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

Activists ‘terrified’ as MPs debate legalising assisted suicide while government proposes PIP cuts 11

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

This report should make any government that deserves to hold power sit up, take
notice and drastically change course. The CRDP Committee has fully recognised:
 The government’s shameful failure to make any significant progress with
human rights for disabled people
 The signs of actual regression in the government’s approach
 The government’s continuing ‘grave and systematic violations’ of disabled
people’s human rights.

An enormous strength of the report is its balance. In its coverage of disabled
people’s right to independent living, equal access to work and employment and right
to an adequate standard of living, the CRDP Committee has looked widely and
comprehensively.

As the report rightly highlights, it is an utter disgrace that many of
us are forced into institutions, continue to be locked up against our will in places
such as psychiatric hospitals and continue to be forcibly treated and abused, in
complete breach of human rights which other citizens hold. It is an utter disgrace that
the socioeconomic conditions which we face as disabled people are so
disproportionately bad and that we face heavy penalties for not working when we so
frequently lack necessary support to do so, or genuinely cannot. It is still more of a
disgrace that some of us experience multiple discrimination because of our gender,
age, ethnic origin or refugee status. It is high time that the government moves out of
denial and takes urgent reparative action.

Dorothy Gould
Founder of Liberation
E: liberationrights@gmail.com

Contents

‘Dangerous’ rollout of universal credit ‘poses threat’ to disabled claimants 1

Reforms to disabled students’ support ‘will confuse and dilute our rights’ 4

This is an existential crisis for disabled people, says campaigner after climate change court win 7

Mayor’s stats show failure to enforce his own accessible housing standards 10

Letter from DPOs accuses care cuts council of ‘inhumane’ policies 12

Tory MP brands plan to scrap WCA and allow work coaches to decide fitness for work ‘a crazy idea’ 14

Spring tour for austerity installation on DWP deaths that was inspired by war photographers 17

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 18

‘Dangerous’ rollout of universal credit ‘poses threat’ to disabled claimants

The “dangerous” rollout of universal credit to half a million more claimants is a potential threat to the “safety and well-being” of disabled people who currently rely on so-called “legacy” benefits to survive, disability campaigners have warned.

Tens of thousands of disabled people will be affected by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) plans to “migrate” claimants of certain benefits onto universal credit from this month.

Those receiving only the out-of-work disability benefit employment and support allowance (ESA), as well as claimants on ESA and housing benefit who do not receive tax credits, will not be moved across until 2028, under current government plans.

But many other disabled people, including those receiving both income-based ESA and child tax credit, will be migrated onto universal credit in the coming months as part of what DWP calls “managed migration”.

Many thousands of disabled people who receive income-based jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit only, and other mainstream benefits, will also be affected.

Campaigners and activists have raised significant concerns about whether disabled people will be able to access the support they need to claim universal credit for the first time, and whether many of them will simply drop out of the social security system entirely.

The government’s announcement of its rollout timetable for 2024 came just days before a new report from the Resolution Foundation concluded that disabled people would on average be “among the biggest losers” from the move to universal credit.

Although many of those moving across from legacy benefits will receive so-called “transitional protection” – so their benefits remain at the same level – that protection will be eroded over time due to inflation, and can even be lost completely if their circumstances change.

The Resolution Foundation said that some single disabled people who received ESA and personal independence payment (PIP) would be about £2,800 per year worse off on universal credit in 2024-25 than on legacy benefits, once any transitional protection has been eroded or lost.

Other single ESA claimants who do not receive PIP would be £1,400 better off on universal credit.

The report says that universal credit’s “creation of winners and losers” was making disabled people “much more likely to be among the poorest, and workers less likely”.

It says that the full roll-out of universal credit will move 550,000 people in families that were previously entitled to ESA into the 10 per cent of people in the country with the lowest incomes, while 890,000 people from working families would move out of this group.

The findings echo figures secured by Disability News Service (DNS) in April 2022 – after three years of pressure on DWP – that showed that of about 1.2 million remaining ESA claimants, an estimated 600,000 would be better off on universal credit, but about 500,000 would eventually be worse off.

In total, the figures showed, about one million ESA claimants would gain from universal credit, while about one million would lose out, once the rollout had been completed.

Disabled activist Gail Ward, a long-standing member of grassroots groups Disabled People Against Cuts and Black Triangle Campaign, and founder of the Hand2MouthProject, which helps and trains those claiming universal credit on how the system works, said many disabled people were “terrified” about the latest rollout.

Some people with mental distress are already “in a panic” before even starting their claim, she said.

Ward said some claimants had told her they were going to let their claim close “rather than jump through hoops”, because of the impact on their mental health.

She said disabled people were facing significant barriers in accessing support to claim universal credit, even those trying to use the DWP-funded Help to Claim service run by Citizen’s Advice.

She added: “Forcing disabled people into work without taking into account the barriers many face will harm disabled people and we may see yet again some fall between the cracks or possibly further fatalities.”

Mikey Erhardt, policy and campaigns officer at Disability Rights UK, said: “For years, disabled people and our organisations have been sounding the alarm about the universal credit system.

“It’s not just a complex maze; it’s a potential threat to our safety and well-being.

“The unspoken agenda of the rollout has been to reduce the number of disabled people receiving the crucial support we rely on.

“At the end of the day, we all want the right support when needed, but this dangerous rollout, if unchecked, will make the UK’s social security system, already one of western Europe’s least generous, even worse.

“We need a new system underpinned by a new ethos of dignity, respect, trust and support, which focuses on supporting disabled people to live the lives we want – with no sanctions, conditionality or caps.”

Under managed migration, a claimant will have three months to make a claim for universal credit – after receiving a DWP migration notice – before their existing legacy benefit claim is terminated, although they can apply for an extension.

So far, managed migration has focused on claimants who only receive tax credits, which should have been the easier cases to move to universal credit.

But in its ongoing project that monitors the “managed migration” process, Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said that even some claimants on tax credits had struggled with the process.

It said earlier this year: “Through evidence collated as part of our research we know that some claimants have difficulties dealing with unfamiliar demands, uncertainty, stress and change.

“Other claimants will, because of their vulnerabilities, find it difficult to open or understand their migration notice.”

CPAG said, in its February project update, that for the claimants set to be affected by the next stage of the rollout, the “stakes are much higher… as benefits will be their primary, often sole, source of income”.

It added: “Those who do not successfully move to UC may find themselves without any financial support at all – at risk of destitution or threatened with homelessness.

“While many will eventually manage to make a claim for UC, they will have lost their entitlement to transitional protection and had to cope without benefit income in the interim, facing mounting debts or rent arrears.

“Most concerningly, some claimants may fall out of the social security system altogether.

“Situations like this could be avoided but, as things stand, the most vulnerable claimants are at the greatest risk in the face of the DWP’s plans for a sprint finish.”

The National Audit Office (NAO) warned in February that about one in five households on tax credits who received a migration notice did not claim universal credit and had their benefit stopped, although DWP said it expected only four per cent of households on other legacy benefits not to move onto universal credit after a migration notice.

NAO said in February that the migration of tax credit claimants had been “expected to be relatively straightforward”, but that DWP was “likely to face greater challenges as it moves on to claimants of other legacy benefits who are potentially more vulnerable and in need of more support”.

DNS has spoken this week to one self-employed disabled woman who previously received working tax credits and was moved onto universal credit.

Tania Howell, from Wales, received a letter telling her to make a new claim for universal credit earlier this year.

She has been a self-employed artist since 2008, but most years earns only a few hundred pounds a year.

She said: “They are telling me I have to make £1,400 a year. They want to know the ins and outs.

“I worked annually before, but they want it all monthly now.

“It’s hard enough when you have a brain injury. You don’t want some horrible people telling you what to do.”

Her first meeting with a work coach took place last month, and she said she had had to ask three times for a drink of water, which she needed to help with her speech.

Eventually, the work coach replied, and told her: “We don’t usually give people a drink of water because of the risk that they will throw it at us.”

This was just after she had been locked in the jobcentre toilet after the door jammed.

Howell said that universal credit had caused her considerable anxiety.

She said: “What they don’t tell you is that they are going to micro-manage your every move.”

Because she does not use the internet, she does not have to fill in the online universal credit journal, but must instead call DWP every month with all her income details. It usually takes her about an hour to get through to an adviser.

At the beginning of the process, she was receiving three text messages a day from DWP.

She said: “It was just too much. It was starting to make me feel quite ill.”

She fears the migration process will affect many disabled people.

She said: “I am quite tough, it takes quite a bit to rock my boat and upset me, but I think it will upset most disabled people.”

18 April 2024

Reforms to disabled students’ support ‘will confuse and dilute our rights’

The government is threatening to make sweeping changes to the system of support for disabled students in higher education, which would remove many individual payments and transfer further responsibility onto universities.

The plans would mean that many disabled students would no longer be entitled to funding to pay for vital support but would have to rely on their universities addressing the barriers they face.

The potential reforms are contained in a call for evidence on possible changes to the non-medical help (NMH) part of disabled students’ allowance (DSA), which covers support such as British Sign Language interpreters, specialist mentoring and one-to-one study skills for autistic students.

The reforms would only apply to students eligible to receive student finance through Student Finance England, although this includes students from England who study at universities and other higher education providers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mette Anwar-Westander, chief executive of Disabled Students UK (DSUK), said this week that the continuing failure to improve the experiences of disabled university students was “a predictable consequence of a lack of government oversight”. 

Research by DSUK last year found that only 35 per cent of disabled students had the support they needed to access their education on equal terms with non-disabled students.

Anwar-Westander said: “While we welcome the interest from the Department for Education in improving non-medical help provision and the acknowledgement that disabled students are not sufficiently supported by the system as it stands, we must warn against any approach that attempts to ‘pass the buck’.” 

In 2021-22, £58.5 million was spent on NMH support for undergraduate DSA recipients.

DSA is a non-means-tested grant which helps students with the additional disability-related costs they face in higher education, such as equipment and travel, and is administered by the Student Loans Company, which determines eligibility and approves the support that can be funded.

But the Department for Education (DfE) is now suggesting that, because universities are required to make reasonable adjustments for all disabled students under the Equality Act, it should be their responsibility to provide all NMH support.

Ministers point to a lack of integration between DSA-funded support and the support provided by the student’s university, and they say the administration of NMH “is not working well for some students”, while there are sometimes not enough NMH workers available to support all the students who need that help.

They are also suggesting that there are “significant risks of poor value for money and inefficiencies” within the NMH system.

They even argue that cutting spending on DSA and passing responsibility for addressing barriers to universities would be a more “social model” approach to inequality.

And they say in the call for evidence that there is a “fundamental question as to whether an individual student should have a funding entitlement for more specialist NMH support” or whether it should be a university’s responsibility to provide this support, assisted by DfE funding.

One of the questions DfE asks in its call for evidence is: “How do you think giving [universities] overall responsibility for the whole of a student’s NMH support would affect the provision offered?”

But in the equality impact assessment section of the evidence call, DfE warns of “a risk that students whose [university] does not perform well in supporting them may have worse outcomes than if they had an individual entitlement to more specialist NMH support”.

It also warns that universities with a “significant” number of students with “very high cost NMH support needs” that are greater than the maximum currently available through DSA “could put pressure on [a university’s] budget for other types of NMH support for other students”.

The call for evidence closes on 3 July.

Previous changes to DSA introduced by the Conservative government in the 2016-17 academic year meant that lower levels of NMH support are already no longer covered by DSA and must be provided by universities.

Anwar-Westander said: “The issue with non-medical help provision within the current system is not which body is responsible for it on paper, but the fact that responsible bodies lack accountability.

“We welcome attempts to simplify the administrative process, but only insofar as the body responsible can be held to account.

“As such we look forward to hearing from DfE how they plan to regularly measure whether disabled students have the non-medical help they need and enforce consequences where providers fall short.”

She said last year’s survey of disabled students by DSUK showed they were “similarly insufficiently supported whether they are DSA recipients or not”, despite the reforms introduced in 2016-17, and that “this failure was a predictable consequence of a lack of government oversight”.

She added: “There is currently no body proactively evaluating whether higher education providers are providing disabled students with the support they need. 

“As a consequence, it is not uncommon to come across providers with a faulty understanding of their responsibility, as evidenced by the Natasha Abrahart case [and the University of Bristol] and our survey data.”

Bethany Bale, education policy officer for Disability Rights UK, said: “We face disproportionate barriers to accessing higher education and it’s essential that any government proposals reduce this inequality.

“Disabled students already face a postcode lottery when it comes to accessing support at university.

“Examples like the recent case in Bristol highlight the dangerous position that this can leave us in.

“This proposal will only confuse and dilute our rights.

“It’s clear that this proposal does not reflect the needs of disabled people and we urge the government to co-produce effective DSA reform with disabled individuals directly.”

A report in October 2020 by Policy Connect and the Higher Education Commission, co-chaired by Lord [David] Blunkett, said the 2016-17 changes meant the amount of support students with lower-level needs received depended on which university they attended.

Sheffield University Students Union told the commission at the time that the DSA changes had “increased inequality for disabled students across the country as the level of support they receive now depends on the ability or willingness of their institution to fund aspects of their support”.

The commission said many professionals had stated “that some disabled students will always need additional support that cannot be provided solely” by their university.

18 April 2024

This is an existential crisis for disabled people, says campaigner after climate change court win

A disabled campaigner who has helped secure a significant legal victory in the fight against climate change has warned that the government’s failure to take the necessary urgent action will put the lives of countless disabled people at risk.

Doug Paulley is one of two individual claimants who have joined Friends of the Earth in seeking a judicial review of the government’s plan to protect the country from the impacts of climate change.

Last week, a high court judge ruled that there should be a two-day hearing in June into their concerns about the government’s latest National Adaptation Programme, which was published in July 2023.

The judge, Mr Justice Sheldon, said the issues raised by the claimants were “of considerable public importance”.

The other individual claimant is Kevin Jordan, who was made homeless shortly before last Christmas, when his house in Hemsby, Norfolk, was demolished after coastal erosion put it in severe danger of falling into the sea.

Last month, the statutory Climate Change Committee, which advises the UK and devolved governments, said the latest adaptation plan “falls far short of what is required” and that evidence of the UK’s “inadequate response to worsening climate impacts continues to mount”.

The claimants’ case has been boosted by a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights last week that Switzerland’s inadequate efforts to tackle climate change had breached the rights of a group of older women who cannot leave their homes and experience significant negative impacts on their health during heatwaves.

Paulley is better known as a disability rights campaigner, particularly around accessible transport issues, but he told Disability News Service this week that he was an environmental campaigner before he became a disability rights activist.

He has a degree in geophysics, comes from a family of scientists, and previously worked for the Environment Agency, and was involved in the first Climate Camp outside the Drax coal-fired power station in north Yorkshire in 2006.

It was while studying for his degree that it became “massively apparent” to him that human activity was responsible for significant global warming, and the devastation it was causing.

In highlighting the disproportionate impact on disabled people of climate change, he points to the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in August 2005, when there were “care homes, nursing homes, where the residents had just been left abandoned to die, and their stinking corpses were pulled out days later”.

Other care home staff “were just utterly overwhelmed at trying to keep their people vaguely safe and healthy and alive. It was devastating.”

But he also highlights the impact of the Covid pandemic on disabled people, who were reliant for survival on care staff putting their lives at risk, while do not resuscitate orders were imposed on some disabled people in parts of the NHS, and people were discharged into care homes from hospital without being tested.

He said: “It just becomes immediately apparent that disabled people are among the minorities that are considered the most expendable in any form of significant catastrophe or emergency. And climate change is an emergency.

“Everybody’s reliant on society for their existence, but you’re made more vulnerable and more reliant on support and assistance if you’re disabled.”

Publicity around his role in the case has so far focused on the fact that extreme summer heat has a significant impact on him because of long-term health conditions that make him susceptible to over-heating, causing him distress and discomfort, but also putting him at increased risk of serious harm.

He said this was true, but he added: “My significant major concern is more that this is a global climate emergency that is causing people to suffer and die now.

“And it is always those who have got the least resources to deal with such who suffer the most, and disabled people are always among the first against the wall.”

It is, he said, an “existential crisis for humanity”, but “particularly an existential crisis for the most dispossessed and disempowered and under-resourced groups, which will include disabled people, both in this country and around the world.

“People with very little resources in Bangladesh or the low-lying areas will suffer and die.

“Disabled people will, too, and disproportionately; it’s been proven that we always do.”

After 14 years of austerity forced on the country by Conservative-led governments, he said his response to the “totally disgraceful” National Adaptation Programme was “a kind of weary knackeredness and unsurprise about their continuing lack of care or action on climate”.

Paulley said there was a clear danger to the lives of disabled people in the UK if the government continued to refuse to take the necessary action and strengthen the plan.

He said: “It’s already happening around the world. I have no doubt whatsoever.

“There are people who are suffering and dying because of climate change now.”

Rowan Smith, from solicitors Leigh Day, which is representing the claimants, said: “Our clients have joined forces to bring this legal claim, because the adverse impacts of climate change are being felt right now, yet they believe the government’s plans to deal with those impacts are woefully inadequate.

“Our clients believe that the government’s adaptation programme leaves the UK unprepared to meet the environmental challenges it is already facing as a result of climate change, in breach of clear legal requirements under both the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Climate Change Act 2008.”

Friends of the Earth campaigner Alison Dilworth said: “We’re delighted the high court has agreed to hear this crucial legal challenge.

“The government’s adaptation programme – which should be a plan to protect us all from the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis – is completely inadequate and puts people’s lives at risk.

“We know the most marginalised communities, including disabled people, are most at risk and largely excluded from planning and preparedness work.

​“We hope our legal challenge will lead to a robust new plan that helps safeguard people, property and infrastructure from the consequences of a rapidly warming planet.”

In response to the court’s decision, a government spokesperson said: “Our third National Adaptation Programme sets out a robust five-year plan to strengthen infrastructure, promote a greener economy, and safeguard food production in the face of the climate challenges we face.

“We are investing billions to improve the UK’s climate resilience, including £5.6 billion in flood and coastal schemes, safeguarding future water supplies by accelerating £2.2 billion of investment and driving tree planting and peat restoration through the £750 million Nature for Climate Fund.

“We are unable to comment further whilst legal proceedings are ongoing.”

18 April 2024

Mayor’s stats show failure to enforce his own accessible housing standards

London’s mayor has been failing for years to enforce his own London Plan, which requires 90 per cent of new homes to be accessible and adaptable, and another 10 per cent to be suitable for wheelchair-users.

Analysis by Disability News Service of the mayor’s own data shows that only three local authorities have ever reached the figure of 90 per cent in a year since 2015-16, in relation to homes given planning permission.

Accurate data on new home approvals only appears to have been collected so far to 2019-20.

Sadiq Khan’s London Plan requires 90 per cent of new-build homes to be accessible and adaptable (meeting what is known as the M4(2) standard) and the other 10 per cent to be suitable for wheelchair-users (either because they are immediately accessible or because they can be adapted for use by a wheelchair-user, and known as the M4(3) standard). 

When preparing their own local plans, London local authorities have to “demonstrate conformity” with the London Plan’s accessible housing requirements.

But concerns about the mayor’s failure to enforce his accessible homes standards emerged from last week’s electoral hustings on disability, at which Conservative candidate Susan Hall, Labour’s Sadiq Khan and Liberal Democrat Rob Blackie all failed to turn up, ahead of next month’s mayoral elections.

Laura Vicinanza, policy and stakeholder engagement manager for Inclusion London, which organised the hustings, said: “In principle, London offers better chances of finding new accessible or adaptable homes as there are higher accessibility standards and targets for new-build homes than the rest of England.

“However, even in London disabled people are struggling to find accessible homes across all tenures and many of us are living in unsuitable accommodation because the supply of accessible homes is not meeting the demand.

“We are extremely concerned that compliance with M4(2) and M4(3) standards has significantly dropped over the years and are urging the mayor of London to thoroughly investigate why new-build approvals and completions are consistently below the targets set out in the London Plan.”

She added: “We do not just need more homes in London, we need the right kind of homes for all, and for this to happen, local authorities have to comply with accessible housing targets.

“However, standards and targets alone are not sufficient.

“We believe councils should go beyond minimum standards and targets and should do so by collecting good quality data about Deaf and disabled people and their needs in their boroughs which is often scarce or non-existent.

“Living in unsuitable accommodation has profound negative implications not just for us disabled people but for society at large.

“Those of us living in unsuitable accommodation are less likely to be in work, are more likely to experience a deterioration in our physical and mental health, are more likely to be admitted to hospital as a result of falls, are more likely to rely on social care and, most importantly, are deprived of our right to live independently.”

The Green Party’s mayoral candidate, Zoe Garbett, did attend last week’s hustings, but her office had not commented on the accessible housing concerns by noon today (Thursday).

The mayor’s figures show that only seven London boroughs managed to ensure that at least 10 per cent of new homes approved in 2019-20 were suitable for wheelchair-users.

In Barking and Dagenham, less than four per cent of about 4,000 new homes met the wheelchair standard in that year, while less than 30 per cent were going to be accessible and adaptable and meet the M4(2) standard.

In Lewisham, only 22 per cent of 843 approvals of new homes were set to be accessible and adaptable, with only about five per cent suitable for wheelchair-users.

And in Newham, only 34 per cent were accessible and adaptable, and just four per cent met the wheelchair standard.

In all, of more than 63,000 new homes approved in 2019-20, only 47 per cent were seen as accessible and adaptable, and another seven per cent were suitable for wheelchair-users.

In 2018-19, 60 per cent of approvals were accessible and adaptable, while nine per cent were suitable for wheelchair-users.

And in 2017-18, just 57 per cent were accessible and adaptable, with only seven per cent of new homes approved suitable for wheelchair-users.

In that year, 1,879 new homes were approved in Havering, but only 24 of them (just over one per cent) were going to be accessible and adaptable, and just two (0.11 per cent) were going to be suitable for wheelchair-users.

The mayor’s data tables also show figures for new homes completed in each year.

Of new homes completed in 2022-23, less than five per cent were suitable for wheelchair-users, and 41 per cent were built to M4(2).

In 2021-22, nine per cent of those completed were suitable for wheelchair-users, while only 49 per cent met the M4(2) standard.

In 2020-21, the figures were eight per cent and 48 per cent; in 2019-20, they were seven per cent and 58 per cent; in 2018-19, they were just under 10 per cent (9.73 per cent) and 62 per cent; and in 2017-18, they were nine per cent and 53 per cent.

The mayor had not commented on the figures by noon today.

18 April 2024

Letter from DPOs accuses care cuts council of ‘inhumane’ policies

Four disabled people’s organisations have written to Bristol’s mayor to call on him to abandon “inhumane and unacceptable” social care policies that are set to breach disabled people’s right to live independently.

Disability Rights UK, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Inclusion London and WinVisible all expressed their “deep concerns” about the proposed actions of Bristol City Council.

They have written to both the Labour mayor, Marvin Rees, and the leader of the council’s Green Party – currently its largest party – over plans that would “fail to uphold the rights of Disabled people in Bristol to receive the care and support they need based on personal choice”.

They say the policies would be a clear breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

The letter follows the council’s decision to withdraw its controversial draft Fair and Affordable Care Policy, which stated that disabled people could be offered a “residential or nursing home placement” if “a care package to remain at home would substantially exceed the affordability of residential care”.

But after withdrawing the draft policy, the council brought forward new cuts worth millions of pounds that are also likely to push disabled people into residential care.

The grassroots group Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) accused the council last month of trying to bring in the much-criticised policy “through the back door”, as it aimed to save nearly £7 million from its funding of adult care and support packages in 2024-25.

The four disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have now told the mayor that the new proposals are “arguably worse” than the “outrageous” Fair and Affordable Care Policy.

As part of its new plans, the council will review the care packages of at least 190 disabled people with what the council calls “complex” packages of support.

The letter warns that the under-resourcing of advocacy services in Bristol will mean that the disabled people targeted for review will not be able to access the support necessary to understand or exercise their rights.

The DPOs told the mayor in the letter: “Given this budget, it’s easy to understand why so many Bristolians do not have confidence that you are genuinely committed to working with the local Disabled community to co-produce and improve the provision of care and support.”

And they said they struggled to understand how the council could justify spending £1,550,000 on a consultancy firm to carry out the reviews of care packages when these consultants would be “cutting back provision of services on commission”.

They added: “Bristolians are facing the threat of being pressured into residential homes, which for many of us is a lonely bleak future which goes against our quality of life and breaks up family life.”

They said the policy would “disproportionately affect Disabled women”, as disabled mothers with high physical support needs fear having their children taken if they are forced into a care home.

The letter says: “Cuts in homecare add to dependence on partners, relationship pressures and risk of domestic violence… [while] women who drop out of homecare due to unaffordable charges, are often exploited, including by violent men, who they are forced to rely on for help.”

Rick Burgess, a GMCDP spokesperson, said: “What is happening in Bristol is emblematic of the struggle across the country as social care staggers from crisis to crisis… [while] Westminster parties refuse to acknowledge the reality of gross long-term systemic underfunding and uncollectable care charge debts.

“The urgent need is for transformation to support nationally-funded independent living in line with the UNCRPD.”

Claire Glasman, co-founder of WinVisible, said the council’s cuts and charges hurt disabled people, disabled people of colour, disabled women and family carers who are “already struggling to survive” with low income and high support needs. 

She said that government spending on social care was half what it spends “on the military and bombing”, while “council spending on ‘child protection’ – the massive fees paid to the privatised child removal industry which profits from the trauma inflicted on mothers and children, placed in institutions where abuse is rife – is swallowing extra funds for adult social care, and must go instead to supporting families”.

Fazilet Hadi, DR UK’s head of policy, said: “Getting care and support when we need it, in the way we choose and without charge, should be an absolute right, on a par with our entitlement to NHS services.

“Central and local government have had decades to improve social care, as recommended by numerous reports, and yet they have allowed social care to reach crisis point.

“It is not disabled people that should pay for these failings.

“A radical new approach to social care is now needed.

“It should be overseen by a new National Independent Living Service and delivered locally by disabled people-led organisations.

“The current system just doesn’t work and totally lets down disabled citizens of all ages.”

A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “We understand that the mayor’s office has received this letter and will be responding in due course.”

18 April 2024

Tory MP brands plan to scrap WCA and allow work coaches to decide fitness for work ‘a crazy idea’

A Conservative MP has branded government plans to scrap the work capability assessment (WCA) and hand jobcentre work coaches responsibility for deciding if someone is fit for work “a crazy idea”.

Nigel Mills made the comments as the Commons work and pensions committee was taking evidence from campaigning organisations on the government’s employment plans.

Under plans announced last spring, the WCA will be scrapped and disabled people who cannot work will only be able to qualify for a new health element of universal credit if they also receive personal independence payment (PIP), disability living allowance (DLA), or, in Scotland, adult disability payment (ADP).

But this would leave it to DWP’s over-worked work coaches – who will usually have no health-related qualifications – to decide if a disabled person should carry out work-related activity.

The WCA will not be scrapped until after the next general election and not until 2026 at the earliest, DWP has said.

Mills, a Conservative member of the committee, said yesterday (Wednesday): “My experience of constituents is they don’t generally have a great deal of time or regard for their work capability assessment medical professional.”

But he added: “The idea that I’m going to trust a work coach and share my biggest issues and concerns and seek their support and want their counselling if they’ve just told me I’m not getting the extra benefit is extraordinarily unlikely, isn’t it?

“It’s just going to destroy the relationship between them and the claimant.

“I just can’t imagine many work coaches are going to fancy this sort of flicking through the file and going, ‘You do get the extra money… you don’t.’

“It seems like a crazy idea.”

Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy adviser for Disability Rights UK, replied: “You said it, really.”

Butler said it would be good to discover the views of work coaches about the government’s proposed reforms.

He said there was already “a great deal of mistrust” of work coaches and assessors among claimants, while work coaches were working “under extreme pressure and don’t have time to actually discuss things properly and form a working relationship”.

Mills suggested that those giving evidence to the committee yesterday might fear that the government’s “well-intended” plans to scrap the WCA “might end up making the situation worse for the people you represent”.

But Butler said: “I wouldn’t say it was well-intended necessarily. One of the most clear outcomes of it… is to save money.

“Scrapping the work capability assessment has always been an aim of many disability organisations, but not scrapping it and having nothing else in its place, and replacing it with something [an assessment for PIP, DLA or ADP] which isn’t intended to be a work benefit and resulting in quite devastating income cuts as well.”

Disability News Service (DNS) is still trying to obtain a copy of the equality impact assessment carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on the decision to scrap the WCA.

The information commissioner decided late last year that the department should release the assessment because “the public is entitled to scrutinise a decision such as this at an early opportunity”, but DWP has appealed the decision.

DNS has been seeking the information from DWP since March 2023, when the move to scrap the WCA was announced in the spring budget, with details included in the government’s Transforming Support white paper.

Later in yesterday’s evidence session, the mental health charity Mind raised serious concerns about government reforms to tighten the WCA in the years leading to its eventual abolition.

Although ministers no longer plan to scrap the criteria that protects those seen as being at “substantial risk” of harm if found able to carry out work-related activity through the WCA, they still aim to amend this safety net so that it only applies in “exceptional circumstances”, protecting those with “the most severe mental or physical health conditions”.

Nil Güzelgün, interim head of policy and campaigns at the mental health charity Mind, raised concerns about the changes to the substantial risk criteria, and stressed how important the current protections are.

She highlighted the case of a disabled man who was found ineligible to be placed in the limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) group of universal credit, following a WCA.

He had both physical impairments and mental distress related to sexual abuse he suffered as a child after being abducted from a bus.

Mind supported him through a mandatory reconsideration of the decision, but DWP told him that although he was too unwell for more intensive work-related activity he could still do “light touch work-related activity”, and suggested that he research new bus routes and test out bus journeys.

A subsequent tribunal appeal was told that this suggestion would re-traumatise him, and the tribunal decided that he should be placed in the LCWRA group on the grounds of “substantial risk”.

Güzelgün said the case highlighted the “lack of understanding of mental health problems” by DWP’s work coaches and its private sector assessors.

She told the committee that the safeguards were “critical for people with mental health problems so they cannot be retraumatised or hospitalised because of activities that are required by the jobcentre or work coaches”.

She told the committee: “To weaken the LCWRA substantial risk regulation would mean that you would push people to engage in work-related activity which will deteriorate their mental health or really put them at risk, and for people with mental health problems that risk is real and they can die and some people have attempted suicide.

“This is a real risk and I think it is really dangerous to introduce these changes.”

She said the substantial risk regulations played “a crucial role” in reducing harm, and the government’s proposed changes reduced that protection.

18 April 2024

Spring tour for austerity installation on DWP deaths that was inspired by war photographers

A spring tour of an award-winning installation is set to expose how the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) caused “devastating violence” and led to countless deaths of benefit claimants in the austerity years.

The mixed reality installation Museum of Austerity is opening its spring tour this week at Live Theatre, Newcastle, before touring next month to Chatham in Kent, and then Bristol Old Vic in June.

The installation uses verbal testimony of family members and state-of-the-art technology to recreate the circumstances that led to the deaths of disabled claimants of benefits in the post-2010 decade of austerity.

The production uses recorded interviews and 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 flaws in DWP’s assessments, sanctions and safeguarding systems.

Sacha Wares, director of Museum of Austerity, said: “Inspired by war photographers of the past who used early cameras to capture distant battlefields, Museum of Austerity employs mixed reality technologies to record the invisible, devastating violence of austerity.

“Museum of Austerity is an artwork I wish we hadn’t had to make, but which needs to be seen.”

John Pring*, co-editor of Museum of Austerity and editor of DNS, said: “Museum of Austerity has found an innovative and powerful way to tell these terrible stories in a way that exposes the horror of what happened to so many disabled people during the austerity period.

“This is a ground-breaking piece of work, and I’m relieved that this tour will allow more people to view the exhibition and understand how the actions of the DWP led to widespread poverty, acute distress and even the deaths of countless benefit claimants.

“I hope the audience will think about the harm done, and how no-one associated with these actions has ever been held accountable for what happened and is still happening today.”

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

Alongside the production, there will be a programme of exhibitions and workshops led by Healing Justice LDN (HJL) and local partners.

The first workshop, Rage, Grief and Justice: Disabled People’s Resistance to Austerity, will take place at Live Theatre, Newcastle, tomorrow afternoon (Friday, 19 April).

It will feature a conversation between Dr China Mills, who leads HJL’s Deaths by Welfare project; Imogen Day, whose sister’s death was linked by a coroner to fatal flaws in the disability benefits system; and disabled activist Gail Ward, a long-standing member of grassroots groups Disabled People Against Cuts and Black Triangle Campaign.

The workshop will examine the “resistance and defiance” of disabled people and bereaved families in response to the years of life-threatening social security policies and state austerity.

It will also share information about the online Deaths by Welfare timeline, which tracks the slow, accumulated violence caused by the social security system over the last three decades.

The workshop will also examine how “rage and grief” can help create community-led approaches to social security, health, safety and justice, and honour those who have died because of austerity and welfare reform.

Museum of Austerity is at Live Theatre, Newcastle, from 17 April to 21 April; at No 1 Smithery Studio, The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, from 16 to 18 May, although tickets for the public, which are free, are only available for this leg of the tour on 18 May, and can be booked through the Gulbenkian Arts Centre box office; and at Bristol Old Vic from 12 to 15 June.

*Pring is specialist advisor and co-editor of Museum of Austerity, and co-creator of the Deaths by Welfare timeline. His book on DWP and how its actions led to countless deaths of disabled people in the post-2010 era – The Department – will be published by Pluto Press in August

18 April 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

People with learning difficulties are being “locked up” instead of receiving care in the community, according to campaign group Stolen Lives. The organisation has launched a petition urging the Welsh government to take action, and about 150 people attended a protest at the Senedd yesterday (Wednesday) to urge the Welsh government to act: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czkvl8mmyx8o

Hundreds of thousands fewer disabled people could receive cold weather payments under the Conservatives’ planned post-election disability benefit reforms, according to an internal government report seen by the Observer. The briefing, by civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions, says that under the plans, new applicants for disability benefits in England and Wales would only qualify for cold weather payments if they passed a much harsher assessment than exists at present: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/14/leak-reveals-tory-plan-to-cut-cold-weather-cash-for-disabled-people

The Department for Work and Pensions is forcing a 92-year-old grandmother to pay back more than £7,000 – more than a third of her life savings – after she failed to notify it about a change in her circumstances five years ago when she was in the early stages of dementia: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/17/injustice-92-year-old-with-dementia-told-by-dwp-to-repay-7k-in-disability-allowance

An inquest has heard how a man with Down’s syndrome died after choking on a conker that was part of a sensory activity for another resident at his home. Marcus Hanlin was left unsupervised at the time, despite his mother saying he was on a support plan that required him to be supervised at all times when around food due to swallowing issues. At the time of his death in 2022, he was a resident at Cheddar Grove Nursing Home, a specialist nursing home for people with learning difficulties in Bristol: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck7l14jnyg8o

A disability campaigner has travelled to London to meet a transport minister to discuss being able to use her electric scooter as a mobility aid. Ella Wakely, from Devon, has faced fines when using her scooter on public roads or public transport, as current laws mean privately-owned e-scooters are illegal to ride on such routes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68826853

18 April 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

From: For The Many Network

1.      10^th May, 6 – 7.30pm. Liverpool For the Many hub – In person meeting. The Casa Bar, Hope Street Liverpool

The last meeting prior to the hub’s AGM, members will discuss planning for the AGM and local campaigning activities in relation to support for Palestine and local independent candidates standing for election.

Please register a space via Eventbrite here for 10^th May: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/for-the-many-network-liverpool-hub-meeting-10th-may-2024-tickets-881474382607

2.      11^th May, 12 – 2pm. In person meeting. Stop the War’s John Rees

Wigan Diggers & For the Many present discussion with Stop the War – John Rees at Sunshine House, Wigan, WN1 3SA.

Get your tickets here for the 11^th May: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wigan-diggers-and-for-the-many-network-present-stop-the-wars-john-reece-tickets-876052284967

3.      15^th May, 6.30 – 8 p.m. via Zoom. NHS and Social Care Webinar

Join network members as we present the first of our webinars on the Network’s 12 principles. This first session focuses on our support for Principle no 2, “National Health and Social Care Services, fully funded from progressive taxation, which employs directly all who work in them. No sub-contracting, and no out-sourcing”.We will be joined by Dr Bob Gill (NHS Doctor & activist, Producer, director & co-writer of the Great NHS Heist), Nico Csergo (long-term NHS campaigner and Socialist Health Association committee member) and Rebecca Smyth (Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital) to discuss the latest national and local campaigns on this theme and how members can learn more about the best campaigning resources and tools to help build a presence in your local area.

Please register here for a Zoom link on 15^th May: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83798280589?pwd=uEjbNpz81KSJReH2iPQNhurBCUIaaX.1

4.      20^th May, 6 – 7.30 p.m. via Zoom. Hub Coordinators & Members Network meeting

Meeting for hub coordinators and members from across the national network, to link up with each other and the network team. Will include summary and discussion of how to organise and conduct meetings, hub committee role profiles, an introduction to available training and campaigning tools, including social media and communications. As we move closer towards a general election, will the expectation of a new government change anything for the people in our communities? Discuss how the Network can support activists to mobilise on the issues that matter in your communities and the Network’s 12 principles.

Please register here to make sure your voice is represented on the 20^th May: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0odOmorDwpGdT9RyWKOaQGK3Xw1lrkmu_Y

5.      1 to 1 calls re: hub coordinators

Please contact the FTM network team by return email, if you would like to find out more about being a hub coordinator in your area.

Contents

DWP ‘destroyed evidence’ on secret investigations rules, in latest ‘cover-up’ 1

Cabinet Office finally finds missing report showing difficulties facing ‘vulnerable’ universal credit claimants 2

DWP ‘destroyed evidence’ on secret investigations rules, in latest ‘cover-up’

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is again facing cover-up allegations after suggesting that it has destroyed reports showing why it weakened guidance on when to investigate suicides of benefit claimants.

Disability News Service revealed last month that DWP had weakened the rules on when to carry out an internal process review (IPR) in April 2021.

The previous year it had told the National Audit Office it would always carry out one of its secret reviews when it heard of a claimant’s death if they had died by suicide, even if there were no allegations that DWP’s actions had contributed to that death.

But since April 2021, after weakening the rules, DWP now only carries out an IPR following the suicide of a claimant if there is already an allegation that DWP’s actions “may have negatively contributed to the customer’s circumstances”.

After asking DWP for any reports about this decision that were considered by DWP directors in the year up to the change in the rules, DWP said it has established that “the information you requested is not held by this Department”.

In the response to the freedom of information request, DWP suggested it had destroyed any such reports – even though the decision was taken less than three years ago – because the discussions were “operational in nature as opposed to policy based”.

The department said: “As discussions around Internal Process Reviews, their management and the criteria that relate to them, are operational in nature as opposed to policy based, there is no requirement for the Department to retain any such reports.”

Figures obtained through a freedom of information request have shown that on at least four occasions in 2022-23 – as a result of the new rules – the department failed to carry out an IPR when told of the suicide of a claimant.

For more than a decade, DNS has been revealing how DWP has covered-up evidence of links between its actions and the deaths of claimants, and how it has repeatedly tried to delay evidence of those links being released.

A DWP spokesperson declined to comment on its freedom of information response.

28 March 2024

Cabinet Office finally finds missing report showing difficulties facing ‘vulnerable’ universal credit claimants

The Cabinet Office has finally found a missing report that showed the “additional difficulties” faced by “vulnerable” universal credit claimants, despite originally claiming it could not locate the document.

The existence of the 2019 report was not known about outside government circles until DWP was forced by a tribunal to release a follow-up report late last year.

DWP had been trying to prevent the release of the follow-up report by the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (PMIU) since its existence was revealed in October 2021 in universal credit papers secured through a freedom of information battle by campaigner John Slater.

The follow-up report, How Effective is Support for Vulnerable Universal Credit Claimants?, revealed significant flaws at the heart of the universal credit system and how DWP supports claimants it sees as vulnerable.

Disability News Service (DNS) had been seeking a copy of the report since late 2021, alongside Slater and Owen Stevens, from Child Poverty Action Group.

The original report was also written by PMIU, which was based within the Cabinet Office, but has since been scrapped.

But when DNS tried to obtain a copy of the original report, both DWP and the Cabinet Office originally suggested it was being held by the other department.

The Cabinet Office claimed earlier this year 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 – Equality Hub”.

But after DNS asked the Cabinet Office to “look a little harder”, it has now found the report, Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups, after carrying out “further searches of additional areas” of its “records and archives”.

The report warns that “vulnerable” claimants of universal credit (UC) – which can include those with long-term conditions and other disabled people, asylum-seekers, those who are homeless and survivors of domestic abuse – “can face additional difficulties claiming UC particularly when making a claim, meeting commitments and managing finances”.

It concludes that only a “small number of vulnerable groups” are captured by the data and analysis which DWP uses to measure the “experience and outcomes” of UC claimants.

It also warns that the “experience of many groups of vulnerable claimants on UC is not currently understood”, while there is a “lack of evidence” on whether the range of support that has been introduced to help these groups is “delivered consistently and delivering the desired outcomes with efficacy”.

DNS has been trying to raise concerns about the serious flaws within universal credit, both with DWP and the Labour party, for the last 18 months.

Slater said the report did not reflect well on DWP and its universal credit team.

He said it suggested that “vulnerable” claimants would be sanctioned or lose some of their entitlement because the system could not cope with their “additional difficulties”, and that this could put their health or even their lives at risk, with staff usually “far too busy to identify vulnerable people and treat them differently”.

He also pointed to DWP research, highlighted in the 2019 report, which found that 44 per cent of claimants fell behind with bills or credit commitments or experience financial difficulties within three months of making a claim.

He said the report suggested that DWP “doesn’t understand (and doesn’t want to understand) the real world that UC claimants live in.

“Unless people fit the ‘standard claimant’ model for the UC claimant the ‘UC system’ can’t cope with them.

“I’m not sure that has significantly changed since this report was written.”

A DWP spokesperson declined to comment on the Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups report.

28 March 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Contents

Government’s response to UN committee ‘was insult to disabled people’ 1

UN committee asks government: ‘Why are you demonising disabled people?’ 4

MPs undermine key government claim, days after it defended its record at the UN 7

It was emergency planning that was vulnerable during Covid, not disabled people, inquiry is told 10

Government finally set to act on housing accessibility standards 11

Maggie Davis: Tributes to pioneer, rebel and advocate 14

‘Underhand tactics’ could still see disabled people forced into care homes, say campaigners 18

Disabled-led business seeks new clients after being hit by rise of AI 20

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 21

Government’s response to UN committee ‘was insult to disabled people’

Disabled people’s organisations from across the UK have described the government’s evidence to a UN disability rights committee this week as “an insult to disabled people” and full of “half-truths, untruths” and “empty assertions”.

Representatives from more than 10 disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) were in Geneva to witness the evidence given by the UK government as it attempted to persuade the committee it had made progress since being found guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2016.

But they have told Disability News Service (DNS) that the evidence provided by a delegation of civil servants from the Disability Unit, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care failed to address key concerns raised more than seven years ago by the UN committee on the rights of disabled people.

In an initial statement on Monday afternoon, Alexandra Gowlland, deputy director of the Disability Unit, pointed to a string of recent government policies across disability strategy, social security, housing, social care and employment, nearly all of which have been widely discredited (see separate story).

She and fellow civil servants were also asked to respond to concerns and questions raised by members of the committee.

But representatives of the DPOs that had travelled to Geneva to brief the committee and watch the session say they were appalled at the evidence given by the UK government’s delegation.

Ellen Clifford, who coordinates the coalition of DPOs that monitors the implementation of the convention in the UK, told DNS that the UK government’s representatives had “avoided all of the substantive issues with which the special inquiry is concerned, and failed to answer any of the committee’s questions.

“They chose instead to talk out their time on issues irrelevant to the inquiry and in a misleadingly positive light.

“We felt their approach was disrespectful to the committee and showed how little they value the lives of Deaf and disabled people.”

She said the questions and comments from the UN rapporteurs – the committee members who have led investigations into the UK’s progress – “showed how well they understand the true picture of what is happening and that they had really listened to and valued the evidence we submitted and the testimonies that were shared with them by Deaf and disabled people”.

John McArdle, co-founder of the Scottish-based grassroots group Black Triangle, said the failure of the UK delegation to address the issues raised by the committee was “insulting, not only to us, but to the United Nations, the rapporteurs and the institution itself”.

He told DNS that the UK government was guilty of “whitewashing and ignoring the rock-solid evidence” and that its delegation had kept trying to “dodge the bullets” by not addressing the issues raised by committee members.

He said Gowlland had failed to respond to the significant criticisms of the work capability assessment by the committee and “how dangerous the system is, how it has cost so, so many lives”.

He said: “If they’re not addressing these issues, then they’re completely evading their responsibilities under the convention.”

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, told DNS: “The government’s response laid bare the fact that they have done nothing to progress our rights to independent living, employment or an adequate standard of living. 

“Their update was a list of empty promises or laws that don’t give people any rights; and we know they are pushing reforms which will lead to further retrogression.  

“We hope the UN disability committee will see beyond this and hold them to account.” 

Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, said on Monday: “Although we are not surprised by the UK government’s response today, we still feel that their refusal to properly engage with this process is an insult to all disabled people whose experiences are reflected in the evidence we’ve provided to the UN.

“Despite requesting a delay last year, they have provided us with no new evidence – instead signposting to plans and policies that create no transformative change.

“The delegation shared all the ways they believe they’ve created progress for disabled people’s rights – but they know, just as we do, that no progress has been made.

“In fact, we have gone backwards.”

Natasha Hirst, president of the National Union of Journalists and the disability representative on its national executive, said the UK government’s delegation had “not stood up well to the scrutiny of the committee”.

She said: “Their empty assertions of being committed to improving disabled people’s lives are in clear contrast with the daily reality of poverty, exclusion and a frequently punitive social security system.

“Planned reforms and continued negative rhetoric about disabled people will only make things worse.”

Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales, also said the UK government’s evidence was “far removed from the reality of disabled people’s lives and experiences since 2016”.

She said: “We are not shocked, but appalled, by the lack of acknowledgement concerning the deaths of disabled people awaiting assessment decisions, the criticism of DDPOs* regarding recent policy such as the health and disability white paper or the harm caused by the disablist ‘benefit scroungers’ stereotyping promoted by the UK government.”

Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance, said: “The UNCRPD committee is not fooled by the half-truths, untruths and smokescreen presented by representatives of the British government.

“They know the Tories are completely hostile to human rights and equality for disabled people.

“The UK delegation has presented the realities of human rights violations that demonstrate ongoing and deepening grave and systematic attacks on living standards and deaths from benefit and cuts to community support services.”

Tony O’Reilly, from Northern Ireland’s Northwest Forum of People with Disabilities, said: “Over these last months we gave our evidence to the… committee supported by facts and the strong testimony of Deaf and disabled people.

“All of us together sought to shine a light on the truth of our perilous situation.

“The fact that the UK government and the devolved administrations sought to hide in the dark refusing to answer directly the questions of this esteemed committee is shameful and another barrier to the full realisation of our human rights as Deaf and disabled people.”

Clifford, a member of the national steering committee of Disabled People Against Cuts, also highlighted the “size and strength” of the delegation of DPOs to Geneva, which was boosted for the first time by disabled trade unionists, and she pointed to the “hard work and support from those back in the UK”.

She said this “gave us confidence that when we come home we can build a strong resistance movement to oppose further cuts to social security and to demand a right to adequate support to live and be fully included in the community”.

Kotova also praised the “solidarity among disabled people and DPOs across UK nations”. 

She said: “If anything, this process can help us build on this as a movement as we will have to keep on fighting.”

*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations

21 March 2024

UN committee asks government: ‘Why are you demonising disabled people?’

A United Nations committee has accused the UK government of demonising disabled people and treating them as “undeserving citizens” by preparing to fund tax cuts through slashing disability benefits.

Members of the UN’s committee on the rights of disabled people provided a string of examples of how the government had continued to breach its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

They pointed to a benefits system that traumatised claimants and led to some taking their own lives; increasing rates of institutionalisation; and a disproportionate number of disabled people who were now too poor to heat their own homes or buy food.

The committee’s Australian vice-chair, Rosemary Kayess, said the social security system and rhetoric from ministers “devalues disabled people and undermines their human dignity”, and she suggested the government had breached its treaty obligations to “combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to disabled people”.

Kayess told a delegation of civil servants in Geneva that there was evidence of “regression” in how the UK government was meeting its obligations under the convention.

The committee was cross-examining the delegation, which included representatives from the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, on progress since the UK government was found guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN convention in 2016 as a result of breaches of articles on social security, employment and independent living.

Following the session, and the “significant” amount of written and oral evidence provided by disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and allies, the committee will now prepare a report on its findings.

Kayess, a human rights lawyer and Australia’s new disability discrimination commissioner, told the UK’s delegation on Monday: “We see a reform agenda that is framed in a political narrative that demonises disabled people, including proposals to cut disability benefits to reward working people by cutting taxes, which tells disabled people they are undeserving citizens.

“And this is coupled with an onerous and complex social benefit system that is the basis for trauma and preventable mental distress.”

Kayess said the committee had found a “pervasive framework and rhetoric that devalues disabled people and undermines their human dignity” within the social security system, and she suggested the government had breached its obligations under the convention to “combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to disabled people”.

She said: “Reforms within social welfare benefits are premised on a notion that disabled people are undeserving and skiving off and defrauding the system.

“This has resulted in hate speech and hostility towards disabled people.”

She also pointed to “increasing rates of institutionalisation” of disabled people, including those “living in secure psychiatric facilities due to a lack of community-based support”, and others forced into residential homes because of inadequate care and support.

And she highlighted evidence of increased use of “restraints, restrictive practices and coercive measures” in institutions, and the shortage of safe, accessible housing.

She also questioned whether the government had failed to meet its obligations to “closely” and “actively” consult disabled people’s organisations when drawing up its National Disability Strategy.

Just as it did in 2016, the committee raised significant concerns about the “complex and onerous” work capability assessment process, and the use of “inexperienced and unqualified” assessors.

Another committee member, Professor Laverne Jacobs, a disability rights and human rights law expert from Canada, said there had been a “repeated pattern” of disabled people taking their own lives after being denied an adequate standard of living by the Department for Work and Pensions.

She asked the government what measures it would take to ensure that its benefit eligibility and work capability systems were “trauma informed so that they do not cause mental health crises, suicide, and death”.

But she also asked what “redress” it would offer to those who have experienced trauma caused by the social security and assessment systems, and to the families of those claimants who had lost their lives through this trauma.

Jacobs said the committee had heard of disabled people facing “intolerable situations, even death, while trying to comply with the eligibility requirements of the UK government’s benefit regimes”, including the work capability assessment process.

She said that evidence they had been given suggested a “significant and shameful gap” between the convention’s requirements and the lived experiences of disabled people in the UK.

And, she said, the evidence suggested a failure to provide an adequate standard of living for disabled people, including disabled women, girls and older people, with a “disproportionate” number of disabled people “living in poverty without the ability to heat their homes or purchase food”.

She also asked the UK government what measures it was taking to ensure that disabled people can enjoy their rights under the UN convention to live independently in the community, and to address the shortage of personal assistants.

And she asked what the government was doing to ensure that disabled refugees and asylum-seekers can enjoy their right to live independently and in the community in the UK.

She urged the UK government to “improve on its commitment” to the rights of disabled people and take “immediate steps to remedy the issues that we have highlighted today”.

A third committee member, human rights lawyer Miyeon Kim, from South Korea, asked the UK delegation about the “biggest death crisis in the history of the NHS”, after campaigners called last year for a criminal investigation into a mental health trust, following a report that found more than 8,400 deaths linked to the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust.

There was little attempt by the UK government to answer the questions asked by the committee members, with disabled people’s organisations who were present at the evidence session describing their attempts as “half-truths, untruths and smokescreen” (see separate story).

Alexandra Gowlland, deputy director of the Disability Unit, who had earlier delivered the UK government’s opening statement to the committee (see separate story), claimed it was committed to the UN convention, and pointed to the protection offered to disabled people by the Equality Act, including the public sector equality duty.

She told the committee: “Ensuring the voice of disabled people is properly heard is something which is very important to us in the UK government.”

Jennifer Heigham, DWP’s deputy director for strategy and briefing, pointed to the £105 billion in cost-of-living support the government had provided from 2022 to 2025, but failed to point out that working-age disabled people receiving non-means-tested disability benefits received just £150 a year in 2022 and another £150 in 2023-24 in disability-related cost-of-living payments.

She claimed the government was “delivering the most ambitious disability reform agenda in a generation” and was “proud to have a proven track record of increasing disability employment, and acting on disability discrimination, providing vital protections”.

And she said the government was “committed to ensuring our welfare system encourages and supports people into work, while providing a vital safety net for those who need it most”.

She added: “In the future, removing the work capability assessment will reduce the number of assessments people need to take to access benefits, give people the confidence to try work, and enable us to provide a more personalised approach.”

David Nuttall, deputy director of neurodiversity, diversity and learning disability at the Department of Health and Social Care, said the government was “investing in better training, accredited qualifications and launching a new national career structure for the adult social care workforce”.

And he said it had given new powers to the Care Quality Commission to inspect how local authorities were delivering their duties under the Care Act.

He claimed the government had “substantially invested in adult social care funding”, while the NHS long-term plan included a “long-term aim to improve community support for people with a learning disability, autistic people and those with serious mental illness”.

He said the government’s draft mental health bill – which appears to have been dumped by the government – included plans to tighten the criteria on when someone can be detained under the Mental Health Act “to ensure detention only happens where absolutely necessary”.

Apparently in response to the question from Miyeon Kim, he said the Care Quality Commission was “the independent regulator of health and social care in England and is responsible for making sure providers adhere to the fundamental standards to ensure services are safe, effective, person centred, responsive and well led”.

21 March 2024

MPs undermine key government claim, days after it defended its record at the UN

The government tried this week to persuade the UN that it has made “progress” since being found guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of the disability rights convention, just as MPs prepared to undermine one of its key claims.

A delegation of civil servants from the UK government, and three devolved governments, were in Geneva to be cross-examined by members of the UN committee on the rights of disabled people.

They had been asked to provide evidence of progress made since a 2016 report by the committee found the UK government guilty of repeated violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

That report followed the first high-level inquiry carried out by the committee and was the result of years of research and lobbying by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which sent members to Geneva this week, alongside representatives of more than 10 other disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

The UN committee found in November 2016 that the UK government had discriminated against disabled people on the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection, employment, and independent living.

But the UK government’s attempts to claim it has made progress since 2016 were described by the DPOs who watched its evidence on Monday as “an insult to disabled people” and full of “half-truths, untruths” and “empty assertions” (see separate story).

The UK government’s lead representative in Geneva, Alexandra Gowlland, deputy director of the Disability Unit, said the government was “fully committed” to implementing the convention.

She presented a list on Monday of what the government appeared to see as its main achievements on disability rights since 2016.

One of the areas she focused on was the right to independent living, detailed in article 19 of the convention.

In late 2016, the committee concluded that the UK government’s policies had “disproportionately affected persons with disabilities and hindered various aspects of their right to live independently and be included in the community”.

Gowlland pointed this week to a 2021 white paper published by the Department of Health and Social Care, People at the Heart of Care, with its “10 year vision for adult social care”, and claimed the government wanted “everyone to access high quality care that enables choice, control, and independence”.

But yesterday (Wednesday), just two days later, the Commons public accounts committee was concluding that the UK government was “falling short” on its promise to “fix the crisis in social care”, as “chronic understaffing, rising waiting lists and patchwork funding place sustained pressure on local authorities”.

The cross-party committee also concluded that the government had “no roadmap for achieving its vision, or any targets or milestones beyond 2025, with nothing meaningful in place to demonstrate progress”.

Gowlland also failed to mention to the UN committee that research by disabled campaigners has shown how tens of thousands of disabled people across England have been left in debt because they cannot pay their care charges.

The government also tried to take credit for two “landmark” pieces of legislation, the British Sign Language Act and the Down Syndrome Act, both of which were private members’ bills eventually supported by the government but were also criticised for failing to offer any strong new rights.

She also highlighted the government’s National Disability Strategy, which she described as “ambitious and comprehensive”, and the more recent Disability Action Plan, which have both been heavily criticised by DPOs for their lack of any co-production and for being full of empty promises.

Gowlland mentioned the Transforming Support white paper, published last spring by the Department for Work and Pensions and which disabled people’s organisations have described as not fit for purpose.

Those reforms, she said, focus “on what people can do rather than what they cannot”, a phrase used repeatedly by work and pensions ministers for decades, with the earliest known use by Labour’s social security secretary Alistair Darling in 1999.

Among her claims was that the government had overseen an increase in the number of disabled people in employment of 1. 3 million between 2017 and 2022, even though that claim has been repeatedly debunked by academics, who have made clear that it is deeply misleading.

Rather than mentioning the long and repeated delays to plans to force all new homes in England to be built to a higher basic standard of accessibility, Gowlland highlighted minor measures on supported housing, which she said “plays a vital role in delivering better life outcomes, improved well-being and health and greater independence for disabled people”.

She again sought to take credit for legislation that was introduced through a private members’ bill, this time the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act, which the government “supported”.

On disability hate crime – something which she said was “completely unacceptable” – she highlighted awareness campaigns in 2018 and 2019, but failed to mention the government’s repeated failure to introduce tougher laws, as recommended by the Law Commission more than two years ago.

Gowlland also pointed to new laws from 2022 that allowed Deaf jurors to be assisted by British Sign Language interpreters in the jury deliberation room, without mentioning that the government had only acted after a judicial review of its failure to remove a ban and more than two decades of campaigning by Deaf activists.

In its evidence to the committee on Monday, the Scottish government highlighted policies such as its introduction of the new adult disability payment and child disability payment to replace personal independence payment, its decision to reopen the Independent Living Fund to new entrants, its introduction of free personal care, and its plans for a National Care Service.

The Welsh government spoke of its commitment to incorporate the UN convention into Welsh law, and how it commissioned a study of the effects of the response to the pandemic on disabled people, led by DPOs, which became the Locked Out report, and subsequently set up a Disability Rights Taskforce.

It also spoke of the Welsh government’s commitment to embedding the social model of disability “into everything it does” and how it was working on the taskforce in co-production with disabled people.

The Northern Ireland government pointed to its work on a disability and work strategy, and a new disability strategy, and its plans for a new hate crime bill, a draft strategic plan for learning disability, and an updated autism strategy.

21 March 2024

It was emergency planning that was vulnerable during Covid, not disabled people, inquiry is told

It was the emergency planning systems that proved to be “vulnerable” during the Covid pandemic, and not disabled people, the UK Covid inquiry has been told by two national disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

Disability Wales and Disability Rights UK (DR UK) told the inquiry, sitting in Cardiff last week as it considered the impact of the pandemic in Wales, that the systems had relied on “chaotic improvisation” rather than the “pre-planning and practice” that was needed to ensure “collective resilience”.

They said the “dedicated machinery” needed to generate resilience in devolved and regional governments had to include disabled people as “leaders and managers” rather than them too often still being “managed and led”.

The two DPOs were delivering their joint closing statement (PDF) to the section of the inquiry examining decision-making and political governance in Wales.

They called for the Welsh government, civil servants, charities and the private sector to all develop “a far greater skill” in co-production and co-design.

In disaster management, they said, the aim of co-production and co-design “is not just to be kind, but to be smart”, which ensures that scientific advice “remains grounded in social reality”.

They called for taskforces to be set up for the UK and devolved nations – with representatives of DPOs – that would co-produce emergency risk assessments and planning for disabled people, with that work “channelled into general planning at various national, devolved and regional” levels of government.

They told the inquiry: “Human rights protection of disabled people matters in pandemics because they are the people that are disproportionately affected.”

For that reason, the UN conventions on the rights of disabled people, and on the rights of the child, must be incorporated into the laws of Wales and of the UK, they said.

Barrister Danny Friedman, from Matrix Chambers, who delivered the closing statement on behalf of Disability Wales and DR UK, said there also needed to be work to address the “truly profound” gaps in data collection and its analysis and how it is used.

He said: “We are supposed to be in the midst of an information revolution, but its possibilities have not reached yet the interests of marginalised people.”

He told the inquiry that the Welsh government had not routinely collected figures during the pandemic which would have shown how many disabled people and others with characteristics protected under the Equality Act were hospitalised and received treatment in intensive care.

And even though Wales has led the UK on the importance of the social model of disability for more than 20 years, it had still failed to gather information that would show what disabled people might need during the pandemic, Friedman said.

The two DPOs also told the inquiry that the flaws in UK devolution ensured that those people who were “on the margins” of the system – including disabled people – were “rendered vulnerable” during the pandemic.

But they also pointed out that it was in Wales – and not England or Scotland – that “close and dynamic collaborative meetings” took place between DPOs and the government, starting in early April 2020.

UK government ministers did not even discuss the pandemic’s impact on disabled people until 21 May, and they did not start their short-lived meetings with DPOs until July, they said.

The two DPOs said the problem in Wales was that it was “too small not to be taken for granted by Westminster”, which meant that it had been “informed about decisions rather than being consulted upon them on numerous occasions”.

This also meant that Wales was “limited in what it could do locally to really change its outcomes”.

21 March 2024

Government finally set to act on housing accessibility standards

The government is finally taking further steps towards introducing laws that would set a higher standard of accessibility for nearly all new homes in England.

The government promised in July 2022 that it would consult on new rules that would force all new homes to be built to the M4(2)* standard of accessibility, except for cases where this was “impractical and unachievable”.

An earlier consultation on raising accessibility standards had ended in December 2020, but when ministers finally responded, in July 2022, they announced this further consultation on the detail of the changes.

Housing minister Felicity Buchan finally confirmed on Monday that the second consultation would go ahead in the next few months, as she was questioned by the Commons levelling up, housing and communities committee in the final evidence session of its inquiry on housing for disabled people.

She said the government had decided there needed to be this second “technical” consultation to decide on the detail of the changes and “any exceptions to the rule”.

Philip White, director of the new Building Safety Regulator, which will be carrying out the consultation, said the 12-week technical consultation would be launched “between April and July” this year.

Buchan repeatedly told the committee that the government believed that decisions on how many accessible homes should be built should be taken by local authorities, including whether there should be a minimum of 10 per cent of new homes to be built to the M4(3) wheelchair-accessible standard.

She told the committee: “We don’t think it’s appropriate for central government to be setting those thresholds.

“It should be local housing need, local delivery plans for local people.”

Buchan said she didn’t have any figures “to hand” on how many accessible homes were being built.

Labour’s Ian Byrne said the evidence received during the committee’s inquiry was that there was “no confidence within the people that we interviewed” that leaving decisions to local authorities would produce significant numbers of wheelchair-accessible homes.

He asked if the government needed to “take a lead on this and make sure that that 10 per cent actually becomes a figure that can be achievable”.

Buchan suggested that when the government introduced M4(2) as a “base” level, it would provide “more time and resources for people to think about M4(3)” but that ministers wanted local authorities “to figure out what percentage of M4(3) they think is appropriate”.

Labour’s Nadia Whittome asked Buchan about evidence from disabled people that private sector landlords were refusing permission for tenants to make “even the most basic accessible adaptations, like installing a ramp or grab rails”.

Buchan said such permission should “not be unreasonably withheld” if it was an adaptation that “does not affect the structure of the fabric of the house”.

But Whittome said that a review commissioned by the government found only eight per cent of disabled facilities grants (DFGs) applications were from private tenants, even though about 19 per cent of disabled people lived in the private rented sector.

Buchan said this was one of the reasons the government was planning to abolish section 21 “no fault” evictions through its renters (reform) bill “so that people can ask for adaptations and those cannot be unreasonably refused”.

Whittome also told the minister that the number of social homes being built was falling under the government, with – last year – 22,000 social homes sold or demolished, and just 9,500 new ones built, with a net loss of more than 175,000 over the last 10 years.

And she said Disability Rights UK had told the committee that it did not matter how many accessible homes existed, if disabled people – who were more likely to be on low incomes –could not afford to live in them.

Whittome said the government did not have any targets for building new social housing.

She added: “Is that because you’re just not building very many?”

Buchan said the government had committed to build more social housing, but Whittome told her: “You have no target for building social homes and in the last year, which is consistent with the last 10 years, there has been a net loss of social homes.”

Conservative MP Mary Robinson had told Buchan earlier that hundreds of disabled people had engaged with the committee’s inquiry through a survey, a roundtable event and by providing written evidence, and there had been “unanimous agreement that we must build more accessible new-build homes”.

Conservative MP Tom Hunt questioned why the DFG system should be means-tested.

He said that many disabled people the committee had met felt they were “cut off from any kind of support” because they were earning too much to qualify for a DFG and were paying “a real big financial penalty” for having a physical impairment.

He said that “many people would see that there’s a sense of unfairness to that”.

He said: “I just think that many will feel… why should they have to pay for something which is completely not their fault… so I think some might ask… how is it any different from, say, access to health services?”

He added: “I couldn’t help but be moved by the conversations that I had, and I think other people on the committee feel the same way.”

Buchan said the government had spent £220 million on DFGs in 2015 which had now risen to £625 million a year, while 91 per cent of DFGs awarded were for less than £15,000.

She said: “It is a balance and clearly the reason that it is means-tested is that if someone really can pay then it’s appropriate that they should pay but it is getting that balance right and it’s making sure that we can use the money as effectively as possible because we want to be using the £625 million pounds as broadly and as effectively as we can.”

She added later: “We could certainly have a philosophical discussion on means-testing.

“All I want to say is that I’m in tremendous awe of disabled people and what they do and that’s why I do want housing that is accessible, we do want to help people with adapting properties.

“That’s the reason why we’ve got the grant, but I’m very much so looking forward to reading the committee’s report.”

Labour’s Mohammad Yasin asked why the government had not acted on a 2018 independent review of DFGs, which it commissioned and which recommended that the upper limit for DFGs, currently set at £30,000 in England, should rise with inflation.

He said the government had promised more than two years ago to consult on increasing the upper limit, as reported by Disability News Service last summer, but that it had so far failed to do so.

Buchan did not explain why the government had failed to meet that pledge, but she said local authorities had “flexibility” to increase the £30,000 limit in their own areas.

She also failed to explain why the government had failed to meet another promise made in 2021, to reform the DFG means test, which Yasin said was “very complex and difficult to navigate”.

Instead, she again pointed to the extra government funding, but she said the government had not ruled out making changes to the formula – nearly three years on – but that this “does require quite a lot of work” and “if you are changing a formula, there will be winners, there will be losers, there will be transitional arrangements, so we need to give it a lot of thought before we alter the formula, the test”.

*Homes built to the M4(2) standard have 16 accessible or adaptable features, similar to the Lifetime Homes standard developed in the early 1990s to make homes more easily adaptable for lifetime use, while M4(3) homes are those that are supposed to be fully wheelchair-accessible

21 March 2024

Maggie Davis: Tributes to pioneer, rebel and advocate

Some of the country’s leading disabled activists have paid tribute to the “immense” contribution of Maggie Davis, an outspoken “rebel”, a powerful advocate and a pioneer of the independent living movement, who died last week at the age of 81.

She was best known for designing – with her late husband Ken – the Grove Road housing scheme, Britain’s first integrated co-operative housing development, which was opened in 1976 in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.

But friends and fellow activists this week also remembered a string of other ground-breaking projects, as well as her vision and determination to fight social injustice and oppression, while also being “a strong advocate for the voice of women” in the disabled people’s movement.

She had struggled for nearly a decade, before moving into Grove Road, to escape from a series of segregated residential units and care homes after becoming disabled in 1967.

While setting up Grove Road, and living in accommodation in nearby Derbyshire, she and her husband came up with the idea for DIAL – the first telephone advice and information line provided by and for disabled people – because of the problems they had had searching for disability-related information.

They set up DIAL in an unused cloakroom, with a single telephone, both provided by Derbyshire County Council, and with help from disabled colleagues.

In an interview with Disability News Service (DNS) in 2019, she said of their work: “There was no time for self-congratulations, and there was no place for it, it was just something that needed to be done.

“If we didn’t do it, nobody would. It was just hard work. It was a struggle for everybody, but it was galvanising at the time.”

Grove Road was a new building with three ground-floor flats designed for wheelchair-users, and three flats on the first floor for volunteer non-disabled tenants who would provide personal assistance support on a rota basis for the disabled people living on the ground floor.

She and her husband lived in the Grove Road development for six years before securing a mortgage and a grant to buy and adapt – including the installation of a through-ceiling lift – a semi-detached home of their own in Clay Cross, Derbyshire.

But the DIAL project also laid the foundations for the country’s first coalition of disabled people, Derbyshire Coalition of Disabled People, and then Derbyshire Centre for Integrated Living.

Maggie and Ken Davis had also helped set up the pioneering Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS), which played a crucial role in the development of the disabled people’s movement and what was later known as the social model of disability.

They had been among those disabled activists who responded to a letter in the Guardian written by Paul Hunt in 1972, which described how disabled people were being forced into “isolated unsuitable institutions where their views are ignored and they are subject to authoritarian and often cruel regimes”.

John Evans, a fellow independent living pioneer, described Maggie Davis as “one of the last remaining persons of the golden generation” of disabled activists, and he said her death was a “personal and historic loss”.

The contributions that she and her husband made to the independent living and disability movements were “immense”, he said.

He added: “They were both pioneers in opening the door of opportunities for other disabled people to live independently.”

Maggie and Ken Davis had joined Evans and other activists in setting up the first informal independent living network in the late 1970s, while Evans and fellow residents of a Leonard Cheshire care home in Hampshire were preparing their Project 81, which eventually secured their own escape into independent living.

He said: “We constantly stayed in touch with each other, sharing our ideas and inspiration and eventually the network grew into a wide-ranging group of independent living activists throughout the country.”

That network helped to “inspire and encourage others to do likewise as part of empowering ourselves to be more political in seeking further progress for change in the UK”, he said.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, another independent living pioneer, from the generation that followed and learned from Maggie and Ken Davis, said the couple had provided “a blueprint” for developing centres for independent living across the country.

This blueprint also allowed the movement to start drafting a plan for laws that would eventually provide disabled people with the option to replace social services or NHS care with personal assistants, she said.

Thanks to their vision, and that of John Evans, independent living became “one of the essential components” of the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP), said Baroness Campbell.

She said that the “vision, determination and bloody mindedness” of Maggie Davis had “spawned other younger women to join the independent living mission and develop her work liberating disabled people from residential care, or their childhood home with mum and dad with little prospect of leaving”.

Paul Hunt’s widow, Judy, a close and long-standing friend of Maggie Davis, said that when she reads articles her friend has written she is still “struck by the force of her words and power of her personality”.

She told DNS: “There was a rebel deep inside her that would not be silenced, and she put it endlessly to good use.

“She was never willing to give in to oppressive administrators of institutions, or others who treated people unjustly.”

She said that the contribution of Maggie and Ken Davis to the struggle against a disabling society was “profound”, and that they had broken through “many of the housing and community care barriers” that were still keeping many disabled people trapped in institutions in the 1970s.

She said: “They travelled to Scandinavia to bring back new ideas for accessible housing with support and showed by example what could be done” through the Grove Road scheme.

And she said they had moved “from one pioneering project to the next with insatiable determination”.

Judy Hunt said: “Maggie spoke with a refreshing directness against injustice of all kinds but particularly against oppression towards disabled people and women and set out to do something about it, such as campaigning for an accessible women’s refuge because there was nowhere locally disabled women facing violence could go.”

Maggie Davis was, she said, “a fighter and a fundamental believer in collective action”, and also “a great support to many people who turned to her”.

Frances Hasler, who would later become a founder and chief executive of the National Centre for Independent Living, said it was Maggie and Ken Davis who had first introduced her to the social model of disability.

She said: “I remember Maggie being a strong advocate for the voice of women in the movement. She was also great at articulating the right to be ordinary.

“She was outspoken and determined because she needed to be, in order to get an ordinary thing – a home to live in and the wherewithal to live there.

“What set her apart was her willingness to share her experience and insights with other disabled women.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Davis had described the institutions she had been forced to live in after becoming disabled and before she met her husband, including years at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and in a hostel in its grounds, describing the “dehumanising” lack of any kind of privacy.

She told the Guardian: “Institutions are just tarted up poor law institutions.

“Where I was I could have been in two centuries ago – all the same attitudes.

“You were given pocket money – you’re impoverished, you are socially dead. It’s just an existence.”

The disabled writer and researcher Jenny Morris, who helped write the Labour government’s Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People white paper, said she hadn’t known her well, but she had “admired and learned from women like Maggie”.

She said: “The story of Maggie and Ken’s struggles and successes in living independently were an inspiration to me when I became disabled in 1983.  

“They were an illustration of not only what individuals could do and change but also of the growing disability movement.”

In the 2019 DNS interview, Davis had spoken of how she feared that much of what she and her husband helped to achieve could be put at risk by the austerity policies of successive Conservative-led governments.

She said: “I think we all feel very proud of what we did but we are desolate about what we think we know is going to happen and that they will destroy it all.

“If no action is taken, then we could quite easily end up where we began, being incarcerated away from society, out of sight and out of the public mind.”

She said she was “terrified” about whether she would continue to receive the funding she needed for 24-7 support.

“With the constant eroding of funding, I am in constant fear of this being removed and me being forced back into institutional care, which I would not allow,” she said.

“It’s just horrendous. I can see it being taken away from me and being taken away from us. Every time they come to do an assessment, they try to take a bit more off me.”

She appealed then for disabled activists to “shout their outrage from the rooftops” about the government’s austerity policies and the creeping return to segregated, institutional living.

21 March 2024

‘Underhand tactics’ could still see disabled people forced into care homes, say campaigners

A council has been accused of using underhand tactics to cut millions of pounds from support packages and push disabled people into residential care, despite being forced to withdraw a controversial policy that could have had the same impact.

The grassroots group Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said Bristol City Council was still trying to bring in the much-criticised policy “through the back door”, as it aims to save nearly £7 million from its funding of adult care and support packages in 2024-25.

Only last month, the council was forced to withdraw its draft Fair and Affordable Care Policy, which said disabled people could be offered a “residential or nursing home placement” if “a care package to remain at home would substantially exceed the affordability of residential care”.

It withdrew the draft policy after being threatened with legal action by BRIL, which argued that the proposals breached the Care Act, the Human Rights Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The council instead set up a new group to “consider how to build a system to fairly allocate Adult Social Care funding within the agreed budget to meet the diverse needs of the population”.

But BRIL says that budget plans published last month (PDF) show the council now intends to increase the number of reviews of anyone receiving at least 40 hours care and support a week or a package worth at least £920 a week, to ensure the council is “delivering best value”.

BRIL fears this will again raise the possibility of disabled people being forced into residential care, and that it will deliver “an identical policy, just with a different name”, and that “best value” will mean a care home placement.

There are also serious concerns that a consultancy being used by the council to carry out “strengths-based” reviews of the support packages will receive a share of all the costs they manage to cut.

And BRIL fears that the temporary “locum” social workers the council is recruiting to carry out reviews will be paid bonuses according to how much they save the council by cutting care packages, just as happened in Southampton eight years ago.

The policy will affect nearly 200 people with what the council calls “complex” packages of support, with 34 of them being identified as “overdue” an annual review.

Analysis of the council’s latest budget documents (PDF) shows the council is now aiming to save nearly £7 million from its funding of adult care and support packages in 2024-25.

This includes more than £1.2 million by reviewing more care packages to ensure disabled people are “enabled to be as independent as possible” and to “support approaches which focus on an individuals’ personal strengths”.

Another £1 million will be found by focusing on “reablement” which will mean “more people go on to achieve improved independence, resulting in the need for less care and therefore reduced costs”.

The council also plans to cut costs by £1.35 million by reviewing the packages of disabled people who have left hospital after being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, which the council says will “support and improve independence, resulting in the need for less care and therefore reduced costs”.

Another £1.785 million will be cut by reviewing housing-related support which currently “helps people stay living independently in their homes”, while £1.5 million will be saved by reducing the number of longer-term care packages by increasing reviews of people who have moved from hospital into residential or nursing care.

Mark Williams, BRIL’s co-founder, told Disability News Service (DNS) they were “very worried and very angry”.

He said: “Very worried for all disabled people in Bristol and everywhere else, as if it’s coming here, it could be the same for everywhere.”

A BRIL spokesperson added: “We can only conclude that Bristol City Council has decided not to invest in the lives and futures of disabled people and families, and instead taken a short-term and budget-led approach that will cost all of us more, in human, social and economic terms.”

Bristol City Council had failed to comment by noon today (Thursday), despite being approached by DNS last Friday.

21 March 2024

Disabled-led business seeks new clients after being hit by rise of AI

By Josephine Fay

A disabled-led business that provides work for more than 20 disabled freelancers at a time is urgently seeking new clients, and financial support, after its profits were severely hit by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

Academic Audio Transcription (AAT) has already raised more than £6,000 through a crowdfunder, but this is only enough to pay its overheads for a month.

Now it desperately needs to find new clients to secure its future.

The company specialises in transcribing lectures, conferences, workshops and interviews, and providing closed captioning services.

But its client base has been hit by the “problematic” rise of AI, while its biggest market, the university sector, is in “chaos”.

AAT’s founder Zara Bain believes that AI provides poorer quality transcripts than those produced by humans, failing to take account of accents or context and nearly always proving less accurate.

She said: “Whilst we’re not opposed to using technology, we believe that AI for transcription is deeply flawed.”

AI captions are also flawed and can often be inaccessible and inaccurate, failing to capture the names of people, places and organisations, she added.

She set up AAT seven years ago when she was forced to take medical leave from her PhD and needed to find a way to pay her rent and bills.

It offers work to its disabled freelancers “at the pace and capacity that people can manage”, allowing them to work remotely around their “flare-ups, crashes, relapses and remissions”.

Bain said that AAT has “transformed” the lives of its disabled freelancers.

She said: “A key part of our mission is to use our business to make fairly-paid, accessible work for predominantly disabled, chronically-ill and neurodivergent freelancers, where such work can be hard to come by, or often comes with inaccessible strings attached.”

At a time when the employment rate for disabled people remains about 30 percentage points below that of non-disabled people, with workplace discrimination still widespread, AAT’s inclusive work environment allows her team to work without the fear of discrimination or judgment, she said.

She decided to launch the company because she knew the importance of making content accessible.

She said: “People who are deaf or hard of hearing rely on captions or transcripts to access audio content like interviews, podcasts, and events.

“Transcription removes the barrier of audio-only information, allowing them to participate equally.

“This is also true for people who might struggle to process information through audio alone.

“A written transcript allows them to follow along, read at their own pace, and revisit key points.”

But as she says on the crowdfunder: “AAT is more than a business to us, it’s a manifestation of not just our belief in equality and equity of opportunity, but our need to realise that belief as a reality to pay our bills, feed ourselves and our kids, and keep ourselves engaged with stimulating work which contributes to projects that really do make a difference.”

21 March 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

The government has brought adult social care in England “to its knees” with years of uneven funding and a “woefully insufficient plan” to fill thousands of staff vacancies, MPs have said in a damning report on a system that provides long-term care for 835,000 people. The public accounts committee said “chronic underfunding, rising waiting lists and patchwork funding” has placed sustained pressure on local authorities, and the government is falling short on Boris Johnson’s promise in 2019 to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/20/government-has-brought-adult-social-care-in-england-to-its-knees-mps-say

Benefit levels are too low with claimants unable to afford daily living costs, according to damning evidence given to MPs. In a report published today, the work and pensions committee highlighted the surging demand for foodbanks among those on benefits in recent years. They found low levels of support received by disabled people had a “negative physical and mental health impact, which could in turn affect their ability to work”: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-benefits-too-low-people-32397711

A disabled woman who provided support to people affected by the Grenfell fire tragedy has been awarded £4.6 million compensation after getting PTSD and being sacked by a council. Rachael Wright-Turner was dismissed from her £125,000-a-year role by Hammersmith and Fulham council and sued the authority for disability discrimination and harassment. A tribunal found officers in the council had lied in its evidence, prompting the award which is thought to be highest-ever such award against a public body: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/grenfell-victims-helper-awarded-46-32374410

A 16-year-old girl with “significant and chronic disabilities” who died in squalor at her family home in rural mid-Wales did not have a care plan in place, a child practice review into her death has found. Kaylea Titford, who had spina bifida and used a wheelchair, was found in conditions described as “unfit for any animal” in Newtown, Powys, leading to her parents being jailed for manslaughter by gross negligence. The review said that though many professionals were involved in Kaylea’s life, her care was not coordinated by a single person or organisation: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/14/kaylea-titford-had-no-care-plan-in-place-when-she-died-review-finds

A disabled pedestrian whose actions led to the death of a 77-year-old cyclist who was riding on the pavement is to appeal her manslaughter conviction. Auriol Grey, 50, shouted an expletive and gestured aggressively towards Celia Ward, who then fell in front of a car, in Cambridgeshire in 2020. Grey, of Bradbury Place, Huntingdon, was jailed for three years in 2023. Court of Appeal judges gave the go-ahead for her to appeal her conviction at a hearing in London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68606255

A Devon woman is campaigning for blue badge holders to be able to use personal electric scooters on public land. Ella Wakley has a rare form of dwarfism which requires her to use an e-scooter, but said she risks being prosecuted when she uses it. The current law means privately-owned e-scooters are illegal to ride on public roads: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-68574960

21 March 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Deaf and Disabled activists have been fighting for decades against our institutionalisation, isolation and deprivation – it’s time the world started to listen. 

The UK government will be facing the United Nations for violating disabled people’s rights. You can get involved!

Watch The Hearing!

When? Monday, March 18th, 2024

What time? 2pm-3:30pm UK time (it will be happening at 3pm on Geneva’s timezone). If you cannot watch it live, the recording should be ready afterwards on the link below.

Where? You can watch it online via UN livestream website, at this link.

The hearing will be signed in International Sign, which is different to BSL. There will also be live, embedded captions on the live stream.

How you can help

• Watch the evidence session and scrutinise the government’s answers.
  • Share your thoughts – what do you think of what the government is saying? Are there any inaccuracies or missing information?
• Post your own short videos and share your lived experience
  • give examples of policies you are worried about or impacted by – use the hashtag #CRDP24
• Follow the delegation on Twitter and share our posts: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1766837090061287862
• Write to your MP calling for the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People to be incorporated into UK legislation to give disabled people access to our rights (draft letter below)

Share some of the stats from the UK DDPO shadow report to challenge what the government is saying in the evidence session: crdp.org.uk

• 590 additional suicides linked to the WCA over just three years
• Three-quarters of disabled workers are paid less than £15 an hour
• One in seven workers with Long Covid lose their jobs
• Two in three workers with Long Covid experience discrimination at work
• Over one million benefit sanctions imposed on disabled people
• Over 230,000 disabled adults affected by loss of severe/enhance disability premium
• Over 330,000 disabled people hit by the bedroom tax
• 18,000 severely disabled people affected by Independent Living Fund closure
• Around 1.2 million disabled people hit by social care cuts
• Over 166,000 disabled people in social care debt
• Over 66,000 disabled people subject to debt collection for social care charges
• 2,030 autistic people and people with learning difficulties incarcerated as inpatients
• 1,500 crimes against patients over just 6 months caught on CCTV at Muckamore Abbey
• 2000 deaths of patients in Essex mental health hospitals
• Over 365,000 disabled people living in unsuitable housing in England
• Over 102,000 disabled people lost their Motability cars
• 250,000 children in the UK denied treatment for mental distress
• 7.2 million people in households with a disabled member are living in poverty
• Over 430,000 disabled people currently waiting for a PIP review
• 429,000 disabled people affected by £30 per week cut to ESA
• 1,650,000 disabled people denied £20 per week Universal Credit pandemic uplift
• Over 380,000 former DLA recipients turned down for PIP
• More than 10,000 households with a disabled member hit by lowering of the benefit cap
• Over 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain linked to austerity welfare reform
• 23,662 additional deaths over five years due social care cuts
• disabled job seekers 26 – 53% more likely to be sanctioned
• Disabled claimants twice as likely to leave benefit system & have no recorded income after a sanction
• 75% appeals successful for both ESA and PIP June – April 2019
• High Court ruled changes to PIP regulations were “blatantly discriminatory” December 2017
• Quality of benefit assessment reports of “systematic poor quality”
• “access to justice has deteriorated” in England and Wales – @EHRC
• “In England, households with more disabilities suffer much larger losses …largely because of social care cuts” – @EHRC
• “neither the overall scale of spending cuts in England, nor their precise impact on protected groups, was inevitable” – @EHRC
• Benefit assessments leave dis ppl feeling worthless and “dehumanised” – @commonsworkpen
• “[Social care] system with a growing disconnect between the care to which people are entitled, and the ability of councils to meet those needs” – @LGOmbudsman
• “Complaints about English social care increasingly due to funding constraints” – @LGOmbudsman
• Faults not one-off staff errors, but increasingly caused by council measures in response to squeezed resources – @LGOmbudsman
• Percentage of cases upheld shown a relentless rise over the last decade – @LGOmbudsman

For references see the UK DDPO shadow report: https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/campaigns-and-policy/uncrdp/crdp23/crdp23/

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Draft letter to MPs re: UN CRPD Incorporation into UK Law

Add your name and address

Dear MP….

Re: UN CRPD Incorporation into UK Law

I am writing to you as your constituent to ask you to urge the Government to enshrine the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (CRPD) into UK Law. In the run-up to the next election we are asking every political party standing to make this a central feature of your manifestos and to commit to coproducing policies for disability equality with our representative Deaf and Disabled People’s organisations (DDPOs).

This is an urgent task as Disabled people’s rights, living standards and independent living are all under attack. Successive Governments since 2010 have pursued policies which led the UN Disability Committee to declare in 2016 that “grave and systematic” rights violations had taken place.

A new shadow report compiled as written evidence for a follow-up by the Committee describes how disabled people’s living standards have deteriorated further since 2016.

Continued cuts to support for disabled people living in the community have led to us becoming segregated away from society from within their own homes.

In England, more than one in four (28%) people who had asked for a social care assessment had been waiting six months or more to get one.  Delayed assessments have helped to precipitate a situation in which an estimated 2.6 million people in England aged over 50 are now living with some unmet need for care. That means millions struggling to do ordinary things like going to the toilet, eating, dressing or washing because they require some help to do so.

A recent report by a disabled people-led Commission in Lewisham found that 20% of respondents didn’t always have access to food and drink, could not wash (or be washed) regularly and couldn’t go to the toilet when needed.

Continued cuts to support for disabled people living in the community have led to disabled people becoming segregated away from society from within their own homes.

While being included in the community is much more than social care it is the crisis in social care which dominates our lives. It is the major factor that is killing Disabled people disproportionately to the rest of the UK population. Disabled people are dying on waiting lists, either waiting to be assessed or waiting for services. These deaths are caused by ongoing cuts to state support over the last 13 years. According to Age UK 28,890 older Disabled people died in 2021/22, the latest year for which figures are available, without ever receiving the care and support they were waiting for. This equates to 79 deaths a day, 554 a week, and 2408 a month. Local authorities are planning another £2.5 billion cuts over next 2 years including social care cuts of £467 million, which will exacerbate this already dire situation.

The UK Government signed and ratified the CRPD in 2008 but has failed to incorporate its articles into UK law, leaving its implementation trapped on paper. If the rights enshrined in the Convention are to be realised then it needs to pass onto the statute book with properly resourced and independent monitoring.

That’s why I am calling on you to support our campaign to have the UN CRPD incorporated into UK law.

Yours sincerely

Your name and address

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Twitter posts (thread):

Watch the UN evidence session LIVE as UK govt tries to defend its actions:

Monday 18th March 2024

2-3:30pm UK time

https://t.co/Qq8O6i0aWL

We’ll be tweeting live under the hashtag #CRDP24

Stay tuned and give your views so we can #DefendOurRights together.

Post 2:

Calling all disabled people. Help us hold the government to account!

Share your thoughts with us on social media with #CRDP24

What policies most worry you?

Is the government spinning a story for the committee? What is the truth about how disabled people in the UK are treated?

Image alt text:

#DefendOurRights

Get involved!

Help us hold the government to account

#CRDP24