Sunak faces verdict on misleading ‘fit for work’ stats, just days after his Labour tax row ‘lies’

The statistics regulator will rule tomorrow on whether the prime minister misled voters around the growth in disabled people found not fit for work, just two days after the same watchdog promised to investigate his claims about Labour’s tax plans.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is to release a statement today (Thursday) on claims made by Rishi Sunak during Tuesday’s leaders’ debate that Labour’s spending plans would result in a £2,000 tax rise “for every working family in this country”.

OSR is particularly examining the claim that the figures were produced by “independent Treasury officials”, with Labour figures accusing Sunak of lying after the Treasury’s permanent secretary told the party the figures were not produced by the Civil Service.

But before this row erupted, Disability News Service (DNS) had already been told that OSR would deliver its response tomorrow to three complaints made about claims made by the government around disability benefits, including one lodged by DNS in March.

At least one of the complaints relates to claims made by the prime minister.

The DNS concern, currently the oldest outstanding complaint on the regulator’s issues log, relates to figures repeatedly used by Sunak about the number of disabled people being found not fit for work.

The prime minister first used these figures in his main Conservative party conference speech last October.

He repeated them in March in an interview with the Sunday Times.

And he repeated them again in a major speech on social security at the Centre for Social Justice in April.

Sunak said in April: “In 2011, 20 per cent of those doing a work capability assessment were deemed unfit to work.

“But the latest figure now stands at 65 per cent. That’s wrong.

“People are not three times sicker than they were a decade ago.”

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which will have briefed him on the figures, will have been aware that they were deeply misleading.

Like his fellow ministers, and many media commentators, Sunak ignored the fact that the 2011 figures reflected the early years of the WCA, before its most serious flaws were exposed.

It took years of research and activism by disabled people and allies to expose the links between the WCA and hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of claimants, and to force DWP ministers to ease the harshness of the assessment*.

That eventually made it less arduous to qualify for the employment and support allowance support group and avoid work-related conditions for those not fit for work, although the assessment process is still deeply-flawed and continues to be linked to serious harm and deaths.

DNS lodged a complaint with OSR on 11 March, and the regulator told DNS in April that it had “contacted the team in 10 Downing Street for information on the sources behind the figures quoted by the prime minister”.

When DNS approached OSR for an update the following month, it was told by the regulator: “As we have looked into your case, there have been other statements made by ministers on the topic of out-of-work disability statistics.

“We want to consider them together and respond in their full context. We will update you with our findings on this.”

DNS contacted OSR again on 31 May, after Sunak had called a general election, and pointed out that the complaint about the WCA figures was now the oldest outstanding concern on its issues log.

The regulator then confirmed that it would be publishing a statement on Friday 7 June on “recent statements on disability benefits and out-of-work statistics”.

It later clarified that this statement would be used to “respond publicly to three claims”, one of which was the DNS complaint.

Another appears to relate to claims made by work and pensions secretary Mel Stride in April that disabled people claiming personal independence payment (PIP) receive “thousands of pounds a month”.

Stride also claimed – wrongly – that PIP was “a benefit that has not been reviewed for over a decade”, when in fact there were two high-profile independent reviews of the PIP assessment process, 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.

The green paper says: “We have continued to implement the recommendations of the independent reviews as we strive to shape PIP into a modern and dynamic benefit.”

*The Department, DNS editor John Pring’s book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled people in the post-2010 era, will be published by Pluto Press on 20 August. Visit the DNS website before publication for a 50 per cent discount  

6 June 2024

Disabled people ignored in ‘parallel universe’ election campaign

Disabled people were not mentioned once in the first major television event of the general election campaign, despite the participants speaking more than 21,000 words over more than two hours.

Analysis of transcripts of the leaders’ debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, followed by interviews with Ed Davey, Stephen Flynn, Richard Tice and Adrian Ramsay, shows none of them, and neither of the two journalists moderating the debate or interviewing the leaders, mentioned disabled people or disability.

The one exception to the sidelining of disability from the two programmes broadcast by ITV on Tuesday evening was in its treatment of social care, but even this received only cursory attention and disabled people were not mentioned directly.

Social care was mentioned in the leaders’ debate after a question was put by ITV’s Julie Etchingham to Sunak and Starmer.

And when Davey was interviewed later by ITV’s Anushka Asthana, he gave his party’s call for an end to charging for personal care for all adults, and a higher minimum wage for care workers, as an example of a Liberal Democrat manifesto policy (see separate story).

The sidelining of disabled people during the leaders’ debate and interviews came just two days after Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, said it was “astonishing and appalling” – and that political parties appeared to be “living in a parallel universe” – that disabled people had been ignored in the first 10 days of the election campaign.

The section on social care during the leaders’ debate lasted approximately one minute and five seconds, and there was no cross-examination of the answers provided by Sunak and Starmer.

Etchingham had asked them: “Five years ago, Boris Johnson was standing where you both are now. He told me there was a plan ready to go on this.

“We’re still waiting. Will you both now commit to a fully-funded solution in your manifesto this time round?”

Sunak claimed the government had “already implemented charging reform” but then added: “Pilots are in place to implement the reforms. They will be rolled out later this year.”

These long-awaited government reforms were widely seen as regressive and unfair but would have introduced a lifetime cap of £86,000 on how much anyone paid for social care in England.

Two years ago, the government delayed their introduction from October 2023 to October 2025.

But in January this year, the permanent secretary of the Department of Health and Social Care, Sir Chris Wormald, told the Commons public accounts committee that the government could be forced into further delays if it decided under-pressure councils would not be able to cope with the “big new chunk” of “complicated work”.

It is not yet clear whether the Conservative manifesto will stick to the October 2025 date for the rollout of the reforms, with pilot projects later this year.

Sunak then said that his Conservative government had provided “an extra eight billion” for social care because “the pressures are immediate”.

This appears to refer to the £7.5 billion funding provided for adult and children’s social care (PDF) over 2023-24 and 2024-25 – although only £2.7 billion of this was new central government funding – that was announced in November 2022 when the government said its charging reforms would be delayed, although some of this money went to the NHS.

The other £500 million of the £8 billion appears to refer to new funding for social care announced by the government in January.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said later that this extra funding “simply isn’t enough to meet rising costs and growing numbers of adults needing care and support this year” and that social care “needs a long-term, sustainable, fully-funded plan”.

The National Audit Office said last November (PDF) that the government had “delayed its charging reforms, scaled back system reform, and is behind on some aspects of its revised plan”.

Starmer focused, as his party has in recent years, on the need to improve conditions for care workers, rather than any attempt to end care charges or increase the availability of funding for disabled people in need of care and support.

He told the audience: “We will have a plan for social care that, like everything else in our manifesto, it’ll be fully costed and fully funded.”

He said the focus on care workers was because “one of the biggest problems in social care is that the workforce has fragmented”, with “poor conditions of many, many people”.

Research by disabled campaigners showed in 2022 that tens of thousands of disabled people across the country every year were having debt collection action taken against them by their local authorities over unpaid care charges.

6 June 2024

Labour silent over key concerns on disability employment policy and claimant safety

The Labour party has refused to answer key questions about the safety of its disability employment policies, and why it published an inaccessible social media post about those plans.

Disability News Service (DNS) has been trying to clarify details of its announcements around disability employment since a speech by shadow disability minister Vicky Foxcroft at the TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference in Liverpool, the day after the general election was announced by prime minister Rishi Sunak.

Those questions became more urgent last week when Labour leader Keir Starmer delivered a speech in which he promised that “those who can work, will work” under a Labour government.

His statement suggested – although this was not explicit – that a Labour government would continue to exert pressure and impose sanctions on disabled people who are not currently in work, rather than offering a more supportive, safer system than the one operated under successive Conservative-led governments.

Starmer also said: “Under the Tories, there are too many people who are not in work, who should be.”

The party highlighted how spending on “health and disability benefits for working age adults” is set to rise by over 50 per cent over the next parliament, from £41.3 billion in 2022-23 to £68.5 billion in 2028-29.

But the party has refused this week to confirm whether it was correct that its approach in government would involve continuing to exert pressure on disabled claimants, while ignoring the need for a more supportive and safer system.

DNS also asked the party why it had made no reference to concerns raised repeatedly by DWP staff about the safety of their department.

Late last month, the work and pensions select committee released the results of a survey of DWP staff which found that two-thirds of them do not have enough time to deal with safeguarding concerns “carefully” and “correctly”, despite years of deaths of benefit claimants linked with DWP’s actions.

And last December, the PCS union submitted a dossier of concerns to DWP that suggested the department was in a state of crisis, while it accused DWP of “deliberate neglect”, and said benefit claimants in vulnerable situations were “falling through the gaps” in the system.

But Labour made no mention of these concerns in last week’s announcements, or in Foxcroft’s speech, while it also ignored two recent letters sent to DWP by coroners after the suicides of universal credit claimants.

DNS asked the party whether last week’s announcements on disability employment, which were heavily criticised by disabled people, suggested that it had already abandoned its supposed commitment to co-producing its disability policies with disabled people.

DNS also asked the party why a social media post it published on Saturday (1 June) referred to “people with disabilities”, and whether this meant Labour no longer supported the social model of disability.

And it asked why the post’s “alt text” – which allows screen-readers to describe an image that appears on the screen – failed to include the words included on the image the party had posted.

The alt text simply said: “A pink graphic with two animated people in work clothes under text.”

But it failed to say what that text was, even though the words summarised the party’s back-to-work plan in three bullet points.

Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, has now declined to answer questions about her party’s disability employment policies from DNS three times in the last two weeks.

The first time, she said she had a train to catch after delivering a speech at the TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference; the following week, she said she was tied up with her legal duties relating to her office and constituency casework after the election was called; and finally this week she said she was just “too busy” but could “probably” answer questions after the manifesto launch “in a few weeks”.

She redirected questions to the party’s press office, but after a two-day delay, a Labour spokesperson said yesterday (Wednesday), in response to the questions asked by DNS: “Confirming that we will not be commenting on this occasion.

“Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We are receiving an increased volume of press enquiries during this general election period.”

6 June 2024

DWP can’t find report on universal credit safety that PM’s unit told it to write

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Cabinet Office have both been unable to find a report that was supposed to describe how DWP supported “vulnerable” people who rely on the universal credit benefit system.

DWP was told to produce the report five or six years ago by a civil service unit set up by David Cameron and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg in 2012.

But neither DWP nor the Cabinet Office have been able to find the report, despite separate freedom of information requests from Disability News Service (DNS).

The failure to find the report comes as DWP has faced a series of coroners’ reports and concerns raised by its own staff about the safety of universal credit and its failure to ensure the working-age benefit system is safe for claimants in vulnerable situations.

Previous freedom of information requests showed that the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (PMIU) had produced a report – Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups – that described the “additional difficulties” faced by vulnerable claimants of universal credit.

The Cabinet Office had initially claimed it could not find this document.

When it finally found the report and provided a copy to DNS, it showed that the document had warned that the “experience of many groups of vulnerable claimants on UC is not currently understood”, while there was a “lack of evidence” on whether the range of support for these groups is “delivered consistently and delivering the desired outcomes with efficacy”.

The report included a recommendation by PMIU for DWP to draw up a “single and coherent” document that described its approach to vulnerable claimants.

The aim was to “demonstrate the support and adjustments” DWP had developed and help those working in the department to share information about this support and “ensure greater consistency” in how it was applied.

This report was supposed to be produced “internally” and then shared with PMIU.

But when DNS submitted fresh freedom of information requests to DWP and the Cabinet Office, neither of them were able to find the “single and coherent” document.

DWP told DNS: “We have carried out a detailed search for the information you have requested and can confirm, DWP does not hold this information.”

The Cabinet Office responded to a separate request: “We are writing to advise you that following a search of our paper and electronic records, we have established that the information you requested is not held by the Cabinet Office.”

This could mean that DWP and the Cabinet Office have lost the report, destroyed it, are refusing to release it, or that DWP ignored the recommendation to write it.

What happened to the report is important because, five or so years after Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups is believed to have been written, DWP is facing increasing concerns about safeguarding claimants of universal credit and other benefits.

Only last week, DNS reported how two-thirds of DWP staff still do not have enough time to deal with safeguarding concerns “carefully” and “correctly”, despite years of deaths of benefit claimants linked with DWP’s failings.

The survey, completed by more than 1,700 DWP staff for the Commons work and pensions committee, also showed that more than two-fifths (42 per cent) of staff with direct contact with claimants did not believe they received adequate safeguarding training, while a similar number said the safeguarding guidance for frontline staff was not clear, comprehensive and easy to access.

More than a third (36 per cent) did not feel confident about how to handle a safeguarding concern.

Last December, a dossier of evidence submitted by the PCS union to DWP showed the department to be a failing organisation in a “state of crisis” and facing a “near collapse” of its benefits systems, with staff accusing DWP of “deliberate neglect” and revealing that claimants in vulnerable situations were “falling through the gaps” in the system.

Meanwhile, DNS has reported on three suicides of universal credit claimants that have also raised critical concerns about DWP safeguarding.

In May, DWP admitted missing multiple opportunities to record the “vulnerability” of Nazerine Anderson, whose death was later linked by a coroner to failings at the heart of universal credit.

Last November, another coroner wrote to the department after the death of Kevin Gale, to warn DWP that it needed to act to prevent flaws in the universal credit system leading to further deaths, after Gale took his own life after becoming overwhelmed by the application process.

And in November 2022, DNS reported how a disabled woman left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit took her own life just four days after being told she would need to attend a face-to-face meeting with a work coach. Her inquest has yet to take place.

6 June 2024

Lib Dems’ free personal care pledge is ‘step in the right direction’, say disabled campaigners

Disabled people’s organisations have given a cautious but positive welcome to proposals from the Liberal Democrats to offer free personal care to all adults if they win power at the general election.

In a policy pledge unlikely to be matched either by the Conservatives or Labour, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said his party’s “groundbreaking” and “bold” £2.7 billion-a-year plans would be funded by reversing tax cuts given to the banking sector.

The party has also provided further details of its plans to Disability News Service (DNS).

Davey, who has a disabled son, said the policy would revolutionise the care system and reduce pressure on the NHS, by providing more care and support for disabled and older people in their own homes.

But the party confirmed to DNS that the pledge would only see an end to charges for personal care, and not for other support such as housework, shopping, laundry and engaging with the local community.

A party spokesperson said: “Given the crisis in social care, it’s impossible for us to achieve a perfect system immediately but we hope that these issues would be covered in cross-party talks that we are calling for with other parties.”

It also told DNS that the threshold for support would remain the same as at present, where care needs are seen as eligible for council-funded support if they have a significant impact on the individual’s wellbeing.

Asked if there would be any limits placed on the free personal care policy, the spokesperson suggested there could be.

She said its model was based on the free personal care model introduced in Scotland, which was first introduced by the Scottish government in 2002, when the Liberal Democrats were in coalition with Labour, although it was originally only available to older people.

It was extended to working-age adults in 2019 by the SNP government.

She said: “There are limits on what can be delivered in Scotland due to financial pressures; that’s why we urgently need cross-party talks to put social care on a sustainable financial footing.”

The party said an average of 12,772 hospital beds in England per day in April were occupied by people ready to be discharged but waiting for resources to provide care in their homes, or a care home bed.

The party also revealed that the Liberal Democrat election manifesto would have a separate chapter on care.

And the party plans to introduce a new minimum wage for care workers, set at £2 above the national minimum wage, while it will also create a Royal College of Care Workers, to run alongside the existing royal colleges for nursing and midwives. 

The Liberal Democrat approach contrasts strongly with that of Labour and the Conservatives.

Last year, Labour was accused of caving in to “powerful vested interests” after failing to include any reference to scrapping care charges in documents that are set to form the basis of the party’s 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.

Davey said: “As a carer for my disabled son, and after caring for my ill mother when I was young, care is deeply personal for me.

“That is why I am putting fixing the care crisis at the heart of the Liberal Democrat offer to the country at this election.

“Far too often, family carers are being left to pick up the pieces because the care system simply isn’t there for them.

“Millions of people are going without the care they need, while thousands are stuck in hospital beds instead of being cared for in their own home or a care home.

“We cannot fix the crisis facing the NHS without fixing the crisis facing social care.

“The Liberal Democrats would bring in free personal care to help people live independently and with dignity, in their own homes wherever possible.”

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice for Inclusion London, said the announcement was “a step in the right direction”.

She said: “Social care has been absent from election debate and this announcement brings it back on the agenda.

“Social care is a vital service; when working well it enables disabled people of all ages to live a fulfilling life with choice and control.

“However, at the moment people are experiencing inadequate support and oppressive bureaucracy, and many, including those who are on benefits, are made to give up a significant proportion of their income to pay for this poor service.

“Making people pay for care is a tax on disability. We believe all social care, not only personal care, should be free.

“And this is not the only thing that needs fixing. The whole system needs a shakeup.

“We are calling on all parties to make social care free at the point of need and to work with us to implement our vision for a national independent living service, which will enable all disabled people to live an equal life.”

Disability Rights UK (DR UK) also welcomed the policy announcement as a step towards all social care being made free.

Mikey Erhardt, DR UK’s policy and campaigns officer, said: “This is the first policy we have heard from the major parties that validates what disabled people have been saying for decades: that social care should be free at the point of use and that reform should be funded from general taxation.

“We hope that this proposal drives other parties to come up with plans for reform, which puts the independence of disabled people at the centre and commits to major financial investment.

“Care and support should be about enabling us to live with choice and control over our lives, connecting us with the communities around us.

“It should not be a list of ‘care tasks’, which gives us the absolute minimum to survive.

“We need to hear strong statements that charging disabled people for social care will be relegated to the history books.”

The grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) also welcomed the Liberal Democrat announcement, but with reservations.

BRIL said it hoped the party’s move would increase pressure on the next government to “sort out the social care crisis”.

A BRIL spokesperson said that while free personal care in Scotland had helped some disabled people, research suggested (PDF) that there had also been confusion and disputes over defining what personal care was, along with other problems, such as further “fragmentation” of the social care system.

BRIL added: “Neurodivergent people and people who experience mental illness/distress often have social care needs that would not be paid for under the Lib Dems’ plans, and as a consequence would continue to face care charges, and the risk of debt.

“Charging for ‘some’ care and support is not only a scandal but creates a hierarchy of need which is contrary to the Care Act.”

BRIL said the Liberal Democrats appeared not to have consulted disabled people about the policy, which was “far from our vision of genuine independent living and rights-based support” and at best “a sticking-plaster on a system that needs radical change”.

Autistic Nottingham also welcomed the Liberal Democrat proposal, but again with reservations.

Justin Donne, the autistic-led charity’s chief executive, said: “When the Conservatives are focused on how to punish disabled people into work, and Labour still hasn’t discussed support for disabled people outside getting us into the workplace, Sir Ed Davey’s plan to fund care for disabled people with high support needs is a breath of fresh air.”

But he added: “Just like he fears for his son once he isn’t there to look after him, our service users are worried about their care being taken away due to national and local government cuts.

“We run a personal assistant service for autistic adults without intellectual disabilities which helps them in their daily lives such as going to the supermarket, cleaning their homes or cooking a meal – all of which greatly improve their quality of life.

“However, our service does not fall under care for disabled people with high needs that would be fully funded under his proposal, and disappointingly there is no mention of even partial funding for lower care needs.”

He said the proposal was “a good first step, but it doesn’t go far enough for our beneficiaries.

“I hope that one day we can have a government who is prepared to fund care for all levels of support needs, but currently that seems unlikely.”

6 June 2024

Council apologises for postponing end of care charges

A local authority has apologised for postponing the scrapping of all charges for care and support for disabled people in their own homes.

Tower Hamlets council, in east London, which is run by the Aspire party, led by former Labour politician Lutfur Rahman, had been set to become just the second council in England to abolish all such care charges from April this year.

But the council has now postponed the introduction of free care at home for a year.

A local disabled people’s organisation (DPO) has expressed regret at the delay and that it was forced to push the council into issuing an apology and a statement.

In its statement, the council said: “Over the next year, we will be continuing to work on plans to introduce free community care from April 2025, which will apply to people eligible for community care and support under the Care Act 2014.

“We know that some of our residents were expecting the updated charging policy to be in place from April 2024, and understand the longer timeline may have caused frustration, or have had an impact on people’s budgeting.

“We apologise for any disappointment and for the uncertainty this may have led to.

“We are committed to launching this groundbreaking policy and believe April 2025 is a realistic and achievable date for implementation.

“We would like to reassure those who access our care service that we do not anticipate the timeline changing, and we are on track to deliver our plans.”

Jack Gilbert, chief executive of the DPO Real, which is based in Tower Hamlets, said: “Real welcomes Tower Hamlets council’s apology for the change to the originally announced schedule, albeit seven weeks after it was due to come into effect.  

“It is a shame that nobody seems to have even flagged it as an issue which might impact on the council’s reputation until we doggedly pursued it.

“At the first sign of a potential delay, we should have been told. Whilst it would have been disappointing, we would have helped.

“We still warmly welcome the unambiguous renewed commitment to implementing the removal of home-based individual charging for adult social care; this is a fundamental change for which we and DDPOs* across the UK have long campaigned.”

He advised any disabled people in the borough who have experienced “further unexpected hardship” due to the postponement to contact the council or Real’s advocacy services, including its our joint advice programme with Disability Law Service, which is now led by Real’s former chief executive, Mike Smith.

*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations

6 June 2024

Government fails to publish guidance to support disabled candidates in time for election

The Conservative government has failed to publish guidance that would have helped political parties support disabled people standing at next month’s general election.

The government’s much-criticised Disability Action Plan, published in February, pledged three actions that would “support both the recruitment and retention of disabled people in elected office”.

One of those pledges was to “develop and publish new guidance by summer 2024” on how political parties and elected public bodies “can best support disabled candidates”.

But there is no sign of the guidance on the Disability Unit’s web pages, and no announcements have been made by the unit, which has made just four announcements on its “news and communications” page in the last 12 months.

The government’s Disability Unit today (Thursday) refused to comment, after being asked what progress had been made on the guidance.

The action plan also pledged to work with disabled people to design a new way to provide financial support for disabled people seeking election to public office, to be launched in 2025.

A short-lived fund – the Access to Elected Office Fund (AEOF) – was originally set up in 2012 following Liberal Democrat pressure on its Conservative coalition partner.

It funded disability-related costs for candidates in parliamentary and other elections, before it was closed by the Conservatives after the 2015 general election.

It was eventually replaced three years later with the temporary EnAble fund in response to a legal action taken by a trio of disabled politicians who warned that the failure to reopen AEOF breached the Equality Act.

The fund initially only covered the 2019 English local elections, but it was later extended to cover the May 2020 local and police and crime commissioner elections, although these were postponed to the following year because of the pandemic.

It also provided retrospective funding for applicants who stood in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament.

The government has been promising to set up a replacement for the last three years.

A report commissioned by the government in 2018, and eventually published three years later, found that political parties and institutions such as local councils had repeatedly broken equality laws by failing to make reasonable adjustments for disabled politicians.

The report said disabled people in England and Wales faced a “multitude” of barriers across the different stages of the political process, from activism and considering running for office, to the selection and election processes, and once they had been elected.

Researchers found disabled politicians had been prevented from attending local party meetings because of access failings, had been invited to take part in inaccessible hustings events during election campaigns, and faced a lack of support from their party once selected.

And because of the barriers they continued to face, disabled politicians typically had to spend far more time fulfilling their duties than their non-disabled colleagues, after they were elected.

Disability Rights UK, which ran the EnAble fund with support from the Local Government Association – 88 per cent of applicants said they had had a “very positive” experience with the fund – this week criticised the government for failing to reinstate a support fund in time for the general election.

Disability Rights UK’s Anna Morell said: “Disabled people have been without democratic support funding for four years now.

“In that time, disabled people have missed out on being able to stand in local elections, police and crime commissioner elections, and now the general election.

“There are over 16 million disabled people in the UK, with just six MPs out of 650 in the last parliament on the record as being disabled.

“Our government will not be reflective of the society it serves until those figures change.

“Realistically, those figures can only significantly change when disabled people are valued enough to be given the resources we need to be able to stand for election.”

Morell also said that securing flexible working as an MP was difficult, while the built environment of many government offices was inadequate to meet the needs of disabled people.

She said the Houses of Parliament only had two accessible parking bays within its grounds, while the lifts in Portcullis House, where many MPs have their offices, are not big enough for mobility scooters or larger wheelchairs.

Deborah King, co-founder of Disability Politics UK, said: “Voters already distrust politicians.

“The failure to help disabled politicians stand for election shows they do not want fair competition.

“The delay in providing guidance and the failure to set up the AEOF smacks of self-interest.”

She said the government was also failing to support job-sharing for those seeking elected office, despite Disability Politics UK requesting that the Disability Unit ask the relevant minister to set up a working group to examine the issue.

Two years ago (PDF), Disability Politics UK worked with the Fawcett Society on a submission to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which set out why this change was necessary.

6 June 2024

Activists to discuss working together over ‘insidious’ violence faced by disabled people and migrants

Grassroots activists fighting for disability and migrant justice are to discuss how they can work together to combat the bureaucratic violence that both groups face at the hands of the state.

The informal public meeting will take place next week at Bristol Old Vic as the theatre becomes the latest venue to host the award-winning mixed reality installation Museum of Austerity.

Museum of Austerity will be running at the theatre from Wednesday to Saturday.

Next Friday’s free discussion event*, Building Solidarity in Times of Fear, is designed to run alongside Museum of Austerity.

It will examine how government policies such as the Rwanda plan, restrictions on the right to protest, and the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions, have led to “individual fear”.

Those planning to attend the meeting include activists with organisations that are part of the Disability and Migration Network, such as Disabled People Against Cuts, National Survivor User Network (NSUN), Bristol Defend the Asylum Seekers Campaign and Migration Mobilities Bristol.

Kieran Lewis, NSUN’s rights and migration policy officer, said that groups fighting for disability justice and migrant justice are often seen as separate, but both groups face the same kind of dehumanising rhetoric and bureaucratic violence.

He said that both groups face “very long waits for decisions that will dictate the way you will be able to live your life.

“In a lot of cases, they are having to provide an awful lot of evidence, and to justify things in a way that they should not have to justify.”

And, he said, both systems rely on heavily-criticised outsourcing companies working on behalf of government departments.

The bureaucratic violence, he said, was “insidious” and so activists “really have to pay attention to catch it.

“In both cases, this kind of bureaucratic violence is meant to be a deterrent, either preventing you from accessing the support you need or getting the immigration status that you need.

“It would be great if people were a bit more switched on to this kind of violence.”

Lewis added: “We want to break down the traditional separation there has been between disability rights and migrants’ rights because it’s not helpful to anyone.”

The meeting on Friday (14 June, 2-4pm) is the latest workshop to be held alongside the Museum of Austerity’s spring tour of England.

Each of the workshops has been led by Healing Justice LDN (HJL), as part of its Deaths by Welfare project*.

One of the topics for discussion next Friday will be how groups fighting for disability justice and migration justice can build solidarity and work together more closely on local and national actions.

It will be an informal meeting, without presentations, so that those taking part can share thoughts “on how fear and distress is being weaponised by government”. 

Rebecca Yeo, from Disabled People Against Cuts, an activist and academic on disability and migration, said that both groups – people seeking sanctuary in the UK and disabled people – are currently experiencing significant mental distress due to “deliberate government policy”.

She said: “When any life becomes considered disposable, it’s only a matter of time before that is extended to others.

“Many policies are tested on one sector before being taken to a wider population.

“It was under New Labour that people seeking asylum lost the right to choose where to live. People began to be forcibly moved to areas of cheap housing.”

Many years later, in Bristol, the previous Labour-controlled council proposed a plan that would force disabled people to move from their own homes into residential care if their needs were considered too expensive.

Yeo said: “The government is deliberately inciting a culture of fear.

“When they release films of immigration officers bashing down someone’s door, when they incite hatred towards disabled people, when they use ever greater displays of violence at protestors, the purpose is to make us retreat in individual bubbles of fear.

“So, we must do the opposite. We must respond with greater determination and solidarity.”

The idea of bureaucratic violence is at the heart of the Museum of Austerity installation, which uses recordings of verbal testimony given by family members and combines that with state-of-the-art technology to recreate the circumstances that led to the deaths of disabled benefit claimants in the post-2010 austerity years.

The production uses ground-breaking “volumetric capture” techniques that have produced high-quality, three-dimensional images.

It focuses on the stories of claimants whose deaths have all previously been linked by Disability News Service (DNS) to the actions and failings of DWP across its assessments, sanctions and safeguarding systems.

The installation is a co-production of English Touring Theatre, the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio and Trial & Error Studio.

*To book a place at the free event, visit the Bristol Old Vic website. There will be a BSL interpreter at the discussion

**DNS editor John Pring has worked on both the Deaths by Welfare and Museum of Austerity projects

6 June 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

ITV has agreed to add a British Sign Language (BSL) version of an election debate programme to its on-demand platform, after pressure from a Deaf campaigner. The debate between prime minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer, aired on Tuesday evening, and it included subtitles but not a live BSL translation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9rr0n7rrvzo

The number of patients stuck in NHS mental health units in England despite being clinically ready to leave has reached its highest level in at least eight years. “Delayed discharges” of patients from hospitals in NHS mental health trusts reached 49,677 days in March, according to an analysis – a higher figure than in any month since at least January 2016, when NHS Digital started publishing the data: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/01/record-number-of-nhs-mental-health-patients-kept-in-hospitals-longer-than-necessary

Thousands of older people in Britain were incorrectly denied an upgrade to their personal independence payment (PIP) in the 2010s, following a major blunder by the Department for Work and Pensions. DWP has promised to pay back anyone who missed out on extra payments after a review of the failure to provide enhanced mobility payments. Experts from Benefits and Work called PIP legislation “badly drafted” after it emerged that thousands of older people who had their claim reviewed between 2013 and 2020 missed out on receiving enhanced payments: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/cost-of-living/dwp-blunder-pip-claimants-backpay-29288510

Adverts for the Alzheimer’s Society which described how a woman with the condition died “again and again and again” have been cleared following 235 complaints that they were irresponsible and caused “unjustifiable distress”. Viewers complained that the ads were excessively distressing, offensive and irresponsible: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alzheimers-society-advert-complaints-b2556732.html

The number of thefts of blue parking badges in London has more than quadrupled in the last decade, new figures have revealed. While 1,230 of the badges were stolen in the capital in 2014, the number has risen almost every year since then to hit 6,415 in 2023: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crgg4m5pvrpo

6 June 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Related Posts

Why the Care Act has failed – viewpoint from Colin Slasberg

September 24, 2020

Npower protest against 31,000 fuel poverty deaths this year

November 26, 2013

Channel 4 Dispatches is looking for somebody who has been sanctioned….

September 23, 2015