Contents
Minister shares post that branded her own government’s PIP reforms ‘dangerous’ 1
DWP’s ‘brutal’ green paper suggests replacing PIP with vouchers or one-off grants 2
PIP consultation: The key questions DWP is refusing to answer 5
Stride refuses to apologise for two untruths in TV interview on PIP cuts 7
PIP claimants ask government: ‘Why should we have to fight to live?’ 8
Labour confirms assisted suicide pledge, as activists protest outside parliament 13
Police still being used in ‘punitive’ NHS mental health schemes, says report 16
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 19
Minister shares post that branded her own government’s PIP reforms ‘dangerous’
The minister for disabled people has refused to explain why she shared a social media post that described her own government’s disability benefit reforms as “dangerous” and accused ministers of “demonising” disabled people.
Mims Davies, who has been minister for disabled people for just four months, shared the post by a disability charity on Tuesday.
The previous day, her government had launched proposals for cuts and reforms to personal independence payment (PIP) that were branded a “brutal, ideological attack” on disabled people’s support (see separate story).
Under the plans for England and Wales, which are now out for consultation, ministers are considering making it harder to claim disability benefits and replacing cash-based payments with vouchers or one-off grants.
Tuesday’s Twitter post, by the disability charity Scope, which was reposted by Davies, said: “Proposals to curb Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and change how people are assessed as unfit for work are dangerous.
“Disabled people and people with mental health conditions must stop being seen as the problem by this government.
“Share your views, and sign the petition to tell the government to stop demonising us.”
The PIP proposals followed a speech last month by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, which led to him being accused by activists of whipping up hostility towards disabled people, and demonising and scapegoating claimants of disability benefits.
Sunak had announced a faster rollout of universal credit to disabled people, and an end to what he called a “sicknote culture”, among other reforms to social security.
Disability News Service (DNS) contacted Davies’s parliamentary office yesterday (Wednesday), but when editor John Pring started to read out the tweet, a staff member said: “I actually don’t have much time right now, we’re really short of staff so I need to crack on with that, all right?”
When Pring said it was important, because Davies was the minister for disabled people, he said: “Yeah, but I can’t deal with it right now, right, thank you, bye,” and hung up the phone.
After DNS followed up with an email, Davies’s chief of staff, Sarah Davies, refused to comment, and wrote: “As you have written regarding Mims’ role as the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, your approach has been forwarded to her DWP office.”
DNS emailed back to say that by sharing a social media post that was highly critical of the government’s position she was not acting in her ministerial role, and asked if Mims Davies was about to resign as minister for disabled people.
Sarah Davies had not responded by noon today (Thursday).
A DWP spokesperson also refused to comment, but referred instead to a response to the Scope post that Mims Davies appears to have made several hours after she had shared the charity’s tweet, in which she said: “Really keen we hear all views on this consultation – its absolutely an open consultation to hear disabled people’s views & those with a health condition – its so vital this is what people hear & engage with – I know people want to be heard & understood & is whats at the heart of this.”
2 May 2024
DWP’s ‘brutal’ green paper suggests replacing PIP with vouchers or one-off grants
The government is considering making it harder to claim disability benefits and even replacing cash payments with vouchers or one-off grants, as part of its latest “brutal, ideological attack” on disabled people’s support.
The plans could see the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) abandoning a core principle behind the disability benefits assessment system that dates back more than 30 years.
The potential options for reforming personal independence payment (PIP) in England and Wales were laid out in a new green paper, Modernising Support for Independent Living.
Its publication, and the launch of a 12-week consultation on the options, provoked an angry reaction from disabled campaigners, who called the government’s plans insulting, dangerous and dehumanising.
The proposals were announced by the government on Monday by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, who said the PIP reforms would address “spiralling” costs.
The current PIP assessment is based on a “functional test”, an attempt to assess the impact an impairment or health condition has on a disabled person’s ability to “function” in daily life.
Among the options for reforming PIP, DWP is asking if it should base eligibility instead on the diagnosis given to a disabled person by a healthcare professional.
This would require “a greater emphasis on the provision of medical evidence of a diagnosis”, although the green paper admits the department would need to consider the extra workload “this would place on the NHS and health professionals”.
With DWP already announcing plans to scrap the work capability assessment after the next election, the green paper suggests an end to DWP’s focus on functional assessments, a much-criticised principle that stretches back more than 30 years.
DWP refused to comment on that suggestion this week.
Another proposal in the green paper is to retain the current PIP assessment, but change the eligibility criteria, which currently assess how the health condition or impairment affects the disabled person’s ability to carry out 12 daily living and mobility activities.
The consultation document suggests that ministers want to tighten these criteria, as it says the aim would be to ensure that “we focus support on people with the highest needs and significant ongoing extra costs”.
It also suggests that ministers are considering lengthening the time that the impact of an impairment or health condition must have been present from its current three months, and increasing the length of time this impact is likely to continue from nine months.
DWP ministers are also suggesting replacing how the social security system contributes to a person’s extra disability-related costs – which is currently through PIP’s four-weekly cash payments – with other means of support.
This could mean offering a disabled person a list of equipment or aids to choose from; providing them with vouchers to contribute towards the cost of a disability aid; forcing them to claim back the cost of equipment by providing receipts to DWP; or offering a one-off grant for major purchases such as home adaptations or expensive equipment.
The green paper also suggests replacing PIP cash payments with improved access to support such as health care, social care or respite services.
And it suggests imposing more of a duty on cash-strapped local authorities and NHS bodies to “improve services and support for individuals”, such as equipment, personal assistance, health, respite services and contributions to utility costs, in place of all or part of PIP.
Although the statements made by ministers around the green paper stressed the increase in the number of successful PIP claims from people with mental distress – with the proportion of the working-age population who are PIP/DLA claimants with anxiety and depression more than doubling from 0.6 to 1.3 per cent between 2012 and 2023 – the consultation itself did not place a huge emphasis on mental health.
Of the 39 questions, only three explicitly refer to mental health, although one of them, question 27, does ask if some people could “benefit more” from improved “mental health provision” rather than cash payments.
Inclusion London said the government’s PIP proposals were “another brutal ideological attack on our rights, at a time when the UK’s welfare policies were yet again found by the UN to be leading to grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights”.
Only last month, the UN’s committee on the rights of disabled people concluded that the UK government had made “no significant progress” in the more than seven years since it was found guilty of “grave and systematic” violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
In March, the committee had accused the UK government of demonising disabled people and treating them as “undeserving citizens” by preparing to fund tax cuts by slashing disability benefits.
Inclusion London said its key concerns with the new proposals were that restricting access to PIP would worsen people’s health, and that those who lost their right to PIP could also see them lose access to other support.
It also said it was “dismayed at the way the government singles out people with experience of mental distress or trauma”, which it said was “blatant discrimination”.
Justin Donne, chair of Autistic Nottingham, which is run and controlled by disabled people, said the proposals would put the lives of autistic people at risk.
He said: “Narrowing PIP eligibility for those struggling with mental illness like anxiety and depression, as the prime minister is suggesting, will directly affect autistic people as we are more likely to struggle with our mental health.”
He said Sunak was “dashing the hopes of autistics who need PIP payments to survive and insulting their dignity by saying that they are abusing the system”.
Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, said the PIP proposals were “deeply concerning”.
She said: “We need a mass mobilisation of disabled people to resist this draconian consultation.”
And she warned that removing PIP from disabled people in work would put their jobs at risk.
She said: “If they take it away from disabled people in work, they will not be able to work. They are shooting themselves in the foot.”
Dan White, policy officer for Disability Rights UK, said: “The clear agenda of the government’s latest proposal is to reduce the number of disabled people receiving the crucial support we rely on.
“Being offered vouchers is more than an insult; it is dangerous.
“They will shut us off from our communities, leaving thousands without access to crucial services and support.
“Their punishing approach, which is obsessed with austerity, sanctions and conditionality, has fuelled increases in disability and sickness by under-resourcing not just the social security system but also health services, social care, education, housing and transport.”
The Disability Poverty Campaign Group said in a statement that the “hostile and misleading rhetoric” being used by Conservative ministers ahead of the general election was “creating considerable distress” among disabled people at a time of “exceptional financial hardship”.
It described the suggestion that vouchers could be used instead of cash payments as “dehumanising” and said it would “use all possible avenues to challenge the implication that disabled people eligible for PIP lack the capacity to manage cash-based income”.
And it added: “We know the prime minister and his government are seeking to weaponise disabled people’s poverty with their dishonest and divisive rhetoric to hide the deficiencies of their own failed legislation and years in office.”
The 12-week consultation closes on 23 July.
2 May 2024
PIP consultation: The key questions DWP is refusing to answer
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is refusing to say how many disabled people it expects to lose their disability benefits if it pushes ahead with controversial proposals for reforms and spending cuts.
The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, launched a 12-week consultation this week on plans for personal independence payment (PIP) in England and Wales they say would “make the disability benefits system fit for the future” and rein in the “spiralling” caseload and costs.
Sunak said: “It’s clear that our disability benefits system isn’t working in the way it was intended, and we’re determined to reform it to ensure it’s sustainable for the future, so we can continue delivering support to those who genuinely need it most.”
But despite asking the public for views on a series of possible major reforms – including making it harder to claim PIP and replacing cash-based payments with vouchers or one-off grants – neither the consultation nor its “evidence pack” include any figures showing how those changes would reduce the number of PIP claimants or spending on the benefit.
And neither Stride nor Sunak offered any clue to how much they wanted to cut spending or claimant numbers.
In contrast, the coalition government revealed in 2010 that it expected to cut the number of people claiming disability living allowance (DLA) – as well as spending on DLA – by a fifth when it announced it would be replacing it with PIP for working-age claimants from 2013.
This week’s evidence pack says the number of working-aged people receiving DLA and PIP has increased from 1.9 million in 2012-13 to 2.6 million in 2022-23, and is forecast to increase to four million in 2028-29.
But DWP declined yesterday (Wednesday) to provide any figures for how much it wanted to cut claimant numbers and spending, suggesting it was just starting a “conversation” and that its Modernising Support for Independent Living document was a consultation and not a white paper.
The department also refused to say what, if any, evidence it provided to Sunak ahead of a television interview with ITV News in which he claimed that PIP assessments were “often easily exploited and subject to unverifiable claims”.
In background information it provided to Disability News Service yesterday (Wednesday), DWP appeared to suggest that Sunak had made this comment because PIP claimants were not obliged to provide medical evidence.
But it had refused to comment further by noon today when asked again for any evidence that DWP provided to the prime minister that would show that PIP assessments were easily exploited.
Disabled people have been raising concerns for years about the harm caused by the assessment process, with a coroner reporting in January 2021 that flaws in the PIP system were “the predominant factor and the only acute factor” that led to a young disabled mother, Philippa Day, taking her own life.
DWP failed to respond this week to the suggestion that DWP civil servants can simply reject a PIP claim if a disabled person fails to provide medical evidence supporting their claim.
DWP’s own figures last year showed estimated PIP fraud was just 0.2 per cent of PIP spending in 2022-23.
The department has also refused to say why ministers believe the number of new PIP claims will continue to grow at the current rate.
DWP said the predictions of future growth in PIP claims were based on Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts and that previous OBR forecasts had underestimated future “caseload”, but it failed to explain why OBR believed the numbers would keep on rising even though the worst of the Covid pandemic had now passed.
A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “Fairness and compassion are at the heart of our welfare system.
“That’s why we want to update PIP’s ‘one size fits all’ approach, recognising that people’s needs vary.
“The consultation will look at how we can modernise PIP to better protect people with the most severe conditions and provide tailored support to help disabled people live fulfilled and independent lives.
“We are inviting views from across society, including disabled people and representative organisations, so we can deliver the right support for disabled people and those with health conditions.”
But Inclusion London (see separate story) said the PIP proposals were “another brutal ideological attack on our rights, at a time when the UK’s welfare policies were yet again found by the UN to be leading to grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s rights”.
Autistic Nottingham said Sunak was “dashing the hopes of autistics who need PIP payments to survive and insulting their dignity by saying that they are abusing the system” and that his plans would put the lives of autistic people “in danger”, while Disability Rights UK said the government’s clear agenda was “to reduce the number of disabled people receiving the crucial support we rely on”.
The 12-week consultation closes on 23 July.
2 May 2024
Stride refuses to apologise for two untruths in TV interview on PIP cuts
Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride has refused to apologise for misleading viewers twice in a television interview about his plans to cut disability benefits.
On the day he launched a new green paper that described the Conservative government’s plans to reform personal independence payment (PIP) to ensure it is “targeted at those most in need”, he told the BBC that PIP claimants received “thousands of pounds a month”.
This is not true. The highest amount any PIP claimant will receive is about £800 a month (or less than £740 every four weeks) for those requiring the highest levels of support for both mobility and daily living.
Stride, a former financial secretary to the Treasury, also told the BBC on Tuesday that PIP was “a benefit that has not been reviewed for over a decade”.
This was also untrue. There were two high-profile independent reviews of PIP, with the first published in 2014 and the second reporting in 2017, just seven years ago.
When he was questioned about this in parliament, by Labour’s Neil Coyle, he appeared to add a further untruth, telling him: “It is the case that there has not been a fundamental review of PIP on the basis that that has subsequently led to a change in that benefit.”
But Stride’s own green paper makes it clear that the government made significant changes to PIP after the two reviews.
It says: “We have continued to implement the recommendations of the independent reviews as we strive to shape PIP into a modern and dynamic benefit.”
When approached about the two comments, DWP only responded to the first one, claiming that Stride “misspoke” and had meant to say “thousands of pounds a year”, which he said during other interviews that morning.
The department refused to explain why he had wrongly claimed there had been no review of PIP for over a decade, and refused to say if Stride would apologise for either statement.
Under the plans for England and Wales, which are now out for consultation, ministers are considering making it harder to claim disability benefits and replacing cash-based payments with vouchers or one-off grants.
It is not the first time Stride has misled MPs and the public about disability benefits.
It took him just six days after he was appointed in 2022 to claim wrongly that there were 2.5 million people who were “long term sick” and “economically inactive” and who wanted to work.
In fact, the Office for National Statistics figures he was quoting did say there were 2.49 million working-age people who were economically inactive and described themselves as “long term sick” in the latest quarter of that year (June to August 2022), but those figures also showed that only 581,000 (23 per cent) of this group wanted a job.
The 12-week PIP consultation closes on 23 July.
2 May 2024
PIP claimants ask government: ‘Why should we have to fight to live?’
Disabled people have described the crucial role that personal independence payment (PIP) plays in their lives, after the government announced proposals that could drastically cut support for many claimants if the Conservatives win the next general election.
Under the plans for England and Wales, which are now out for consultation, ministers are considering making it harder to claim disability benefits and replacing cash-based payments with vouchers or one-off grants.
The proposals for reforming PIP were laid out on Monday in a new green paper, Modernising Support for Independent Living.
The publication provoked an angry reaction from disabled campaigners, who called the government’s plans insulting, dangerous and dehumanising (see separate story).
One PIP claimant, Deborah, who has several health conditions and is in her 70s, told Disability News Service (DNS) that she was angry that disabled people were constantly being “attacked” by the government.
Because of her double incontinence, she needs to run her washing-machine several times a week, and due to osteoarthritis, if no-one is available to help her shop she has to pay for a taxi.
Her local council cannot afford to pay for an adaptation to her bathroom, so she has to wash sitting on the toilet.
Even with the PIP she receives, she cannot afford the walk-in shower she needs, and she has to keep her hair short because cannot always wash it herself.
She is hoping to receive physiotherapy on her arms, but she will then need her PIP for travel to and from the hospital, and if she has surgery she will need to pay someone to cook for her or will have to buy expensive takeaways.
Deborah told DNS: “Why should I have to fight to live? If you do get PIP, it is clear they are selectively leaving out the full extent of your care needs, but you don’t challenge it for fear of a reassessment.
“Citizens Advice are so limited with the help available you just live on the rate and be grateful. But if they take PIP away then there is no hope.
“At the moment I have that help at night to get to the toilet, but if they take away my PIP I would have to find extra money from my pension, which I couldn’t do.
“I would be living in my own filth.
“At the time of my next assessment I will be nearly 80 and because of my cognitive impairment I will need to be sure the help will be there and I don’t have to fight for help.”
Another PIP claimant, Margaret Robinson, from West Yorkshire, told DNS that the government was “creating a divisive dialogue as always” and was “trying to stir up hostility” towards disabled people.
She emailed work and pensions secretary Mel Stride this week about his “inappropriate plans” and told him they could “make life increasingly miserable” for thousands of disabled people.
She told him that disabled people’s needs “go beyond adaptations and living aids”.
She told him: “This benefit is designed to support recipients living in their own homes and remain as independent as possible.
“Take PIP away, and the disabled may struggle to afford their living costs at home, especially those people who rely on other enhanced benefits associated with receiving PIP.
“Household incomes may be severely reduced, increasing levels of dire poverty.
“More disabled people may end up living in care home environments or sectioned as their physical and mental health breaks down, increasing spending on social care and the NHS.
“Local authorities will not be able to meet demand for social care and care home places because the current state of budgets across the country is resulting in cutbacks and closures.
“More disabled people may end up hospitalised as their health deteriorates. This will put further strain on NHS spending and waiting lists.
“Increasing numbers of disabled people living alone may possibly die from increased isolation and neglect. Suicide and homelessness may be increased risks.”
She called on Stride to ensure there was a consultation that heard from a wide range of disabled people who receive PIP, and not just charities and representative bodies.
She told DNS that the prospect of having her income reduced to a basic level of employment and support allowance or universal credit was “deeply unsettling”.
She said: “I have considered it each time my PIP is reviewed and increasingly now the political parties have decided benefit spending is a reduction target.
“My mental health deteriorates and overwhelms me to the point of inertia each time the media report another ‘initiative’.
“My quality of life (which my family think is already poor) will be reduced even further if I lose PIP.
“I will have no quality of life, my income won’t cover the basics and [it] will increase my vulnerability.”
She added: “The attitude towards benefits recipients is being fuelled by a hostile and divisive narrative from government and, increasingly, the opposition.
“The welfare state is a safety blanket for us all and needs evolving to reflect the fluidity of the challenges we face today.
“I was a tax-payer and I felt proud to contribute to the welfare state.
“Hard work should be rewarded but… hard work doesn’t always pay off and the best of us can end up jobless, sick, disabled and on benefits – the pandemic being a case in point.”
The 12-week consultation closes on 23 July.
2 May 2024
Activists ‘terrified’ as MPs debate legalising assisted suicide while government proposes PIP cuts
Disabled activists protesting outside parliament have spoken of their horror at the government releasing new plans to cut disability benefits on the same day MPs were debating the idea of legalising assisted suicide.
There are fears that yet more cuts to the support disabled people rely on to live independently will only exert more pressure on them to take their own lives if assisted suicide is eventually legalised.
Activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) joined Not Dead Yet UK, which leads disabled people’s opposition to legalisation in the UK, across the road from parliament on Monday, just yards from a larger rival action by those pushing for legalisation.
Actor, writer and comedian Liz Carr, whose documentary highlighting the dangers of legalisation will be broadcast on BBC1 later this month*, was one of the disabled activists raising concerns about the apparent political momentum enjoyed by those seeking new laws.
That momentum includes the announcement by Labour leader Keir Starmer last month that he was in favour of a change in the law in England and Wales, and that he would make parliamentary time for legislation to be debated – albeit with a free vote for MPs – if his party wins the next general election.
On Monday, as the two rival rallies took place across the road, MPs debated a petition that called for a parliamentary vote on the issue (see separate story).
Carr told Disability News Service (DNS) she was terrified by the government’s latest personal independence payment (PIP) proposals.
She said: “I don’t even think the other side will make the connection over how terrifying that feels to disabled people yet again.
“We know disabled people have killed themselves because of DWP reforms in the past.
“That’s what terrifies me: the kind of thing happening in Canada where people for socio-economic reasons are choosing to end their lives through euthanasia.”
She said she was “fed up” with the continuing complaints from those supporting legislation that parliament was not listening to them.
In February, a cross-party committee of MPs rejected attempts by a minority of its members to try to use a new report to push the government towards legalising assisted suicide in England and Wales.
Even after the committee’s report and eight failed attempts to persuade parliament to legalise assisted suicide over the last two decades, she said supporters of legalisation were still complaining that MPs and peers were “not listening”.
She said: “No, they are not giving you the answer you want.
“On the same day that we are listening about PIP reform and about disabled people being labelled as scroungers, it’s more important than ever to say let’s give disabled people support in life and choice over their life.”
She added: “This is about everybody, actually, it’s about all marginalised people, not just disabled people.”
She later told other protesters opposing legalisation: “I know it’s hard being a small group of people, but I absolutely believe that if the public in general could hear our side then I think they would be far less likely to support assisted suicide.”
Andy Greene, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said the decision to publish the PIP proposals on the same day as the assisted suicide debate was “not so subtle”.
He told DNS: “We are an easy target in terms of political targeting. We are the go-to group for cuts to services, for cuts to income, for building a narrative around, because we are seen as an easy target.
“It’s a message and not so subtle a message to the public and to disabled people about where the direction of travel is.”
He said he believed the momentum towards legislation appeared to be “unstoppable, inevitable” which had left him “genuinely horrified”.
He said he had seen the “slippery slope” in other countries where assisted suicide has been legalised and has gradually been extended to more and more groups of disabled people.
He said: “That’s inevitable once it comes in. The catchment broadens and broadens and broadens every time, without fail.”
He said he had wanted to be at the protest “because it’s important disabled people are represented in this debate.
“We are the people who have the most at stake here and, as history has shown us, we have the most to lose.
“You feed the worst in people when you legislate for this.”
Nick Saunders, a member of the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN), said: “We want help to live, not to die. It’s a matter of life and death, nothing more, nothing less.
“We fought for public transport, for independent living; now we are fighting for our own lives.”
Paula Peters, another member of DPAC’s national steering group, said the government’s move to publish its plans for further cuts to support on the day of the assisted suicide debate made her want to “throw rocks” at parliament, and had caused her “anger and huge anxiety”.
She said it would “ramp up” disabled people’s feelings that they were “a burden on society”.
She said: “To launch a consultation on PIP the day of the assisted dying debate is rubbing salt in the wounds.”
She added: “Disabled people will feel they are better off dead because they can’t afford to live.”
Peters said disabled people “need assistance to live, not to die”, including properly-funded social care and palliative care systems.
Nikki Kenward, campaign director of The Distant Voices, a user-led campaign group which opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide, told DNS she was “very concerned” at the momentum behind legalisation and now believed it would happen.
She said safeguards had failed in prisons, schools, children’s homes and within the police, so there was no reason why any safeguards would work with assisted suicide laws.
Another disabled campaigner, Nan Whitehouse, aged 91, told DNS that the idea of legalising assisted suicide was “very, very dangerous”.
She said: “Once you decide that human life is disposable, there is no halting it.”
*Better Off Dead? will air on BBC One and iPlayer on Tuesday 14 May at 9pm
2 May 2024
Labour confirms assisted suicide pledge, as activists protest outside parliament
Labour has re-affirmed its commitment to making time for MPs to “have a final say” on whether assisted suicide should be legalised, just as disabled activists were protesting about the idea outside parliament.
MPs were discussing a parliamentary petition set up by the right-wing Daily Express newspaper, which has been signed by more than 200,000 people and calls for assisted suicide for terminally-ill people to be legalised.
As they were debating the petition in Westminster Hall, disabled activists just 100 yards or so across the road outside parliament were highlighting the dangers of legalisation.
They were speaking of their horror at the government releasing new plans to cut personal independence payment on the same day MPs were debating the idea of legalising assisted suicide (see separate story).
Inside Westminster Hall, significant concerns were raised about the prospect of legalisation, although opponents were outnumbered by MPs who backed the petition.
One of the most prominent opponents was Labour’s Sir Stephen Timms, who warned that “changing the nature of the National Health Service, so that it ends people’s lives as well as sustains them, would be an absolutely fundamental change that we need to weigh very carefully indeed before introducing”.
He said: “I understand the proposition that people with a diagnosis of terminal illness should be allowed help to die, but it is clear from what happens elsewhere that if that did happen, it would not remain subject to that narrow criterion.
“It would not end there. Indeed, the campaign to broaden the scope has already begun.
“Matthew Parris wrote in his column in The Times that we need assisted suicide because old people cost too much.
“It seems to me that legalising assisted dying would impose a terrible dilemma on frail people, elderly people and others when they are at the most vulnerable point in their lives, especially on conscientious frail people who do not want to die but do not want to be a burden.
“I do not think that there is any way to avoid imposing that dilemma. The National Health Service should be there to protect those people.”
Other MPs warned of the “slippery slope” that would inevitably mean that the scope of any legislation would be widened once a law was brought in.
Conservative MP Nick Fletcher described how a 23-year-old woman with post-traumatic stress disorder was euthanised in Belgium two years ago, and how a 28-year-old woman, Zoraya ter Beek, is due to die this month in the Netherlands after seeking euthanasia due to depression.
The Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne pointed to the latest statistics released by the US state of Oregon, which legalised assisted suicide in 1997.
He said: “By far, the largest cohort of applicants for the service – 52 per cent – are those who say they wanted it because they did not want to be a burden, far exceeding those who wanted it to avoid pain in death.
“There is a profound danger that what begins as a choice will end as an expectation.”
Labour’s Rachael Maskell told fellow MPs: “I am worried about the person who says, ‘I’m just getting in the way. My children will have a better future without me. Perhaps the savings I have put aside could be better spent by them than on me.’
“It is not necessarily coercion, but the way that people feel in a society that changes the law.”
She also told MPs: “The NHS is in tatters, social care is in a dire condition and so much funding has been withdrawn from civil society.
“There is much for the government to do, and they must address those reasons in order to ensure that everyone has the opportunity for a good end-of-life experience.”
Some supporters of legalisation appeared to concede that some people would be placed at risk under a new law.
Labour’s Sir George Howarth suggested that the idea of coercion was “based on an unduly pessimistic view of human nature, that people will pressure their close relative or loved one to take such a decision purely on the grounds that it might serve them well financially… or because they want to avoid caring responsibilities in the later stages of their loved one’s life.”
But he added: “I do not believe that that is how the majority of people take those decisions.”
He agreed that “some people might act in that way”, although the “overwhelming majority” would act “out of love”.
And Labour’s Tonia Antoniazzi, who moved the motion on the petition on Monday, told fellow MPs in Westminster Hall that it was “perhaps naive to suggest that any change in the law would not have wider consequences in society, beyond the individual making the choice”.
She pointed to the Danish Council on Ethics, which she said concluded last year that “the existence of an offer of assisted dying would decisively change ideas about old age, quality of life and dying, and that there was too great a risk that it would become an expectation aimed at certain groups in society”.
Ruth Cadbury, a shadow justice minister and a supporter of legalisation, confirmed that a future Labour government “would make time for a private member’s bill so that parliament can have the final say through a free vote, following a full debate and a process of amendments”.
Junior justice minister Laura Farris said the government’s position remained that “any relaxation of the law is an issue of conscience for individual parliamentarians, rather than one for government policy.
“In the tradition of all conscience matters where the government maintain a neutral stance, that is typically achieved through a private member’s bill.”
Better Off Dead?, a documentary by disabled actor and activist Liz Carr that highlights the dangers of legalisation, will be broadcast on BBC One and iPlayer on Tuesday 14 May at 9pm
2 May 2024
Police still being used in ‘punitive’ NHS mental health schemes, says report
Police are still being used as part of “punitive, exclusionary and discriminatory” NHS schemes in England that criminalise mental distress, an 18-month investigation has found.
The Criminalising Distress report calls for an end to all such practices and the immediate removal of police from NHS mental health services.
The report, written by the global health charity Medact and supported by disabled activists, focuses on the “national scandal” of the Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) scheme, which was only halted through a campaign by the StopSIM Coalition that exposed it as discriminatory, coercive and punitive.
The coalition’s campaign eventually persuaded NHS England (NHSE) to order local reviews by mental health trusts of how SIM had been implemented, and to admit it was wrong to endorse SIM without applying “sufficient scrutiny” and accept that this had harmed service-users.
Former members of the StopSIM coalition of service-users and allies acted as a steering committee for the Criminalising Distress project.
Hat, one of those former StopSIM members, and a survivor, researcher, activist and artist, told an online launch of the report that the coalition had eventually been forced to disband to prioritize their own health.
The coalition had worked with NHSE for 15 months on a new policy statement, only for NHSE to renege last year on a promise to publish it, and refuse to apologise or commit to change.
Hat said the hardest part of the decision to disband “was knowing that the fight to end SIM and the harmful and abusive systems and structures which allowed it to spread continued so widely, and knowing that the fight to eradicate all of that needed to continue”.
But they said that, despite StopSIM being disbanded, the survivor activism against SIM-like schemes continued.
Hat said that even though an apology would not have rectified “the real harms that continue to happen, it still felt like a huge injustice that that was never recognized, along with anyone taking accountability and responsibility for the failure and the harms”.
They also spoke about Oxevision, the system used to monitor mental health inpatients in their own bedrooms through a camera and infra-red sensor, which campaigners have described as “intrusive and dehumanizing and retraumatizing”.
They told the meeting: “We’ve spoken to people who’ve spent entire admissions sleeping on the bathroom floor, in communal areas, in the garden, just anywhere to avoid the camera.”
Hat said that Oxevision and similar surveillance systems were “being used to punish and criminalise patients”.
They pointed to similarities to SIM, with “patients and survivors” being left to “do the jobs of lawyers and detectives” and investigate what was happening, with a lack of accountability within the health system.
They said that services were “jumping on new technologies and ideas as if these can fill the gaps and failings that are created by a broken and chronically-underfunded system with deeply entrenched harms and violence”.
The SIM scheme focused on users of mental health services – often those at high risk of suicide and self-harm – who were seen as “high intensity users” of emergency services and a “troublesome burden on cash-strapped services”, with police officers embedded into community mental health teams.
But the Medact report exposes how the scheme grew and spread across England despite the false claims of its success made “aggressively” by its founder, police sergeant Paul Jennings.
The report concludes that, even though schemes named “SIM” have disappeared, there are “multiple” similar schemes that continue to criminalise distress, often led by the police.
These schemes are based on coercion and denial of potentially life-saving support, leaving some service-users to live in fear of arrest or even prosecution when in mental health crisis.
The report calls for an independent inquiry into ongoing SIM-like schemes, as well as a move towards a non-coercive, “robust and sustainable”, rights-based system of community support.
But it also says there is a need for interventions that “pre-empt crises occurring, by addressing the social determinants of mental health such as poverty, housing and employment”.
SIM was first trialled in 2013 on the Isle of Wight, but it was eventually rolled out to nearly half the mental health trusts in England.
NHSE, the NHS Innovation Accelerator, the Academic Health Science Network (now known as the Health Innovation Network) and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have all failed so far to apologise for the harm caused by SIM or the failures that led to its widespread introduction.
But the report also says that, due to the NHS culture of “blame-shifting and unaccountability, combined with its hierarchical leadership structures”, frontline staff who have spoken out against criminalisation have been punished, while there has been “no evidence of accountability” within the police.
The report also says that the NHS Innovation Accelerator has continued to push “dubious” new schemes such as Oxevision.
Research by the grassroots campaign group Stop Oxevision has confirmed that the technology is “regularly used without patients’ consent or sometimes even knowledge”, the report says.
Dr Jay Watts, a disabled activist and consultant clinical psychologist, told the report’s online launch that people she had spoken to who had been on SIM had experienced a “neglect of care” and then “kind of get attacked” and become a “scapegoat”.
She said there was “a lack of complex trauma knowledge, a lack of therapy, a lack of all the things that we know are affecting this group”, and they are viewed by the NHS as “a kind of a sucker of resources, in some dreadful way, who need to be punished”.
She said it was vital that those in need of support know they are “worthy of decent, really good care, and that’s so important to say when the system is still against you”.
And she said it was vital people looked after themselves and also “use our social power, whatever it might be”.
The Medact report concludes that SIM “was an example of a wider problem”.
It says: “Lack of compassion, failure to respect confidentiality, coercive practices, exclusion, denial of care, criminalisation and outright abuse are all far too common.
“Nor can we hope to truly eradicate SIM-like practices while the NHS’s culture of blame-shifting and unaccountability at the top remains intact and whistleblowing frontline staff continue to be punished.
“This same culture meant that the medical establishment waved through SIM, and it was left to people with lived experience of prior harm and injustice in the mental health system to challenge the programme.”
Patients, it says, “continue to be criminalised, neglected and used as scapegoats for a grossly inadequate system in need of radical overhaul”.
Dr Hil Aked, research and policy manager at Medact and lead author of the report, said: “The continuation and rebranding of SIM under different names shows that accountability for this harmful set of practices is still being evaded.
“The government, NHS England and individual NHS trusts must recognise that people in mental distress deserve care and compassion, and should never be punished for being unwell.”
2 May 2024
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Staff were filmed hitting, kicking and leaving special school pupils in their own urine, the BBC has found. Despite the school proving abuse in so-called “calming rooms”, some staff are still employed there and have not been barred from working with children. Parents say they have not been allowed to see the footage and were misled about the use of isolation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68897335
Thousands of vulnerable people are at risk of ending up without social security payments, MPs have warned. Just under a million new claimants are being switched to the universal credit system, replacing six older payments. But the cross-party public accounts committee said the transition could see a large number of people slip through the net, causing “real-world misery”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68897387
A celebrated deaf performer and sign-language poet has become the 16th “remarkable” Welsh woman to be recognized with a purple plaque. Dorothy “Dot” Miles was born in Rhyl, Denbighshire, in 1931 and lost her hearing aged eight due to meningitis. She became a key figure in the literary heritage of British Sign Language and the deaf community: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68907928
2 May 2024
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
