PRESS RELEASE
18/11/23
For immediate release.
Disabled people in Sheffield say they are not ‘coasting’ on benefits, in response to recent
comments made by The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. Hunt’s comments relate to the government’s
‘Back To Work Plan’ which DPAC say will see disabled people forced into job search activity which
they cannot cope with due to their medical conditions, leading to sanctions, loss of healthcare,
essential means of living, greatly increasing disabled people’s risk of death through poverty,
neglect and suicide.
A spokesperson for DPAC Sheffield said:
“ When Hunt spoke of people ‘coasting’ on taxpayers’ money, people may have thought he was
referring to corporations who dodge billions of pounds every year, bosses and shareholders of the
numerous companies that governments are so fond of bailing out with public money to the tune of
many billions and to whom they also give taxpayers’ money for crony contracts, people like
Sunak’s wife, or MPs and ministers like himself who receive a very generous salary from the public
purse each year along with heavily subsidised travel and meals, or The Royal Family who receive
over £86m a year from the public, enough to support thousands of families. However, Hunt was
dredging up his ideological obsession with punishing disabled people by forcing people who are
unfit to work into work, something that not even the Victorian workhouse system tried to do. So we
have the obscene sight of people who have everything taking everything off people who already
have very little.
This is part of the government’s well-worn tactic of creating scapegoats to cover up and distract
from the complete misery and mess they have created for most people in the country. We don’t
believe most people are willing to keep falling for it. Like most people, disabled people face a cost
of living disaster created by the government, trying to exist on incomes which are not keeping up
with true inflation, whilst the companies for which governments really work are increasing their
already obscene profits and shareholder payouts, living the high life and coasting off everyone
else’s efforts whilst people from all walks of life are becoming destitute because of daily living
costs.
We’ve seen Cameron retrod and reintroduced to the cabinet by Sunak, yet his
Conservative/LibDem coalition introduced the needless, ideological policy of austerity on behalf of
the bailed out financial institutions that caused the global economic crash in 2008. That ideology
has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths through cuts to social security, the NHS, social care
and other essential services, and it is still killing people. The ‘Back to Work Plan’ will lead to more
people like myself dying and our conditions deteriorating through forcing disabled people into job
search activity, looking for jobs that we cannot do and cannot cope with due to our medical
conditions, whilst Works and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride whose salary exceeds £150k before
expenses has threatened us with losing our NHS prescriptions if we don’t comply. The current
disability payments regime has already caused many people to take their own lives and put
thousands of disabled people into poverty. We know the sanctions system runs as a parallel penal
system for claimants, treating us worse than prisoners, causing misery and impoverishment for
people, a system that actually ends up costing the government money. None of this makes any
sense other than as an expression of hatred from government for disabled people. The biology of
disabled people’s bodies and medical conditions does not care about the ideologically warped
views of government ministers; if we are unfit for work then we are unfit for work, and we are not
going to be miraculously cured by a government white paper.
We urge all disabled people, their families and supporters to resist the government’s plans to vilify
disabled people as part of their ever advancing shift to the far-right.”
ENDS
