Praise for ‘bold’ and ‘progressive’ council as it scraps care charges
Disabled people’s organisations have praised the “bold” and “progressive” actions of a local authority after it promised to become just the second council in England to abolish all charges for care and support for disabled people in their own homes.
They have called on other local authorities to follow the example of Tower Hamlets council in east London, which is run by the Aspire party, led by former Labour politician Lutfur Rahman.
In its annual budget for 2023-24 (see page 41), approved by councillors last week, the council says it will scrap all charges for community-based care and support services from April 2024.
The pan-impairment disabled people’s organisation Real, which is based in Tower Hamlets, said it was “delighted” by the decision, which was a “bold move that flies in the face of trends across the country”.
The council currently provides community-based support for more than 2,600 people, of whom nearly 1,300 have to pay a charge – with about 700 people paying less than £50 per week and about 600 more than £50 – as a contribution to the cost of their support package.
Scrapping charges is likely to cost the council more than £2.4 million a year in lost income.
Tower Hamlets was previously one of the few councils in England that did not impose care charges, but a previous administration introduced charging because of budget deficits caused by increasing government cuts to local authority funding in the post-2010 austerity years.
Real pushed to overturn that decision while also working with the council to develop a best practice guide on calculating disability-related expenditure (DRE) – the disability-related costs that should be taken into consideration when assessing how much someone can afford to pay in care charges – which helped many disabled people “reduce their charges or escape them altogether”.
Mike Smith, its outgoing chief executive, said Real had always believed it was “morally wrong, punitive and discriminatory” that disabled people should be charged for support with the “basics of getting out of bed, eating and washing”, especially when compared to free NHS care for all.
He said: “It’s effectively a tax on being disabled.
“This progressive decision ensures the cost of essential support is spread evenly across the population, rather than only billing those people who have no choice but to use the services.”
He added: “Tower Hamlets has higher than average levels of disability amongst its population, and higher than average levels of poverty.
“The current administration should be proud of this decision, and we hope other local authorities around the country follow their example.
“It’s great that this latest news means that we have returned to be a kinder, fairer and more progressive borough for disabled people.”
But Smith said Real regretted the council’s decision not to implement the move until April 2024 as there was “plenty of evidence that disabled people have been hit disproportionately by the cost-of-living crisis.
“It’s now that disabled people need this essential financial support, not in 13 months’ time.”
And he said Real was concerned that the council would continue to pursue outstanding care charge debts after April 2024.
He said: “We would urge the local authority to review each situation case-by-case and use their discretion to waive charges.”
Labour-run Hammersmith and Fulham is currently the only local authority in England not to impose charges for care and support in the home, and made that decision in 2015 following years of campaigning by disabled people, including the disabled people’s organisation Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition Against Cuts.
Helen Rowlands, a board member of Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP), which also campaigns against care charges, praised Real for its years of campaigning that have led to “this very welcome outcome”.
She said that the “pioneering” councils in Tower Hamlets and in Hammersmith and Fulham had proved that “with political imagination and strong commitment to equality, the inequity of care charging – which is a tax on disability – can be ended”.
And she called on other councils to begin working with disabled people’s organisations and disabled residents to end charging.
She said: “GMCDP continue our work in the fight for rights-based, coproduced, universally provided social care – reframed as the right to independent living in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – in our own combined authority area, and in solidarity with disabled people across England.”
Tower Hamlets council says in budget documents that the end of charging will provide “significant benefit” to residents and “a positive financial impact on personal incomes” but will also end the need for complex discussions and explanations about charging with service-users and families.
It says the move is likely to raise demand for care and support and increase the existing “significant” overspend on social care.
A spokesperson for the mayor of Tower Hamlets said: “Providing free homecare was a key manifesto commitment for mayor Lutfur Rahman and the Aspire party.
“We are delighted it has been fully provisioned as of the budget full council on 1 March, and will begin to take effect from April 2024.
“In the midst of the worst cost-of-living crisis in modern history, and after years of destructive austerity, relieving costs for Tower Hamlets residents – particularly vulnerable residents – is a top priority of this mayor and this administration.
“While we would have preferred to relieve said costs with immediate effect, we needed to follow a rigorous budget-setting process to ensure the money was properly allocated.”
The move by Tower Hamlets council comes as disabled people continue to press the Labour party nationally to support an end to care charging in its developing proposals for a National Care Service.
This week, Disability News Service reports that an influential inquiry that will feed into Labour’s policy-making process is set to rule out scrapping charges (see separate story).
9 March 2023
Concern over DWP’s ‘unacceptable’ failure to answer scores of key questions
Work and pensions ministers have refused to answer scores of questions from MPs on issues that are vital to disabled people, research by Disability News Service (DNS) has revealed.
In the last six months, ministers have repeatedly argued that they cannot answer written parliamentary questions because of the “disproportionate cost” or because the information is “not collated centrally”.
The excuses used by Tom Pursglove, the minister for disabled people, and his colleagues mean they have been able to avoid providing important – and potentially embarrassing – information about the government’s performance on social security.
It also means the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has prevented the release of information that could reveal holes in the social security safety net that is putting disabled people’s lives at risk.
Last month, employment minister Guy Opperman told Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, Vicky Foxcroft, that he could not say how many benefit claimants had declared to DWP staff their intention to attempt suicide or self-harm because the information was “not collated centrally”.
Also last month, Pursglove told Labour MP Marsha de Cordova that DWP was unable to say how many recipients of disability living allowance (DLA) had their claims ended because they failed to return their re-assessment form, as answering the question “would incur disproportionate cost”.
Last month, DNS reported on the death of Laura Winham, who had her DLA stopped in 2016 after she failed to respond to requests to apply for the new personal independence payment.
It is believed she died the following year, in November 2017, and at the time had access to just a handful of loose change. Her body was not discovered for more than three years.
Other questions DWP ministers have refused to answer include the average length of benefit sanctions, the number of work capability assessment decisions for universal credit claimants that are being overturned on appeal, and how much DWP spends on running jobcentres.
Ministers have also been unable to say how many claimants of employment and support allowance (ESA) stopped receiving ESA because they found work.
Pursglove told Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, in January that this information “could only be provided at disproportionate cost”.
Last September, Ashworth was told by the then employment minister Victoria Prentis that DWP could not say how many universal credit claimants had seen their payment reduced to nothing because of a sanction in each month of 2022 because this would “incur disproportionate cost”.
Earlier this year, Pursglove was unable to tell de Cordova how many applications were made to the Access to Work (AtW) disability employment programme, or how many AtW applications were unsuccessful.
And last November, Opperman was unable to tell Labour’s Rachael Maskell how many universal credit (UC) claimants could not update their online journals – a crucial condition of continuing to receive UC – because they did not have internet access.
Opperman told her: “The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.”
Foxcroft told DNS this week: “It is becoming increasingly obvious that there are unacceptable gaps in the data held by the DWP.
“These gaps make it incredibly difficult to understand the full impact government policy is having on disabled people.
“I raised this very issue at work and pensions questions on Monday [6 March] when I asked the minister to investigate the shocking increases in the number of PIP claims disallowed for non-return of the AR1 review form.
“A Labour government will be transparent with all data and reports to ensure we get things right.”
DNS reported last month that Pursglove had refused to investigate why the number of disabled people whose disability benefits were stopped when they failed to return the AR1 form rose by more than 450 per cent in four years, after telling her and de Cordova that DWP does “not collect information on the causation of a failure to return the AR1 review forms”.
But he told Foxcroft this week that he would “take the point away and look at it further”.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We adhere to all relevant parliamentary protocols when preparing answers to parliamentary questions, including application of the disproportionate cost limit where appropriate, and are not obliged to create new information in order to provide answers.
“Parliamentarians can raise any issues with parliamentary question performance with the procedure committee.”
9 March 2023
‘Potent’ billboard art will highlight disabled people’s ‘many costs of living’
Four “potent” and “extraordinary” works of art produced by disabled artists in response to the cost-of-living crisis are to be displayed on billboards across five British cities next week.
The Many Costs of Living exhibition offers a response to the disproportionate impact of the cost-of-living emergency on disabled people.
The exhibition, commissioned by the disabled-led organisation Shape Arts, will be shown online and on billboards in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and three locations in London, for two weeks from Monday (13 March)*.
One of the pieces, It Feels Like This, by Bella Milroy, is a list of responses to correspondence to the artist from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), written on the back of a DWP envelope.
It addresses, says Shape, “the violation of the home, the absence of privacy, the pervasive hostility of the state, and the precariousness of depending upon it to live”.
Milroy told Disability News Service today (Thursday) that she had wanted to examine how DWP envelopes can be both “covert and overt” and “how it is obvious to those who understand its meaning and unnoticed by those who see it as just another bit of post”.
She said displaying her piece on a billboard could “better reflect the way it arrives and how much space it takes up mentally and emotionally”.
Milroy said: “I wanted to play with these notions, and how even in displaying them so big, there will still be those who miss it and don’t see it for where it originally came from; the insidious quality of it remains no matter what.
“I wanted the text I wrote to speak to the ways we are often left without words, how this moment feels drenched in grief and how we are not given the space to acknowledge that.
“I hope others connect with it in their own way, and perhaps consider what grief in this moment feels like for them.”
She said DWP envelopes were “endlessly inspiring” to her creatively because of the way they “arrive in the home, and are visible to some, but invisible to others”.
She said: “If you know, you know, and when it arrives through the letterbox I always feel the sense of dread it brings with it.
“They are both really ordinary and really powerful, and I like to creatively play with the space in between those two things.
“Recently the envelopes have changed from brown to white, making them even more covert, and I have made art responding to this change in stationery too.”
The other billboards will feature Justin Piccirilli’s Eton Mess, which addresses the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, while Hanecdote (Hannah Hill) illustrates her fears about the future of the NHS in Down The Drain, and the Kirkwood Brothers examine the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on their mental health in Pressure.
The exhibition builds on conversations that came out of The Mine, by Jay Price, the winner of last year’s Adam Reynolds Award, which explored the historic and current marginalisation of disabled people.
Price said the new exhibition “takes a high impact, forceful approach”, with the four artists “creating innovative platforms to address a life-threatening subject”.
They said: “I feel inspired and empowered by their collaboration, and hopeful that their message will meet open eyes and empathetic ears – as they offer both insight and solidarity.”
Disabled artist Alison Lapper said The Many Costs of Living campaign was “an extraordinary example of the alchemy of art in action”.
She said: “Each artist has confronted the unavoidably dismal outlook we currently face with gentleness, humour, and craftsmanship typical of their work.
“As the public encounter the campaign in the wild, the potency of the works will surely have long-lasting and galvanising effects.”
Shape Arts said disabled people had been disproportionately affected by the rising costs of living, with their daily expenses “one of the most significant barriers they face”.
A Shape Arts spokesperson said: “In a time of spiralling inflation, the chaos of a crumbling welfare state and national infrastructure, and set against a backdrop of climate breakdown, this has turned into an ongoing crisis.
“The Many Costs of Living is a collective response to this emergency.”
*They will be shown outside Finsbury Park station, Clapham Junction station, and Peckham Rye station, in London; in Fitzwilliam Street, Sheffield; Candleriggs, Glasgow; Whitworth Street, Manchester; and Parr Street, Liverpool
9 March 2023
Government’s SEND plan is ‘wholly insufficient’ and ‘an all-round failure’
The government’s new plans for improving education for disabled children and young people have been described as “wholly insufficient” and an “all-round failure” by disabled people’s organisations.
Alongside the long-awaited improvement plan, ministers have announced another “tranche” of new special schools across England, with 33 local authorities given permission last week to open a new special free school in their area, in addition to 49 special free schools that are “in the pipeline” and 92 that have already opened.
A Commons debate this week on the new Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision* Improvement Plan featured a string of MPs welcoming the announcement of new special schools in their constituencies.
But in an initial response to the improvement plan for England, while it prepares a detailed report, The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) said it was “very disappointed” with the government’s plans.
It criticised the “all-round failure” to address the concerns ALLFIE raised in its response to the government’s review of the Children and Families Act, originally announced in September 2019.
The government’s improvement plan highlights how flaws in the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system are leading to children and young people’s needs being identified “late or incorrectly, with needs escalating and becoming more entrenched”.
This is leading to “low confidence in the ability of mainstream settings to effectively meet the needs of children and young people with SEND”.
As a result, families and providers “feel they need to secure EHCPs [education, health and care plans] and, in some cases, specialist provision as a means of guaranteeing support”.
This pulls resources “to the specialist end of the system”, meaning there is less funding for “early intervention and effective, timely support in mainstream settings”, which means “the vicious cycle continues”.
The improvement plan promises new national standards for the SEND and alternative provision system which the government says will place “a greater emphasis on the important role” played by mainstream settings in meeting the needs of “the majority of pupils with SEND”.
Ministers hope these national standards will lead to improved early identification of the needs of disabled children and young people and will “set out clear expectations for the types of support that should be ordinarily available in mainstream settings”.
They believe these “expectations” and improved mainstream provision will mean fewer families will feel they need to access support through an EHCP and often a special school placement.
The plan says there is evidence “that greater inclusion in mainstream settings can improve the academic achievement for children and young people with SEND and has neutral or small positive effects on the outcomes of those without SEND”.
It says: “A whole-setting inclusive ethos improves the sense of belonging for those with SEND and has been found to increase acceptance of difference amongst peers.”
And it adds: “We have heard that lessons must be learned from the past to prevent unintended consequences, such as a drift away from inclusion in mainstream education and over-emphasis on securing an EHCP in order to access support in the future.”
These comments appear to be the latest sign of a retreat from the policies of the 2010 Conservative-led coalition (PDF), which pledged to “end the bias” towards including disabled children in mainstream schools.
The improvement plan also says the government wants to see more children with SEN and in alternative provision reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths at the end of primary education, and achieving improved GCSE grades in English language and maths.
And it wants to see mainstream settings that are seen as “high-quality and inclusive, valuing those with SEND”.
The improvement plan says the SEND system has become “financially unsustainable”, with an increase in government “high needs” spending of more than 50 per cent between 2019-20 and 2023-24 leading to “no marked improvement in outcomes or experiences”.
Among its pledges are to pilot examining how to ensure there can be flexibilities to the standard English and maths requirements for apprenticeships; to improve the supported internships programme; to invest £18 million in doubling the capacity of the supported internships programme; and to improve the disabled students’ allowance process.
There will also be a “nationally consistent” EHCP process which “makes greater use of digital technology”, which should “reduce bureaucracy in the system”.
The improvement plan says the “vast majority” of pupils receiving alternative provision also have SEND.
It says there will now be a “three-tier” alternative provision system, with “targeted early support within mainstream school”, time-limited intensive placements in an alternative provision setting, and longer-term placements “to support return to mainstream or a sustainable post-16 destination”.
There will also be an improved regime of local authority inspections by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission, with “a greater focus on the outcomes and experience of children and young people with SEND and in alternative provision”.
There are measures in the plan to improve the SEND skills of school staff, train more educational psychologists, and improve access to speech and language therapy, as well as to develop new SEND and alternative provision practice guides, which will “equip frontline professionals with the skills and expertise to make best use of provision and to identify needs early, accurately, and consistently”.
Both ALLFIE and Disability Rights UK (DR UK) were highly critical of the improvement plan.
In its early response to the plan, ALLFIE highlighted the “zero mention” in the plan of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which makes it clear in article 24 that inclusive education is a human right.
It said the move to a three-tier alternative provision system would move the UK further away from the inclusive education elements of CRPD.
And it criticised the emphasis in the plan on opening new special schools and the government’s “continued strategic thinking towards segregation”.
It also attacked the rebranding of special schools as “specialist”, in the context of “repeated reports of abuse and overcrowding that has led to children being taught in cupboards”.
Fazilet Hadi, DR UK’s head of policy, said disabled children and their families would be left “underwhelmed and disappointed” by the government’s plans.
She said: “The plans aren’t radical enough and investment in the future of disabled children is wholly insufficient.
“The vast majority of disabled children are educated in mainstream schools in classes that are too large, in inaccessible buildings and without sufficient learning assistants to provide personalised support.
“It’s good that the government is going to set standards and increase elements of the workforce but this just doesn’t go far enough.”
She added: “The growth in special schools is presented as a huge step forward, in fact it is a sign that inclusive mainstream education is failing.
“It is only relatively recently that disabled children were allowed to come to mainstream schools and now the clock is being turned back.
“Disabled and non-disabled children should be given the choice to be educated together.
“Of course, for this to work you need to create a mainstream system that is fully accessible and inclusive and provides personalised care and learning support to those who need it. Why has this vision been dropped?”
The Local Government Association said the measures in the plan “will help to fix some of the problems with the current system” but “do not go far enough in addressing the fundamental cost and demand issues that result in councils struggling to meet the needs of children with SEND”.
It said that improving levels of mainstream inclusion would be “crucial to the success of any reforms, reducing the reliance on costly special schools and other settings”.
It claimed that the gap between the cost of providing SEND support and the funding available to councils currently stands at about £1.9 billion a year and is projected to rise to £3.6 billion by 2025.
Claire Coutinho, the minister for children, families and wellbeing, said: “Parents know that their children only get one shot at education and this can have an enormous impact on their child’s ability to get on with life.
“Yet for some parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities, getting their child that superb education that everyone deserves can feel like a full-time job.
“The improvement plan that we are publishing today sets out systemic reforms to standards, teacher training and access to specialists as well as thousands of new places at specialist schools so that every child gets the help they need.”
*The Department for Education defines alternative provision as “education arranged by local authorities for pupils who, because of exclusion, illness or other reasons, would not otherwise receive suitable education; education arranged by schools for pupils on a fixed period exclusion; and pupils being directed by schools to off-site provision to improve their behaviour”
9 March 2023
Labour-linked inquiry set to rule out scrapping care charges
An inquiry that will have significant influence on Labour’s policy on independent living at the next general election is set to rule out scrapping care charges, according to a document leaked to Disability News Service.
The document, a summary of a draft working paper prepared by the Fabian Society, makes a series of proposals for reforms to adult social care in England.
But the last line of the final section of the document, on charging, says only that there would be an “aspiration” to reduce care charges “over time”.
The proposals are intended to be a “roadmap” towards a National Care Service, and the paper will feed into Labour’s policy review in the run-up to the next general election, reporting to shadow health and social care secretary Wes Streeting.
Its authors are now consulting on the draft plans, but if the failure to call for an end to care charges is confirmed it will be the third recent inquiry linked to Labour that has failed to issue a clear and urgent demand for such a policy.
Among other draft proposals, the Fabian document suggests that a National Care Service should provide a new right to independent living, with a duty to co-produce policy “at all levels” and funding for peer-to-peer organisations.
There should also be a 10-year commitment by a Labour prime minister and chancellor to increase spending on social care by at least six to seven per cent above inflation each year, with “many more people receiving support than today, and people receiving more support to meet their needs”.
It also suggests that the care workforce will need to grow by about 50 per cent over eight to 10 years.
The first priority on charging, it says, should be “a more generous means-test of income and assets, including a higher minimum income guarantee and personal expenses allowance”, but there would only be an “aspiration” to reduce charges over time alongside “increased state contributions”.
Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), was critical of the document’s failure to address the “inequity of social care charging”.
He said: “ROFA believes charging for social care is regressive and is a tax on disability.
“If it is to truly be a national care service it needs to be free at the point of use, like the NHS.”
He said ROFA was concerned at the “timidity of the approach” and “lack of ambition” and the failure to co-produce the document with disabled people.
He said: “Personalisation is in tatters. Direct payments, self-directed support and increased choice and control have all been abandoned to cuts and the tyranny of austerity.
“ROFA has coproduced our proposals for a National Independent Living Service (NILS) with users of social care based on evidence of best practise and achieving better outcomes for disabled people of all ages.”
NILS would provide a universal right to independent living that was “enshrined in law”, and would introduce free social care in England, funded by national and progressive taxation.
But Harrison said: “Instead of adopting our proposals, the Fabians have chosen a pick ‘n mix approach.
“Whilst providing an improvement on what we have today, this roadmap to a National Care Service fails to deliver on key fundamentals.”
Harrison said that without a significant upfront investment in adult social care, “people will continue to die on waiting lists – waiting for assessments, waiting for services, waiting in ambulances outside hospitals or unable to leave institutions because of lack of community-based alternatives.
“The acceptance that social care is for profit and that the private sector will continue to dominate is a missed opportunity.”
He said ROFA was about to relaunch NILS and hoped the Labour frontbench “will engage with us to deliver this”.
A Fabian Society spokesperson said: “The Fabian Society consulted with disabled people’s organisations by sharing a working paper setting out some of our early thinking.
“This document stated that it did not contain our final recommendations.
“We have listened to disabled people and our proposals will be different from those in the paper in a number of important ways.
“Our proposals on charging are still being developed.”
Labour had failed to respond to requests to comment by noon today (Thursday).
Although Streeting has previously stated that he asked the Fabian Society to carry out the review, the left-leaning thinktank said this week that it was commissioned and funded by the public service union Unison and that its views were “those of the authors, not Unison or the Labour party”.
Streeting has made it clear that his party will prioritise increasing the wages of care workers above the need to eliminate care charges, if it wins power at the next general election.
Despite those comments, party members approved a motion at last autumn’s Labour conference that called for a National Care Service that was co-produced with service-users, publicly funded, and free of charge.
Labour’s party conference in 2019 approved plans for a NILS model for social care reform, which was backed by Labour leader Keir Starmer during his Labour leadership campaign three years ago.
But Labour has since backed away from the idea of free social care, with the party’s shadow leader of the Commons, Thangam Debbonaire, telling female party members in 2021 that introducing free social care for disabled and older people would just “give the Tories a stick to beat Labour with”.
Research by disabled campaigners has shown tens of thousands of disabled people across the country every year are having debt collection action taken against them by their local authorities over unpaid care charges.
Meanwhile, Tower Hamlets council in east London has become the second local authority in England to decide to scrap all charges for care at home (see separate story).
9 March 2023
Anger over Hancock’s ‘despicable’ message on disability support
Disabled campaigners have expressed anger at reports that former health and social care secretary Matt Hancock considered blocking disability funding to persuade an MP to vote in favour of Covid restrictions at the height of the pandemic.
The allegations emerged as the Daily Telegraph continued its investigation into tens of thousands of WhatsApp messages leaked to the paper.
The Telegraph reported this week that Hancock’s political aide Allan Nixon had suggested telling Bury North MP James Daly (paywall) that funding for a new centre for people with learning difficulties in his constituency would be “off the table” if he failed to vote for new lockdown measures in December 2020.
Hancock is reported to have replied: “Yes 100%.”
Daly eventually voted against the measures, as part of a sizeable backbench Conservative rebellion, but they were approved by MPs by 291 votes to 78.
Daly told the Telegraph this week that he had repeatedly campaigned for the centre – although it is not clear what it would have offered – but it had still not been approved and Hancock “never showed the slightest bit of interest in supporting it”.
He said: “I think it is appalling. The fact that they would only give a much-needed support for disabled people if I voted for this was absolutely disgusting.”
Hancock is reported to have said this week that the WhatsApp messages were taken out of context and were not acted on.
But Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said: “These comments between Nixon and Hancock are horrific, despicable, and beyond contempt.”
He added: “A month before these comments, the first ONS data came in about the impacts of Covid on people with learning disabilities.
“The chances of someone with a learning disability dying of Covid at this point was six times more than a person without a learning disability.
“People with learning disabilities were also denied information about the pandemic, and protective measures, due to the persistent failure of government to produce critical public information in alternative formats at the same time as conventional formats.
“Easy read formats, a type of pictorial document used widely by people with learning disabilities, were especially hard to come by in a timely fashion.
“These texts show a shocking level of disregard by those at the very top of government for people with learning disabilities during the pandemic.
“As a community, they were thrown to the wolves, as were disabled people in general.
“We often feel like second class citizens. Our country’s leaders should be modelling respect, dignity and protection for disabled people, especially during the pandemic when six in 10 deaths were those of disabled people.”
The disabled people’s organisation Inclusion Barnet said on Twitter that DR UK had “got it spot on”, adding: “To play with disabled people’s lives for the sake of political gains is appalling.”
9 March 2023
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Waiting times to assess new claims for a crucial sickness benefit have doubled under the Conservatives, new analysis shared with The Independent shows. Analysis shows the benefits system has become increasingly sluggish in dealing with claims for employment and support allowance (ESA). Labour analysis of statistics shows that the average time from ESA claim to DWP decision doubled – from 13 weeks to 26 weeks – between April 2010 and June 2022:
Dame Judi Dench has given her “wholehearted support” to campaigners calling for a ban on blue badge parking in York city centre to be lifted. A permanent ban on accessible parking in pedestrianised areas was introduced in November 2021. The decision angered many of those affected, who said they had been made to feel like “second-class citizens”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-64872475
Falkirk wheelchair racer Abby Cook said she was “speechless” after being chosen as the 42nd Blue Peter presenter. Abby will join Mwaka Mudenda and Joel Mawhinney as she makes her debut on the long-running BBC children’s show on Friday (10 March): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-64863530
9 March 2023
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
