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
