Contents
New film celebrates 10 years since ‘moment in time’ victory over care charges in London borough 14
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 16
Tory trio mislead party conference on disability benefits as they stir up hostility towards disabled claimants
A trio of leading Tories have used misleading and offensive statements at their annual conference in Manchester to scapegoat disabled people who rely on support from the benefits system and whip up hostility towards them.
The Conservative party made it clear this week that it would go further and faster than the Labour government in cutting disability benefits, and said it would cut £23 billion from social security spending if it won back power.
Some of these savings would be used to pay for the abolition of stamp duty on residential property sales*, which would only benefit the better-off.
The most offensive line may have come from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who told the conference yesterday (Wednesday): “I stand for a society where… the vulnerable are supported, but where freeloaders are told where to get off.”
She said a Conservative government would “restrict benefits to those with more severe mental health conditions, not anxiety or mild depression”**.
Disability News Service (DNS) reminded the party this week how government-funded research found that when a Conservative-led government tried to slash the number of people on out-of-work disability benefits and force them into work in the post-2010 austerity years, it led to 590 suicides in three years.
The party had not responded to these concerns by 11am today (Thursday).
Badenoch also told the conference that “after Covid, 2,000 people a day were being signed onto out-of-work sickness benefits”, which she said was “a national tragedy”.
There was no suggestion in the former engineer’s speech that she had connected the impact of a deadly and disabling pandemic with this increase in the number of people being unable to work due to sickness or disability.
Badenoch also appeared to suggest that she supported allowing disability hate speech to pass unpunished, telling Tory members: “I stand for a society where free speech trumps hurt feelings.”
Mel Stride, the former work and pensions secretary and now his party’s shadow chancellor, had spoken earlier in the week of the “spiralling welfare bill”.
DNS has now told the party’s press office on at least three occasions that figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility*** show clearly that social security spending as a proportion of GDP**** is predicted to remain at or close to 11.1 per cent for the next five years, and that it is lower than it was in 2015-16.
Again, the party had not responded to these concerns about Stride’s misleading comment by 11am today.
The party also announced plans to prevent anyone other than British citizens from receiving social security support, if it regains power.
It appears that this would apply to disabled people with significant support needs and those who have legally worked in the country for years through “indefinite leave to remain”.
The third shadow minister to mislead the conference on cuts to disability benefits was shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately.
She told Tory members: “Millions are getting benefits for anxiety and ADHD, along with a free Motability car.”
A disabled person can only qualify to join the Motability scheme if they receive the enhanced mobility component of personal independence payment (PIP) or similar benefits.
In fact, DWP figures show – as highlighted by the Benefits and Work website – that only about 190,000 PIP claimants have ADD, ADHD, anxiety or anxiety-related conditions as their “main disabling condition” and receive an enhanced mobility component.
And many of this group will not have exchanged their PIP mobility component for a Motability vehicle.
It is possible that Whately was referring to all those disabled people with anxiety and ADHD who have a Motability vehicle (ie including those with a different main disabling condition in addition to a mental health condition or being neurodivergent), but – if so – her statement was still highly misleading.
And even if that had been her intention, Motability Operations, the company that runs the scheme, says it has only a total of 860,000 customers, and many of those use their allowance to hire a powered wheelchair or mobility scooter.
Whately’s comments also suggest that PIP claimants receive a “free” car in addition to that benefit, when in fact a claimant usually has to exchange all their mobility allowance to lease a Motability vehicle, and must also often make a non-refundable advance payment.
Once again, the Conservative party had refused to comment by 11am today on Whately’s figures.
*It is believed this would apply to primary residences in England and Northern Ireland
**Although she said she wanted to “restrict benefits”, it is unlikely that she meant that people with anxiety or “mild” depression would be prevented from accessing mainstream benefits such as the standard universal credit allowance
***See chapter five of OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – October 2024, chart 5.2
****Gross domestic product, the size of the country’s economy in a particular year
9 October 2025
Government ‘has lost its way’ on accessible housing, after new towns report ignores disabled people
The government has been accused of losing its way on accessible housing, after refusing to explain why a report by its “taskforce” on delivering a series of new towns across England does not include a single mention of disabled people.
The independent report – commissioned by the government – recommends 12 potential locations for new towns across England, with at least 10,000 new homes in each location.
But the 135-page report contains only two brief references to the need for accessibility, either with the new homes themselves or the built environment surrounding them, and there is no mention of working-age disabled people.
One reference in the report says new towns should “include homes for older people, as well as specialist housing built to accessible and adaptable standards”.
The other says the mix of homes in new towns should include “homes for market sale, private rent, affordable housing, and specialist accommodation for students, families, and older people, all within a single coherent masterplan”.
Disabled people’s organisations that have been campaigning for action to solve the accessible housing crisis were critical of the latest failure by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
Mikey Erhardt, policy lead for Disability Rights UK, said: “It is unacceptable that, in 2025, a plan to deliver thousands of new homes, to tackle the housing crisis, will do nothing to improve the lives of disabled people.
“Relegating the needs of millions to a classification as ‘specialist’ shows just how entrenched ableist views are within the department.
“What is specialist about creating places that millions can actually call home, instead of the less than 10 per cent that disabled people can currently even visit?
“Yet again, we see a government department that has lost its way in trying to triangulate policy in favour of big developers and landlords, with disabled people as ever missing out.
“Talk about a missed opportunity; they’ve not even chosen to commit to a minimum number of accessible or wheelchair-accessible homes, let alone ensuring DDPOs* are included in the planning process.
“If our newest towns can’t be accessible, which ones will be?”
Last week, housing secretary Steve Reed announced that the government would build 12 of the new towns across England, but he and his party failed to make any pledge that accessibility would be central to their design.
More than 15 months after the general election, disabled people are still waiting for the new government to say whether it will introduce stricter minimum accessibility standards for new-build homes in England, three years after a pledge by the last Conservative government – which was never fulfilled – to take action to address the critical shortage of accessible housing.
Laura Vicinanza, senior policy and stakeholder engagement manager for Inclusion London, said: “The taskforce talks about accessible ‘specialist housing’, but accessible and adaptable standards must apply to all housing, so we’re not cut off from our communities.
“Housing with a baseline level of accessibility benefits us all – it allows us to stay in our homes longer as our needs change and we age.
“Three years ago, the Conservative government committed to raise the minimum accessibility standards for all new-build housing to the M4(2) accessible and adaptable standard, but they didn’t follow through.
“It’s time for Labour to commit to M4(2) accessibility for all new-builds, and for 10 per cent of new housing to be M4(3) wheelchair-accessible, focused in social housing.
“This is the opportunity to ensure that this wave of new housing and new towns doesn’t lock us out of safe housing for another generation.”
This week, Disability News Service (DNS) asked the government why the taskforce and its report had almost completely ignored disabled people’s housing needs, and the opportunity to build in accessibility across the new towns from the beginning; and why there was nothing in the taskforce report that sets a minimum level of accessible homes, including how many wheelchair-accessible homes should be built in the new towns.
DNS also asked for reassurance for disabled people that the government’s new towns plans would build in accessibility right from the start and from the ground-up, in co-production with disabled people and their user-led organisations.
MHCLG declined to explain why the taskforce report contained so few references to accessible housing and built environment in the new towns and failed to mention disabled people.
And it once again said it would set out its policies on accessible new-build housing shortly.
At last year’s Labour party conference, in September 2024, after DNS questioned the party on the failure of ministers to mention the accessible housing crisis, a Labour spokesperson promised the government would “set out its policies on accessible new build housing shortly”.
An MHCLG spokesperson said in a statement this week: “Everyone deserves to live in a decent home that is suitable for them and meets their needs.
“We will create New Towns that work for everyone, including disabled people, and we welcome recommendations from the taskforce that they should include specialist housing built to accessible and adaptable standards.
“We’re committed to working with disabled people and their organisations to shape these new communities together.”
*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations
9 October 2025
Alarm over government’s choices to lead ‘over-diagnosis’ review that could help ministers cut benefits
The government’s decision to commission a review of alleged “over-diagnosis” of mental health conditions and neurodivergence has caused alarm among many disabled people, with fears that it will allow ministers to justify further sweeping cuts to disability benefits.
There is also concern that health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has commissioned two high-profile mental health figures with controversial backgrounds to lead the review.
Although the government has not yet confirmed the review will take place, it will reportedly examine the prevalence of mental illness and neurodivergence, “with a particular focus on whether some conditions are being overdiagnosed”.
But disabled activists believe its authors have been chosen because they will “help to slash the social security bill”.
The review will apparently be chaired by Professor Peter Fonagy, while the vice-chair will be Professor Sir Simon Wessely.
Fonagy is a highly-decorated clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst but he has also been closely associated with the Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) programme, which was described as unethical, unlawful and unsafe and “a national scandal” that had put people in severe mental distress at risk of being denied vital support.
He was lead author of an article (PDF) whose co-authors included Paul Jennings, the former police officer who founded SIM, and which examined how SIM was working in London and concluded six years ago that it was “promising”.
Jennings described Fonagy in one presentation as a “senior supporter” of the programme.
Campaigning by the StopSIM Coalition later exposed SIM as discriminatory, coercive and punitive, and eventually persuaded NHS England to admit it was wrong to endorse SIM without applying “sufficient scrutiny” and to accept that this had harmed service-users.
Wessely’s appointment is likely to prove even more divisive.
He helped recruit patients onto the notorious, and later discredited, PACE trial – part-funded by the Department for Work and Pensions – and he was hugely supportive of the PACE research (PDF) into the use of controversial treatments such as cognitive behaviour therapy and graded exercise therapy for those with ME.
In 1993 (PDF, page 17)*, Wessely had written to the then Department of Social Security to argue that the only difference between “chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME as it is sometimes known” and “the major psychiatric disorders” was “the existence of a powerful lobby group that dislikes any association with psychiatry”.
Wessely argued in his letter that any suggestion that ME was a neurological condition would “discourage any sensible efforts at rehabilitation” and lead to an “ever increasing stream of claims for permanent benefits in people who might otherwise have had a chance of recovery”.
The view – shared by Wessely – that it was the attitudes of people with ME that were preventing their recovery, and the impact of this belief among many doctors and scientists on the treatment of many thousands of people with ME, was described by the Guardian’s George Monbiot last year as “the greatest medical scandal of the 21st century”.
Wessely also led a review of the Mental Health Act, which was criticised for falling “significantly short” of recommending full human rights for people in mental distress, but was a blueprint for Labour’s much-criticised mental health bill.
Although the Fonagy review has yet to be officially confirmed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), its existence was revealed by the well-connected Health Service Journal (HSJ).
Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “I think the choice of these two people shows how little regard the government, and Streeting and Timms** in particular, have for the fears of disabled people.
“It seems likely that they have deliberately been chosen to help to slash the social security bill.”
The grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin (RiTB) said both appointments were “safe establishment” figures with troubling backgrounds, such as Wessely’s links to the ME “forced exercise programmes” and Fonagy’s links to SIM, which suggested “a very low probability that this will be an open and fair investigation”.
RiTB said: “We expect it will return findings the government will find useful to deny people benefits.
“The issue that should be investigated is the thousands of deaths covered up by the DWP.
“Instead, they want to cause more death.”
A spokesperson for DPAC Cymru said it was “alarmed” at the decision to appoint Fonagy and Wessely, whose backgrounds were “a clear signal” of a “politically-motivated review that has had its outcome decided in advance.
“In the context of an NHS starved of funding, disability welfare cuts, and the UK government’s demonisation of disabled people, it is obvious why these two men have been selected.”
A DPAC Cymru member added: “Normalising mental health and neurodiversity normalises seeking help and clarity which makes diagnosis more accessible.
“We’ve always existed, we’ve always been different, we just didn’t have the ability to seek help or diagnosis.
“This whole ‘autism is new’ and ‘over-diagnosed’ argument is just another load of rubbish to demonise young people, make disability a taboo, exclude disabled communities, and save rich people pennies on providing help to people who really need it, and it frustrates me so incredibly much.”
Bethan Edwards, co-founder of the Stop SIM Coalition, which has now been disbanded, told Disability News Service (DNS) this week: “Professor Fonagy led an evaluation of SIM during its implementation in London in 2018 and 2019.
“SIM involved withholding care from people in extreme mental distress and involved the threat of criminalisation for attempting to use statutory services to meet significant mental health needs.
“It should not have taken a group of service-users to bring this to the public and professional bodies’ attention in 2021, leading to SIM’s demise.
“The alarm could and should have been raised sooner, including by Professor Fonagy himself.
“I, therefore, have very little confidence that the DHSC’s review will put the well-being and safety of people with mental health needs ahead of the Labour governments agenda – to cut welfare spending and to continue underfunding mental health services.”
And Kate Skinner, a neurodivergent campaigner, psychology student and academic research assistant, told DNS: “In my mind, the government’s potential reasons behind this review are straightforward: if fewer people qualify for diagnostic labels (such as ADHD), then fewer people will qualify for benefits, accommodations, and specialist services, as so many places lock the provision of support behind these labels.
“Reviews like this one feel like their real purpose is redefining who counts as being ‘deserving’ of support, as evidenced by the wider media, which has been chipping away at the ‘validity’ and ‘deservingness’ of neurodivergence for a while now.”
She said: “I understand why many disabled people, particularly those who are neurodivergent, are deeply concerned about this review.
“Psychology and psychiatry have a long history of researchers deciding what is ‘best’ for others, while ignoring the lived experiences of the people they study.
“This history of exclusion and paternalism already makes it difficult to trust that this new review, commissioned in such a negative light, will be conducted with genuine openness or ethical integrity.”
Skinner added: “One of the professionals leading this review [Wessely] has previously argued that greater awareness of mental health conditions may not be ‘beneficial’, and has warned against ‘over-professionalising’ or ‘medicalising’ certain conditions.
“Therefore, it is difficult not to feel that the government is seeking to use ‘experts’ to push through a harmful, ideologically-driven agenda.
“Until reviews like this are shaped and conducted by those they claim to represent, any talk of ‘overdiagnosis’ will continue to sound less like healthy, scientific investigation and more like deep, cynical suspicion.”
DHSC declined to comment on the HSJ article.
*This document was obtained from the National Archives through the efforts of disabled barrister Valerie Eliot Smith, who has ME
**Sir Stephen Timms, minister for social security and disability
9 October 2025
Coach firm to pay thousands to accessible transport activist after driver lied that he threatened violence
A coach operator that passed on defamatory lies about a well-known disabled activist who exposed the inaccessibility of one of its coaches will have to pay him substantial damages, and make a humiliating apology in open court.
A driver for Bolton-based Tyrers Coaches fabricated claims about Doug Paulley, alleging he had threatened a Network Rail coordinator with violence and that he hurled swearwords at him over an access failure at Rochdale train station 13 months ago.
Tyrers had passed on the allegations to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), and another transport company, Arriva.
The incident occurred after Tyrers – which was one of the companies providing a rail replacement service on behalf of government-owned Northern Trains – had been unable to accept Paulley onto its vehicle because the relevant door was not working.
Coaches from two other companies were also not able to accept Paulley on board, with one driver not trained to operate the accessibility equipment, and the other vehicle not wheelchair-accessible.
Tyrers later told DVSA and another transport company, Arriva, that Paulley had threatened violence, was physically threatening, called its driver “a d**khead” and told him he didn’t know what he was “f***ing doing”.
Paulley later discovered by accident – when his solicitor submitted a subject access request to DVSA in connection with another discrimination case – what Tyrers had said about him.
The coach company was unaware that Paulley – who has spent years exposing access failures across the transport industry – had recorded the incident on a camera attached to his wheelchair.
He was able to use the recording to show that none of the claims made by the Tyrers driver had been true.
He decided to launch a defamation claim in the high court because of the risk of serious damage to his reputation, and – he told Disability News Service – because he wanted to address the “reprehensible”, discriminatory and dishonest behaviour of transport companies and coach drivers, and their “horrific, hateful, ableist behaviour”.
Tyrers has now agreed to pay him £7,500 in damages and a further £1,000 for a breach of data protection law.
The company will also have to write to DVSA and Arriva, making it clear that the allegations it shared were false.
And it will have to apologise in open court for the false claims it made, and for the distress and damage caused to Paulley’s reputation.
Tyrers had not commented on its actions by 11am today (Thursday).
Train company Northern has also apologised to Paulley, after one of its managers claimed in an email that he “goes around Railway Stations and tries to find fault at each location”.
The email had been sent out after Paulley complained about the Rochdale incident, in which he had been “simply trying to travel and encountered genuine accessibility barriers” with the rail replacement bus service.
He told Northern in a complaint: “When I documented these experiences, it was as part of my legitimate role as a nationally recognised transport accessibility advocate, not as malicious troublemaking.
“The suggestion that I ‘go around’ railway stations looking for problems fundamentally misrepresents evidence-based documentation of accessibility failures as some form of personal vendetta.”
He said the language used showed “a concerning institutional prejudice against disabled passengers who exercise their legal rights to document accessibility failures and hold operators accountable”.
And he said it had “contributed to the toxic atmosphere” that enabled the discriminatory behaviour by Tyrers, and the subsequent “inaccurate, defamatory allegations” that were made about him.
Paulley said Northern’s actions had created “chilling effects that may deter other disabled passengers from reporting legitimate concerns”.
Northern has now apologised in an email for the distress caused by its manager’s comments and told Paulley his campaigning was “invaluable” and “helps us learn from our mistakes” and that his work over the years “has been greatly appreciated and has played an important role in helping us improve”.
Paulley’s data protection case against another transport company is ongoing.
A Northern spokesperson said the company had no further updates to the apology issued to Doug Paulley.
But he added: “As referenced [in the emailed apology], the work that campaigners including Mr Paulley do is invaluable.
“The comments in the email about which the complaint was received are not reflective of Northern’s views, and we are truly sorry for any distress caused by these comments.”
9 October 2025
Access to Work dossier of evidence shows ‘real harm’ and job losses caused by DWP cuts and failings
The Access to Work scheme is failing Deaf and disabled people, and its “decline” in the last two years has caused them “real harm”, with some support packages cut by 80 per cent, according to a detailed dossier of evidence prepared by a user-led organisation.
The 33-page report was put together by London-based Action on Disability (AoD), which said its evidence shows “systemic administrative failure, lack of transparency, and potential breaches of equality and human rights obligations” by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The evidence has been sent to the National Audit Office (NAO) as part of its ongoing investigation into how DWP is addressing “challenges” in the operation of the Access to Work (AtW) scheme.
NAO launched its investigation earlier this year following concerns that increased demand for AtW support, and other factors, had “adversely affected DWP’s administration of the scheme”, with “growing backlogs of people waiting for their applications to be processed or their claims to be paid”.
Much of the AoD report is based on its experience assisting disabled people with their AtW applications, renewals and appeals, in which their awards were “reduced, delayed, or rendered unusable due to unimplementable conditions”.
Between January 2023 and July 2025, it says, average support hours per week for more than 35 work placements it monitored have fallen from 22.5 to just four, while the average waiting time for an AtW case manager to be allocated has risen from eight weeks to 30, the job retention rate has halved from 88 per cent to 43 per cent, and the progression to paid work for those on supported internships has fallen from 72 per cent to 28 per cent.
Employers working with AoD say the deterioration of the scheme since 2023 has led to “job losses, reduced hours, and withdrawal from inclusion programmes that were previously successful”, with a significant decline in confidence in AtW among employers.
The dossier was shared with Disability News Service (DNS) this week, just days after DNS reported how disability minister Sir Stephen Timms admitted signing off on a directive that led to widespread cuts to disabled people’s AtW support packages.
Sir Stephen admitted to DNS last week that he had signed off on an order for AtW staff to apply guidance more “scrupulously”, after civil servants submitted a “proposal” to him to approve.
Among its concerns, the AoD report says changes to the way the scheme operates have made it harder for disabled people to contact their AtW case manager, while leading to inconsistency around quotations, inconsistent decision-making, and delayed or unclear pathways for appeals.
The effect of the changes has been to exclude disabled people from employment, destabilise supported internships, and undermine employers’ commitment to inclusion.
This has left AtW no longer operating “as a transparent, accountable, or lawfully administered scheme”, says the report.
The impact of changes over the last two years has been “a significant reduction in awards, increased administrative delays, and a breakdown of communication between AtW and service users, reversing years of progress in inclusive employment”.
And it says its evidence suggests that DWP has refused to publish internal policy instructions; denied claimants procedural fairness; obstructed transparency; and failed to ensure economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in public spending.
The report particularly highlights what AoD calls a “systemic policy shift”, with many applications that would previously have been awarded 100 per cent of a disabled person’s support needs in the workplace now being awarded about 20 per cent of their assessed needs.
This occurs when AtW categorises the assistance requested as a “job aide”, meaning the support worker is viewed as performing part of the job on the claimant’s behalf, rather than helping the disabled employee to overcome barriers related to the work.
AoD says AtW’s “rigid” approach fails to recognise the “legitimate” support that many disabled people need to complete their work independently, such as prompting and structured guidance.
It says AtW’s lack of recognition of such an approach to support has led to significant funding reductions of up to 80 per cent, disproportionately affecting people with learning difficulties, autistic people, those with acquired brain injury, or people with sensory processing impairments.
The report says the 20 per cent award policy “is like handing someone a plank that only stretches a fifth of the way across a river and then blaming them when they fall in”.
The NAO said its report was likely to be published early next year, and its team was still “gathering evidence through different methods”.
A government consultation on the future of Access to Work closed on 30 June, and DWP says it is now reviewing those responses and the scheme and working with disabled people and others on its proposals.
A “collaboration committee” on Access to Work – whose members have remained anonymous – concluded its work this month, and DWP says its views and concerns will now help shape the department’s policymaking.
DWP continues to insist that no changes have been made to AtW policy.
David Buxton, chief executive of AoD, said: “Access to Work should be a bridge into employment.
“Instead, thousands are being left stranded mid-way.
“The scheme’s decline is costing jobs, damaging wellbeing, and wasting public money.
“We hope the NAO’s inquiry restores transparency, fairness, and trust.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “We inherited an Access to Work scheme that is failing both employees and employers, which is why – as part of our welfare reform – we consulted on how it could be improved.
“We are reviewing all aspects of the scheme and will develop future policy with disabled people and the organisations that represent them.”
Meanwhile, disability consultant Alice Hastie, who specialises in providing AtW advice, warned this week that DWP had now shut down the AtW complaints email address, which she said “seems like a bizarre (and barely legal!) way of reducing the number of complaints they have to deal with”.
DWP said last night (Wednesday) that its policy is that email is not a valid contact method for complaints unless this has been agreed as a reasonable adjustment.
It is believed that the complaints email may have been shut down because it was for internal use only and its existence was not supposed to have been leaked to claimants.
9 October 2025
Greens show contrast with other major parties on disability cuts and refusal to stir up hostility to claimants
The Green Party is set to continue to contrast its policy approach on disability with other political parties by supporting disabled people who rely on benefits and have already experienced years of austerity cuts.
The newly-elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Zach Polanski, told members at their annual conference in Bournemouth that the party would fight for the many disabled people “who have found themselves at the sharp end of brutal government cuts”.
His speech was focused on reducing the cost-of-living and addressing “rip-off Britain”, demanding more from “the very wealthiest”, tackling climate breakdown, attacking the “alarm bells of authoritarianism” within the Labour government, supporting the NHS and community cohesion, protecting “rights” and “liberties” through a “politics of hope”, and supporting migrants.
But there was almost no mention of how the party would fulfil these pledges, other than a repeated emphasis on wealth taxes, although its general election manifesto last year pledged a five per cent increase in the level of disability benefits, free personal care for adults, and more money to support disabled children in mainstream schools.
The difference in emphasis from the Liberal Democrat conference – where party leader Ed Davey spoke in an interview of targeting disability benefit fraud – and particularly the Labour, Reform and Conservative party conferences (see separate story), was clear.
There were no attacks on disabled people claiming benefits in Polanksi’s speech, and no calls for cuts to spending on supporting disabled people, or complaints about the “over-diagnosis” of mental distress or neurodivergence.
Instead, he said his party would fight for hard-pressed families, renters who live in “shoddy accommodation” and are wary of further rent increases, and “thousands and thousands of disabled people in the UK who have found themselves at the sharp end of brutal government cuts”.
In his speech, Polanski mentioned meeting a disabled man and his carer while knocking on doors with another Green politician, and how they spoke about “how hard everything is and how it just didn’t feel like a single person was representing them”.
Despite his words, there was still no clear picture of what Polanski and the Green Party would do to change that, other than “focusing day-in, day-out on the cost of living”.
One of the party’s co-deputy leaders, Rachel Millward, had told the conference of her experience of physical impairment and associated “horrendous” pain in her 20s, when she had a blue parking badge and an adapted vehicle.
But she said: “Far worse than that was the pain of separation from my community and from nature.
“Conference, please let us always make it a priority to find ways to give people with disabilities much better access to both.”
The contrast with the four main UK-wide parties continued this week, when the Green Party’s other co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, attacked the “divisiveness and hatred” of the Conservative party and its announcements at its conference in Manchester this week (see separate story).
He said: “The package so far – turbo-charged welfare cuts, draconian anti-migration measures, and axing life-saving foreign aid – would leave few but the wealthiest unscathed.
“These measures are a cruel attack on the sick and disabled, migrants and asylum-seekers, and some of the poorest communities in the world.”
9 October 2025
New film celebrates 10 years since ‘moment in time’ victory over care charges in London borough
A new film released to celebrate 10 years since activists won a campaign to stop their local council charging for care shows how disabled people can achieve important victories by taking collective action, say campaigners who fought for that success.
The film* highlights the eight years of campaigning by Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition against Cuts (HAFCAC), which led eventually to their London borough scrapping home care charges in April 2015.
The campaign began in 2006 when the new Conservative-led council introduced a policy that imposed charges for home care.
HAFCAC was set up to fight the “discriminatory policy”, and it spent eight years lobbying councillors, holding protests and pushing the council to change its policy.
Tara Flood, one of the HAFCAC steering group members, says in the film: “There’s something particularly awful about receiving, through the post or via email, a document, an invoice, that sets out how much you have to pay to enable you to live at home with the support that you need to participate in your community, to be a friend, to be a family member, to be a parent, to get to work.
“No-one else is experiencing that.”
HAFCAC also backed a judicial review legal action against the charges brought by three disabled people from the borough who received home care.
Although they lost the case, one of the high court judges described the policy as sacrificing home care services on the altar of council tax reductions.
The film describes how the coalition raised much of its funding with pub quizzes, at which disabled activists such as Flood, Kevin Caulfield and Debbie Domb – all members of HAFCAC’s steering group – began to build relationships with politicians, including Labour’s Steve Cowan.
Cowan, who would go on to lead Hammersmith and Fulham council, says in the film: “The crucial thing was what Debbie, Tara and Kevin were able to do, was educate me and my colleagues on the need for the social model of disability to be right at the heart of our Labour administration’s approach.”
Months after Labour won back control of the council in May 2014, Cowan announced that Hammersmith and Fulham would be scrapping all home care charges in May 2015.
It remains one of only two councils in England that do not charge for home care, after Tower Hamlets council in east London scrapped adult home care charges from April this year.
Caulfield says in the film: “That moment [in 2014] was a real moment in time to show that campaigning does work, that disabled people getting together and collectively taking action can really have an impact.”
David Webb, a fourth member of the HAFCAC steering group, who ran the fund-raising pub quizzes, describes in the film how having personal assistance has completely changed his life.
He says: “It has given me a measure of choice and control that I didn’t have before.”
Victoria Brignall, who has benefited from scrapping care charges in the borough, says in the film: “People don’t choose to be disabled.
“It’s a tax on disability and we would like disabled people to be treated in the same way as other people.
“You don’t charge people to send their children to school, or to use parks, or to collect your rubbish, so why charge disabled people for their care?”
She says she hopes other councils will now be inspired to abolish home care charges.
Last year, Disability Law Service published research which showed that disabled people across England were continuing to face unlawful discrimination and inequality on an “unparalleled” scale due to “unjust” social care charging policies.
Caulfield points out in the film that tens of thousands of disabled people every year are taken to court for non-payment of care charges.
“That’s just a disgrace,” he says.
He and his fellow HAFCAC veterans say the film serves as both a celebration and a rallying cry, and that they hope their success “will inspire more disabled people to take action”.
The film, launched on Tuesday, is dedicated to Debbie Domb, “a fearless freedom fighter for disabled people’s rights”, who died in 2018.
*The film, ‘£12.40 an Hour for a Shower: The Story of Disabled People’s Struggle to Abolish Home Care Charging in Hammersmith & Fulham’, was directed, edited and produced by disabled film-maker, journalist and author Richard Butchins, and can be accessed with BSL and subtitles only, or with added audio description.
**Inclusion London is campaigning to persuade the government to scrap all social care charges.
9 October 2025
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Thousands of sick or disabled people will be helped into work through a major push to place job advisers in GP surgeries, the DWP has claimed. Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden is announcing a £167.2 million expansion of the Connect to Work programme to nine further areas across England, including Cumbria, Oxfordshire, and West Sussex and Brighton: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-change-affect-gp-surgeries-36033854
Jobcentre work coaches say they are struggling to find employers who can accommodate disabled people and get them into work. The BBC spoke to two work coaches, who said opportunities are hardest to come by for those with long-term health conditions who may require a level of flexibility or additional support. It comes as new data obtained by the BBC from the Department for Work and Pensions suggests that the number of jobseekers finding work each month is falling: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gz9njvj43o
9 October 2025
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
