Boris Johnson ‘ordered delay to pandemic plans to protect disabled people’
Boris Johnson ordered that plans to protect disabled people from being disproportionately impacted during the second wave of the pandemic should proceed at a “slower time” than other crucial work, the Covid public inquiry has heard.
Government documents released to the inquiry show that this package of measures was “never fully put into place”, the inquiry heard this week from four national disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).
The direction from the prime minister and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove was made in November 2020, even though they had known for five months that disabled people were dying in disproportionate numbers.
It is now known that 60 per cent of those who have died from Covid were disabled people.
The decision was made even though Gove declared in October 2020 that “time is running out” for the risks to disabled people and others to be mitigated as the second wave of the pandemic began.
Barrister Danny Friedman – representing Disability Rights UK, Inclusion Scotland, Disability Wales and Disability Action Northern Ireland – was delivering their opening statement to the second module of the Covid inquiry, which focuses on government decisions in the early months of the pandemic
He told the inquiry that government decisions meant “there was no plan for disabled people throughout the first and second waves of the pandemic, and there is still no plan”.
And he described an “abject failure to escalate disability issues to ministerial meetings for months”.
Documents released to the inquiry have revealed that rising Tory star Kemi Badenoch, whose portfolio as minister for equalities did not include disability, was commissioned in June 2020 to conduct a review of the “disparities” in the pandemic impact but that her work “did not examine the impacts on disabled people”.
Friedman also told the inquiry on Tuesday, on behalf of the four DPOs: “None of the key decision-making during the pandemic was informed by the expertise of disabled people.”
He added: “Despite obvious risks to disabled people from the outset, the government did not properly engage with them or their organisations during the pandemic response.”
And he said that the meetings that Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, had with DPOs were “too little, too late”.
In their written submission to the inquiry, the four DPOs told the inquiry that the government failed to engage with a series of urgent recommendations made by DR UK to Tomlinson and Helen Whately, the social care minister, in a letter sent on 16 March 2020.
These included calls for more stringent protections for care home residents and funding for isolation units in care homes.
The DPO submission highlighted information from previously confidential government documents, which have been released to the inquiry and its core participants.
The DPOs said afterwards that the documents released so far to the inquiry showed that ministers, including Johnson, “chose to delay focussing upon and remedying the impact of the pandemic on disabled people”.
The information released to the inquiry appears to corroborate the reporting of Disability News Service (DNS) in the early months of the pandemic.
DNS revealed repeated concerns through 2020 about the government’s failure to protect disabled people, including delays in publishing crucial guidance for those using direct payments and employing personal assistants, concerns over the right to life-sustaining treatment, disabled people in high-risk groups being unable to obtain personal protective equipment (PPE), and the failure of ministers to engage with DPOs.
DNS later obtained government figures that showed Tomlinson had taken part in just a handful of meetings – mostly online – with “external” organisations during each of the first four months of the pandemic, and just four of these meetings included a DPO.
Kamran Mallick, DR UK’s chief executive, who will be giving his own evidence to the module on Monday (9 October), said after the hearing: “The consequences of Covid touched every disabled person and their family and friends.
“Almost 60 per cent of people who died from Covid were disabled people.
“We found ourselves dismissed and patronised as ‘vulnerable’, we were last in the queue for health care, our social care was removed or reduced, our rights were restricted and our reasonable adjustments were denied.
“Disabled people were left without food, were forced to receive support from carers without PPE or testing, were compelled to give up work, were denied assistance on public transport and were harassed for legitimately not wearing face coverings.”
Disabled campaigners will be outside the inquiry on Monday to “honour the devastating impact of the pandemic on disabled people and visibly show our solidarity with those who died or experienced hardship”.
5 October 2023
Ministers ramp up hostile rhetoric, a decade after Osborne, Cameron and Duncan Smith
Conservative ministers have used their party conference to ramp up rhetoric that blames disabled people on out-of-work benefits for the country’s economic problems, just as they did in the post-2010 coalition government.
Following months of media articles highlighting the growth in the number of disabled people on out-of-work benefits, many of which were criticised for demonising and scapegoating disabled people, prime minister Rishi Sunak yesterday (Wednesday) told the country in his main conference speech that “welfare” should be “a safety net and not a way of life”.
He said that supporting so many disabled people on out-of-work benefits was “not good for our economy” and “not fair on taxpayers who have to pick up the bill”, and he called it a “national scandal”.
He also became the latest member of the government to compare the proportion of those now found not fit for work (65 per cent) after an assessment with the same figures in 2011 (21 per cent).
Like his fellow ministers, and many media commentators, he has ignored the fact that the 2011 figures reflected the early years of the work capability assessment (WCA), before its most serious flaws were exposed.
It took years of activism and research by disabled people and allies to expose the links between the WCA and hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of claimants, and to force DWP ministers to ease the harshness of the assessment.
That eventually made it easier to qualify for the employment and support allowance (ESA) support group and avoid work-related conditions, although the test continues to be linked to serious harm and multiple deaths.
But Sunak was not the only senior member of his government to target disabled people in Manchester this week.
On Monday, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, spoke of 100,000 people leaving work every year “for a life on benefits”.
He was referring to the number of people leaving work and being found to have limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) after being put through the WCA.
He told the conference that this was the reason work and pensions secretary Mel Stride was scrapping the WCA.
Hunt said he was “proud to live in a country where, as Churchill said, there’s a ladder everyone can climb but also a safety net below which no one falls”, before adding: “That safety net is paid from tax.”
The words of Sunak and Hunt closely mirror the hostile rhetoric of Conservative politicians such as David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith and George Osborne in the coalition years.
In a notorious conference speech in 2012, Osborne, the chancellor at the time, talked about the unfairness of a “shift-worker” leaving for work early in the morning who looks up and sees “the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits”.
At the 2011 conference, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said that incapacity benefit was “too often abused as an excuse for avoiding work”.
And in October 2010, prime minister David Cameron told the party conference: “If you really cannot work, we will always look after you.
“But if you can work, and refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others.”
Rhetoric like this led to years of hostility and hate crime directed at disabled people.
Disability Rights UK warned this week of “language that is harmful and potentially destructive to those who rely on the benefit system because they have no other option due to a disability or long term health condition” and called on the government to “stop demonising people”.
It added: “It seems that disabled people and those with long term health conditions are being used as scapegoats.”
When Disability News Service asked the minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, if he supported Hunt’s comments, he did not appear to be aware of them.
Speaking only 75 minutes before Hunt was due to take the stage to make his speech – which had been trailed over the weekend by the party press office – Pursglove said he had not seen the speech and had “literally just arrived at conference”.
Asked what he felt about the comments, Pursglove said he would not “prejudge” them, but would comment if DNS emailed him after the speech.
DNS emailed Pursglove after the speech, as requested, but he failed to respond by the deadline.
The advance briefings of Hunt’s speech led to news stories in the right-wing media that echoed those of the early 2010s, with the Daily Mail pointing to the figure of 100,000 disabled people leaving work to claim disability benefits and claiming that Hunt would “declare war on 100,000 work-shy benefit claimants”.
The Sun’s headline was “Shirkin class blitzed”, as it said Hunt would “crack down on benefits claimants refusing to find a job as 100,000 people leave the workforce each year for a life on handouts”.
The Daily Express quoted a “senior Tory source” saying Hunt would “turn the screw” on people who refused to work.
Pursglove was challenged about the use of hostile rhetoric at a fringe event organised by the disability charity Scope.
Louise Rubin, Scope’s head of policy and campaigns, told him: “In the context of what we have heard over the last few days, there has without a doubt been an increase in the often unpleasant rhetoric about benefits creeping back in over the last few weeks and months.
“Articles about clamping down on scroungers, making it much harder to apply for benefits… we are not here to discuss benefits today, but it does seem to us here at Scope rather misguided to put all of the attention on forcing unwell people back to work, using sticks, but to pay little attention to supporting those who are already in work.”
Stride had spoken of the same 100,000 people referred to by Hunt in his conference speech at a fringe event hosted by the Resolution Foundation on Sunday.
He agreed there needed to be “some more study” into the reasons for the increase in the number of those receiving long-term sickness and disability benefits over the past four years, but he made no pledge to carry out that research.
Instead, he insisted he was still ploughing ahead with reforms that will make it significantly harder – if the Conservatives win the next election – for many disabled people to secure the highest rate of support and avoid being forced to carry out work-related activity.
Last week, DNS reported that the Department for Work and Pensions had admitted making no attempt to research why spending on out-of-work disability benefits had risen significantly in recent years, despite planning its “horrendously dangerous” cuts.
But Stride suggested some possible reasons for the increase.
He said an increase in the state retirement age was tipping more older people into the LCWRA group, while increasing numbers working from home might be playing a part in an increase in musculoskeletal injuries.
But he particularly focused on mental health and younger people.
He suggested the increasing use of social media might be responsible for an increase in mental distress among younger people, while he also claimed that the trend towards greater discussion of mental health issues meant there could be “an element of a more extensive labelling of people having a mental health issue perhaps in a way that might not have happened 20 years ago”.
He repeated this claim at another fringe event on Tuesday, again without quoting any evidence, saying there was “a question mark to what degree are we too readily identifying individuals [as having a mental health condition] and then consequently doing various things as a result of that… it’s a question mark in my mind”.
5 October 2023
Minister suggests fresh PIP cuts and means-testing are still on the table
The work and pensions secretary has sparked fresh concerns that a Conservative government would target the main disability benefit – personal independence payment (PIP) – for cuts and means-testing if it wins the next general election.
Both Mel Stride and the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, spoke at the party conference in Manchester this week about the significant increase in the number of people claiming out-of-work disability benefits.
Stride spoke of this “unsatisfactory” trend over the last four years, while Hunt spoke in his main conference speech of the 100,000 people a year leaving work to claim the limited capability for work-related activity element of universal credit (see separate story).
But Stride was also asked at a Centre for Social Justice fringe event this week whether PIP “would ever be incorporated into the universal credit system”.
Three months ago, Disability News Service (DNS) reported that the Conservative party appeared to be considering plans to means-test disability benefits like PIP as a way of cutting spending.
DNS was told at the time that participants in focus groups had been asked questions about which people “deserve” various benefits and what they think about the idea of means-testing “extra cost” benefits.
Although DNS was unable to confirm that it was the Conservative party that paid for and ran the focus groups, such a move would almost certainly involve benefits such as PIP, disability living allowance and attendance allowance.
The introduction of means-testing could mean these benefits eventually being folded into the universal credit system, and payments in future only going to those with less than a certain level of income, savings and investments.
There have been concerns about the possibility of a Conservative-led government means-testing PIP since the publication of its Shaping Future Support green paper, two years ago.
That green paper suggested that ministers could create a “new single benefit” to simplify the disability benefit application and assessment process, which could “provide support for disabled people and people with health conditions on low income and with extra costs”.
The then work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey later told DNS at a fringe meeting at the annual conference in October 2021 – also held in Manchester – that merging PIP with universal credit was “on the table” as part of a fresh wave of social security reforms.
Just a month later, DNS reported how a Department for Work and Pensions civil servant told a disability charity that the government planned to merge PIP with universal credit, although not until at least 2027.
Asked this week whether PIP would be incorporated into the UC system, Stride pointed out that existing Conservative plans would see PIP act as the “gateway” that disabled people would have to go through instead of the work capability assessment to claim out-of-work disability benefits, through a new health element of universal credit.
But he then criticised PIP – introduced by his own party 10 years ago to replace working-age disability living allowance – even though it is seen by disabled people as a hugely-important contribution to meeting their extra disability-related costs, despite its deeply flawed assessment process.
Stride told the event: “There are some issues around PIP in that it is a fairly blunt instrument because it’s there basically to compensate for the extra costs of disability and yet what we know is that for some people [who need] a grab rail to get into the bath or an extra step to be able to reach the microwave, and yet the amount of course is relative to those kind of items really quite high.”
He appeared to be suggesting that many claimants would not need PIP if they had such adjustments made to their homes.
Stride then said that the demand for PIP “has been increasing quite dramatically recently, so there are some issues around PIP”.
He said there were no “immediate plans to reform PIP”, but he did not rule out future changes.
5 October 2023
Disabled activists face down police to protest in front of Rishi’s hotel
Disabled activists faced down police officers who tried to prevent them protesting in front of the four-star hotel where prime minister Rishi Sunak was staying during this week’s Conservative party conference in Manchester.
Activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) gathered opposite The Midland Hotel to protest at the presence of the “institutionally disablist” Conservative party in the city, and to support the new Disabled People’s Manifesto.
But shortly after they arrived on Tuesday, police officers approached the group of activists to tell them they would have to move to an official protest site in nearby St Peter’s Square.
The official protest site was out of sight of the hotel entrance, which has acted as the hub for conference fringe events and socialising by Conservative party members during this week’s four-day event.
When the DPAC group refused to move, one police officer warned them: “We either do it nicely…”
Officers quoted powers under section 14 of the Public Order Act, and claimed the street needed to be kept clear for emergency vehicles and was “a designated no protest site”, although activists had been able to use the same street for protests both in 2019 and in 2015.
Rick Burgess, from Manchester DPAC, told Disability News Service (DNS) during the protest: “We are not in anybody’s way but we are visible to the conference. Our visibility is important.
“The Conservative party and the government it forms re-institutionalised disabled people and they are not welcome until they deal with their institutional disablism.”
He said they wanted to be opposite the hotel “to be visible with our messages and our presence so they have to look at us and go past us”.
He said the government’s latest work and pensions white paper and other cuts and reforms to the work capability assessment “are literally threats to our life. They are trying to wipe us out.”
One police officer told him: “We are here to facilitate a peaceful protest but also facilitate the conference. You’re allowed to walk through, but not allowed to protest.”
A more senior police officer eventually agreed that the DPAC activists could continue their protest opposite the hotel until 2.30pm.
Among the protesters was actor and activist Ali Briggs, who told DNS that she had wanted to be there to “stand with disabled colleagues”.
She said: “I really want to fight the whole thing about ticket office closures. It’s terrible, it’s cruel.
“They carry on ignoring us. It’s not good enough. Our rights: we won’t see them eroded by this lot.”
Another activist was Dom Hutchins, who two years ago had a high-profile party conference confrontation with senior Conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg, at the time the leader of the Commons – just yards from where they were protesting this week – when he challenged him over the government’s record on disability rights.
He told DNS this week: “Nothing has changed in two years. Disabled people are still dying because of Tory policies.
“They listened to me, but obviously it was just lip service. Disabled people are still dying because of assessments and the media are just ignoring it. I feel it’s my duty to do this.”
Another DPAC activist, Stella Thomas, from Salford, said she was concerned about the latest government “crackdown” on people who claiming disability benefits which she said would affect people both in and out of work.
She said her message to the government was: “Stop lying to us, tell us the truth: are you going to cut disability benefits?”
DPAC activist Luke Beesley told DNS: “I am here because disabled people in Britain have undergone 13 years of social murder.”
He pointed to benefit cuts, the “pathetic response to Covid, which put profits over disabled people’s lives”, and the segregation of disabled people in special schools and care homes.
He said: “As this government continues its assault on the working class, I know disabled people will continue to be in the firing line and I am here to say enough is enough.”
Fellow disabled activist Klint Durham said he was there to “express my deep concern and disappointment” at the “utter contempt” shown to disabled people by the government through its decision not to give evidence in August to the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities about its progress since being found guilty of grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights.
Durham said: “It sends a signal to politicians in this country and people in this country that disabled people are second-class citizens.”
He said he believed that disabled people had “not moved forwards” since the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.
He said: “We fought for rights and we have basically been sold a pup because nothing has changed.”
JoAnn Taylor, who founded Salford DPAC, said she was protesting the “devastating” impact of Conservative austerity policies.
But she said she was also there to protest about flaws in the disabled facilities grant system, which have left her having to move home four times while waiting for her housing association to provide her with accessible housing.
5 October 2023
Pursglove silent over research that linked WCA with hundreds of suicides
The minister for disabled people has failed five times to say whether he was aware of research linking the “fitness for work” test with 590 suicides of disabled benefit claimants, as his department prepares to tighten the assessment even further.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is currently consulting on proposals that would make it significantly harder for many disabled people to secure the highest rate of support and avoid being forced to carry out work-related activity.
Among its plans – which would not be introduced until after the next general election – is to remove a vital safety net that protects those at risk of suicide.
But at this week’s Conservative party conference in Manchester, both work and pensions secretary Mel Stride and Tom Pursglove, the minister for disabled people, suggested that they had not been briefed by the department on the ground-breaking research, despite embarking on major reforms to the work capability assessment (WCA).
At a fringe event hosted by the Conservative thinktank Policy Exchange and the Health Foundation, Disability News Service (DNS) asked Pursglove whether he was aware of the high-profile research, and if it would impact how he approached the reforms.
The research, published in 2015 by public health experts from Liverpool and Oxford Universities, found that a programme to reassess people on incapacity benefit through the WCA was linked to 590 suicides in just three years.
In response to the DNS question, Pursglove insisted that his department would proceed with the reforms “with great care” and was “continuing to engage with relevant stakeholders” to make “every effort possible” to ensure “there is all of the right safeguarding around that”.
He added: “I can absolutely say to you that we will take forward any reform that we seek to make as a government with the utmost care and attention to the needs of our most vulnerable customers.”
Asked again if he was aware of the research, Pursglove said he considered a “wide range” of reports.
Asked a third time, he pointed to the “considerable work taken place since 2018 particularly, tangible improvements that have been recognised as quite significant strides forward in terms of those safeguarding mechanisms, and we continue to keep that under review, taking account of all reports”.
Asked a fourth time if he knew of the research, he said nothing, and when DNS asked for a final time, he again stayed silent, before the event’s chair asked another panel member to comment.
When DNS had asked the same question of Pursglove’s boss the previous evening, he also did not appear to be aware of the research.
Stride told DNS: “It’s therefore really important that when we look at the report you referred to that we do it in a measured and proportionate and very careful way.
“So rather than rushing out and announcing reforms, we are going through a consultation that will end in October… to make sure that we don’t rush these things, to make sure that we do take those decisions in a proportionate, careful and caring way.”
Asked if Stride would now promise to ask the department to brief him on the research, a Conservative party spokesperson refused to comment, directing DNS to DWP.
Asked if it could confirm that it had failed to inform Stride about the research, despite the secretary of state announcing plans to further tighten the WCA, a DWP spokesperson refused to comment.
Pursglove also confirmed at the fringe event that DWP was proceeding with further controversial changes to the assessment process that would – eventually, after the next general election – scrap the WCA entirely.
The reforms, announced through the Transforming Support white paper in March, would see eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits – through a new universal credit “health element” – decided by the personal independence payment assessment.
This would also mean that decisions on whether a sick or disabled person must attend job-focused interviews or other work-related activity would in future be decided by a jobcentre work coach.
Pursglove told the fringe event that the reforms would remove the “jeopardy” that some disabled people feel when considering whether to try to move into work from out-of-work disability benefits because of the risk of it not working out and losing their benefit entitlement and then having to reapply and be reassessed.
He said: “We have been through extensive consultation around that change, and I think it is the best route forward in terms of alleviating that pressure and anxiety that people feel.”
Chris Smyth, Whitehall editor of The Times, told the event that the government’s plans for reform were “pretty similar” to Labour’s plans.
He said he had spoken to Labour’s (at the time) shadow work and pensions secretary, Jon Ashworth, and asked him “what do you actually disagree with the government on” and was told Ashworth’s main concern was: “We thought of it first.”
Smyth said there was “an unusual degree of political consensus on this”.
5 October 2023
Stride may have blundered by admitting DWP has ‘duty to act with real care’
Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride appears to have made a significant blunder after insisting that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has a duty of care to disabled people who claim benefits, following years of DWP denials.
DWP has repeatedly denied that it has a legal duty of care, almost certainly because it fears such an admission would lead to a flood of legal cases taken by the families of disabled people whose deaths have been linked to its failings.
Former work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has previously been particularly insistent in her denials that the department had a legal duty to “safeguard” its claimants, insisting that such tasks were the responsibility of local agencies such as social services departments and doctors’ surgeries.
But now comments by the current work and pensions secretary have thrown that position into confusion.
Stride was speaking at a fringe event hosted by the Resolution Foundation at this week’s Conservative party conference in Manchester.
Disability News Service (DNS) asked him how he could be sure that his latest reforms to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA) would not have a similar impact to reforms introduced by the coalition government a decade ago.
Research published in 2015 by public health experts from Liverpool and Oxford Universities found that the coalition’s programme to reassess people on incapacity benefit through the WCA was linked to 590 suicides in just three years.
Stride is now spearheading plans – which would not be introduced until after the next general election – that would make it significantly harder for many disabled people to secure the highest rate of support and avoid being forced to carry out work-related activity.
Among the proposals is to remove a vital safety net that protects those at risk of suicide.
He told DNS: “We have a duty as a department to act with real care and to make sure that we interact in the right way with often very vulnerable people, and we have processes and training and appeal procedures and so on in place to make sure that we do exactly that.
“I’m not saying that DWP gets everything right all the time, but we are very, very aware of our duties in that regard.”
He said the department was consulting on the reforms to the WCA, a process that will end on 30 October, “to make sure that we do take those decisions in a proportionate, careful and caring way”.
Stride also highlighted guidelines on media reporting of suicide (PDF) from the Samaritans charity. Those guidelines suggest that “most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life”.
Asked to clarify if Stride was now accepting that DWP does have a legal duty of care to its claimants, a Conservative party spokesperson refused to comment, referring DNS to DWP.
DWP suggested that its position had not changed and that it did not have a statutory safeguarding duty.
But a DWP spokesperson declined to comment on Stride’s remarks.
5 October 2023
Minister silent over UN rights evidence no-show, despite criticism from disabled Tories
The minister for disabled people has refused three times to explain why his government failed to give evidence to the United Nations on its disability rights record, weeks after his party’s disability group expressed concern at the decision.
The Conservative Disability Group (CDG) has been a familiar presence at party conferences for at least 20 years, hosting stalls in the exhibition area and fringe events on matters of interest to disabled party members.
This week, at the conference in Manchester, there was no stall in the exhibition and no CDG fringe event, although Disability News Service (DNS) has been told this was due to financial reasons and the lack of accessible rooms available on the group’s preferred date.
But last month, CDG’s chair, Barry Ginley, wrote to Tom Pursglove, the minister for disabled people, to raise concerns over reports that the government had refused to attend a meeting of the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities in Geneva.
The meeting was being held to examine the government’s progress since being found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The UN committee found in November 2016 that the UK government had discriminated against disabled people on the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection, work and employment, and independent living.
Most of those breaches were caused by policies introduced by Conservative ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The 2016 findings were the result of the first high-level inquiry ever carried out by the UN committee, which followed years of research and lobbying by Disabled People Against Cuts.
The committee had put aside a day in August to examine the government’s progress in implementing its recommendations over the last seven years.
But the UK government refused to attend the session in Geneva on 28 August and said it would not give its evidence until next March.
Ginley told Pursglove in his letter: “I am concerned that the advice you have received is incorrect and the decision not to attend may show the Government does not respect the rights of disabled people.
“As a group who strive to promote accessibility, we would urge the Government to reassess its decision and attend the review, regardless of any public scrutiny, to highlight the work undertaken by the UK Government.”
Ginley told DNS yesterday (Wednesday) that he had been unable to attend the party conference himself because of family bereavements, and he stressed that CDG’s failure to hold a fringe meeting was “not due to the government’s work on disability or the issue of attendance at the Geneva meeting”.
Asked by DNS about the decision not to attend the Geneva meeting, at a fringe meeting held by the disability charity Scope, Pursglove dismissed Ginley’s concerns.
He claimed the government had a “very ambitious programme of work that responds in a very thorough way to many of the challenges that people have highlighted”.
He then mentioned his draft Disability Action Plan – criticised for its lack of action and dismissed as a “PR exercise” – the National Disability Strategy, which was previously on hold for two years after its legality was challenged through the courts, and a planned review of the much-criticised Disability Confident employment scheme.
He also referenced two pieces of controversial legislation that were introduced through private members’ bills – the British Sign Language (BSL) Act and the Down Syndrome Act – but supported by the government.
DNS reported in August that more than half of government departments had ignored the BSL legislation, which was supposed to boost the use of BSL in their communications.
Pursglove also referenced DWP’s own controversial reforms of the work capability assessment and employment support.
He said: “I think this government’s got a record of being very thoughtful about these issues, and responding to the challenges that people have raised with us in a considered way.
“We of course live up to our UN convention obligations, we will continue to do that, and when it comes to the UN committee, we have agreed entirely properly, and through the usual processes, to appear in March and present our latest position and we will continue to engage in that process in good faith, as you would expect.”
Pursglove repeated some of his points in a reply to Ginley that was added to the CDG website this week.
But when asked by DNS why the government did not attend the meeting in August, he said: “I’m not going to say any more to that which I’ve already said. I’ve set out the position.”
Asked again, he said the government “continues to act in good faith”.
And asked a third time why the government did not attend in August, he declined to say anything further.
5 October 2023
Harper dismisses disabled people’s concerns over rail ticket office closures
Transport secretary Mark Harper has dismissed concerns that plans to close hundreds of ticket offices across England will have a negative impact on disabled people’s right to “turn up and go” rail travel.
Even though the proposals are set to lead to more than 2,300 redundancies among rail staff, Harper insisted that the closures would improve disabled people’s access to rail travel.
His comments came as two disabled campaigners applied for a judicial review of consultations on the plans to close nearly 1,000 ticket offices across England, which they believe could leave many disabled people unable to use the rail network.
Sarah Leadbetter and Doug Paulley say the consultations were unlawful and unfair as they did not give people – particularly disabled people – the opportunity to respond “meaningfully” to the proposals.
They are challenging “multiple, serious flaws” in the consultations carried out by four publicly-owned train operating companies: London North Eastern Railway, Northern Trains, South East Trains – which trades as Southeastern – and TransPennine Trains.
Leadbetter and Paulley want any decision to close ticket offices based on the results of these consultations to be quashed.
Meanwhile, Harper was speaking this week at a fringe event organised by the Rail Industry Association at the Conservative party conference in Manchester.
Disability News Service (DNS) had asked him what his level of commitment was to “turn up and go” rail travel for disabled passengers and why the government had not done more to protect that right through the closure proposals.
But Harper said he was “not sure that’s got anything to do with ticket offices at all”, before adding: “In fact, I’d say quite the opposite.”
He said he and rail minister Huw Merriman “want to see people moved out of ticket offices into the station so they are better able to help customers that require assistance, like disabled people, the more vulnerable customers”.
DNS reported two months ago that a template drawn up by Harper’s department as part of the consultation process failed to ask the train companies in its access section how they would preserve the right of disabled people to turn up and go assistance that does not need to be booked in advance.
DNS has also reported how campaigners have warned that disabled people’s right to enjoy spontaneous travel on the rail network is under “serious threat” because of the planned closures.
But Harper dismissed any concerns that the closures would have a negative impact on disabled people’s right to turn up and go travel.
He said that, for any proposed closures that come to him for a final decision – if the passenger bodies and train operating companies cannot reach agreement – “one of the things that will be important to me when I make a decision on this is about the impact on disabled and vulnerable passengers”.
He said: “I want to make sure that disabled people are able to use our rail network at least as well as they can at the moment.”
And he said train operating companies had had to carry out equality impact assessments as part of their proposals.
Harper, a former minister for disabled people, said: “I take my responsibilities to improve [disabled people’s] opportunities and life chances very seriously indeed.”
In answer to a question from Ben Clatworthy, transport correspondent for The Times, he also repeated the pledge made by Merriman that “those stations that are currently staffed, the expectation is that they should not become unstaffed as a result of any of the proposals from the train operating companies”.
He said that was “one of the things that we will use to test proposals if any proposals come before me when I am making decisions about them”.
Analysis by disabled campaigners and DNS of the consultation documents issued by the train companies showed that at least three of them were planning to move some stations from being staffed part-time to relying on mobile teams that cover a group of local stations.
5 October 2023
Minister bashful over sharp rise in Access to Work spending
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has declined to welcome its own figures which show a huge increase in spending on the Access to Work disability employment scheme.
The new figures show spending of more than £180 million in 2022-23, more than £30 million higher than 2021-22, which itself was the highest spending on record.
They also show that real terms spending increased by 15 per cent on 2021-22, and is now more than £20 million higher than the previous highest real terms spending level before the pandemic.
The minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, spoke briefly about the importance of the Access to Work scheme at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference on Monday, but failed to mention the new figures.
He also mentioned Access to Work at another fringe event the next day, and again failed to mention the significant increase in spending.
The number of disabled people who received some kind of Access to Work (AtW) provision rose by nearly a quarter (23 per cent) to 47,230 in the year to 2022-23, although about 14,000 of those people only received a payment for an assessment.
The remaining 33,000 receiving a payment to provide an element of AtW provision – such as aids and equipment, help with the cost of travelling to work and adaptations to work premises – again the highest number on record.
And the number of people who had an assessment rose by nearly half (48 per cent), compared to 2021-22.
The number of disabled people who received an Access to Work payment for a support worker rose by 14 per cent on the year to more than 12,000.
There were also significant increases in the number of disabled people receiving an AtW payment for mental health support (a nine per cent rise) and travel to work (a 28 per cent rise).
Despite the successful expansion of the scheme, there are still significant waiting-times for disabled people waiting for a decision on their AtW claim, with unpublished figures released to Disability News Service (DNS) in July showing there were still more than 23,000 disabled people waiting for their claim to be dealt with.
That had fallen to just under 22,000 by 5 September.
But despite the government’s apparent success in expanding the scheme, a DWP spokesperson declined to welcome the figures when approached by DNS.
Asked why the figures had risen so sharply, and whether ministers welcomed the increase, a spokesperson said: “Our Access to Work grants are available to disabled employees to cover the additional costs of in-work adjustments and we are recruiting new staff to meet increased demand for the scheme.
“Our extensive wraparound will support disabled people to sustain employment in the long term.”
They also said: “We are committed to supporting disabled people who want to work to do so, and latest figures show disability employment has risen by a total of 1.6 million since 2017.”
DWP and ministers have been told repeatedly that these disability employment figures are deeply misleading.
Government figures released in January found that 60 per cent of the increase in disabled people in employment was simply due to a sharp rise in the number of people identifying as disabled.
Those figures estimated that only 15 per cent of the increase in disabled people in work was due to a narrowing in the disability employment gap – the difference in the proportion of disabled and non-disabled people in jobs.
But DWP also admitted to DNS that it could not prove that even this small proportion of the increase was due to government policies.
5 October 2023
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
A woman whose friend took her own life after being driven to desperation by the benefits system hit out as Tories gathered for their annual conference. Helen Lomas was one of thousands of protesters who rallied against Conservative failures outside the Manchester Central Convention Complex, where top Tories were assembled. She carried a heartbreaking placard saying “Poverty Kills”, following the death of pal Karen McBride: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/mum-whose-friend-died-after-31077398
One of Brighton’s busiest North Laine streets, which was pedestrianised last year, will be reopened to traffic. Brighton and Hove City Council voted in favour of reducing Gardner Street’s pedestrianised hours to 11am to 7pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The change will improve accessibility for disabled residents, one of whom has been “left stuck in their home for months”, the council said: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-66988425
5 October 2023
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
