth, and that requires interventions. It is not possible to do that remotely.”

He later said that MPs should “lead by example” and that MPs should join the cleaners and security staff who were “working every day”.

He said: “We should be proud to be doing the same as them and working here physically.

“Duty may not be a fashionable word, but it is the right word to use.

“It is our duty to hold the government to account and to legislate, and to do that properly, we need to be here.”

Another MP with a long-term health condition, the SNP’s Dr Philippa Whitford, told Rees-Mogg that she took “great offence” at the inference that she was “somehow shirking my duty” by declining to travel to and from Westminster during the pandemic.

She said: “With England going into lockdown, the prime minister has just said that the most vulnerable should only work from home, so I, too, call on the Leader of the House to restore and maintain full virtual participation until next year to ensure that all Members can fully represent their constituents throughout the COVID crisis and the end of the EU transition.”

Rees-Mogg refused to comment further, other than referring Whitford to his earlier answer.

5 November 2020

 

 

Round-up: £1 million funding for DPOs, work inquiry, TUC pay gap report… and Baywatch

Nearly 100 disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) across the UK have secured more than £1 million in funding to help them deliver grassroots emergency support to disabled people during the pandemic.

A total of £1,092,906 of funding from the National Emergencies Trust (NET) Coronavirus Appeal will be handed to 98 DPOs.

Projects that have secured funding include those offering advice on benefits and accessible employment, training, and IT support, while other DPOs will use the funding to improve access to their own websites.

Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London*, one of the coalition of DPOs that oversaw the release of funding, said: “The sheer demand for this fund, from DPOs that were locked out of mainstream emergency fund awards, shows the overwhelming need for the peer services that DPOs offer disabled people during times of crisis.

“It also shows how DPOs, run by disabled people, are best placed to know what disabled people need to maintain and protect our rights and our inclusion, choice and control.”

The disabled people’s and service-user network Shaping Our Lives* (SOL) has secured four years of funding from the National Lottery Community Fund.

It said this will allow it to continue and extend its work across the country, “advocating for the inclusive involvement of people with lived experience of using health and social care services”.

It has also adopted a new mission and vision, and relaunched with a new logo and slogan: “Inclusive Involvement Matters.”

Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of SOL, said in a video that many user-led organisations had already been lost because of the funding crisis DPOs have experienced in recent years.

He said SOL would be working in “new and strong inclusive ways, to make sure that, in these difficult and changed circumstances, people as service users, as disabled people, have a real organisation, nationally, on your side”.

The Commons work and pensions committee has launched an inquiry into the disability employment gap, and how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can provide better support for disabled people in the jobs market.

The inquiry will examine trends in the disability employment gap – the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people – the impact on the economy of low employment rates for disabled people, and the assistance available to support disabled people both in and out of work.

Among other areas it will cover, the inquiry will look at the ongoing impact of the pandemic on disabled people’s employment rates, and the effectiveness of DWP’s much-criticised Disability Confident scheme.

Last month, Disability News Service (DNS) reported how the government’s repeated claims that its policies have transformed the employment prospects of disabled people over the last seven years had been challenged by academics who suggested their figures were simply the result of a statistical quirk.

A link to that story has been passed to the committee by DNS.

The deadline for submissions to the inquiry is 18 December.

New analysis by the TUC has found that disabled people earn on average a fifth less than non-disabled workers, with the gap widening by more than a quarter (27 per cent) over the last year.

The analysis shows that the “disability pay gap” rose from £3,000 to £3,800 per year over the last year for someone working a 35-hour week.

Disabled women face an even bigger pay gap, being paid around £6,700 less a year than non-disabled men.

The TUC said the figures mean that disabled people effectively work for free for the last 60 days of the year and in effect stop getting paid on 1 November.

And it warned that the pay gap will “almost certainly” increase again because of the impact of the pandemic.

It said the key reasons for the pay gap are that disabled people are more likely to be working in part-time jobs, which tend to be lower paid; that they are over-represented in lower-paid jobs; and that they tend to leave education earlier than non-disabled people; while it is also linked to unlawful discrimination, structural barriers and negative attitudes.

A disabled child from Sheffield missed out on years of education because a council failed to provide suitable alternative schooling for him, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has found.

The ombudsman found that Sheffield City Council was responsible for a “catalogue of errors”.

When the boy – who is now 15 – could not stay at his first secondary school, he was placed in alternative education on a much-reduced timetable, but this was with an unregistered provider that failed to provide him with “proper formal schooling”.

The boy left his first secondary school in 2015 but did not start his second school until April 2018, and he did not complete a full week’s education until March this year.

The ombudsman found 12 separate faults with the way the council handled the family’s case, including a delay in creating an education, health and care plan for him when he left primary school, which should have been completed in 2015 but was not finished until December 2017, with his mother not receiving a copy until May 2018.

The council has agreed to apologise to the family and pay them nearly £20,000 to make up for the boy’s lost education, which will be used for his educational benefit.

The council has also agreed to carry out a full audit of its alternative education provision.

Results of an annual survey of accessible parking have shown “alarming” levels of abuse across the UK.

Nearly 800 people took part in the annual Baywatch survey, which examined blue badge spaces controlled by both supermarkets and local councils.

It found that that 96 per cent of respondents did not think local authorities were doing enough to tackle abuse of the blue badge system, while 87 per cent found that bays for holders of blue parking badges in supermarket carparks were either “often” or “very often” abused.

It also found two-thirds (66 per cent) of respondents had seen accessible spaces being removed because of the pandemic.

Disabled Motoring UK, which runs the annual survey, said the results “should be the wake up call that the parking industry needs to once and for all provide adequate parking provision to disabled motorists and make sure it is enforced correctly”.

*Inclusion London and Shaping Our Lives are both Disability News Service subscribers

5 November 2020

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 

 Posted by at 15:25
Oct 222020
 

 Activists’ anger after watchdog supports ministers’ ‘abhorrent’ care home COVID policy

Disabled activists have attacked the care watchdog for supporting an “abhorrent” government policy that will again see older and disabled people who have been infected with coronavirus being discharged from hospitals into residential homes.

Early in the pandemic, hospital patients were discharged into care homes without being tested for COVID-19, which is believed to have caused the loss of thousands of lives.

Ahead of an expected surge in winter cases, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has now decided that patients in England who are set to be discharged from hospital into a care home with a positive COVID-19 test result will first have to be admitted to a “designated setting”.

They will have to be cared for there until the end of their isolation period.

Some of these designated settings will be “stand-alone units” where only service-users with coronavirus will be admitted.

But others will be care homes “with separate zoned accommodation and staffing” for service-users with coronavirus.

Other parts of those homes will be occupied by residents who have not been infected with the virus.

This means that some older and disabled service-users who are not yet infected could again be exposed to the risk of catching COVID-19.

Every local authority in England was told last week in a letter from DHSC (PDF) that it must “identify sufficient designated accommodation to meet current and future demand over winter in their local area and notify CQC of the details of these facilities as soon as possible”, and ideally by last Friday (16 October).

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has agreed to the plans and has told ministers that it has the “necessary capacity” to approve 500 designated settings by the end of November.

The DHSC letter says the government wants every local authority to have access to “at least one CQC designated accommodation” by the end of this month.

Once a setting has been approved by CQC, it would be able to “receive COVID-19 positive people discharged from hospital”, the DHSC letter says.

Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts (MDPAC) first raised concerns last month about the idea when DHSC said in its new adult social care winter plan that it was working on such a scheme with CQC.

MDPAC said this week that the government was trying to solve the problem “on the cheap” rather than funding recovery facilities that are solely for older and disabled people with coronavirus.

Rick Burgess, from MDPAC, said the government “have had months to prepare for this”.

He said: “This last-minute thing is what they have been doing across the board. It suggests a national government running around like a panicked chicken.

“The government’s attitude appears to be underpinned by an attitude that there are lives that are not worth living and they don’t mind losing them… and that’s eugenics.”

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said the policy was “utterly unacceptable and must be stopped”.

She said that thousands of older and disabled people in care homes had “needlessly died due to the reckless mishandling of the pandemic by government, from the lack of adequate personal protective equipment, the wrongful imposition of DNRs [do not resuscitate orders], as well as the murderous discharge of infected patients into these homes.

“Now we find that this scenario is not only going to be repeated but actually supported by CQC, in spite of the fact that it is known the spread of the virus in such enclosed communities is rapid.

“This means there can be no lingering doubt that a eugenics policy targeted at care home residents is in full swing.”

Despite being asked to answer questions about the new policy on Monday, CQC had failed to do so by noon today (Thursday).

*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page

22 October 2020

 

 

Regulator refuses to criticise DWP over misleading universal credit statistics

The UK statistics regulator has refused to criticise work and pensions ministers even though they have repeatedly breached its code of conduct by misleading parliament about the impact of universal credit (UC) on disabled people.

Ministers including work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey and Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, have stated on several occasions that around one million disabled households will receive a higher entitlement under UC than they would have received under the previous “legacy” benefits system.

But every time they repeat the figure, they fail to say how many disabled households are expected to lose out when UC is finally rolled out.

Disability News Service (DNS) first approached the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) about the failure nearly three months ago, after DWP refused to release the figures in its response to a freedom of information request.

Since that first contact, OSR has repeatedly attempt to excuse and defend ministers’ misleading use of the figures.

At first, it argued that the information used by ministers came from an “unpublished policy impact assessment” and that DWP “has confirmed that it does not have the data to provide the actual numbers impacted by the policy”.

It later suggested that as the impact assessment was “unpublished” OSR did not know “if it included any estimate of the number of disabled people who would lose out from the move to Universal Credit”.

Tomlinson told Labour MP Neil Coyle in a written answer earlier this month that “millions of people who move onto Universal Credit from legacy benefits will be better off, including around a million disabled households who will gain on average around £100 per month”.

Apparently as a result of DNS’s discussions with OSR, he referred this time to a 2011 equality impact assessment which still “stands overall”, although he said that “major changes” to UC had also been subjected to later impact assessments.

The 2011 assessment, updated in November 2011 (PDF), states that, even though many disabled households would gain under UC, “it is likely that the average change in entitlement for disabled households would in fact be closer to zero”.

This suggests – although it is likely that the figures repeatedly quoted by ministers are taken from an impact assessment that was carried out in later years – that there will be multiple winners and losers from the UC rollout among disabled households, as has always been assumed by campaigners.

The 2011 document strongly suggests that ministers have repeatedly misled MPs about the impact of UC on disabled households by only quoting the winners, and ignoring the losers.

OSR also argued in its lengthy discussions with DNS that it was “outside our remit to comment on data in Impact Assessments”.

But this does not appear to be true.

Although OSR sets standards for “official statistics” – which do not cover impact assessments – it also oversees voluntary application of its code of practice, which is for “any producer of data, statistics and analysis which are not official statistics”.

This should mean that it is within its remit to criticise DWP over the use of data from impact assessments by ministers.

DNS has now asked OSR 12 times if it will criticise DWP over its misleading use of figures relating to disabled people and the rollout of UC.

By noon today (Thursday), it had failed to do so.

A DWP spokesperson declined to answer questions about the figures, and he advised DNS to submit another freedom of information request.

22 October 2020

 

 

DWP blunder sees claimants told their benefit overpayment debt has been written off

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has had to send out a panicked message to staff after its IT system mistakenly ordered benefit overpayments owed by thousands of claimants to the government to be written off.

Last month, following a COVID-related suspension, DWP told staff they could again begin bids to reclaim overpayments of benefits – whether through DWP or claimant error, or fraud – from disabled and non-disabled claimants.

The blunder appears to involve claimants who have been overpaid new style employment and support allowance (ESA) and new style jobseeker’s allowance (JSA)*, but it could possibly also involve universal credit.

The process of recovering benefit overpayments had been on hold since April because of the coronavirus pandemic, partly to allow debt recovery staff to be redeployed to frontline roles.

The process of recovering overpayments resumed in July, although apparently only since late last month has DWP been able to make new referrals through its IT system for overpayments to be recovered from claimants of new style ESA and JSA.

But late last week, every member of staff in DWP’s working age benefits section received a panicked internal email telling them they needed to “urgently pause” further referrals for overpayments of “new style” benefits.

The email said this was because “recoverable overpayments” were being “incorrectly scheduled for write-off rather than being referred through to debt management for recovery”.

The email also said it was not known when the problem would be fixed, although “digital colleagues” were looking at the issue “as a priority”.

It is not clear yet how many people have been affected, and what will happen to those mistakenly told their DWP debt has been wiped.

DWP declined to answer a series of questions about the blunder from Disability News Service (DNS) this week.

DNS had asked whether the repayments related solely to those who had been overpaid new style ESA and new style JSA.

But a DWP spokesperson suggested that it could also apply to some overpayments of universal credit.

He said: “Overpayments of Universal Credit, new-style JSA and new-style ESA that are in excess of entitlement are recoverable.”

But he declined to say how many claimants had mistakenly been told their overpayments had been written off; whether these overpayments would now be reinstated; and how much the department had mistakenly written off.

DWP has also made clear that any overpayments above a claimant’s benefit entitlement are recoverable by the department, even when the claimant was not at fault.

*New style ESA and new style JSA are contributory benefits for those credited with sufficient national insurance contributions, and they can be claimed on their own or at the same time as universal credit

22 October 2020

 

 

Victims of inpatient restraint and seclusion describe ‘inhumane’ care

Autistic people have told the care regulator about the “undignified and inhumane” care they have been subjected to in mental health units, including the frequent and traumatising use of segregation and restraint in England.

They spoke to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as part of its government-commissioned review into the use of restraint, seclusion and segregation for autistic people and people with learning difficulties and mental health conditions.

In the report, Out of Sight – Who Cares?, CQC says it found “too many examples of undignified and inhumane care, in hospital and care settings where people were seen not as individuals but as a condition or a collection of negative behaviours”.

The response to this was often to “restrain, seclude or segregate them”.

The review calls for “fundamental change in the way care is planned, funded, delivered and monitored”, so it is “underpinned by a firm foundation of human rights”, and restraint, seclusion and segregation “are no longer accepted and are only used in extreme cases”.

Many of those subject to restraint described to CQC its “lasting and traumatising effects”, with one saying: “I feel absolutely f***ing sh*t about being restrained.

“It makes me feel …dehumanised. I don’t feel like a real human being.”

Another said: “It feels like my freedom has been taken away and I am powerless.”

One of the autistic people the review spoke to – Alexis – described how she sought help from mental health services because of a lack of appropriate community care.

During an initial 72-hour admission to hospital, she experienced a “catastrophic clash” between her autism and the lighting, noise and chaos of the “box” she was kept in, and quickly became “overloaded”.

In the following months, she was restrained 97 times and secluded 17 times, was forcibly drugged, and her body was left “battered and bruised”, and her identity “fractured”.

She told the review: “They didn’t like the autistic part of me. I tried to tell them that autism is all of me, it’s who I am.

“I argued that my autism couldn’t be treated. They said I lacked insight.”

After three-and-a-half years, she was eventually able to flee to Africa where she created a new routine and set up an autism-friendly home, weaned herself off the drugs she was taking, received private treatment from a psychologist, and, after six weeks, started to work as a teacher again.

The key to success, she told the review, “is creating the right environment and treating psychological differences with dignity and respect”.

The review found that 81 per cent of 313 wards for children and young people, people with learning difficulties and autistic people, had used physical restraint in the last month.

The review also found widespread use of medicines as “chemical restraint” to control people’s behaviour.

It found so-called “rapid tranquilisation” used in a third of wards for children and young people and people with learning difficulties and autistic people in the previous month, even though the practice has “significant side effects and should only be used as a last resort”.

The review looked in detail at 66 people who were subject to prolonged seclusion (which tends to be shorter-term) or long-term segregation (used to isolate someone away from the main ward for a longer period).

Out of those 66, the review found evidence that just three people received “consistently good quality care and treatment”.

Some of the people it came across had spent up to 13 years in long-term segregation.

Almost 71 per cent of people whose care was reviewed had been segregated or secluded for three months or longer, and some people had been in hospital for more than 25 years, although it was not clear whether they had been in segregation or seclusion for even longer than 13 years.

Most of the people CQC saw were autistic or had learning difficulties, although some had a diagnosis of mental distress.

Overall, the review concludes, people in community-based services were experiencing a better quality of life than those with “comparable complex needs” in hospital settings, and were subject to less restraint.

And many people ended up in hospital because they did not receive the support they needed in the community, the review found.

The review calls for a system of national oversight of people living in adult social care services in the community who are being subjected to “highly restrictive environments”.

Of the people seen by CQC during its review, 60 per cent had been prevented from securing a discharge from a hospital because of a lack of suitable care in the community.

The review makes 17 recommendations for improvements, including a demand that the commission itself improves its regulatory approach, such as increasing the number of unannounced and evening and weekend inspections.

It also says that disabled service-users, their families and advocates must be involved in the development of services and care plans.

The review concludes: “Immediate action is needed to put an end to the abuses in human rights that we have seen throughout this review.

“This action must be owned and led from the top by government, delivered by local systems working together, and involve people and their families to ensure the needs of the individual are met.”

The review also commissioned a group of “experts by experience” – three parents of autistic people and an autistic person, who also acted as the review’s expert advisory group – to analyse the conclusions of previous reports dating back more than a decade on health and social care for autistic people and people with learning difficulties.

They found that their meetings throughout the review with disabled people, parents, carers, chief executives, psychiatrists and others “almost unanimously came up with the same ideas and themes as those identified in previous reports”.

They found a repeated failure to implement the recommendations of previous reports, which was caused by the failure of governments to ensure “adequate, fit-for-purpose” administration, funding, accountability and inspection.

They concluded: “The lack of upfront community funding seems to be the key contributory factor to the failure on the part of all involved to deliver reform.”

But they also criticised CQC for its inspection regime.

They said: “People with a learning disability and autistic people need CQC to implement an inspection framework that is fit for purpose, one that is focused on upholding people’s rights.

“Without this, human rights abuses… will not only continue, but also be inevitable.”

They said that those paid to “police” the system need to find a way to “find, manage and deal with unlawful practice”, adding: “There must be greater oversight and accountability as we presently see the clear consequences of repeated failure to take on board the recommendations of past reports.”

They said that “power must be handed back to individuals (and their families), enabling them to make choices and be the rightful authors of their own destinies.

“If this does not occur, any additional money will be wasted and make little difference to the lives of autistic people, people with a learning disability and/or people with a mental health condition.”

22 October 2020

 

 

Labour silent over why it watered down Foxcroft’s criticism of government

The Labour party has refused to explain why it watered down strong criticism of the government by its own shadow disability minister.

Last week, Disability News Service revealed that an email mistakenly sent to Disability News Service by a member of Vicky Foxcroft’s staff showed that her original draft comments attacking the government were weakened by someone within the party hierarchy.

The changes made by the party included the removal of a reference to the “vital” role played by trade unions in protecting disabled people from discrimination, while the party also removed any reference to disability discrimination from Foxcroft’s comments.

Responding to new pandemic guidance, Foxcroft had also warned that disabled people who might need to shield again needed to be “properly compensated and not left without enough money to survive”, but that call had vanished by the time her draft comments had been amended and approved.

After the story was published, there was widespread concern expressed about the party’s actions on social media.

Steve Paget, president of disAbility Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, said: “What hope do disabled people have, when the opposition water down criticism of prejudice policies that fail to adequately address the myriad of issues disabled people face?”

One autistic campaigner, who tweets at @leoniedelt, said: “This is why I quit @UKLabour – they sure as hell have NOT represented disabled people for the last seven months.”

Another disabled campaigner, who tweets at @Richievilla, said: “Labour seem to think that being slightly less nasty and vindictive than the Tories will mean disabled people will vote for them.

“That isn’t enough for me. They lost my vote last year after I was subjected to ignorance and hostility from my local Labour for daring to challenge them.”

Anita Bellows, a researcher with Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “I am not sure why it was watered, whether there was an intent behind this, or whether somebody along the line thought it was too strong.

“It just shows that disabled people still have a fight on their hands, even within the Labour party.”

A disability rights campaigner who tweets at @mettlesometeri added: “This is extremely concerning.

“Disabled people have endured the biggest cuts to benefits and support leading to thousands of deaths. This is utterly grotesque.”

This week, DNS asked Labour why the comments had been weakened, and who in the party made the decision to water them down.

DNS also asked if Foxcroft’s comments had been regularly weakened by the party since she became shadow minister for disabled people after last December’s general election.

The party ignored the questions before eventually confirming that it had “no further comment to make” following comments made last week by the member of Foxcroft’s staff who mistakenly sent the email.

It also declined to explain how the party justified weakening Foxcroft’s comments.

22 October 2020

 

 

Silence from police chiefs over ‘very worrying’ hate crime failure

Police chiefs have refused to explain why the number of cases of disability hate crime being passed to prosecutors has fallen for the fifth year in a row.

It is the second year running that the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) has refused to provide any explanation for why police forces are passing significantly fewer cases to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The number of disability hate crime cases referred to prosecutors by police forces for a decision on whether to charge the alleged offender fell by 13 per cent to just 320 cases in 2019-20, and it is now only about a third of the level it was in 2014-15 (924 cases).

Last week, CPS suggested that the continuing police failure on disability hate crime was the key reason why prosecutions of such cases had fallen from 19 per cent in 2016-17 (1,009 prosecutions and 5,254 recorded offences) to just four per cent (360 prosecutions and 8,469 recorded offences) in just three years.

The Home Office has also refused to offer any explanation for the fall, or to say if it was due to a fall in police numbers, or even if it was concerned about the issue.

This week, an NPCC spokesperson refused to answer questions about the figures, other than cutting and pasting answers his office had produced in response to completely different hate crime figures obtained by a charity earlier this month.

Asked if the falling numbers of police referrals was a concern, the NPCC said that “statistics can also represent real rises in hate crime, which do concern us”.

But NPCC did say that it had agreed to “undertake a national audit to help identify any issues that need attention”, which appears to include the drop in referrals.

Disabled members of the Disability Hate Crime Network this week expressed alarm at the police failings.

Sue Groves, chair of Medway Independent Police Advisory Group and an independent critical incident advisor to Kent Police, said the drop in police referrals to CPS was “very worrying and will only serve to increase the concerns victims of disability hate crime have around reporting incidents to the police that they will receive an appropriate response”.

She said she had spoken directly to senior officers about the impact of disability hate crime on disabled people “and how their response can be critical to the outcome of the case”.

Groves was herself a victim of a disability hate crime, in London, and the four-week delay before it was investigated as a hate crime – after originally being told by the Metropolitan police that it was “just an on-street altercation” – meant any CCTV evidence was no longer available and the investigation failed to progress.

She said: “I have been able to use this experience to feed into improvements within Kent Police, but others are not so fortunate, and thus there is a desperate need for a concerted national push to ensure all disability hate crime reports are correctly flagged from the outset, processed timeously, being mindful of the very limited time window for evidence gathering… and early referral to CPS to ensure that there is sufficient time built in to carry through to prosecution.”

Stephen Brookes, a former adviser to the CPS and police on disability hate crime, said the “police response right now tends to be that they have not the resources to deal with certain types of crime.

“However, at a time with COVID driving a substantial hate agenda particularly in terms of peer to peer abuse, they should be taking far more notice of disability hate crime.”

David Wilkin, a coordinator of the network and author of a book on disability hate crime on public transport, said there was an “urgent need to speak out”.

He said: “We need real world accounts to bring realistic action and make the authorities buck up their ideas.”

Another disabled network member, David Gillon, said he was particularly concerned by reports that some officers were removing the “tags” or markers that show that offences should be treated as disability hate crimes, which he said not only affects those cases but also “potentially distorts the statistics about how common this is, and the margin of police failure”.

22 October 2020

 

 

Round-up: David Toole tributes, COVID rights, DPAC’s video call… and a new EHRC chair

Tributes have been paid across the disability arts community following the death of disabled dancer and actor David Toole, a founder member of Candoco Dance Company.

Among his career highlights were a solo performance at the opening ceremony of the London Paralympics in 2012, and work with companies including Graeae, the Royal Shakespeare Company, DV8, Slung Low and Stopgap Dance Company.

He also appeared in films including Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson.

Candoco’s artistic director Charlotte Darbyshire said Toole was a close friend but also “an exceptional dancer whose outstanding presence and performance changed the dance world”.

Jenny Sealey, artistic director of Graeae Theatre Company and co-artistic director of the London 2012 Paralympics opening ceremony, said: “Dave was so many things, our darling wonderful, grumpy, opinionated, glorious, silly, funny, kind, sexy, loving, and wise friend.

“The most unique and left-field man ever and funny beyond words.

“And of course, an extraordinary performer and a unique brilliant dancer. But above all, to all of us in Graeae, he was a dear friend and a cherished collaborator.”

Alan Lane, a friend of Toole and artistic director of Slung Low theatre company, said: “We are all so sad to hear of Dave Toole’s passing.

“It was such a privilege to make so many adventures with him. He had an extraordinary talent; he was a brilliant actor and the very finest dancer we’ve ever seen.”

The International Paralympic Committee also expressed its condolences and said it remembered his performance at the London 2012 Paralympics “with great fondness”.

Toole was awarded an OBE for services to dance and disabled people last year.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) has launched a new video project that will celebrate the lives and achievements of disabled people during the coronavirus crisis.

DPAC wants disabled people to send videos of between two and four minutes that show what they achieved during the seven months of the pandemic.

The videos could show artistic creations, support that was provided to other people, something that was cooked or grown, reports of campaigns or activism, or even legal actions or journalism.

From Relaxation to Resistance – a Celebration of our Lives in Lockdown will be used for DPAC’s Disability Pride event on the International Day of Disabled People on 3 December.

Videos can be sent to DPAC by email at mail@dpac.uk.net.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is “magnifying inequalities” across the health and social care systems and “risks turning fault lines into chasms”.

In The State of Health Care and Adult Social Care in England 2019-20, the regulator also warned that the proportion of mental health services for autistic people and people with learning difficulties that were rated as inadequate had risen from four per cent to 13 per cent.

It said this rise was almost all due to “deterioration” in independent services, rather than those in the NHS.

It described the social care sector as “fragile” because of the failure to produce a long-term funding solution, and said that this “long-standing need for reform, investment and workforce planning in adult social care has been thrown into stark relief by the pandemic”.

Because CQC suspended routine inspections in March 2020, due to the pandemic, the ratings examine services up to 31 March 2020, but are compared with the previous year’s figures up to 31 July 2019.

The report finds that 80 per cent of adult social care services were rated as good and five per cent as outstanding (a slight improvement on 31 July 2019, when 80 per cent were rated good and four per cent outstanding).

The inequality experienced by disabled people risks becoming further entrenched because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to new analysis by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

In its report, How Coronavirus Has Affected Equality and Human Rights, the commission concludes that “hard-won equality and human rights are at risk of going backwards” for disabled people and other protected groups, including ethnic minority groups and older people.

The report warns that disabled people are likely to have been negatively and disproportionately impacted across employment, poverty, education, social care, justice and personal security.

It says the impact of the pandemic “is already falling disproportionately on groups in society who were already in or close to poverty”, while the economic impact on disabled people and other groups has been “unequal” and is “widening and entrenching existing inequalities”.

It also warns of the concerning rise in domestic abuse during lockdown, which had a “likely disproportionate impact on women, particularly younger women, women from some ethnic minorities and disabled women”.

A new report has highlighted how disabled people across England and Wales have experienced repeated breaches of their rights and cuts to their access to advocacy during the pandemic.

Three-quarters of the 435 independent advocates who took part in the survey the Valuing Voices report is based on said the human rights of the disabled people they supported were not fully upheld during the initial three-month lockdown that began in March.

Almost half (47 per cent) saw blanket restrictions used to confine care home residents to their rooms or prevent them going outside.

Nearly a third (31 per cent) said they had seen “do not attempt cardio-pulmonary resuscitation notices” unlawfully applied to groups of care home residents or other people without the necessary consultation with the individuals or their families.

And 20 per cent had witnessed unlawful blanket decisions to withhold medication and treatment from groups of care home residents if they became ill.

Some advocates encountered council staff who believed they were covered by the controversial Care Act “easements” and so did not have to meet their usual legal duties, even though their council had not asked for the easements to be put in place in their area.

The report says: “This meant people were not getting assessed as they were entitled to or supported as they should be and for some people has had a severe impact on their health, wellbeing and safety.”

More than a quarter of the advocates said that providers such as hospitals had tried to prevent patients or service-users from speaking to advocates, while nearly half (48 per cent) had been unable to meet with some of their clients.

The report also says there was a significant fall in the number of referrals to advocacy services during the spring.

The survey was carried out by independent advocacy organisations including the user-led, Cumbria-based organisation People First, with support from the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi).

The government has selected a former Liberal Democrat executive as its preferred candidate to chair the Equality and Human Rights Commission, replacing David Isaac.

Baroness [Kishwer] Falkner is a crossbench peer but previously represented the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords for 15 years, before a brief spell as a non-affiliated peer.

Before entering the House of Lords, she worked for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons and its party headquarters, including a spell as director of international affairs and policy.

She also worked at the Commonwealth Secretariat and as chief executive of Student Partnerships Worldwide, and was a member of parliament’s joint committee on human rights (JCHR) from 2004 to 2010.

Liz Truss, minister for women and equalities, said: “Baroness Falkner’s experience and commitment to equality means she’s an excellent candidate to take forward the important work of the EHRC.”

Baroness Falkner will appear before a joint “scrutiny” meeting of the women and equalities committee and JCHR next month before her appointment is confirmed.

22 October 2020

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 19:17
Oct 152020
 

 Campaigner on hunger strike over care package ‘shows need for reform of abusive system’

A disabled campaigner is on hunger strike in response to the failure of his local authority and the NHS to provide him with the support package he needs to “just live as a human being”.

Jimmy Telesford said his experience in Lambeth, south London, had convinced him of the need for major reform of the “abusive” and “outrageous” social care system.

He called for a new system that gives disabled people “complete control” over their support.

Telesford ate nothing between 2 October and Monday (12 October) this week and was drinking only diet 7-UP to keep himself hydrated.

He was admitted to St Thomas’s on Monday on the advice of his doctor, and agreed to take on food and fluids.

But he was discharged from hospital later the same day and restarted his hunger strike when he returned home.

He had earlier spoken to Disability News Service (DNS) from his bed at home and said that he had “nothing to lose” and was “prepared to die” unless Labour-run Lambeth council or the local NHS clinical commissioning group (through NHS continuing healthcare) provided him with the support he needed.

Telesford, who was working as an advocacy worker with a disability organisation until June, said: “I don’t want to die but I will if I cannot get the independent living support I need to live as a disabled powered wheelchair-user.

“My key concern is that I am not getting enough support. It doesn’t meet my needs and it never has. I don’t really want to carry on the way I am.

“The fact that I have to [go on hunger strike] just shows how difficult things are. I have to be prepared for the idea that I am going to die.”

He currently receives between 24 and 28 hours a week of support from Lambeth council, but believes he needs support throughout the day to ensure he can have a normal life.

He is also angry about the quality of the support he receives, and has lodged complaints about the care agency that currently provides that support.

He said: “The quality of life that you’re expected to have as a disabled person from a social services point of view is disgusting. You wouldn’t treat a dog like that.

“Even if I have another assessment, it’s not based on my needs, it’s based on what they are willing to give. It’s just care needs, and that’s it.

“Life is about a lot more than having a shower.”

He added: “We are the fifth richest country in the world. Nobody really understands what it is like to live as a disabled person in the trenches. It does your head in.

“Why can’t disabled people have complete control?”

He was given another assessment by the council after returning from hospital this week.

But he said: “They just want to fill out a form, tick a box and move on. It’s not acceptable.

“I honestly don’t think they care. I don’t think [social services] see disabled people as people.”

He had earlier warned the council not to be “under any illusion”.

He told the council: “I will go through this process 1,000 times if I have to as long as I have breath in my body I will fight Lambeth social services and their partners. Until I get what I need. Or die trying.”

He said he hoped that if he did die, it would show that “not everybody is willing to live under the oppression of the status quo”.

Inclusion London, the pan-London disabled people’s organisation, said: “We stand in solidarity with Jimmy and salute his determination to fight for the rights of disabled people. We hope he recovers soon.

“Although local authorities are in a difficult position, they still make political choices about how to prioritise their resources.

“We urge Lambeth Council to see the devastating consequences of its decisions and actions and ensure its disabled residents, including Jimmy, get appropriate social care support to live a normal life.

“Many disabled people all over the country will relate to Jimmy’s situation. The current social care system is not helping us live a good quality life.

“It is oppressive and often humiliating with many disabled people’s lives reduced to just being clean and fed.

“With a decade of budget cuts and increased demand combined with the laws that place all power in the local authorities’ hands without real and effective means to challenge, it is shocking, but not surprising, that people have to use such extreme actions to fight for their basic human rights.

“This is why we are calling for a reform of social care support; it must be based on our right to independent living and it must give disabled people true power, control and resources to live a normal life.”

A Lambeth Council spokesperson said: “Lambeth Council has worked to support Mr Telesford over an extended period of time, and we are both alarmed and concerned at the current situation.

“We are listening, and given the breadth of his concerns have offered Mr Telesford an opportunity to discuss and urgently review his services.

“Lambeth Council is determined to provide excellent quality adult services to all that need them in the borough, and remain fully committed to that pledge.”

A spokesperson for NHS South East London Clinical Commissioning Group said: “The CCG is very sorry to hear of Mr Telesford’s situation.

“His appeal against the outcome of his NHS continuing healthcare (CHC) assessment, which was made earlier in the year, unfortunately was delayed in line with national guidance issued at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when health and care resources were refocussed on combatting the threat to people’s health posed by the virus.

“Across the country, work is now getting underway to address those waiting for CHC assessments, including where appeals have been lodged against previous decisions.

“Locally here in south-east London, that work is now starting and Mr Telesford’s appeal will be reviewed as soon as is possible.

“We are aware that Lambeth Council’s adult social care team remains in contact with Mr Telesford and is offering him ongoing support.”

15 October 2020

 

 

Labour waters down criticism of government by its own shadow disability minister

Powerful criticism of the government’s performance on COVID-19 and disability employment by Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people was significantly watered down by her own party, Disability News Service (DNS) can reveal.

An email mistakenly sent to DNS yesterday (Wednesday) by a member of Vicky Foxcroft’s staff shows that her original draft comments attacking the government were weakened by someone within the party hierarchy.

The changes made by the party include the removal of a reference to the “vital” role played by trade unions in protecting disabled people from discrimination.

The party also removed any reference to disability discrimination from Foxcroft’s comments.

The comments had been requested by DNS in response to three stories: new research which casts doubt on the government’s much-vaunted progress in reducing the disability employment gap; further research which warns of the impact of the pandemic recession on disability employment; and concerns about the government’s new COVID-19 guidance for people placed in the “clinically extremely vulnerable” group (see separate stories).

In her draft comments, seen by DNS, Foxcroft said the party had “long wondered” whether the government’s figures on reducing the disability employment gap “stand up to scrutiny” and that the research “shows this may not be the case”.

She also said it was “absolutely vital” that the government recorded disability employment data in a “transparent” and “open fashion”, and that Labour was “extremely concerned” about the government’s failings on data about disabled people.

But the eventual “official” comment made no reference to the research’s suggestion that the government’s claims to have sharply reduced the disability employment gap were based simply on a statistical quirk.

Instead she said: “We remain concerned about the lack of internal data on disabled people in work and the frequency it is collected.

“If we are to close the disability employment gap we must make sure the data captured is accurate and transparent.”

On the pandemic recession, Foxcroft called in her draft statement for the government to ensure that disabled people and those clinically vulnerable to the virus were “protected in the workplace from discrimination”, and she added: “Trade unions are an obvious vital part of this, but so is having stringent regulations that support disabled people.”

But her official statement removed any reference to discrimination and trade unions.

Instead, she called on the government to “put safeguards in place to ensure that disabled and clinically vulnerable people are protected in the workplace from disproportionate job losses” and said ministers “must urgently act to ensure disabled workers do not bear the brunt of redundancies in this jobs crisis”.

Responding to the new pandemic guidance, Foxcroft’s draft comments warned that disabled people who might need to shield again needed to be “properly compensated and not left without enough money to survive”.

She added: “People are extremely worried and government guidance has done little to alleviate this.”

But her official statement said that disabled people were just “anxious” rather than “extremely worried”.

Her call for disabled people who might need to shield again needing to be “properly compensated and not left without enough money to survive” had vanished.

Instead, she asked simply: “What support will people who are expected to shield get?”

A spokesperson for Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts said: “Given the government’s well documented grave and systemic catastrophic policies towards disabled people, we would hope opposition leadership does not soften its previous stronger condemnations and trusts the shadow minister for disabled people to speak with frankness.”

It is not clear whether Foxcroft’s staff member consulted with party headquarters before amending her comments.

But he said yesterday that the comments read by DNS “were drafts that I was free to amend” and the final version was “agreed with Vicky so those are the responses that should be used”.

15 October 2020

 

 

The truth about the government’s disability jobs ‘miracle’

The government’s repeated claims that its policies have transformed the employment prospects of disabled people over the last seven years have been challenged by academics who suggest their figures are simply the result of a statistical quirk.

Disabled activists have been left bemused for years as official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) appear to have shown disabled people becoming increasingly likely to find work in comparison with non-disabled people.

The figures continued to come despite a decade of government austerity policies and allegations of a hostile environment created by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, has repeatedly bragged that the figures show the government has slashed the disability employment gap (the difference in the proportion of disabled and non-disabled people of working-age in jobs).

In July, he said this had fallen by more than five percentage points in six years (from 33.8 percentage points to 28.6 per centage points).

But academics from Cardiff Business School – part of the Disability@Work group of researchers – have now shown that these figures appear to simply reflect an increase in the number of people reporting that they are disabled.

In a Disability@Work briefing note, Professor Victoria Wass and Professor Melanie Jones have shown that, between 2013 and 2020, an alternative indicator, the proportion of people prevented from working due to disability, has remained stable.

One potential explanation for the figures repeatedly quoted by ministers over the last few years is that there has been a sharp rise in the proportion of people describing themselves as having an impairment that limits their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.

This is the indicator used by the government to measure whether someone is disabled in its employment figures, which are collected by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Between 2013 and 2020, the percentage of working-age people describing themselves this way rose from 16.5 per cent to 19.7 per cent.

Wass and Jones believe this increase is because increased public awareness and acceptance have led more people to “recognise and acknowledge that they have a health condition and/or that it is limiting”.

They say this change in the “disability prevalence” rate is particularly relevant to those with mental health conditions.

Their research has been passed to DWP for “welcome discussion” on how to interpret these findings.

Their conclusions are given further weight by a 2015 RNIB study which showed that the proportion of people who were registered as blind and partially-sighted and had jobs fell by 21 per cent between 2005 and 2015, whereas, using the ONS definition, the employment rate for those with visual impairments rose by 23 per cent between 2005 and 2012.

Once the increase in the rate of people describing themselves as having an activity-limiting impairment is taken out of the ONS figures, they show that the prevalence-corrected disability employment gap actually rose slightly between 2013 and 2020, while it fell significantly under the last Labour government, between 1998 and 2009.

The authors conclude: “The prevalence-corrected measure suggests all the narrowing in the [disability employment gap] from 2010 is accounted for by the expansion in disability prevalence and not by any reduction in underlying disability employment disadvantage.”

They urge the government to enhance data collection on disability prevalence so that it can explore these findings.

They also point to government research (PDF, see pages 10-12) which suggests that the increase in the number of disabled people in employment – which Tomlinson says reached 1.4 million between 2014 and 2020 – was due not simply to a narrowing of the disability employment gap, but also to a steady increase in the working-age population, an increase in disability prevalence, and a rise in the overall employment rate.

Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said: “We remain concerned about the lack of internal data on disabled people in work and the frequency it is collected.

“If we are to close the disability employment gap we must make sure the data captured is accurate and transparent.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “Before this pandemic the number of disabled people in work had increased to over four million and as we begin to rebuild, our continued support for disabled people will not be diminished.

“Through our Plan for Jobs and tailored schemes like Access to Work we will continue to support disabled people to find, retain and remain in work to help unlock their full potential.”

15 October 2020

 

 

Deaf campaigner sues government and Labour over lack of BSL at COVID briefings

A Deaf campaigner is set to take legal action against both the government and the Labour party after they both failed to provide British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters at televised coronavirus briefings this week.

Katie Rowley, who is pregnant, said it was “terrifying” to be unable to follow the information provided at the coronavirus briefings, particularly those on health-related issues.

The Labour party member, from Leeds, is supporting an existing legal action being taken by Deaf campaigners against the government over its “callous and heartless” refusal to provide BSL interpreters at its coronavirus TV briefings.

That legal action is spearheaded by Lynn Stewart-Taylor, founder of the #WhereIsTheInterpreter campaign, who with fellow Deaf activist Mark Hodgson is set to reach Downing Street tomorrow (Friday) after walking from Gloucester to London in a bid to “shame” the government into providing interpreters alongside ministers and health experts at the briefings.

They are also raising funds for a judicial review of the government’s refusal, which they say has breached the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act and the UN disability convention.

Now Rowley, while backing their legal action, is also taking two legal cases of her own.

One of those relates to the failure to provide a BSL interpreter at two televised briefings with health experts at 10 Downing Street, on Monday (12 October), which focused on how the NHS was preparing for the next phase of the pandemic, and on 21 September.

Monday’s briefing was attended by three health experts, including Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer, and Professor Stephen Powis, medical director of NHS England.

The government has previously defended itself by arguing that BSL-users can now follow its televised briefings by watching the interpreter provided by the BBC News digital channel, but Rowley says that service was not available for either of the briefings so there was no way she could understand the information provided.

Her second case is against her own party for failing to provide an interpreter for a televised COVID-19 briefing given by Labour leader Keir Starmer on Tuesday.

Leeds is currently at the second highest local coronavirus alert level, with fears that it could soon be placed into the highest level.

Rowley, who is also visually-impaired, and struggles to understand written English, told Disability News Service: “As a Deaf BSL-user I feel at disadvantage to what’s going on.

“I have health issues and am pregnant. I need access to an interpreter to be able to protect not only myself but my unborn baby.”

She said it was “terrifying for any mum” to be without access to the information she needs to “make the appropriate decisions”.

She added: “Without access to the information, how can I make decisions which not only affect me, but my unborn baby and those around me?”

Her solicitor, Chris Fry, of Fry Law, yesterday (Wednesday) sent a letter to Labour party headquarters, seeking compensation for disability discrimination under the Equality Act, as well as a written apology and a promise to provide an interpreter for future live briefings.

A similar letter will to be sent to the government relating to its failure to provide an interpreter at the briefings on 21 September and 12 October.

In the letter to the Labour party, Fry says that Rowley watched the Starmer briefing hoping to find out about his COVID-19 policies and hoping he would “demonstrate his commitment to the Deaf Community by leading by example, embarrassing the Government and ensuring that his Briefing was accessible” by providing a BSL interpreter.

The letter adds: “However, and much to Ms Rowley’s dismay, the Briefing had no BSL Interpreter.

“She could not follow any of the content. As a result of the inaccessibility of the briefing for our client, she was left feeling excluded from her own political party, she felt insignificant and irrelevant and isolated.”

The party said more than a month ago that it planned to begin its own regular media briefings – which it wanted to be televised – but it has so far refused to apologise for the failure to provide an interpreter on Tuesday, arguing that the event was only set up at short notice.

A Labour spokesperson said: “Yesterday’s press conference was organised with only a few hours’ notice. We did try to get a BSL interpreter.

“However, unfortunately this was not possible at short notice. The Labour Party is committed to introducing a BSL interpreter at future news events and we have already spoken to Vicky Foxcroft [the shadow minister for disabled people] about taking this forward.”

The Cabinet Office refused to comment on the failure to provide a BSL interpreter for Monday’s televised NHS briefing, with a spokesperson pointing instead to a comment made last week, which related to briefings where there was an interpreter provided by the BBC News channel.

He said: “At this stage we have nothing further to add.”

15 October 2020

 

 

Disability hate crime prosecutions plummet, while Home Office stays silent

The number of cases of disability hate crime prosecuted in court has plunged by nearly 40 per cent in just one year, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) figures have revealed.

The fall appears to be the result of a steep fall in the number of cases referred to prosecutors by police forces, with one leading disabled campaigner saying the figures showed the police “failing disabled people yet again”.

It is the third year in a row that the number of disability hate crime prosecutions has fallen steeply and the figures have caused alarm among disabled campaigners.

The fall, from 579 prosecutions in 2018-19 to just 360 in 2019-20, comes as new Home Office figures show that the number of disability hate crimes recorded by police forces in England and Wales has continued to climb.

It means that the number of prosecutions as a percentage of the number of recorded disability hate crime offences has fallen from 19 per cent in 2016-17 (1,009 prosecutions and 5,254 recorded offences) to just four per cent (360 prosecutions and 8,469 recorded offences) in just three years.

The CPS report also shows that there were just 292 convictions for disability hate crime in 2019-20.

CPS has passed figures to Disability News Service (DNS) showing that the number of disability hate crime cases referred to prosecutors by police forces for a decision on whether to charge the alleged offender has fallen every year for the last five years.

In 2014-15, there were 924 cases passed on by the police, but this had fallen to 367 by 2018-19 and fell again to 320 in 2019-20.

CPS is continuing to offer support to the National Police Chiefs Council in its efforts to “understand” the fall.

A CPS spokesperson said: “If a disability hate crime case meets our legal test we will always seek to prosecute, however, we are demand-led and can only prosecute cases referred to us by the police.”

He said the continuing falls in referrals since 2014-15 “has had an impact on our prosecution figures”.

He said: “Despite this, last year we secured 292 convictions out of 360 disability hate crime prosecutions.

“We would urge any victims of these sickening offences to come forward and report.

“CPS areas have been encouraged to offer support to local police forces to improve understanding of this fall in receipts.”

One positive figure in the CPS report was that its conviction rate for disability hate crime offences rose from 72.4 per cent in 2018-19 to 81.1 per cent last year.

Anne Novis, chair of Inclusion London, a leading expert on disability hate crime and an adviser to the Metropolitan police and the CPS on hate crime, said the figures showed police services across England and Wales “failing disabled people yet again” and “allowing perpetrators to get away with harassment, abuse, hostility and worse”.

She said forces were failing to continue successful projects on disability hate crime that had been “initiated more often than not by disabled people”.

She added: “If we try to report, we have to deal with officers with little training and awareness of disability hate crime, often having to tell them what our rights are, what disability hate crime is.”

Novis also said that police officers were removing markers from reports which showed that offences should be treated as disability hate crimes.

She said this leads to poor investigations, offences being treated only as “anti-social behaviour” and then a lack of evidence that a hate crime has been committed when police reports are passed to CPS.

New figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) were also released by the Home Office this week (see appendix table seven).

But although they suggested that actual disability hate crimes experienced by disabled people (rather than those reported to the police) had remained roughly stable when comparing the period 2015-16 to 2017-18 with the period 2017-18 to 2019-20, the Home Office made it clear that the two sets of data could not be compared because of a change in methodology.

David Wilkin, a coordinator of the Disability Hate Crime Network and author of a book on disability hate crime on public transport, said: “Whilst data from the victim and perceptions survey (the CSEW) do not offer clarity regarding disability hate crime it is again obvious from police recorded incidents that hate crime is on a continuously rising trend.

“As these are seemingly not being passed on to the CPS for threshold and public interest tests and ultimately prosecution, the police are therefore evidently sitting on these cases.”

Last year, a CPS spokesperson told DNS that there was a “concern over the growing gap between the number of hate crimes reported to the police and the number of cases being sent by forces to the CPS for a charging decision”.

The Home Office refused last year to offer any explanation for the fall in cases passed to CPS by the police, or to say if this was due to a fall in police numbers, or if the Home Office was concerned by the drop.

This week, it again refused to offer any explanation for the fall, or to say if this was due to a fall in police numbers, or if the Home Office was concerned.

A statement by a Home Office spokesperson failed to mention disabled people or disability hate crime.

He said: “All forms of hate crime are completely unacceptable.

“The government takes this issue very seriously, which is why we published the hate crime action plan which has helped improve the police response to, and public awareness of, all forms of hate crime.”

15 October 2020

 

 

Coronavirus: Criticism over new ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ guidance

The government’s updated guidance for those who are “clinically extremely vulnerable” (CEV) to COVID-19 has been criticised for its lack of detail and clarity, and its failure to announce new support for those who are particularly at risk from the virus.

The new guidance for the 2.2 million CEV people in England was published by the UK government this week as the number of new infections continues to rise across large parts of the country.

It describes extra measures that CEV people should take, depending on which of the three coronavirus alert levels applies to their local area.

Health and social care secretary Matt Hancock said the announcement would mean “every person most at risk from serious outcomes from the virus will have specific advice targeted to local levels, which they can follow to keep themselves as safe as possible, while ensuring they can also keep as much normality in their lives as possible”.

But the guidance is “less restrictive than previous shielding advice” and it says the government will, in the future, “only reintroduce formal shielding advice in the very worst affected local areas and for a limited period of time”.

It does not suggest – yet – that anyone in the CEV group adopts “formal shielding” and there is not yet any extra support being offered with accessing food, arranging deliveries of medicines and providing additional care or support.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it would write to CEV people in the future “if they are advised to adopt formal shielding again”.

The highest of the three levels – for those living in areas with “very high” local alert levels – advises those in the CEV group to work from home, to “stay at home as much as possible, and avoid all but essential travel” and “significantly reduce shopping trips” [for detailed advice on all three levels, visit the guidance page].

But it adds: “People in these areas are encouraged to still go outside for exercise, and can still go to school and to work if they cannot work from home.”

DHSC and the NHS are writing to all those in the CEV group, and their doctors, describing the changes to the guidance. Anyone advised to shield in the future will be written to again.

But Disability Rights UK (DR UK) criticised the new guidance for offering “little in the way of support to those who previously shielded, such as food parcels or deliveries, or medicine deliveries”.

It was also critical of the failure to change the list of conditions which lead to people being placed in the CEV group, even though disability groups including DR UK advised the government in March that the list was “not comprehensive enough”.

Kamran Mallick, chief executive of DR UK, said: “It is incredible that given that two-thirds of deaths from the virus have been those with disabilities and long-term health conditions, that the government is not providing robust support and protections for those most at risk.

“Given the virus is at similar levels to March, and we are being told to expect it to rise over the winter, it is astonishing that shielders are now, effectively, being told to be more relaxed.”

He was also critical of the guidance for those in work, which says that even those in the highest-risk areas “can still go to work” if they have no alternative.

Mallick said: “The financial provisions for those who cannot work are punitive. Not all employers will make adequate provisions for their disabled workers.”

He also said the lack of ringfenced supermarket deliveries for those who need to shield “makes no practical sense” as “the impacts of coronavirus on individual lives have not changed since March”.

He added: “Individuals on the shielding list should be able to make their own choices in conjunction with their clinical professionals. But this guidance doesn’t leave much room for that.

“It’s keep calm and carry on, unless the government issues a top-down instruction to order people to stay at home. There is no personal agency in that.

“This is yet another example that the government has not yet grasped the basic concepts of the social model of disability – that people need the right support frameworks in place for them to be able to truly exercise their agency.”

Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said the guidance was “too vague”.

She said: “Once again, the government isn’t providing the assurances the 2.2 million people who have shielded in the past need.”

She said that questions remained about the support that will be available to those who are expected to shield in the future and about the CEV list and who is on it.

She said: “People are anxious; government guidance has done little to alleviate this.

“Seven months after this pandemic started, we can’t continue with this confusion – people need clear guidance.”

There was also anger over the guidance from disability and health charities, including concerns that CEV people in the highest risk areas were still being advised to travel to work if they cannot work from home, and about the lack of detail.

The MS Society condemned “the lack of financial and practical support to help people follow the government’s new advice”, while Age UK and Scope were both reportedly critical of the lack of clarity in the guidance.

*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page

15 October 2020

 

 

Funding provides opportunity to build evidence of national DPO crisis

New research will seek crucial evidence of the “serious crisis” facing disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) across England.

Inclusion London has secured £80,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund to research the state of England’s “chronically under-resourced, fragmented and precarious” DPO sector.

It will produce proposals for long-term improvements to the regional and national DPO infrastructure and build a “clear picture” of the support the DPO sector needs.

The research will be used as the basis for future funding applications.

The new funding follows calls by DPOs during April’s national conference of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance – of which Inclusion London is a member – for more to be done to ensure the voices of disabled people and their user-led organisations are heard at both regional and national levels.

Inclusion London says that about a quarter of DPOs have closed since 2015, while many others are “hanging on by a thread”.

It says that life for disabled people “is getting worse not better”, with “exclusion and discrimination coupled with rising poverty and inequality as a result of austerity, welfare reform and cuts to public services”.

As well as an austerity-driven financial crisis, it says, there are also “considerable challenges” in “developing new leaders, having our voices heard, losing contracts to organisations and charities run by non-disabled people and a lack of diversity and representation reflective of the whole disability community”.

The lack of resources means DPOs cannot carry out vital projects, such as outreach work with disabled people in institutions, developing the skills of its members, and tackling the “systematic exclusion” disabled people face.

Inclusion London warns that it is still “culturally acceptable, indeed the norm, to have non-disabled people representing us with funding disproportionally going to the large disability charities that are not run or controlled by disabled people and do not represent or even amplify our voice”.

Tracey Lazard, Inclusion London’s chief executive, told April’s conference that there was a need to “call out the charities and tell them to move over and stop taking our space”, while Mike Steel, from Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living, said the influence of the charities meant that local grassroots and community groups were excluded from decision-making.

Lazard told Disability News Service this week: “The funding from NLCF to carry out grassroots research on the capacity building, policy and voice and movement building needs of DPOs across England is critical funding that will enable us to gain in-depth insight and evidence of the needs of our sector and movement.

“We will use this evidence to collectively develop strategic funding ‘asks’ to provide the strategic long-term investment we need for our sector and then work with funders on how best they can meet our asks.

“Tackling structural inequality must become a top priority of funders and to do that funders must re-set how they work with DPOs and start prioritizing long-term, core funding support to DPOs and other grassroots community user-led organisations from all communities blighted by structural inequality.

“All of this is only possible if DPOs take part in this research.”

As part of the research, Inclusion London is asking DPOs in England to take part in a survey.

Lazard said: “We know your time is precious but this is a rare opportunity to gather the evidence we need to secure long term strategic funding so please do take part in our survey and the range of on-line focus groups taking place up and down the country.”

The new research will be carried out by disabled consultants and DPOs in the six regions of England – the north-west, the north-east, the Midlands, the east, the south-east and London, and the south-west – and is expected to be completed within nine months.

Inclusion London is working on the research with seven regional DPOs: Equality Together in Bradford; Disability Sheffield; Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People; Disability Resource Centre in Birmingham; Equal Lives in East Anglia; Spectrum Centre for Independent Living in the south-east; and West of England Centre for Inclusive Living.

15 October 2020

 

 

Tributes paid to ‘irreplaceable’ and ‘irrepressible’ Sian Vasey

Disabled activists have paid tribute this week to Sian Vasey – a much-loved, “multi-layered activist” who played a “pivotal role” in the disabled people’s movement for more than 40 years – who died last week.

A stream of messages on social media mentioned her contributions as a disabled activist, a pioneering member of the disability arts movement, a BBC producer, a writer, a campaigner on issues such as accessible transport and independent living, and as a Labour party and union activist.

Many mentioned her wit, her contribution as a role model for other disabled people, and the part she had played in protests as an activist with the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN) and Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK).

Several described her as a “warrior” as well as a friend and an inspiration to many other disabled activists.

Mandy Colleran described Vasey as “the warrior queen of the disability movement”, and “a role model, a thinker, a leader, an activist, a writer, and a great friend”, and said she was “irreplaceable”.

Another disabled campaigner who knew her well, Mary-Ellen, described her as “incredible, irrepressible”, with an “infectious smile and laugh”, and said she had “worked tirelessly for a better, more just and equal, inclusive world”.

Vasey’s activism with NDY UK often intertwined with her campaigning on independent living.

In November 2014, as NDY UK prepared for its latest protest outside the House of Lords to demonstrate opposition to a bill that sought to legalise assisted suicide, she said: “Many of us need support with our daily routine, washing, dressing, continence and going to the loo but this in no way affects our well-being, or diminishes our dignity.

“We get the help we need, but we have had to fight hard to get it.

“Those who develop terminal and disabling conditions later on in life often find it impossible to grapple with the social care system.

“It is a tragic fact that this is a primary cause of such people wanting to end their lives prematurely.”

Vasey was also a member of the pioneering Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) in the 1970s, and played a key role in setting up another pioneering disabled people’s organisation, London Disability Arts Forum.

In the late 1980s (PDF), she wrote of the importance of disability culture and of making links with other oppressed groups.

She predicted the future importance of the disability arts movement, writing: “In time we will have our own body of artistic work about or informed by the experience of being disabled in the same way as there is already much work created from the point of view of women, people from ethnic cultures and from lesbians and gay men.”

Through the arts, she wrote, disabled people can “make discoveries about what we have in common and place the emphasis on those things rather than on our differences, thus countering the traditional charitable model of Disability that has historically kept us separate from each other”.

She was later director of Ealing Centre for Independent Living (ECIL) and was awarded an OBE in 2009 for services to disabled people.

Broadcaster, campaigner and access consultant Mik Scarlet first met Vasey at the BBC in the early 1990s, where they both worked at its Disability Programmes Unit (DPU), she as a producer and he as a presenter.

He said: “Sian was so important to my career, as she guided me through developing a more rounded approach to presenting.

“She was a stickler for language, and she spent many hours helping me develop my presentation and voice-over technique.

“As I voiced over most episodes of the later series of From The Edge and Sian was the voice-over producer, we spent many hours together and became firm friends.

“She helped me learn more about disability politics and the concept of disability pride.

“After the DPU was disbanded, we remained in touch and worked together on several equality campaigns.

“I also compered the ECIL Christmas parties on many occasions, where Sian always did a turn and was the life and soul of the party, with her dry sense of humour.”

He said: “The disability movement owes so much to Sian.

“Her ability to hold her ground with people from all walks of life, especially with those with the power to make real change, led her voice to be one listened to by all.

“She played pivotal roles in many of the advances in equality we disabled people have experienced, and was a hardened campaigner right up until the end.

“Most recently we worked together through NDY UK, making sure the voices of disabled people were heard in the campaign against assisted suicide.

“I’ll miss Sian the campaigner, Sian the creative, Sian the raconteur but most I’ll miss Sian’s cheeky smile and dry, wicked sense of humour.”

Dennis Queen, another NDY UK activist, described Vasey as “an iconic disabled woman and a multi-layered activist” and said it was a time of “deep grief” for those who had known her.

She said: “From grassroots peer advocacy, to writing, protesting and sitting at the top table, Sian was at home in every environment and generated admiration in them all.

“I had the privilege of protesting with Sian on many occasions in Not Dead Yet UK and previously, the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN).

“Sian’s presence and media representation in our campaigns at NDY UK will be sorely missed.”

15 October 2020

 

 

Pandemic recession likely to have ‘disproportionate’ impact on disabled people

The recession associated with the pandemic is likely to be having a disproportionate impact on disabled employees, just as it did in the last recession, according to academics.

They have examined the impact on disabled people during the recession of 2007 to 2009, and believe it is set to be repeated during the coronavirus recession.

They believe that – just as with the last recession – disabled employees might experience a disproportionate impact through experiencing increased workloads, wage freezes, and restricted access to overtime and training.

The conclusions have come from academics from Cardiff, Warwick and Cass Business Schools – professors Nick Bacon, Kim Hoque, Victoria Wass and Melanie Jones – who form the Disability@Work group of researchers.

It is too early to assess whether there has been a disproportionate negative impact on the employment of disabled people, they say, although early research by the charity Citizens Advice, based on inquiries it has received about redundancy, suggests this could already be happening.

Their research shows that, during the last recession, disabled employees were significantly more likely than non-disabled staff to report increased workloads (36 per cent of disabled employees compared to 28 per cent of non-disabled employees), a wage freeze or cut (37 per cent compared to 32 per cent), and restricted access to paid overtime (23 per cent compared to 18 per cent) and training (15 per cent compared to 12 per cent).

They believe this led to widened disability pay gaps, and wider job satisfaction gaps.

Even allowing for the concentration of disabled people in jobs more heavily affected by the recession, their findings still held up.

They conclude, in a briefing note (PDF): “The results are therefore consistent with the argument that disabled people face unequal treatment from employers during recessions, and that organisational responses to downturns affecting employment terms and conditions form an important source of inequality at work.”

They call for both employers and the government to take action.

Among their recommendations, they say the government should monitor disability pay gaps and disability job satisfaction gaps, and that it should analyse the impact of policies such as the furlough scheme on disabled people.

And they call for the government to support self-employed disabled people, introduce mandatory reporting on disability employment for large firms, and increase funding and promotion of the Access to Work scheme.

Their research has been shared with the government’s Disability Unit, which is working on a new, much-delayed national disability strategy, which is due to be published next spring.

They also say that employers should measure how many of their staff are disabled – encouraging staff to disclose this information – and monitor the impact of changes they make to working practices as a result of the pandemic.

And they say employers should also ensure disabled staff working from home are adequately supported, and retain and support employees who are the most “clinically vulnerable” to COVID-19.

Victoria Wass and Melanie Jones, from Cardiff Business School, told Disability News Service: “Given the economic impact of COVID-19 is likely to be pronounced and more persistent than expected, it is even more critical that the government responds rapidly to our evidence.

“Otherwise there is a clear risk that disabled people, who are some of the most disadvantaged in society, will face increased absolute and relative economic disadvantage.”

Bacon and Hoque have also called repeatedly (PDF) for the government to scrap its much-criticised Disability Confident employment scheme and replace it with a new programme based on how employers actually perform on disability employment rather than the promises they make when they sign up to Disability Confident.

And they say that trade unions must be supported to do more to represent disabled workers and highlight their workplace support needs.

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “Disabled employees and those seeking work, are undoubtedly being hit hard by the recession caused by the coronavirus crisis.

“Yet we have seen two government employment programmes announced with no additional measures in place to support disabled job-seekers.

“The eligibility criteria for these schemes would stop some disabled people having access to them.

“There are no plans to ensure that new work coaches and careers advisers have disability expertise. The Access to Work scheme remains painfully slow.

“We support calls for mandatory monitoring of the numbers of disabled people in the workforce, their satisfaction levels, and the disability pay gap.

“We need to expose discrimination within the workforce and require employers to tackle it.”

Vicky Foxcroft, shadow minister for disabled people, said: “Throughout the pandemic, disabled people have felt like an afterthought.

“The government must put safeguards in place to ensure that disabled and clinically vulnerable people are protected in the workplace from disproportionate job losses.

“Ministers must urgently act to ensure disabled workers do not bear the brunt of redundancies in this jobs crisis.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “Before this pandemic the number of disabled people in work had increased to over four million and as we begin to rebuild, our continued support for disabled people will not be diminished.

“Through our Plan for Jobs and tailored schemes like Access to Work we will continue to support disabled people to find, retain and remain in work to help unlock their full potential.”

15 October 2020

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 14:29