Disabled people ‘must create a drumbeat’ to promote radical new manifesto
Disabled people’s organisations have been urged to “make a hell of a lot of noise” to promote a radical new manifesto that would tackle “the root causes of our oppression” if adopted by the next government.
The Disabled People’s Manifesto calls on the next government to take action across the “four pillars” of representation and voice, rights, independence, and inclusion.
The manifesto was launched in Manchester at a conference of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) from across England, with the next general election likely to be no more than 12 months away.
It was the first significant in-person gathering of English DPOs since a conference in Sheffield in 2016, and was organised by the DPO Forum England, Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP).
Among the manifesto’s demands is for funding to support a network of DPOs across England, for action to ensure co-production of policies at local and national level with disabled people and DPOs, and for a new fund to provide reasonable adjustments for disabled candidates at elections.
On rights, it calls for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to be fully incorporated into UK law, for long-awaited action on disability hate crime law, for new laws to abolish forced detention and treatment of people on mental health grounds, and for an inquiry into deaths linked to the Department for Work and Pensions.
The publication of the manifesto came in the same week that a Labour policy document suggested that the party had ignored calls for an inquiry into benefit deaths, and had scrapped its previous promise to incorporate the UN convention into UK law.
On independent living, the manifesto calls for an end to social care charging – another omission from the Labour document – a legal right to independent living, measures on accessible housing, and a series of demands on disability benefits, including an end to sanctions and a significant increase in the level of both means-tested and non-means-tested disability benefits.
And on inclusion, the manifesto demands action across education, access and work, including a call for the next government to work with DPOs to develop plans to move disabled children and adults out of all institutional provision.
Launching the Disabled People’s Manifesto, Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said it was vital to keep telling politicians “like a drumbeat” that disabled people “want a radical transformational plan for disabled people to be put in place by the next government in complete co production with disabled people”.
She said: “We don’t want a plan that tinkers. We want a plan that transforms our lives and it won’t be done overnight, and we want a government to have that commitment and that dedication to fight that injustice with us.”
Hadi said the manifesto does not mention “everything that disabled people need or want or deserve or are entitled to” but acts as “a political marker for the change we want to see from the next government”.
She said: “We won’t get everything, you know, this month, this year, next year, but we will lay the groundwork for other disabled people who come after us.”
She said disabled people were facing “great, great hardship” and “some people haven’t survived”, while the “dial” was “going backwards” in nearly every area, “whether it’s economic, whether it’s education, whether it’s employment, whether it’s wellbeing”.
And she told the conference that DPOs could “create that drumbeat” and “make a hell of a lot of noise” if they worked together to promote the manifesto in the run-up to the next election.
Dennis Queen, GMCDP’s co-chair, told the conference that DPOs would play a vital role during the general election campaign and “need to be shouting from the outside as well as doing that policy work inside”.
She said: “We’re really looking forward to carrying on this work and in the next 12 months, let’s get out there.
“Let’s get all of our demands as perfect as we can, so they’re intersectional, so they apply to everybody, and so they work whatever age we are, whatever group we’ve come from.
“And let’s go and show them this future world that we want to see, because it’s going to be ours.
“We are in it, and we’re not going anywhere. So they better just move over and let us in.”
The conference was held at the People’s History Museum*, which is currently hosting a co-produced exhibition of the history of the disabled people’s movement, Nothing About Us Without Us.
There was also a speech from the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham (see separate story), as the region prepares to celebrate five years since the launch of its ground-breaking Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel, a formal partnership between Burnham and DPOs.
*Other representatives of DPOs watched the conference and took part in discussions online
28 September 2023
Anger over ‘clueless’ government’s ‘completed misguided’ awareness campaign
Disabled campaigners have asked why the government is spending money on a “potentially damaging” and “completely misguided” awareness-raising campaign that aims to stop non-disabled people making “assumptions” about people’s impairments.
One of the disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) that were backing the project has already told Disability News Service (DNS) that it is now asking the government to rethink its Ask Don’t Assume campaign.
The minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, has so far failed to respond to the wave of anger and frustration about Ask Don’t Assume, which encourages strangers to approach disabled people and ask them personal questions about their impairments and “what they are capable of”.
Among those expressing concern was disabled journalist and author Lucy Webster, who called it “completely misguided” and warned on Twitter that it risked “opening the ableism floodgates”.
The campaign website, which has only sketchy, confusing details of what it hopes to achieve, claims Ask Don’t Assume was “developed in partnership with disabled people” and is based on “their individual experiences, extensive research and work with disability stakeholders”.
The government’s Disability Unit yesterday (Wednesday) repeatedly refused to respond to the criticism, pointing only to background notes about the campaign.
In that background information, it said the campaign wants non-disabled people to ask disabled people what their access needs are, and not what their impairment is, and that they should not make assumptions and should instead support disabled people in the way they have requested.
But the public response to the campaign from disabled people has been overwhelmingly negative.
Sarah O’Brien, author of So, I’m Autistic, a guide for young autistic people, told DNS that the campaign “encourages invasive questioning and curiosity that creates the expectation that people’s impairments and needs should be public rather than personal”.
She said: “Some people are happy in the right moment to take the time to educate others, but that choice is taken away from the disabled person by this campaign which encourages people to be put on the spot.”
She also warned that it could have an even more troubling impact on disabled people with intersectional identities, who “may face additional harassment because of not wanting to answer questions”.
Vera Kubenz, a disabled academic, said it was “not disabled people’s responsibility to constantly educate strangers”.
She said: “Because I am researching disabled people’s encounters with strangers, I am really concerned that the government campaign will encourage intrusive questions, which are a really common experience for many disabled people, alongside staring.
“These questions are just as harmful and exhausting as more outright hostility because they are so frequent and turn disabled people into public property, rather than letting us just go about our day like everyone else.”
The government claims the campaign was “developed in partnership with disabled people”, but DNS has heard from Autistic Nottingham, one of the DPOs whose logo appears on the website.
Claire Whyte, chief executive of Autistic Nottingham, said the campaign’s “lack of message clarity” was “extremely disappointing”.
She said: “We initially saw the government’s scheme as positive and understood it was trying to bring to light the issues faced by those with physical disabilities having assumptions pushed upon them, such as wheelchair users being pushed/manoeuvred without their consent.
“However, due to the campaign’s lack of message clarity, it could be seen to promote asking disabled people intrusive and inappropriate questions.
“This is extremely disappointing, as we were hoping the campaign would promote a more open discourse to reduce those incidents from occurring.
“As an Autistic-led organisation, where most of our staff are Autistic, a campaign that allows issues to be taken out of context is not helpful and we believe that the government should look again at the content.”
Disabled author Penny Batchelor, co-founder of the Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses Literary Prize, said: “There’s a huge difference between asking someone if they need help, such as opening a door, and thinking that it’s acceptable to ask personal medical questions.”
She listed on Twitter some of the “insulting and distressing” things she has been asked by strangers, such as “What’s wrong with you?” and “How do you have sex?”.
She told DNS that the government “doesn’t seem to have a clue”, ignoring practical advice such as the need to bring in personal emergency evacuation plans for disabled people living in high-rise buildings while “spending money on this potentially damaging campaign”.
She said: “It’s tinkering round the edges whilst Rome burns – not addressing the real issues such as extensive NHS waiting lists, inaccessible housing, rising disability hate crime, disability poverty, the care crisis and a disability benefit system that assumes you’re a faking scrounger until proven otherwise.”
Kubenz said the campaign failed to consider “where the harmful assumptions come from”.
She said: “We have had over a decade of anti-austerity politics where mainstream media frequently claimed that many disabled people were scroungers and ‘trying it on’.
“My research focuses on blue badge spaces, which were largely exempt from cuts, but still many of my participants faced these assumptions.
“These ideas stick to disabled people and harm them in all situations, and this continues to be perpetuated by the government who are now gearing up for yet another round of benefit cuts.”
Disabled activist Jess Plant said the campaign “encourages the public to ask intrusive questions of disabled people who are just going about their day to day lives”, such as why they are using the accessible toilet.
She said: “I for one, as a disabled person, don’t want to share my personal medical information as I am doing the shopping.”
But she said the campaign also deflects “from what the government could and needs to be doing to address its own policies and inactions that make disabled people’s lives more difficult”, such as on social care, its plans to close rail ticket offices, and consultations on benefit reforms.
28 September 2023
Disabled man in fourth week of hunger strike over ‘inhuman’ Home Office facility
A man with significant long-term health conditions is in the fourth week of a hunger strike over “inhuman” conditions at a former Essex care home that is being used to house more than 50 disabled people seeking asylum.
The Home Office has so far refused to take any action over the case of Basam Huzyene, originally from Jordan, who has diabetes and a serious heart condition.
He is pleading with the government to intervene to provide humane conditions for himself and the other disabled people at the home, in the Tendring district of Essex.
But the Home Office failed to turn up to a safeguarding meeting last week, which was attended by local social services and NHS representatives, his solicitor (from lawyers Deighton Pierce Glynn), and the voluntary organisation Refugee, Asylum Seeker and Migrant Action (RAMA), as well as Clearsprings Ready Homes, which is contracted to run the facility.
Huzyene has been in the home for eight months and says the conditions, and the lack of nutritious food, are putting his life at risk.
He is in such poor health he believes he could easily catch an infection from the cramped, shared facilities, which would be fatal.
He told Disability News Service last Friday: “The food you can’t even eat, even your dog will not eat it, but you eat it because you have no choice, no money to buy your own food.
“Every day my condition is going down. I feel weak.
“This is the third week. The first week it was very hard. The second week I don’t feel hungry no more, this week my body is struggling.
“I am training my brain to keep myself up and strong. It is very, very difficult, but I try.
“They have to change. If they don’t, I have no choice. I have to finish what I started.”
He added: “My health is weak, I can catch anything from anyone, from a shower, from the toilet. If I catch anything that’s the end of it.
“They should know I have all my reports, all the surgeries I have had, my history, I just want to be like a human, I don’t want anything else.
“I am not asking for something special, I am just normal. I just need normal things.”
Campaigners say that 53 disabled people seeking asylum are currently being housed in the facility in “cramped, unsafe conditions, without adequate food or care”.
One resident, Behnam Murufi, who was Iranian, died in June after being denied the wheelchair that doctors said he needed after a number of strokes. RAMA said he was not offered any support and had “struggled hugely with mobility”.
Among the current residents, there are six who are paraplegic, 13 with prosthetic limbs, a number with significant mental distress, and others with life-limiting conditions.
The lack of proper care resulted in one disabled woman being left on the floor for 14 hours because the security staff that work there are not trained in manual handling.
Although the facility is step-free and accessible to wheelchairs, there are no hoists or other vital equipment to assist those with physical impairments.
Another disabled woman, aged 74, is so desperate for nutritious food that she has taken to knocking on the doors of local families to ask permission to use their cooker to boil cheap vegetables she has bought with her £9-a-week allowance.
National media, including the Guardian and ITV News, have previously reported on allegations that the disabled people dumped at the facility have been abandoned by the Home Office and “left to rot”.
Clearsprings Ready Homes has 10-year Home Office contracts to manage accommodation for people seeking asylum in England and Wales and last year made £28 million profit on those contracts, with its three directors sharing almost £28 million between them in dividends.
The Home Office refused to comment this week on the case of Basam Huzyene and his hunger strike.
But it said in a statement: “We are committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of those on asylum support, with extra provisions in place for people with disabilities.
“Asylum accommodation providers are contractually obliged to ensure accommodation is accessible for disabled people and where concerns are raised, we work with providers to ensure they are addressed.
“The food provided meets NHS Eatwell standards and caters for all cultural and dietary requirements.”
But Maria Wilby, operational lead of RAMA, which has been supporting those in the Essex facility, said: “We are aware of three individuals, all elderly and disabled, who appear to have become diabetic while staying at the site.
“The lack of training provided for staff around working with disabled people and the lack of essential equipment is putting lives at risk.
“There has already been one death. We will do everything we can to ensure there is not another.”
And Rebecca Yeo, a disabled activist and academic and member of Disabled People Against Cuts, who has researched issues of disability and forced migration, said: “The disabled people’s movement and anyone who cares about justice must not turn away from what is happening to Basam and everyone housed in this place.
“People are being deliberately deprived of the most basic needs and isolated from the wider population.
“We need a social model approach to focus resistance on the disabling impact of restrictions imposed on people in the asylum system.
“We have seen time and again that these restrictions are gradually extended to the wider population of disabled people.
“We need a stronger collective movement of solidarity to benefit us all.
“The Disability and Migration Network of people involved in either or both sectors are collecting signatures on an open letter which will be delivered to Clearsprings Ready Homes, the company providing this accommodation.”
Campaigners believe the government, Clearsprings and local authorities are breaching the rights of the disabled people in the former care home under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
But Cllr Mark Stephenson, an independent councillor and leader of Tendring District Council, said the council had a “long and proud history of supporting people fleeing persecution”, and “understand the government’s reasoning for dispersing asylum seekers throughout the country”.
He said the council had “robustly expressed concerns about the suitability of this specific location which we feel is unsuitable both for those placed there and the existing community, given other pressures on services and levels of deprivation – and have repeatedly asked for information and assurances around our concerns.
“People placed here are vulnerable due to additional care needs, and we have been doing what we can within our remit, and the bounds of propriety, to help them.”
He said it was the duty of Clearsprings to fund the relevant services.
The council has asked the Home Office for written clarification of whether it can use some of the Asylum Dispersal Grant of more than £100,000 it receives to support those placed at the facility, but Stephenson said “this has not been forthcoming”.
The council said it was aware of Huzyene’s hunger strike and was trying to influence the Home Office to take action to improve conditions and release the funding it could use to support that goal.
Stephenson said the council had regularly visited the former care home and raised concerns “where appropriate”, even though it was not responsible for safeguarding, health care or commissioning the services.
He said the council had also installed a free Careline service so the council can support and lift anyone who falls, had organised exercise classes, provided clothing through partner organisations, and co-ordinated fortnightly meetings with partners, such as the NHS and social care, “in order to ensure there is appropriate support in place”.
Asked what action it was taking to address the concerns, including the hunger strike, a Clearsprings Ready Homes spokesperson said: “We would not comment thereon but refer you to the Home Office press office for any comment they may have.”
A spokesperson for Conservative-led Essex County Council said it was aware of the hunger strike.
He said in a statement: “While we don’t comment on individual cases, we continue to be in close contact with our partners, including the Home Office, health partners, the local council and voluntary sector organisations, to support all those living at this site.
“Work that has taken place in partnership has included site visits in advance of their arrival to ensure that the former care home was fully accessible and appropriate for people with a range of care needs, and advice and guidance has been provided to residents, many of whom are fully independent.
“In all cases where a referral has been made, Essex County Council staff have undertaken assessments and care packages have been put in place to meet eligible needs, as well as providing advice, support and signposting where needed.”
He said he could not reveal how many care packages had been put in place “as it would risk personal identification of those involved”.
He added: “Any urgent referral is dealt with quickly in the same way as it would be for any Essex resident.
“Whilst we are not resourced to undertake this additional activity, we are fully committed to safeguarding all vulnerable adults living in Essex.”
28 September 2023
DWP failed to research why benefit spending rose before announcing ‘horrendous’ cuts
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted making no attempt to research why spending on out-of-work disability benefits has risen significantly in recent years, despite planning “horrendously dangerous” cuts after the next election.
Earlier this month, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride revealed 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.
Disabled activists raised serious concerns about what they said were “cynical” and “horrendously dangerous” attempts to make new government cuts by tightening the work capability assessment (WCA).
A DWP press release announcing the proposals highlighted a real-terms increase in spending on “incapacity benefits” from £15.9 billion in 2013-14 to £25.9 billion this year, while Stride told MPs that the proportion of disabled people “being given the highest level of award and deemed to have no work-related requirements at all” had risen from 21 per cent in 2011 to 65 per cent last year.
He said the situation was “excluding significant numbers of people from receiving employment support” and was “holding back the labour market and the economy”.
But he did not tell MPs that the early 2010s saw the beginning of years of activism and research that exposed the links between the WCA and hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of claimants.
That activism eventually forced DWP ministers to ease the harshness of the assessment and make it easier to qualify for the employment and support allowance (ESA) support group and avoid work-related conditions, although the test continued to be linked to serious harm and multiple deaths.
A consultation on the latest proposed changes – which would not be introduced until after the next general election – ends on 30 October*.
Some researchers and campaigners believe a key reason for the increased number of people receiving out-of-work disability benefits – and non-income-related disability benefits such as personal independence payment – in the last three years is the impact of the pandemic.
But Stride did not seem to be basing his proposals for a stricter WCA on any DWP research, instead appearing to focus on the need to cut government spending, despite the likely impact on those who would lose support.
Following his comments, Disability News Service (DNS) submitted a freedom of information request to DWP, aimed at discovering what research the department had carried out in the last three years into the reasons for the sharp rise in the number of people needing to rely on ESA and the disability element of the new universal credit.
But in a response to that request, DWP has now admitted to DNS that it “does not have specific research on this matter”, even though the department plans to make it more difficult for disabled people to claim support if they cannot work for health or impairment-related reasons.
DWP said that it “draws” instead on “the wealth of data” produced by the Office for National Statistics, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and others.
It highlighted OBR’s Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report, which was published in July and includes a lengthy chapter on “inactivity and health”.
The OBR chapter includes detailed analysis of data relating to people reporting long Covid symptoms, NHS waiting-lists, the rise in caseloads for incapacity benefits and personal independence payment, rates of benefit sanctions, and the rise in health-related inactivity.
But the chapter repeatedly makes clear that the analysis can draw no firm conclusions about why spending on ESA and disability- and health-related universal credit has risen so sharply in the last few years.
It uses phrases such as “would suggest”, “looks unlikely”, “it is possible”, “could plausibly have played a role”, “may have”, “might have”, and “there appears to be limited evidence” in its analysis.
But the report is clear that ONS figures show the number of people “citing long-term sickness as their main reason for being inactive has proven to be the most significant and persistent legacy of the pandemic, rising steadily over the past three years and by 440,000 by early 2023”.
It is also clear that “the increase in inactivity due to long-term sickness since 2019 has been concentrated among those who previously worked in lower-paid occupations”.
Ellen Clifford, author of The War on Disabled People and a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “The rhetoric amplified by the Tory government has absolutely no place within any evidence-based system of policymaking.
“The amplification by the right wing over the so-called rise in sickness benefits is an ideological distraction.
“The government thinks they can get away without evidence base or economically-logical arguments. We have to prove them wrong.”
DWP refused this week to address concerns that it was planning potentially dangerous cuts to spending on incapacity benefits and a tightening of the WCA without undertaking research to discover why disabled people have been claiming those benefits in larger numbers, and whether it was safe to introduce its cuts and reforms.
But a DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “We know that one in five people on an incapacity-related benefit would like to work at some point in the future, but fewer than one in a hundred move into employment every month.
“That is why we are consulting on reforms to work capability assessments and will take the time to ensure any subsequent changes are implemented safely.”
*Any organisation that needs help responding to the consultation can access free, confidential email support from the independent benefits advice website Benefits and Work
28 September 2023
Liberal Democrats edge ahead of Labour on charging, with free personal care pledge
The Liberal Democrats have promised to introduce free personal care for all adults if they win power at the next general election, although there are question-marks over key details of their pledge.
Party members this week approved a £5 billion-a-year plan to offer free personal care, which a party spokesperson said would cover “everybody” and not just older people.
The party also claims (PDF) that the net cost of the policy – to be introduced “throughout the UK” – would be only £3 billion a year because it would cut NHS costs by £2 billion a year.
The pledge appears to cover support with nursing care, getting dressed, washing, bathing, and at mealtimes, but not other support such as housework, shopping, laundry and engaging with the local community.
It is not clear whether there would be any limit to the free personal care for those supported to live in their own homes, and it is likely that it would apply only to those assessed as having substantial and critical needs under the Care Act, although the party declined to clarify these details this week.
The Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said the plans would mean “everyone can live independently and with dignity”.
But there were no further details in the conference speech made by the party’s health and social care spokesperson, Daisy Cooper.
And Davey’s conference speech also failed to offer any details about the free personal care promise.
He spoke instead of “rescuing our NHS and care system”, of “better social care, with many more care professionals, better paid” and “more support for family carers”.
Although the party declined to explain this week why it apparently did not intend to extend the policy to cover all council-funded care and support, it still puts the Liberal Democrats ahead of the Conservatives and Labour on dealing with the care charging crisis.
Only last week, Labour was accused of caving in to “powerful vested interests” after failing to include any reference to scrapping care charges in documents that will form the basis of the party’s next general election manifesto.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives have failed to take action to deal with a charging crisis that has left tens of thousands of disabled people every year facing debt collection action by their local authorities over unpaid care charges.
Successive Conservative governments have repeatedly promised – and then failed – to solve the social care crisis.
28 September 2023
Movement now has ‘powerful voice’ to challenge oppression, conference hears
The disability movement now has a “powerful voice” to challenge oppression, the first major in-person gathering of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) in England for seven years has heard.
DPOs from across England gathered in Manchester on Friday* for the launch of a new Disabled People’s Manifesto (see separate story).
It was the first significant in-person gathering of English DPOs since a conference in Sheffield in 2016 and was organised by the DPO Forum England, Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP).
Svetlana Kotova, Inclusion London’s director of campaigns and justice, said the conference showed how disabled people and their organisations had continued fighting over the last 13 years despite “huge cuts to our support”, the COVID pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.
She said the succession of setbacks felt as though “we can’t lift our head from one blow [before we] get another one”.
She said it was “important to remember that despite receiving all those blows from the government and from everyone who is supposed to support us, we kept fighting”.
Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance, said the DPO Forum England now provided a “much more powerful voice” for DPOs because it “came out of adversity”.
He said the forum was set up two years ago after the then minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, set up a forum of DPOs and then shut it down after just three meetings “because we challenged him on every single thing”.
Harrison said later that the conference had “reaffirmed the belief of what we know, and that what we know is that disabled people change the world.
“Nobody else is going to do it for us. It’s us. We are the people that are going to make the change happen.”
Michelle Daley, director of The Alliance for Inclusive Education, spoke of the vital importance of sustainable funding for DPOs, which would provide the resources necessary for proper co-production of policy.
She said: “We don’t just want to sustain. We want to thrive. We must thrive.
“We don’t just want to be at the table. We want to be part of the conversation. We want to dismantle the shit that’s happening.
“We know that we can’t be sustained when we have to scrape for the pebbles. And we know that in order to be sustainable, we need to thrive as well.
“DPOs are important, they’re necessary. They’re necessary for our tomorrow, they were necessary for yesterday, and they’re necessary for the years to come.”
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said it felt like “such a momentous day”, and that they were following “a very proud tradition of disabled people fighting for our rights and our equality and inclusion”.
She highlighted how she had personally benefited from the past activism of disabled people, which had produced disability living allowance and the Disability Discrimination Act.
And she said disabled people had continued their activism in recent years, protesting about personal emergency evacuation plans, the failure to extend the universal credit £20 uplift to those on legacy benefits, the unlawfulness of the National Disability Strategy, and now against rail ticket office closures.
*Other representatives of DPOs watched the conference and took part in discussions online
28 September 2023
Burnham pledges to challenge Labour leaders over broken promise on rights
Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have secured a promise from Greater Manchester’s mayor that he will ask his party why it dropped a promise to implement the UN disability convention into UK law if it wins the next general election.
Andy Burnham made the pledge at a national conference of DPOs in Manchester*, after being told that the Labour party had dropped its pledge to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law.
He spoke out after being told of the broken pledge by Ellen Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts.
The party was insisting until at least July this year that a Labour government was “fully committed” to incorporating the convention into law.
But last week, Disability News Service reported that a leaked copy of Labour’s National Policy Forum report included no mention of the policy.
The report will form the basis of Labour’s general election manifesto and will be put to the party’s annual conference in Liverpool next month.
Clifford asked Burnham what he could do to persuade Labour to renew its pledge.
Burnham said he believed it would be a “mistake” and a “very big backward step” for the party not to include the promise in its general election manifesto.
He said if the DPO conference could pass a resolution about Labour’s broken pledge, he would take that to national party leaders “and we will say that we think this is a mistake”.
He said the last 13 years had been “brutal for disabled people” and “there has to be a reckoning here, and an understanding of that, and then a commitment to change”.
The conference later unanimously passed a motion – witnessed by Burnham – that called on the Labour party to incorporate the UN convention into UK law, remove all the UK’s existing reservations to the convention, and commit to end care charging and introduce a National Independent Living Service within the first 100 days of a Labour government.
Burnham also promised to fight the “dangerously excluding” plans to close hundreds of rail ticket offices across England, which would mean that disabled people would be “straightforwardly discriminated against if this policy proceeds”.
He said: “We’ll fight this proposal all of the way. We will take them to court if they proceed with it.
“We will use the Equality Act to stop it. This proposal is not going ahead in Greater Manchester, and we will be fighting it every single step of the way with all of the people in this room.
“And we’ll be fighting it for you and your part of the country as well, because it isn’t happening.”
*Other representatives of DPOs watched the conference and took part in discussions online
28 September 2023
Successful care charging campaign ‘led to huge change’ in co-produced policy
A disabled activist has told a major conference of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) how a successful campaign to end discriminatory care charges in a London borough has led to powerful change in other key areas of independent living.
Kevin Caulfield told the conference in Manchester that the campaign led to “huge, huge change” in disabled people’s involvement in co-producing policy with Hammersmith and Fulham council.
It was the first significant in-person gathering of English DPOs* since a conference in Sheffield in 2016 and was organised by the DPO Forum England, Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP).
Caulfield is former chair of Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition Against Cuts, which played a key role in campaigning for an end to care charges in the borough, and is now strategic lead for co-production at the council.
He told the conference how the then leader of the council had told disabled activists in the 2000s to “to wake up and smell the coffee, and that we are never going to live in a borough where disabled people are not charged for essential support and services”.
But in 2015, Hammersmith and Fulham became the only council in the country to abolish all charges for care and support, when Labour won control of the council under Cllr Stephen Cowan, who had pledged to scrap charges when in opposition.
Caulfield said the message to the conference was “to stick to your principles, however strong the coffee smells, and if we water down our messages and our demands, then we’re stuffed”.
But he said care charging was just one of the “huge” barriers disabled people face.
Hammersmith and Fulham also set up a disabled people’s commission that focused on how to remove the barriers disabled people faced in the borough by embedding a culture of co-production within the council.
All eight of the recommendations made by the commission were about co-production, he told the conference.
One of the priorities was to implement a vision for independent living, co-produced by disabled people, which Caulfield said was “groundbreaking”.
He said there were now at least seven council groups working with disabled residents, including on housing, the redevelopment of the town hall, and on digital inclusion, so there was “a movement of residents becoming part of the fabric of the way the council works, and that’s a huge, huge change” and a long-term commitment.
Caulfield said: “All of our residents are being paid for their time if they want to be, and disabled people are becoming much more a part of a delivery team across the borough, not just consultees and service-users.”
Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, told the conference that he would speak to Cowan about how he managed to scrap care charges in his borough, and also find out what has happened in Tower Hamlets, which this year announced that it would also be ending care charges.
He said care charge policy and council tax rates were set by the 10 Greater Manchester local authorities, but he said he would work with them to try to produce a “standardised approach” to care charging “as a prelude, hopefully in the future, to removing it completely, which is what I support”.
He had said earlier: “Personally, I think care charges are an abomination. I would want to see all people able to live their lives without being disadvantaged from a financial point of view.
“These are the issues we need to get into the general election campaign. I hope today will help us do that.”
The conference also heard from two co-chairs of the Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel, a formal partnership between Burnham and DPOs across Greater Manchester.
One of the co-chairs, Chris Hamnet, from Embrace Wigan and Leigh, said: “We’re able to select the issues we want to take to the system, so we get to speak to Andy, and we take the issues that we think are important, rather than the system telling us what they want to consult us on.”
Another co-chair, Sara Crookdake, from Disability Stockport, spoke of the survey of 1,700 people, including 1,500 disabled people living within Greater Manchester, which was carried out by the panel last year.
The survey found that disabled people were being “forgotten and effectively abandoned”, forced to rely on foodbanks, and having to cut back on how much they eat, because of the cost-of-living crisis.
Crookdake said the panel had worked in partnership with Greater Manchester Combined Authority to discuss how to respond to the issues raised by the survey, and met with the four main energy providers, while communications had improved with all 10 Greater Manchester councils.
She said: “It’s meant that those disabled persons’ organisations can now better network, they communicate with each other, and it’s undoubtedly going to strengthen the movement.”
*Other representatives of DPOs watched the conference and took part in discussions online
28 September 2023
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Two disabled academics are to give their £20,000 book advance to charities committed to supporting neuro-divergent working-class families. Earlier this year, Prof Jason Arday became the youngest black person ever appointed to a professorship at the University of Cambridge. He is now writing a book – We See Things They’ll Never See: Love, Hope and Neurodiversity – with sociologist Dr Chantelle Jessica Lewis of the University of Oxford: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-66911978
A young disabled woman is calling for recognition for owner-trained assistance dogs. Sophie Noel, from Craven Arms, Shropshire, is autistic and trained her dog Loki to help her when she feels anxious or overwhelmed. But self-trained dogs are not recognised everywhere, and she and her family are calling for it to be possible to secure certification so they can fly together on holiday: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-66892866
28 September 2023
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
