Contents

Committee examining assisted suicide bill ‘is skewed’, ‘a stitch-up’… and may have breached UN convention 1

DWP blocked researchers from discussing ‘shocking’ data on ESA suicide attempts in ‘unique’ report 4

High court victory over Tory DWP cuts will provide impetus to fight any Labour plans, say activists 6

Lords committee led by Tory banker calls for stricter assessments and conditions for disabled benefit claimants 9

Minister told it is ‘not too late’ to change direction and stop favouring big charities 11

Disability minister is ‘drawing up a list’ of potential actions to address barriers 13

Abuse of disabled supporters at live sports events is growing problem, survey finds 16

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 17

Committee examining assisted suicide bill ‘is skewed’, ‘a stitch-up’… and may have breached UN convention

Disabled campaigners have raised serious concerns about the fairness of the committee of MPs that is carrying out detailed examination of a bill to legalise assisted suicide, after it prevented any disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) from giving evidence in person.

The actions of the committee, led by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, appear to have breached the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and the duty it imposes to “closely consult with and actively involve” disabled people through DPOs when developing laws relating to disabled people.

It emerged on Tuesday that nearly two-thirds of the witnesses who will give oral evidence to the committee in the coming weeks have previously expressed support for legalising assisted suicide.

And, of the eight witnesses who were proposed by Leadbeater to give oral evidence about foreign countries and states that have legalised assisted suicide, all eight are in favour of legalisation, despite huge concerns about laws introduced in countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and parts of the US and Australia.

The list of proposed witnesses was put together by Leadbeater, who is trying to steer the private member’s bill – which will apply to England and Wales – through the House of Commons.

The committee she is leading – which is dominated by MPs who support legalisation – decided on Tuesday that it would not hear oral evidence from any DPOs, even though disabled people and their organisations have been at the heart of opposition to Leadbeater’s terminally ill adults (end of life) bill.

The first tranche of witnesses was published this morning (Thursday), and it includes no DPOs, although Chelsea Roff, the founder of Eat Breathe Thrive, which describes itself as “a community of people with lived experience of eating disorders”, is listed as a witness.

Disabled peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson, an opponent of legalisation, told DNS yesterday that she was “very concerned” by the committee’s actions.

She said: “There must be balance in terms of the witnesses called and an impartial look at other jurisdictions.”

She added: “There are lots of claims that this is the most tightly-worded bill in the world, but I have not seen evidence of this.”

Tony Jennings, a prominent disabled activist, who usually focuses in his work on accessible transport, said he believed the actions of the committee show the parliamentary process “now looks like a stitch up”.

He said: “Disabled people will pay with their lives as there is no way to prevent coercion and the safeguards will not work.”

He said it was clear the evidence sessions would not be fair and balanced when nearly two-thirds of the witnesses will be in favour of legalisation.

He added: “Kim Leadbeater must now explain why there is no representation from disabled people’s groups so that they can express their specific concerns about the bill.”

He said the events of the week showed why disabled people were “terrified for their lives”.

Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, told DNS that it was “deeply concerning and troubling” to see how the committee was selecting witnesses to give oral evidence, including blocking DPOs from appearing before the committee. 

She said: “The committee seems very skewed towards the pro-assisted dying lobby and supporters. That’s unacceptable.”

She said it was an “appalling situation”, and she urged disabled people across England and Wales to contact their MPs and raise their worries and concerns about the committee’s actions.

The aim of Tuesday’s hearing was to agree when the committee would hear oral evidence from witnesses in the coming weeks, and which experts would be asked to give that evidence.

There was particular concern raised among opponents of the bill – and some of those who support legalisation – that Leadbeater and her supporters on the committee were refusing to allow an expert from the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) to give evidence, despite huge concerns about the issues of capacity and the risk of coercion of people with terminal illness if the bill becomes law.

Conservative MP Kit Malthouse, a strong supporter of legalisation, claimed in Tuesday’s hearing that allowing someone from RCP to give evidence would create a risk that they would “double up” in their expertise with other medical experts, “which was not necessarily in the interests of time”.

Leadbeater was later forced to back down, and yesterday morning announced that an RCP expert would now be allowed to give evidence.

Among those the committee is refusing to hear evidence from is disabled activist Ellen Clifford, who was played a key role in coordinating disabled people’s opposition to the bill, and who coordinates the coalition of DPOs that monitors UNCRPD implementation in the UK.

The Conservative MP who has led opposition to the bill, Danny Kruger, told the committee on Tuesday that Clifford had just won a high court case she took against the last government over its benefit reforms (see separate story) and so was “no friend of my party”.

But he said she was “a very, very powerful advocate on behalf of disabled people” and played an important role as coordinator of the UN monitoring coalition.

The committee has so far refused to allow Clifford to be added to the list of witnesses.

There was also concern raised by the bill’s opponents on the committee about the failure to hear from critics of legalisation in countries such as Canada, which has some of the most permissive assisted suicide laws in the world and where “medical assistance in dying” was the sixth highest cause of death in 2022.

The committee is also only inviting evidence from experts from Australia who are in favour of legalisation, and not any of the leading Australian experts who have raised concerns about how assisted suicide laws have been implemented.

Kruger said it was vital to hear from politicians in Australia who were opposed to the legalisation and “continue to very profoundly oppose it on the grounds that it’s not working and it’s dangerous and it’s being expanded”.

Malthouse said there was no need to hear from experts in Canada, where legislation was “very different” to Leadbeater’s bill, and he claimed Leadbeater had produced a list of witnesses which was “a compromise”.

But Kruger told fellow members of the committee that it was “an unbalanced list” of witnesses.

He said his “quick analysis” of almost 60 names proposed by Leadbeater was that 38 of them were in favour of legalisation, and just 20 were opposed, while all eight from “foreign jurisdictions” were “supportive” of legalising assisted suicide.

He said: “I’m not surprised [Malthouse] does not want to hear from Canada because the stories there are so appalling.”

Dr Simon Opher, a Labour supporter of the bill, claimed that the split of 38 witnesses to 20 (66 per cent to 34 per cent) was “an appropriate split and actually reflects the vote in the Commons”, even though the Commons vote was 330 MPs in favour to 275 against the bill (55 per cent to 45 per cent) at its second reading.

Kruger told him: “He doesn’t want to hear from Canada. I don’t blame him. People who are in favour of this bill are desperate to keep Canada out of it.”

Leadbeater said she had been given more than 100 names of potential witnesses.

She claimed she had tried to be “extremely balanced” in drawing up the list so there were “people with a range of views and opinions but most importantly, there are people we will hear from who have got expertise”.

She said: “I’m very happy that we will hear from so many witnesses over a period of several days, and I’m, again, very happy that I have added more time to that so we can hear from more witnesses.”

Even before the committee’s hearing, there were concerns that, although a strong majority of disabled MPs voted against the bill at its second reading, none of them are members of the bill committee, while one of the two disabled MPs who voted in favour – Dr Marie Tidball – is on the committee.

Oral evidence will begin on Tuesday (28 January).

23 January 2025

DWP blocked researchers from discussing ‘shocking’ data on ESA suicide attempts in ‘unique’ report

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) civil servants who commissioned a key piece of research on claimants of out-of-work disability benefits blocked researchers from discussing “shocking” data showing how many of them had attempted suicide.

The research, commissioned in 2018, examined the “health, social and economic profile” of disabled people who receive employment and support allowance (ESA).

It was viewed as “a unique opportunity to gain valuable insights into the mental health and life circumstances of this group of people, and compare their experiences to those in the rest of the working age population”.

This was because it used data from the national Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS), England’s highest quality survey of the population’s mental health, whose results had been published in September 2016.

Disability News Service reported in November 2017 how the “shocking” APMS figures showed that more than two-fifths (43.2 per cent) of ESA claimants said they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives, while two-thirds (66 per cent) had had suicidal thoughts.

The following year, DWP commissioned social research agency NatCen to examine the “particular challenges and barriers faced” by ESA claimants to “inform thinking on how best to develop a health and disability benefit system that supports people into work, where possible, and to live independent lives”.

But it told NatCen not to include any discussion of the figures showing how many ESA claimants had tried to take their own lives, or how many of them had had thoughts of suicide.

And when NatCen passed its completed report to DWP, there was no mention of those figures.

Instead, the report showed that ESA claimants were “a population reporting high levels of stress”, while “many faced serious debt arrears” and were “more likely to live by themselves, have a small network, and feel isolated and lonely”.

There was no mention of attempted suicide, self-harm or suicidal ideation.

Last week, DNS reported how Conservative ministers prevented the report from being published and ensured it was not included in a “health and disability” green paper.

The NatCen report was only finally published last autumn by the new Labour government, as part of a batch of 31 research papers the last government had “sat on” for up to six years.

This week, a NatCen spokesperson refused to confirm that DWP asked for the figures to be excluded from the report.

Instead, she said: “Self-harm and suicidality were not part of the agreed scope of this particular report as the topics were covered in 2014 in the main APMS report.

“This is all we are aware of as commissioned researchers on the project.”

She later added: “As the DWP were the commissioners of this research, you will need to talk to them for more information.

“All we can say is that self-harm and suicidality were not part of the agreed scope of this particular report.”

DWP was asked on Monday how it justified telling NatCen to omit discussion of the figures from its report, and whether it now regretted that decision.

Despite confirming receipt of the questions on Monday, and later apologising for the delay in responding, it had failed to produce a response by noon today (Thursday).

The years after the NatCen report was commissioned were marked by Conservative governments continuing to push for measures that would make it harder for disabled people to receive ESA and other out-of-work disability benefits.

This led eventually to a consultation on proposals, published in September 2023, for tighter restrictions on the work capability assessment, which would cut spending by about £3 billion over four years.

Last week, disabled activist Ellen Clifford succeeded in persuading the high court that the consultation was “misleading”, “unfair” and “unlawful” (see separate story).

The years since the NatCen report was commissioned were also marked by the suicides of many claimants of ESA and its universal credit equivalent, including Roy Curtis in 2018 and Kevin Gale in March 2022, and the death following self-harm of Nazerine Anderson in June 2023.

23 January 2025

High court victory over Tory DWP cuts will provide impetus to fight any Labour plans, say activists

A “groundbreaking” legal victory at the high court has provided fuel for disabled activists to fight the new government’s expected cuts to spending on disability benefits, and to call on ministers to meet their legal obligations to co-produce policy.

Disabled activist Ellen Clifford, who brought the high court case, said she was “overjoyed” after Mr Justice Calver ruled the last Conservative government had issued a “rushed”, “unfair” and “misleading” consultation on proposals to make “substantial” cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.

Clifford and other activists and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) told Disability News Service (DNS) this week that the new Labour government must now commit to work in co-production with disabled people and DPOs to build a new, fairer social security system.

Clifford said she hoped the victory had given disabled people “momentum” and inspired them to believe that “we can make a difference”.

She said the case was a “real collective effort” and came out of the work of the UK coalition of DPOs that monitors the implementation of the UN disability convention, and the work of disabled activists and allies who have visited Geneva to give evidence to the UN about that lack of progress.

She said outside court that the judgment had “respected the expertise of Deaf and disabled people’s organisations” and was “a win for disabled people”, although “we know that this isn’t the end of the fight” and that “the government is hell bent on attacking disabled people”.

Disability Wales, which raised concerns with DWP about its consultation, said Clifford’s victory over the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its former secretary of state Mel Stride was “groundbreaking”.

Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales, called on the new UK government to be “open and transparent about its current proposals and to engage co-productively with disabled people’s organisations on reforms that reflect the higher costs of daily living faced by disabled people as well as addressing the wide-ranging ableist barriers in workplaces and everyday life”.

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice for Inclusion London, which provided a witness statement for the legal case, and worked with Clifford and her lawyers, said: “We are delighted that the court has seen beyond the DWP’s deceptive tactics and upheld the rule of law.

“The legal judgment handed down last week is a damning indictment against the previous government’s attempts to obscure their plans for huge cuts to essential benefits, for nearly half a million disabled people.”

She added: “We would urge the Labour government to start working with disabled people and to use this ruling as an opportunity to rethink their approach to social security.

“They must not simply announce the same devastating cuts in a different way – they must stop pursuing Tory policies that do not work and will cause disabled people so much harm.”

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, who provided a witness statement for Clifford’s case stating that he felt “personally misled” by the consultation, said it was a “magnificent victory”.

He said it would “absolutely” provide impetus for disabled activists to fight back against attacks by the new government on disabled people’s support and rights.

He warned the government that if it “does decide to make a bonfire of disability rights, we will fight them all the way through the courts” and that every disabled person should write to their MP and say “these proposals must not pass” if they are re-introduced by Labour.

He said: “We have won a case in the high court hands down.

“The machinations of DWP policy-making have been exposed for all to see.

“We want evidence-based policy; what has been exposed in this court case, and it has all come into the glaring daylight, is that their first consideration was to slash the budget and then to find evidence to justify it.

“Now Labour are planning to do the same, but it’s not going to happen.”

Emma Cotton, a social security adviser and co-ordinator of the trade union group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said the fightback against the consultation had been “incredible” and “a great lesson in the power of solidarity”.

She said: “The judgement itself is damning – agreeing with nearly all of Ellen’s arguments and by doing so establishing helpful case law principles for social security cases to come.

“It means the government will have to be very cautious in the way it approaches another consultation on the work capability assessment.

“I hope this gives disabled people some hope and would urge them to reach out to their local DPAC and get involved in the continuing fight for disability rights.”

Disability Rights UK, which had criticised the consultation and was another DPO mentioned in the judgment, congratulated Clifford on her “important legal victory”, and said: “Without her steadfast, principled and brave campaigning, the DWP would not have suffered the conclusive loss it has.

“Instead of pursuing the further impoverishment of disabled people, it needs to co-produce reforms that will protect our rights to an adequate standard of living.”

Disability North, another DPO that had been critical of the consultation and was mentioned by Mr Justice Calver, said the judgment was “a victory for fairness and transparency”.

Vici Richardson, chief executive of Disability North, said: “We hope this will send a strong message that any future consultations must be grounded in clear communication, respect and with enough time and appropriate means to feed back. 

“Moving forward, in any conversations around welfare reform, we want to see disabled people supported, not vilified, ensuring the right support for those who need it most.” 

Aoife O’Reilly, from Public Law Project, the solicitor who acted for Clifford, said: “This judgment has vindicated our criticism of the DWP’s unlawful consultation and we now urge the government to scrap these planned reforms, which were disingenuously presented to the Deaf and disabled people who would be affected.”

Finding DWP’s actions unlawful, Mr Justice Calver said in his 42-page judgment that the eight-week consultation – issued by Stride in September 2023 – had failed to explain that planned reforms to the work capability assessment (WCA) would cut the benefits of 424,000 disabled people, with many worse off by at least £416 a month.

If the reforms became law, those 424,000 disabled people would also have to comply with work-related requirements and face the possibility of sanctions, while another 33,000 disabled claimants who were already in the limited capability for work group would now have to comply with even tougher work-related requirements and potential sanctions.

Stride had failed to make it clear that one of the key motives for his reforms was to cut spending by about £3 billion over four years.

He and his ministers had claimed that the reforms were intended to support more disabled people into work, yet only 15,000 of the 457,000 affected were expected by DWP to enter employment.

Internal DWP documents, revealed during the legal case, showed that nearly 100,000 more disabled people could be forced into poverty.

Despite issuing a statement to other media last week – in which it pledged to repeat the consultation* – DWP had failed to respond to questions from DNS by noon today (Thursday).

DNS had asked the department, now led by Labour’s Liz Kendall, for its next steps on the proposed reforms, and whether it would apologise to disabled people for misleading them in the 2023 consultation document.

Fears of further cuts to disability benefits were heightened this week when prime minister Sir Keir Starmer – in an interview with The Sun newspaper published the day after the judgment – boasted that he would be “ruthless with cuts” if necessary and would “fight” to convince his own MPs of the need for cuts to benefits.

Details of Labour’s plans will be included in a green paper in the spring and then – following a 12-week consultation – a white paper later this year, but the government has already pledged to make the same £3 billion in cuts as those proposed by the Conservatives, although it has not yet said whether it will implement the same reforms proposed by Stride.

*The Guardian reported a DWP spokesperson saying: “The judge has found the previous government failed to adequately explain their proposals. As part of wider reforms that help people into work and ensure fiscal sustainability, the government will re-consult on the WCA descriptor changes, addressing the shortcomings in the previous consultation, in light of the judgment. The government intends to deliver the full level of savings in the public finances forecasts.”

23 January 2025

Lords committee led by Tory banker calls for stricter assessments and conditions for disabled benefit claimants

Disabled activists have questioned the “draconian” conclusions of a Lords committee that has told the government to impose stricter conditions, more assessments, and a more “rigorous” work capability assessment on claimants of out-of-work disability benefits.

The calls by the economic affairs committee echo many of those made by politicians over the last 30 years, including the much-repeated demand for an assessment that examines what “an individual can do rather than… what they cannot do”, a phrase first used by Labour social security secretary Alistair Darling in 1999.

There were also concerns that the committee dismissed reports that increasing claimant numbers are at least partly due to rising levels of ill-health and NHS waiting-lists since the start of the pandemic.

The committee called for sick and disabled people who are signed off work for more than a month by their GP to “undergo additional or ongoing assessments”.

And it called for all those on “incapacity benefit” – which probably means the “limited capability” universal credit groups – to have a work coach for the first two years of their period on out-of-work benefits. 

It said reform was needed “both to curb the increasing fiscal burden and to address the ever-growing social cost of hundreds of thousands of people dependent on benefits”.

But there was no call for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to research why claimant numbers have been rising in recent years.

And as with other recent reports, speeches and policy proposals, there was no mention in the committee’s findings of the years of deaths and other harm caused by successive reforms of the assessment process and cuts to benefits*, the harshness of the assessment systems, DWP’s chronic safeguarding failures, or the continuing risk of harm to disabled claimants.

The cross-party economic affairs committee based its report on just six oral evidence sessions, held last October, November and December, and it took no written evidence.

It took no evidence from any disabled people’s organisation, or from anyone who claims out-of-work disability benefits.

Instead, the committee heard from thinktanks, ministers, civil servants, academics and the Office for Budget Responsibility.

In a letter to work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, the committee’s chair, the Tory peer Lord [George] Bridges, said the health-related benefits system was financially unsustainable.

Lord Bridges is a former chair of the Conservative research department, and the party’s former campaign director, a former leader writer for The Times, and now a senior adviser to the Spanish bank Santander.

His letter was widely reported in the mainstream media, and adds to pressure on the government to announce cuts to spending in its forthcoming disability benefits green paper.

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said there was “no economic sense in these draconian proposals” but “yet again, disabled people will bear the brunt of cuts if they are adopted”.

She said the committee appeared to “know nothing about how the social security systems work and most of their suggestions would involve large additional expenditure to achieve the goals the committee are proposing”. 

She said: “DWP staff are already massively overworked, with lengthy backlogs for many claims, so to have a jobcentre coach involved after someone was off work for over a month and to have a jobcentre coach pursuing people to get into work for the first two years of any claim would involve recruiting many extra staff, which would cost more than any savings made.

“Changes to assessments, making them more stringent, would also necessitate additional funding for the corporations carrying these out.

“Added to that, pushing even more disabled people into further poverty would increase demands on the NHS, which we know is already under enormous pressure and that too would cost more in the longer term.”

Asked why there was no evidence from disabled people’s organisations, a spokesperson for the economic affairs committee said: “The inquiry was a short follow-up to the committee’s previous inquiry into economic inactivity so there was no formal call for evidence.

“As an economic affairs committee, the focus of the inquiry was on the economic and fiscal aspects of inactivity and so witnesses were invited who could specifically address those aspects of the issues explored.”

He said the committee “did not hear corroborating evidence that the rise in health-related claimants was primarily caused by a decline in the nation’s health”.

The spokesperson did not explain why there was no call for DWP to research the reason for increasing numbers of claimants, but he said that, because there was “insufficient evidence that the sharp rise in the number of claimants reflects a deterioration in people’s health”, its conclusions focused on “the extent to which the rise in caseloads might be explained by the structure and process of the welfare system”.

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press

23 January 2025

Minister told it is ‘not too late’ to change direction and stop favouring big charities

The new disability minister has been told it is “not too late to change course”, after government figures showed he has prioritised meetings with the big disability charities over engagement with disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

The figures, obtained by Disability News Service under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Labour’s Sir Stephen Timms had just 10 meetings with organisations run and controlled by disabled people in the first five months after he was appointed.

This compares with 17 meetings with charities that are not run and controlled by disabled people, including big disability charities such as Mind, Sense, MS Society, Scope, Mencap and RNID*.

There are likely to have been further meetings with charity representatives at Labour’s annual party conference in Liverpool in late September**.

The figures came just weeks after it emerged that DPO Forum England and Disability Rights UK had accused non-disabled-led charities of seizing their language on empowerment but failing to share their access to ministers and other decision-makers.

In a response to the government’s consultation on developing a new relationship with civil society, they said the government should prioritise the “authentic” views of DPOs and ensure that “those directly impacted by these issues have real authority in the decision-making process”, while those organisations not led by disabled people were “actively harmful to DPOs and the Disabled people’s movement”.

While Labour was in opposition – particularly under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and chancellor John McDonnell – there were frequent pledges that the party would put disabled people’s voices at the heart of government if it was elected.

There were hopes among DPOs that the election of a new Labour government would mark this kind of transformation in engagement, following years in which they were sidelined by successive Conservative-led governments.

In July 2023, the Conservative minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, was criticised by Tory MP and former minister Jackie Doyle-Price for failing to consult properly with DPOs over his forthcoming disability action plan.

One of his predecessors, Justin Tomlinson, was repeatedly criticised for his lack of engagement with DPOs during the early months of the pandemic.

And in January 2021, DPOs across the country said they were “shocked and dismayed” at the government’s failure to engage with them as it prepared its long-awaited disability strategy.

When Sir Stephen was appointed in mid-July 2024 as Labour’s new minister for social security and disability, he promised to “ensure disabled people’s views and voices are at the heart of all we do”.

He then said he looked forward “to meeting with disability organisations this week”.

But the freedom of information response from the Department for Work and Pensions shows that that week’s meetings were all with charities that were not led by disabled people, although a representative of one DPO was present at a virtual meeting with representatives of the Disability Benefits Consortium.

By this time, Sir Stephen had already had an in-person meeting with representatives of two disability charities – Scope and Mind – on 11 July, just three days after his appointment.

He did not have his first meeting with DPOs until more than two months after his appointment, when he had a virtual meeting on 10 September with the DPO Forum England, whose members are all DPOs.

Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) steering group, said this week: “All we are asking of the Labour government is to implement the UN convention on the rights of disabled people. 

“This very clearly states that engagement needs to be with disabled people and their representative organisations. 

“When the [last Labour government] signed and ratified the [convention] they committed to progressive realisation – this means making things better for disabled people and progressing against all the articles. 

“Unfortunately, the evidence from the first six months in office suggests policy is regressing – going in the opposite direction. 

“As yet there has been no strategic engagement or dialogue with DPOs on how to repair 14 years of Tory austerity cuts and culture wars.  

“We haven’t been invited to coproduce a policy like Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People or Equality 2025 – which the Conservatives and Lib Dems derailed. 

“It is not too late to change course. 

“Alarmingly, from the current government discourse around disabled people and the adoption of Tory cuts to disability benefits, Timms and colleagues in government are on a collision course with DPOs and the UN disability committee.”

*These figures exclude meetings of the government’s own disability networks and advisers. They also exclude meetings with representatives of Disability Benefits Consortium, where DPOs are vastly outnumbered by non-user-led charities

**DPOs are rarely well-funded enough to send representatives to party conferences, and any meetings at conference would not have been included in the DWP figures as they will have been viewed as political meetings

23 January 2025

Disability minister is ‘drawing up a list’ of potential actions to address barriers

Labour’s disability minister has said for the first time that he is drawing up a list of priorities for action to address the barriers faced by disabled people.

It is believed to be the first time that Sir Stephen Timms has spoken publicly of any plans to replace the last government’s much-criticised and deeply-flawed disability strategy and disability action plan.

During a webinar organised by the Communication Workers Union on Tuesday evening, Sir Stephen said that, over the next few months, in connection with the government’s Disability Unit, he would be “drawing up a list of priorities of areas that I think we can make some real progress on in the course of this parliament”.

He said: “I know we’re not going to be able to do everything that everyone would like, but we will I believe be able to make some really substantial progress on key things.”

He had been asked by Joyce Stevenson, the union’s regional disability lead for Scotland, whether he had plans to replace the Enable fund, which supported disabled people who want to stand for elected office with their extra costs.

Sir Stephen told her that “we need to do more” in that area.

He said: “I am going to be looking at the possibility of funding to help those who want to seek elected office.

“I’m not in a position to say we are going to do it, but I think it is an interesting idea and as you say it has been tried out in the past, although it wrapped up a few years ago.”

He said the question of increasing political representation among disabled people was “a strong candidate for inclusion in that priority list”.

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

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

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

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

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

The last government had been promising to set up a replacement for EnAble for three years until it lost power at the general election last July.

Sir Stephen also told the CWU webinar that the government would carry out a 12-week consultation on the disability benefits green paper it plans to publish this spring.

He said this would be followed by a white paper, which he hoped would be published by the end of the year “with firm proposals based on the original proposals and the responses we’ve received in consultation”.

He was speaking just days after disabled activist Ellen Clifford won a “groundbreaking” legal victory at the high court over the last government’s plans to cut spending on out-of-work disability benefits, proposals which the Labour government has yet to rule out (see separate story).

Mark Anthony Bastiani, CWU’s disability lead on its national executive committee, asked Sir Stephen when the government would fully implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) into UK law.

Before the general election, the party – through shadow disability minister Vicky Foxcroft – had made repeated pledges that a Labour government would implement the treaty into UK law.

That pledge was weakened in the subsequent National Policy Forum report to a promise to “honour our commitments to the United Nations’ Convention for the Rights of Disabled People and ensure its principles are reflected across government”.

But the general election manifesto did not even offer that weakened promise.

This week, Sir Stephen offered a new explanation – which is likely to leave many disabled activists bemused – for why Labour has backed away from its previous promises to implement the convention.

He told Bastiani: “We haven’t incorporated any of the UN human rights treaties into law in the UK.

“We have ratified them all, we are committed to them all.

“I think that is because they are not really in the form of laws… particularly not in the form of UK law.

“There are other countries that have laws that are more aspirational… and then you kind of leave it sometimes to judges to work out in detail what that means.

“That isn’t how we do law in the UK. Our laws are set out in quite a lot of detail and none of the UN conventions are in that form.

“I think that’s the reason we haven’t adopted any of the UN conventions into law.”

That explanation is in sharp contrast to the years of pledges by the party in opposition to implement the UN convention into UK law, which included its commitment to do so ahead of the 2019 general election.

Only two months ago, disabled Labour MP Marsha de Cordova – herself a former shadow disability minister – pledged in a lecture to push her government to implement the UN convention into UK law.

Despite his excuse for his party reneging on its repeated promises to implement the UN convention, Sir Stephen said he was “very keen” to improve the UK’s standing with the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, which delivered a series of stinging reports on violations of the treaty by successive Conservative-led governments.

Sir Stephen said: “I am going to New York in June when the UN committee meets and I will want to tell them what we have been doing since the general election to put right the problems that have been identified and to remove, we hope, more and more of the barriers that society has put in the way of disabled people.”

He said he hoped to “reassure the committee this new government is committed properly to delivering for disabled people and putting right the problems the previous government was responsible for”.

23 January 2025

Abuse of disabled supporters at live sports events is growing problem, survey finds

The proportion of disabled supporters who say that “disability abuse” is a barrier to them attending live sport has risen sharply in the last three years, according to a new survey.

The annual survey (PDF) of disabled supporters by the disabled-led charity Level Playing Field (LPF) also found that the proportion of those fans reporting inaccessible public transport as a barrier has risen significantly over the last three years.

In 2021, 5.5 per cent of those taking part in the survey pointed to disability-related abuse as a barrier to attending live sport, but this rose to 6.5 per cent in 2022 and seven per cent in 2023, and it has now risen to 8.5 per cent.

LPF said it was working with other organisations, including the Football Policing Unit and Kick it Out, to combat the trend of rising abuse.

The “attitudes of others” also remained a significant barrier – the second most-reported – with 26 per cent reporting this, a slight increase since last year.

Those reporting inaccessible public transport as a barrier rose from 16 per cent in 2021, to 17.5 per cent the following year, to 20 per cent in last year’s survey, and now to 22 per cent.

LPF said the trends on public transport and abuse were “concerning”.

As with last year, the most reported barrier was physical access at sports stadiums, which saw a significant increase from 29.5 per cent to 33 per cent in those reporting this as a barrier, although it had fallen significantly last year.

LPF said addressing problems with physical access was a “huge priority”, and that it was working with the Sports Ground Safety Authority and others on a new version of the Accessible Stadia guidance.

The largest increase in any of the barriers reported by disabled supporters was in the cost of attending live sport, with the proportion of those saying this was a barrier increasing from 17 per cent last year to 22.5 per cent in 2024, an increase of 5.5 percentage points or nearly a third.

LPF believes these concerns are partly due to the removal, reduction and alteration of some disability- and age-related concession rates for match tickets and parking. 

The survey results also show that more than a fifth (22 per cent) of disabled supporters said there were sports or sporting venues that they felt unable to attend because they were inaccessible, although this was far lower than the 36.5 per cent who said yes to this question in 2022.

LPF’s chair Tony Taylor said that, despite the fall since 2022, it was “completely unacceptable” that more than a fifth of disabled sports fans were still unable to attend some events due to access concerns.

More than 2,000 disabled supporters responded to the 2024 survey – the highest ever number of responses – with half of them (49 per cent) supporting a Premier League football club, and a quarter (26 per cent) following a club in the Championship, the second tier of the football pyramid in England and Wales, but there were also some responses from those following women’s football (1.2 per cent), cricket (0.3 per cent) and rugby (0.2 per cent).

Among its recommendations, LPF said clubs should have a “clear process” for fans to report any disability discrimination they experience, and that fans should know what that process is; all such reports should be taken seriously, investigated, and responded to; and stewards should receive training to recognise and act on any abuse.

LPF also called on clubs to raise issues about inaccessible public transport with local providers.

23 January 2025

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Convicted benefit cheats who fail to pay back what they owe could be stripped of their driving licences, under government plans to crack down on fraud. Those who repeatedly cheat the system and have debts of £1,000 or more could be punished with a driving ban of up to two years. The plans also include new powers to force banks to hand over account information about benefit claimants to help target investigations, echoing a scheme announced by the previous Conservative government: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/22/dwp-crackdown-could-see-people-banned-from-driving-if-welfare-debts-go-unpaid

CCTV and cameras are not uncommon on mental health wards, used with the intention of keeping patients safe. But some say that new Oxevision technology, where cameras also monitor their pulse and breathing in their bedrooms, is adding to their sense of paranoia and in some cases making them more unwell. The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the mental health charity Rethink have now said they want to see the rollout of the technology paused: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq8kqzgel2no

Blind and partially-sighted people are being left “humiliated” and unsure they have voted correctly because of a lack of support at polling stations, according to an MP. Carlisle’s Julie Minns said many with visual impairments were unable to vote without someone else knowing their choice. The Labour MP has put forward a proposed new law to ensure there are tactile and audio aids for blind voters in polling stations: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gwel89x20o

23 January 2025

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Contents

Tory ministers blocked ‘unique’ research on ESA claimants from inclusion in benefit cuts green paper 1

Ministers decided to sit on critical PIP report, just days before publishing ‘brutal’ green paper 2

Activist’s ‘genius’ two-year plan opens door to more generous compensation for disabled rail passengers 4

Disabled people ‘have been betrayed’, 20 years on from groundbreaking Life Chances report 7

‘Jaw-dropping’ evidence from CQC bosses on safety and IT failures shocks MPs 10

Minister agrees to cross-party talks on strengthening rights for disabled renters 12

John Evans: Death of independent living pioneer leaves ‘massive gap’ and vital legacy 14

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 17

Tory ministers blocked ‘unique’ research on ESA claimants from inclusion in benefit cuts green paper

Conservative ministers prevented research that showed disabled people on out-of-work benefits were subject to high levels of stress, debt and isolation from being included in a controversial policy paper that called for cuts to spending on those benefits.

The research had examined the “health, social and economic profile” of disabled people who received employment and support allowance (ESA).

It showed they were “a population reporting high levels of stress”, while “many faced serious debt arrears” and were “more likely to live by themselves, have a small network, and feel isolated and lonely”.

The research* was described as “a unique opportunity to gain valuable insights into the mental health and life circumstances of this group of people, and compare their experiences to those in the rest of the working age population”, as it used data from the national Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey.

The report described how ESA claimants in England were much more likely than the rest of the working-age population to struggle with using public transport, dealing with paperwork and managing money, while two-thirds had a common mental health condition.

The research is believed to have been completed in the early months of 2020, but DWP sat on it for more than a year before finally deciding not to publish it.

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) email, obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) through a freedom of information request and dated 20 May 2021, shows ministers decided not to publish the report, but also to prevent it from being included in the “health and disability” green paper that was about to be published.

That Shaping Future Support green paper said that rising spending on disability benefits “suggests there is more we can do to enable independent living and employment” and that ministers want to “explore making bigger changes to the benefits system” that will mean the system is “more affordable in the future”.

The work and pensions secretary at the time was Therese Coffey.

Ministers appear to have concluded that research demonstrating the significant barriers and challenges facing ESA claimants was unlikely to be a helpful addition to a green paper that laid the foundation for further cuts to support.

The 20 May email, copied to Coffey and the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, said: “Ministers have reviewed and are not content to publish ‘A health, social and economic profile of ESA recipients in the 2014 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey’ and do not want it included in the Green Paper.”

The email was released in response to a freedom of information request by DNS, following the new Labour government’s decision last October to publish the ESA report and 30 other papers that were commissioned by DWP under Conservative-led governments, but were never released.

DNS had requested documents that showed why Conservative ministers had refused to publish the ESA research report.

In its freedom of information response, DWP said the single email was “the only recorded information we hold” on the decision by ministers not to publish the report.

The Conservative party had not responded by 11am today (Thursday) to a request to comment.

*The research was carried out for DWP by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen)

16 January 2025

Ministers decided to sit on critical PIP report, just days before publishing ‘brutal’ green paper

Conservative ministers decided to hide a report that exposed the flaws of the “degrading” personal independence payment (PIP) system, just five days before they published proposals to replace PIP cash payments with vouchers or one-off grants, ministerial emails have revealed.

Disability News Service (DNS) has obtained copies of emails exchanged last year between ministers and advisers, which show how the minister for disabled people, Mims Davies, was asked to approve the publication of four Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) research reports in January 2024.

One of those reports showed how the dishonest and unfair PIP assessment system left disabled people “broken”, “numb” and “fuming”.

When ministers finally made a decision, three months later, on 24 April, they decided to allow publication of three of the reports, but not the PIP research, with an email sent by a member of the ministerial team stating that ministers and special advisers were “not content to agree to publication” of that report.

Five days later, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride published his hugely controversial health and disability green paper, in which he said he was “concerned” about the growth in spending on PIP, and questioned whether this was “providing value to the public”.

Among its proposals – described as a “brutal, ideological attack” on disabled people’s support – the green paper suggested making it harder to claim PIP and even replacing cash payments with vouchers or one-off grants.

Researchers for the PIP report had interviewed disabled people who had been awarded zero points after being assessed for their PIP eligibility.

One of those interviewed, who had ME, and spent all but half an hour every day in bed, took three months to fill out his PIP claim form, but he said that when he tried to explain more about his case to the assessor, he was “cut off”.

Like all the interviewees, he was given zero points and so was found ineligible for any support with his disability-related costs.

The emails were released in response to a freedom of information request from DNS, following the new Labour government’s decision in October to publish the PIP report and 30 other papers commissioned by DWP under Conservative-led governments, but which were never released.

DNS had requested documents that showed why ministers refused to publish the PIP research report.

DWP provided just three short emails to DNS.

The first email was sent to Davies on 29 January 2024, asking if she wanted to publish the PIP research report.

The response, 10 days later – either from Davies or a member of her team – suggests “we should wait as there is a lot of thinking in this area”, and then warns: “Could set hare’s [sic] running and so not to publish while in this space of policy development.”

The final decision to prevent publication of the research, apparently from a member of Davies’s team, comes two-and-a-half months later, on 24 April, just five days before the green paper’s “brutal” attack on PIP was to be published.

In its freedom of information response, DWP said the three emails were “the only recorded information we hold” on the decision by ministers not to publish the PIP report.

Neither Davies nor Stride had responded by 11am today (Thursday) to a request to comment.

16 January 2025

Activist’s ‘genius’ two-year plan opens door to more generous compensation for disabled rail passengers

A disabled activist has won praise for a successful two-year plan that has exposed the “ridiculously-low” awards handed out by the Rail Ombudsman to disabled passengers.

Doug Paulley’s efforts have led to the ombudsman issuing what appears to be its highest-ever compensation award for a failure to provide assistance, opening the door to more generous payments for countless future disabled passengers.

He began his campaign because he was frustrated at the ombudsman’s failure to award a fair level of compensation to disabled passengers who had faced discrimination when trying to obtain passenger assistance on a rail journey.

The ombudsman’s average award for a passenger assistance failure is just £146, far lower than such cases are likely to receive if a case for discrimination under the Equality Act is taken through the county court.

In an attempt to prove his argument, Paulley launched a court case and a complaint to the ombudsman at the same time, following an incident in March 2023 at Euston station in London.

This led to an award from the ombudsman of just £125, but he rejected this sum and completed the court case, rejecting multiple offers of out-of-court settlements from Network Rail until the court awarded him £1,325 in compensation.

Paulley then used the two figures – £125 and £1,325 – to persuade the ombudsman to review its framework for setting the level of awards for disability discrimination, arguing that it did not appear to meet its aim that awards were underpinned by “moral fairness” and “natural justice”.

Fellow accessible transport activist Sam Jennings also began to challenge the unfair ombudsman payouts, pointing out on her campaigning website Disabled By the Railway that average ombudsman awards for 2023 were only about £100 (PDF), even for significant acts of discrimination against disabled rail passengers that might lead to thousands of pounds of compensation under the Equality Act if taken through the civil courts.

When Paulley faced another passenger assistance failure, at Birmingham New Street station in August 2024, he lodged another complaint with the ombudsman.

This time, even though it was a less serious failure, the ombudsman awarded him £1,200, nearly 10 times the level he had been offered after the more serious Euston assistance failure.

A staff member at Birmingham New Street had failed to provide him with the assistance he had booked for a connecting train to Bristol because his incoming train had arrived late and the staff member had other assistance requests to deal with.

Paulley had to make his own way to the platform for the connecting train and position himself by the train door, to prevent its departure, until another member of staff eventually arrived with a ramp just before it was due to depart.

In its ruling, the ombudsman said legal advice it had taken suggested the assistance failure by Network Rail was “a failure to provide ‘reasonable adjustments’ in accordance with the Equality Act 2010” and although the ombudsman “does not have the same powers as a court and cannot make a declaration under the Equality Act 2010… the impact of the breach will be assessed in considering the level of compensation to award”.

Although it was “a one-off assistance failure… the incident occurred in a public place, and caused [Paulley] inconvenience and distress”, the ombudsman said.

The £1,200 awarded to Paulley is believed to be the highest amount it has ever awarded for an assistance failure.

In the five years between 2018 and 2023 (PDF), the highest the ombudsman awarded for an assistance failure was just £1,000.

This week, Paulley praised the ombudsman for listening to his concerns and making a “step change” in the level of its awards, which he told the ombudsman was “brilliant news for discriminated-against disabled people, both in comparative ease of access to justice for failures and in bringing home to rail service providers the impact of such failures”.

Paulley says he is now more likely to recommend other disabled passengers seek justice through the ombudsman, as its new approach is more likely to be in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Equality Act.

He told Disability News Service that the ombudsman’s new approach was a “significant change”, and that hundreds of disabled passengers have previously received awards that were probably about 10 per cent of what they should have been.

He said countless other disabled people would have been dissuaded from appealing to the ombudsman because “they knew any award would be at an insulting level”.

Paulley said the low levels of ombudsman awards were “complicit with the industry’s undervaluing of disabled people’s discrimination and experiences”.

He said: “It shouldn’t have taken activism to make them do this, and it is still limited, and everything is still very far from perfect, but I think it may make a difference.”

He said that if a substantial proportion of future accessibility cases result in ombudsman awards of more than £1,000 it should make rail companies take the issue of assistance failures “a bit more seriously”.

He added: “Previously I would be more reticent to recommend the ombudsman to discriminated-against travellers but now I’m a bit happier doing so.

“The rail industry needs to recognise assistance failure as a significant discrimination event rather than a customer services issue to be fobbed off with token awards.”

Jennings said Paulley’s victory had “solved a huge problem with the Rail Ombudsman, which came to light in a set of research reports published by the Office of Rail and Road last year”. 

She said: “It finally forces the ombudsman to act in line with the Vento scale – the established guide from the senior courts that is used to assess compensation due in discrimination cases.

“In the year 2023, the ombudsman’s average compensation award was just £101 – just a fraction of the minimum £1,200 due under Vento banding.”

But she said there was “still a huge problem” because the ombudsman can only award a maximum of £2,500, which is near the foot of the Vento scale, whereas the highest Vento banding reaches £58,700 for the most serious cases.

And she said the ombudsman’s own reports show it is “barely even functioning for disabled people”, having received just 316 complaints in five years.

Jennings said: “I’ve personally experienced that many access fails in that time, so what about the other millions of disabled people in Britain?”

She added: “The ombudsman must be reformed to be fully compliant with the Equality Act 2010, and to make awards in line with Vento banding.”

Emily Yates, a disabled researcher in equality and human rights, and co-founder of the Association of British Commuters, said: “Doug Paulley’s two-year strategy has been proven an act of genius, and that’s no mere compliment.

“He has gone through every possible step to prove the holes in the system, arguing the case for equality law compliance at each stage, and backing this up by comparison with other experiences within the same system.

“It’s like a model for all campaigners of how the best legal activism should be done, and what can be achieved by it.

“This has created a precedent that should, by rights, change Rail Ombudsman practices in the UK forever.

“Promoting this precedent and campaigning for reform should now be a priority for all disabled people’s organisations working on rail accessibility complaints and transport discrimination.”

Asked whether it would use Paulley’s case as a precedent for future awards, a Rail Ombudsman spokesperson said in a statement: “As a general policy, the Rail Ombudsman does not comment publicly on individual cases to maintain confidentiality and fairness in our processes.”

Potential resources for other disabled people considering complaints or legal action for a failure of rail passenger assistance include this guide (PDF) by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and this guidance (PDF) from the presidents of the Employment Tribunals in England and Wales, and in Scotland

16 January 2025

Disabled people ‘have been betrayed’, 20 years on from groundbreaking Life Chances report

Disabled experts who advised the Labour government on its ground-breaking Life Chances report – which was published 20 years ago on Sunday – say successive governments over the last 20 years have abandoned its ambitious goals.

The 20^th anniversary of the report – which placed independent living at its heart – comes just days after the new Labour government announced further delays to long-term reform of the adult social care system in England.

Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People was widely viewed as a radical and ambitious report that had the language of rights embedded in its pages.

Influential disabled people played a key role in drafting the report, which used social model language and principles, and called for every local area to have its own user-led organisation modelled on centres for independent living (CILs).

It made recommendations across four key areas: independent living; early years and family support; transition to adulthood; and employment.

The report – produced by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit – also made an ambitious pledge: “By 2025, disabled people in Britain should have full opportunities and choices to improve their quality of life, and will be respected and included as equal members of society.”

There was optimism at the time that Life Chances could secure the “transformation in disabled people’s life chances” that prime minister Tony Blair suggested was possible in his foreword to the report.

But 20 years on, three of the disabled people who advised the government on the report have told Disability News Service (DNS) that successive governments have failed to fulfil its promises.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell and Dr Sally Witcher were both members of the project’s advisory group, while Professor Peter Beresford was a member of its independent living expert group.

Dr Witcher said the Life Chances report had brought “cause for hope”, but that reading it 20 years on showed “how far backwards we’ve gone”.

She told DNS: “In 2025 we emphatically do not have full opportunities and choices to improve our quality of life. We are not respected as equal members of society. Far from it.”

At the time it was published, she said, she could not remember any other report “being received with such enthusiasm by disabled people and their organisations”.

Her enthusiasm for the report led to her applying for, and securing, the role of deputy director of Labour’s new Office for Disability Issues, which was tasked with rolling out the recommendations across government.

But she said people who were disabled, sick, or both, were now, 20 years on, “under siege”.

She said Labour had continued the previous governments’ attacks on benefits and public services, while the disabled population “continues to swell as failure to act on Covid safety takes an ever-higher toll on the nation’s public and economic health”.

She said: “We are not responsible for long-term government and economic failure. It’s not our fault we’re disabled, sick, or both.

“Do governments, including this one, seriously think anyone would choose destitution if they had any real choice?”

Dr Witcher appealed to the new government not to launch another 20-year strategy, as “strategy after strategy” had failed to deliver “lasting positive change”, but instead to work with disabled people to “assist us to live and stop making our lives ever more impossible”.

Professor Beresford said it was not difficult to see the way successive governments had failed to implement Life Chances as “a huge betrayal”, which had been led “from the front” by politicians.

He said: “Governments of all colours since have been determined to attack disabled people and treat us as fraudulent.

“Life Chances was an integrated policy, led by disabled people and true in spirit to the aims of the disabled people’s movement with its commitment to truly independent living and a national network of disabled people-led organisations.

“Sadly, its grasp fell far short of its reach.”

He said the continuing attacks on disabled people and disability benefits over the last two decades “constitute a crime no less than the hated pre-war poor law.

“This, together with the failure to prioritise social care and disabled people’s rights and involvement, continue to besmirch our politics and any claim to challenging disability discrimination.”

Baroness Campbell said she found it “deeply disappointing” that none of the goals laid out in the report had been achieved.

She said: “In terms of living independently in one’s own home, we were promised a CIL-type organisation in every area of England.

“Such local organisations would have gone some way to help prevent such a monumental crisis in social care for working-age disabled adults.”

She said disabled adults were now facing the prospect of leaving work or being forced into residential care “because they cannot afford to pay for essential care and support to remain independent citizens in the community, once provided by local authorities”. 

She said: “All this government can offer since coming to power is yet another independent commission on the issue, which won’t report fully on proposals until 2028.

“This will be the fifth time I have been involved in a government exercise to reform our failing social care system.

“I really can’t face going around the same roundabout, with the same outcomes, only to be told the investment costs too much.”

The message being sent to disabled people, she said, was that “only the fit and able deserve our investment; all others can wait, yet again”.

Baroness Campbell added: “Short-term plasters or delaying tactics such as this one are akin to throwing good money after bad.

“When is this government and opposition going to understand that by investing in disabled and older citizens, savings will be made within the healthcare and welfare benefits systems in the longer-term.”

Asked to respond to the failure to produce the change the Labour government of the time had hoped for from the report, and whether the new government would try again with a new strategy to achieve this change, a UK government spokesperson said: “Nobody deserves to be treated unfairly because of their disability and we remain focused on championing the rights of all disabled people.

“That’s why we are increasing funding to allow disabled people to stay in their homes, boosting the carer’s allowance, and working with disabled people and their representative organisations to break down barriers which prevent individuals from being fully respected and included in society.”

The increased funding relates to the extra £86 million for the disabled facilities grant scheme – which helps councils fund access improvements to disabled people’s homes – which brings total government spending on the programme for 2024-25 to £711 million and will support about 7,800 more adaptations.

16 January 2025

‘Jaw-dropping’ evidence from CQC bosses on safety and IT failures shocks MPs

The care regulator has admitted to shocked MPs that many service-users, relatives and care staff who have reported safeguarding concerns about a care home or hospital may still be waiting for a response five months later.

The Care Quality Commission’s outgoing chair and its new chief executive were giving evidence about the under-fire regulator’s work to the Commons health and social care committee yesterday (Wednesday).

The commission’s chief executive, Sir Julian Hartley, had been asked by disabled Labour MP Jen Craft if the regulator had the capacity to deal with the backlogs it faced in registering new providers and dealing with safeguarding reports.

He said that nearly a third (29 per cent) of new providers seeking to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) were waiting more than the 10-week target.

But he also told Craft that the backlog in dealing with “notifications and information of concern” was “another key priority”*.

He said this related to health and care providers “who notify us of major issues and incidents and changes” but also to “people [who] contact the CQC with major issues of concern”.

Craft said: “There’s a potential there for quite significant safeguarding issues around people flagging things early on.”

Sir Julian replied: “Exactly”.

He said there was currently a backlog of about 5,000 such concerns.

Craft said it felt as though “at the moment there is a potential for [the system of dealing with concerns] to go very badly wrong for individuals and for their families”.

Asked by Craft for the longest that people were waiting for CQC to respond to such concerns, Sir Julian said the “oldest case with no action” was from 19 August last year.

Asked if that was someone who had reported a concern and had not received a response from CQC, he said: “I believe so.”

Craft told him: “You can appreciate the level of shock that I think we felt on that.”

Sir Julian and Ian Dilks, the outgoing chair, also told the committee that the flawed IT system introduced by CQC towards the end of 2023 meant many assessment reports drafted by inspectors could not be published because they were “stuck” in the system and could not be accessed by staff.

Andrew George, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, said his “shocked” colleagues’ “jaws were on the floor when we heard this”.

Sir Julian said he did not disagree and had “immediately” commissioned an “urgent” independent review by an IT expert to understand “what had gone wrong and why” when he heard what was happening.

The evidence session followed the publication last October of the final report into CQC’s effectiveness by Dr Penny Dash, which found an “urgent need” for a rapid turnaround in the way CQC operated.

It found that, over the last five years, the proportion of health and care settings that had never received a rating had risen from 13 per cent to 19 per cent, while the average age of a rating (the time since it was published) had almost doubled, from two years in 2020 to three years and 11 months in 2024.

In response to a question from the committee’s Liberal Democrat chair, Layla Moran, Sir Julian appeared to accept that, three months on from the report’s publication, the regulator could still not guarantee that the care homes, hospitals and other settings it inspects were safe.

After Moran asked if “patients and families” can be sure that “the care home their mother is in or the hospital their child is being treated in” were safe as a result of CQC’s inspections, Sir Julian said the Dash review “was very clear that poor operational performance is impacting our ability to ensure that health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate and high quality care”.

And he said there were “multiple issues that need urgent resolution”.

When asked by Moran for a “yes or no” answer on safety, he said: “We’re not delivering for people. I’m sorry I went round the houses on that.”

He said later that the regulator “had to get back to doing more assessments” and that it needed to “speed up registrations”.

Dilks, who was appointed three years ago, apologised for the failings exposed by the Dash review and said CQC had “not done what it should have been doing over a period of time, but most particularly over the last year to 18 months”.

He said: “I would love to be sitting here saying, as the outgoing chair, that this organisation is in a much better shape than everybody thought it was, and I can’t say that, for which I am personally very sorry.”

He also told the committee that he had not had regular meetings with the health and social care secretary or the relevant minister under the previous two governments, which Moran said after the meeting was “incomprehensible”.

Dilks said CQC had decided it needed to change in 2018, and had commissioned consultants two years later.

It then decided in 2021 to carry out “a much more ambitious strategy”.

But it was not until the end of 2023, when new technology was being deployed, “that the scale of the problems really became obvious”.

He said that some of the strategic decisions were “not the right decisions”, the strategy was “too ambitious”, the technology failed to “deliver”, and CQC failed to “engage well enough” at the beginning of the process with its own staff.

*Longcare Survivors: The Biography of a Care Scandal, by John Pring, editor of DNS, was published in 2011 and is available through the DNS website. It investigates the horrific abuse of adults with learning difficulties that took place at two residential homes in south Buckinghamshire in the 1980s and early 1990s, and how the repeated failings of the inspection and regulation system allowed the abuse to continue for so long.

16 January 2025

Minister agrees to cross-party talks on strengthening rights for disabled renters

The government has agreed to cross-party talks on strengthening the law so that landlords would have to allow “reasonable” adaptations to the homes of disabled renters.

Ministers had refused on Tuesday to back two separate attempts – by Green and Liberal Democrat MPs – to strengthen the renters’ rights bill in favour of disabled renters.

But housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook did agree to a cross-party meeting to discuss the concerns of MPs who have highlighted how many disabled people in rented homes are faced with landlords who refuse to allow them to install adaptations such as grab rails, ramps or accessible worktops in the kitchen.

The meeting will take place before the bill begins its progress through the House of Lords.

Carla Denyer, the Green party co-leader, had proposed an amendment to the bill that would have forced landlords to give permission for home adaptations where the local council has carried out a home assessment and recommended an adaptation, if it would be considered a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act.

Gideon Amos, the Liberal Democrat housing and planning spokesperson, had put forward a similar amendment to the bill.

Denyer told fellow MPs on Tuesday that the Equality and Human Rights Commission had found that one in three disabled people in the private rented sector lived in unsuitable accommodation, while a government survey had shown that 44 per cent of private landlords would not rent to someone who required adaptations to the property.

She said: “My amendment seeks to ensure that, if all tenants can put up shelves, disabled tenants should be allowed to put up grab rails.”

Denyer said the government had argued that the issue was already covered by the Equality Act, but she said landlords were still refusing requests, while the “hassle and delay in appealing an adaptation refusal, given the major backlog in the courts, makes it prohibitive for many and unfairly puts the onus on the tenant”.

Amos told MPs that his friend and constituent, Mike Godleman, who was disabled, had died “while recovering from major surgery and under the threat of a no-fault eviction notice, for no reason he could possibly work out”.

He said the party’s proposed amendment to the bill was partly in his memory.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – now an independent MP – also backed Denyer’s amendment, which he said had been “widely supported” by MPs and would meet an “important and genuine need across the country”.

It was also supported by former Labour chancellor John McDonnell, currently sitting as an independent, who said he hoped the government would be able to agree an amendment that would “satisfy all concerned” if there were further discussions.

Labour’s Florence Eshalomi, who chairs the Commons housing, communities and local government committee, called on the government to address the issue.

She said: “It is not fair that disabled tenants end up with reduced access to their own homes.

“The government are rightly looking at making it easier for disabled people to thrive in the workplace, but what is the point of someone thriving if they do not even have an adequate home or housing?”

She added: “Can any of us imagine being unable to have a shower in our own flat because the landlord refuses to make the necessary adaptations, or trying to cook in a kitchen when we cannot even reach the worktops?

“None of us would want to live in such conditions, yet that is the reality for many disabled people in the private rented sector in 2025 in the UK.

“People face such issues on a daily basis, with more challenges and blockages when trying to get private landlords to address them.”

But Pennycook told MPs that the Equality Act “already provides that landlords cannot unreasonably refuse a request for reasonable adjustments to a disabled person’s home”.

He said the bill’s abolition of no-fault evictions would “remove the threat of retaliatory eviction, empowering tenants to request the home adaptations they need and to complain if their requests are unreasonably refused”, while a new ombudsman would “have strong powers to put things right for tenants where their landlord has failed to resolve a legitimate complaint”.

But he promised the government would continue to consider “what more we may need to do to ensure that requests for reasonable adjustments cannot be unreasonably refused, including those recommended by local authority home assessments”.

And he promised a cross-party meeting to discuss the issue, and Denyer’s amendment, before the Lords began to debate the bill.

Afterwards, Denyer welcomed the minister’s offer to hold a meeting.

She said: “I’m really pleased that the minister has agreed to meet with me to discuss my renters’ rights bill amendment to give disabled people the right to adapt their home to meet their needs.

“I’m not counting any chickens yet, but this is a potential big win for all those who campaigned on this, and I will continue to push this forward.”

The bill, which the Labour government says will “transform the experience of private renting in England”, passed its third reading by 440 votes to 111, and will now be debated in the Lords in the coming months.

Pennycook said the bill would “modernise the regulation of our country’s insecure and unjust private rented sector, levelling decisively the playing field between landlord and tenant” and would “empower renters by providing them with greater security, rights and protections so that they can stay in their homes for longer, build lives in their communities and avoid the risk of homelessness”.

16 January 2025

John Evans: Death of independent living pioneer leaves ‘massive gap’ and vital legacy

One of the founders of the UK’s independent living movement, John Evans, who was driven by a determination to ensure that disabled people could take control of their own lives, has died.

Since he became disabled in an accident at the age of 25, which left him needing 24-hour support, he had devoted his life to advocating for independent living.

Independent living was, he said, “a philosophy and practice of life” and “a basic human right”, and he spent nearly 50 years freeing himself from the restrictions of residential care and then supporting other disabled people to do the same.

He died early on Monday afternoon.

Even after his diagnosis with terminal cancer in September 2018, he had pledged to devote the time he had left to trying to save the independent living movement in the face of government-imposed austerity.

He told an event in April 2019 that was held to celebrate his contribution to the movement over the previous 40 years: “It is not going to be easy but we have to do it, to enable disabled people to continue to have choice and control.”

The independent living movement was, as he told Disability News Service in 2023, “too precious to lose”.

He was born in Swansea in 1950 – his wife described him this week as “a very proud Welshman” – and before he became disabled at the age of 25, he had travelled widely and helped set up a peace project in Jerusalem, before becoming disabled after an accident while living with a group of peace activists in the US state of New Mexico.

When he returned home – inspired by his contact with the US independent living movement in California – he spent time at Stoke Mandeville hospital before attempting to live independently in a cottage in the New Forest, until his relationship with his girlfriend, his main carer, broke down in 1978 after almost two years.

He was forced to move to a Leonard Cheshire residential home in Hampshire, an idea that “terrified” him.

He said in 2016: “My feeling from the beginning when I entered this home was that I was not going to spend the rest of my life there.

“I was laughed at because nobody else thought anything different was possible.

“I was determined to prove them wrong. I knew that there had to be a way.”

There was. He and fellow residents set up Project 81, which was aimed at securing their escape into their own homes by 1981, the UN international year of disabled people.

They eventually achieved their aim by employing their own personal assistants, with council funding, and he moved into a flat in 1983.

He said many years later: “There was no community support for people like myself at that time, so we wanted to create our own.

“Once funding was agreed for me, the world was my oyster. I was free to organise my life in the way I wanted.”

He helped set up Hampshire Centre for Independent Living, and in 1989 co-founded an independent living committee to push for legislation that would make it easier for other disabled people to live independently with funds from their local authority.

In a short film he co-produced in 2023 with his wife, Jana, he explained how the committee’s work helped pave the way for the introduction of direct payments through the Direct Payments Act in 1996, and the foundation of the National Centre for Independent Living.

He was awarded an OBE in 2001 for his services to disability rights and independent living.

Evans promoted the independent living movement across Europe through the European Network on Independent Living, of which he was president for 10 years, while he also served on the board of the European Disability Forum.

He always stressed that what he achieved had been in collaboration with other disabled people.

“Independent living is the cooperation, networking and collective working together of disabled people in order to be able to achieve our ultimate goals of being included in society,” he said in 2003, at the launch of the European year of disabled people.

He fought for years to persuade the government to incorporate article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – the right to independent living – into UK law, something he said would “transform everything”.

Over the last decade and more, he continued to speak out to promote the principles of independent living and co-production, and the damage caused by Brexit to the availability of personal assistants.

In 2013, he spoke about the coalition government’s plans to close the Independent Living Fund (ILF), and told a parliamentary meeting that the right to independent living needed to be enshrined in law, and should be viewed by the government as a “treasure” to be “celebrated and not taken away from us”.

The previous year, as an ILF user himself, he told another parliamentary meeting how he feared being forced back into residential care after escaping the Leonard Cheshire home: “My biggest fear ever since that day has been will I ever return to that. Right now it is looking like a reality.”

In 2016, he warned that Brexit meant disabled people risked losing access to European Union legislation and directives “which have protected our rights for the last 20 years”, as well as losing access to European funding.

He said that in 33 years of employing personal assistants, he had employed people from 12 EU member states, an option that Brexit was putting at risk.

Evans said in 2003 that it was the experience of living in an institution that inspired him “to fight and devote my life to finding an alternative”.

“Such freedom of spirit is born from removing the chains of imprisonment,” he said.

“This kind of experience is unforgettable and enough to fire me up in our fight for freedom.”

His wife, Jana Bleckmann-Evans, told DNS yesterday (Wednesday): “He fought for the life he loved so much for as long as he could, but in the end, he realised that there was no more energy left and that he had to let go.

“I find great comfort in the fact that he was in control of his life until literally his last breath.

“He looked comfortable and at ease when he passed over, and he was surrounded by warmth and love.

“John leaves a massive gap in my life as well as in the lives of his family, his friends, colleagues, allies and fellow freedom-fighters.

“The condolences that have started to pour in show me just how massive his legacy is – as an independent living activist and as the amazing human being that he was, loving, caring, clever, passionate, thoughtful and simply wonderful.

“I will miss him forever.”

16 January 2025

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

The crisis in special educational needs and disabilities in England risks creating a “lost generation” of children, while putting “almost half” of all councils with an education remit in danger of bankruptcy within 15 months, parliament’s spending watchdog has warned. MPs on the public accounts committee expressed frustration with the government’s lack of progress in resolving the crisis, and complained their inquiry had found “no sense of urgency” among officials: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jan/15/send-crisis-in-england-risks-creating-lost-generation-of-children

Benefit claimants are being forced to wait more than three months for reviews on decisions, DWP figures have revealed. Departmental data shows the average time for mandatory reconsideration of benefit decisions rose to 71 working days in 2024, more than doubling between December 2023 and July 2024. With weekends factored in, this is a wait of 99 days on average: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/dwp-benefit-delay-appeal-mandatory-reconsideration-b2676419.html

Charities providing specialist care to thousands of adults with learning difficulties and autistic adults claim they are having to “evict” residents to avoid insolvency because of tax and wage rises and local authority funding cuts. Non-profit providers say their work is in a “state of acute precarity” with many preparing to cut services, close doors to new residents, and effectively evict tenants because the fees councils pay no longer meet the cost of care: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/14/charities-forced-to-evict-adults-in-their-care-to-stay-solvent-survey-finds

16 January 2025

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

We’d like to wish all our supporters a peaceful festive season and a better New Year when we hope the current government will uphold disabled people’s human rights and enable our greater equality and inclusion.

We’ve been unable to process any new membership applications as the person who does this is in hospital at the moment but everyone is free to get involved regardless of that.

Disabled people’s organisations tell government: Big disability charities are ‘actively harmful’ to our movement

Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have made a plea to the government to listen to their “authentic” voices rather than disability charities that are not led by disabled people, which they say are “actively harmful” to their movement.

In a response to the government’s consultation on developing a new relationship with civil society, DPO Forum England and Disability Rights UK (DR UK) accuse non-disabled-led charities of seizing their language on empowerment but failing to share their access to ministers and other decision-makers.

They say the charities “financially benefit from talking about our oppression” and that the government should instead prioritise the “authentic” views of DPOs and ensure that “those directly impacted by these issues have real authority in the decision-making process”.

They tell the government in the response: “Non-Disabled People Led Organisations are actively harmful to DPOs and the Disabled people’s movement.

“They appropriate our language about empowerment yet do not share their access to decision-makers or people in power with us.

“They take up the majority of funding going into the disability space whilst not letting Disabled people lead their organisations, campaigns and policy work.

“This perpetuates the paternalistic and charitable marginalisation of Disabled people.”

They add: “Despite our 45-year track record in advancing disability rights and systemic change, we face substantial challenges in securing meaningful engagement and funding compared to disability charities not led by disabled people.

“These charities, often with larger budgets and established government ties, systematically overshadow our efforts, perpetuating a cycle in which non-disabled voices influence disability policy and community work.”

When it comes to government funding, they say, there were 1,457 government contracts awarded to just nine disability charities that were not led by disabled people in 2022-23, reaching a total value of more than £460 million.

This compares to just 148 contracts awarded to 90 DPOs, worth a total value of just £12.5 million in the same year.

The government consultation, which closed last week, was aimed at securing the views of voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises on the government’s framework for a new Civil Society Covenant, which it hopes will improve collaboration between the government and civil society.

The forum and DR UK say in their response that they want the new covenant to provide a “strengthened mandate” in policy consultation and decision-making for those organisations that are led by members of the communities they represent, including DPOs.

DPOs should be “explicitly” prioritised in government consultations, decision-making processes and funding, they say, and provided with the funding they need to cover their accessibility and disability-related costs in these processes.

But they also say that the government should “deprioritise” disability charities that are not led by disabled people.

And they call for the same emphasis on engagement with DPOs to apply to local authorities.

They also want the government to incorporate into the covenant its obligations under article 4.3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which states that governments should “closely consult with and actively involve” disabled people through their representative organisations when developing disability-related laws and policies.

The forum’s membership includes DPOs from across England, including DR UK, Inclusion London, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Shaping Our Lives, The Alliance for Inclusive Education, Disabled People Against Cuts, Buckinghamshire Disability Service, and British Deaf Association.

Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of the national service-user network Shaping Our Lives, told Disability News Service that it was vital that the government gave DPOs the funding they needed – and the “credibility and respect” – rather than funding disability organisations not led by disabled people.

He said these big charities “would probably have a big struggle to justify speaking for us but they’ve never struggled, and they’ve never justified stealing our voices.

“These are difficult days, with a Labour government that still needs to learn the lesson people voted against the Tories not for a continuation of its ideology but for democratic change.

“But we have right and rights on our side and as our numbers grow, we will get there.”

19 December 2024

New government figures show key policy at heart of disability employment strategy ‘will not work’

A key treatment that ministers have placed at the heart of their strategy for pushing people with mental distress and ill-health into paid work has only a tiny impact on the probability of them securing jobs, government figures have shown.

Disabled people’s mental health groups say the figures destroy the government’s case for “using mental health interventions as a stick to enforce work” and have called on ministers to rethink their “harmful” disability employment strategy.

The government placed an expansion of NHS Talking Therapies – which already costs hundreds of millions of pounds a year – at the centre of last month’s Get Britain Working white paper.

The white paper announced: “To tackle poor mental health, the leading driver of ill health-related inactivity, the government has committed to continuing to expand access to NHS Talking Therapies for adults with common mental health conditions in England.”

The white paper claimed that “extensive literature and studies” showed that NHS Talking Therapies improved employment outcomes.

The last Conservative government had also placed a massive expansion of NHS Talking Therapies at the heart of its own Back to Work Plan last year.

Last month, the new Labour government’s white paper mentioned a forthcoming evaluation of the impact of NHS Talking Therapies.

But when that research was published last week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there was no mention of it on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) website, and no press release issued by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall.

What the ONS research showed – based on analysis of nearly 600,000 people* with “common mental disorders like anxiety and depression” who completed NHS talking therapy – was that this treatment had almost no impact on the probability of being in work after seven years.

After three years, there was an increase of just 1.4 percentage points in the probability of someone being a paid employee, and after seven years that had increased to only 1.5 percentage points.

To qualify as being a “paid employee” in the study, someone only needed to have earned more than £0 in a month.

After three years, the average increase in monthly earnings for someone who had completed the treatment was just £17.

The impact of the therapy was even lower for disabled people who had not been working before the therapy began, with the probability of being a paid employee even decreasing in the first couple of years after treatment, and then only rising by 0.1 percentage points by the sixth year, although it increased by 0.6 percentage points after seven years.

The research also found that average monthly earnings fell after talking therapy for disabled people who had not been working before the treatment started, dropping by nearly £16 in the first year and as much as £23 a month by the seventh year.

Amy Wells, senior communications and membership manager for National Survivor User Network, said: “It becomes ever more transparent and worrying that our government is intent on pushing disabled people — and those living with mental ill-health — back into work, in place of genuine, comprehensive support.

“Little regard is being paid to whether it is possible or beneficial for disabled people to get ‘back into work’, furthering the rhetoric that people are not valuable beyond their contributions to the economy.

“The majority of investment for these plans is being funnelled into talking therapies, with the expectation of its ability to ‘support’ people back to work, which has now been shown to have a very insignificant impact on individual employment status.

“What this new data shows is that the government’s plans are not only harmful, but that they also will not work.

“We find these developments incredibly disappointing and call for a rethink of the government’s strategy around disability employment.”

Rick Burgess, a spokesperson for the grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin, said the ONS data “destroys the government’s case for using mental health interventions as a stick to enforce work” which instead was “just a fig leaf for cuts”.

He said: “The tiny statistical positive effect does not justify the polluting of healthcare with coercive work requirements.”

He also pointed to the ONS research stating that only Asian and white ethnic groups saw statistically significant positive impacts from the therapy on their monthly pay and chances of being in paid work, which he said shows the policy is “racist” and that DWP is “proposing a policy that discriminates”.

And he said there was “growing scepticism of the efficacy and suitability of cognitive behavioural therapy**” within the talking therapies programme.

He said: “This leaves Liz Kendall yet again claiming policy success while evidence proves the opposite, and trying to hide £3 billion in cuts.

“There is simply no future in the DWP’s approach, yet they flog this dead horse because the suffering is borne not by them, but by us, as the prevention of future deaths reports mount up.”

Asked if the ONS figures destroyed Kendall’s strategy of placing an ever-increasing reliance on talking therapies to push people with mental ill-health into work, and whether the tiny increases reported by ONS justified the substantial investment in NHS Talking Therapies, a DWP spokesperson said: “We are confident NHS Talking Therapies is a beneficial service that has a positive impact on those at risk of falling out of work due to ill health, with several studies demonstrating its health and economic benefits.

“Along with the expansion of Talking Therapies to an extra 380,000 patients, our £240 million Get Britain Working white paper gives local leaders the power they need to join up local work, health and skills support so more people can get into work.”

DWP also pointed to the government’s plans to invest £26 million in opening new mental health crisis centres as part of last month’s budget.

*Individuals referred to NHS Talking Therapies between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2020; who attended at least one therapy session; were considered to be a “clinical case” for anxiety, depression or both; were between the ages of 25 and 60 years on the day of the referral; and were resident in England

**One of the most common talking therapies used in the programme

19 December 2024

New research exposes ‘shocking and eye-opening’ levels of bullying of universal credit claimants

New unpublished research has exposed the impact of “shocking and eye-opening” levels of bullying and systematic mistakes on disabled people forced to rely on the universal credit working-age benefits system.

Reports from focus groups hosted by Inclusion Scotland in October add to growing evidence of the significant and harmful flaws of universal credit, how it is operated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and its strong links with at least three suicides.

Dr Rianna Price, policy and research officer with Inclusion Scotland, who led the focus groups, said two of the participants had spoken of how they had planned to take their own lives because they felt “so overwhelmed” by the universal credit process.

She said they “didn’t see a way out, and they had been treated like a burden, treated as if they were just parasites leeching off the state”.

She told Disability News Service (DNS): “The issues that people spoke about were in some cases very shocking and eye-opening to the levels of systematic error and bullying that are apparent in the Department for Work and Pensions.”

One claimant with a health condition, who already had a part-time job but was using universal credit to top-up their wages, spoke of how their mental health had deteriorated because of harassment from a work coach who bullied them into applying for other jobs they were hugely over-qualified for, and told them they faced sanctions if they failed to do so.

They said the work coach had appeared to be “more interested in getting them off benefits than actually helping them”.

An autistic claimant had spoken of the constant, repeated messages sent to claimants through universal credit’s online journal.

Price said that every time this claimant received a notification, they had to log on to their journal immediately, and “the constant time pressure made them feel incredibly anxious”.

She said: “Every time they saw it pop up, and usually nine times out of 10, it was a completely benign message… they would be panicked that they had done something wrong, or that they were going to get their money taken off them.”

But the claimants also told Inclusion Scotland that work coaches who replied to questions through the journal often did not know the correct rules, so a claimant might receive different answers to their question from different work coaches, or even the same work coach.

One of the claimants had been accused of fraud, before DWP admitted it had made an error.

Price told DNS: “The majority of them had incredibly negative associations with universal credit, that all stemmed from not necessarily the system itself, although that didn’t meet their needs, but feeling as if they were being targeted and criticised, bullied, because their needs were complex.”

The focus groups were carried out in October, and were carried out online and in-person, with a total of 16 disabled claimants taking part.

Price said she was “incredibly concerned” by what she had heard during the focus groups.

One of the claimants, who had fibromyalgia, spoke of being forced to attend a face-to-face work capability assessment because the contractor would not carry it out over the phone.

When they arrived, they were told the lift was out of order, and they were forced to climb stairs to an assessment room.

After the assessment, said Price, “they were so fatigued that they fell off a chair and their partner had to carry them out of the assessment building, and they couldn’t get out of bed for a month while they recovered their energy”.

She said most of the focus group participants had reported “negative interactions” with a work coach, while only three had spoken of having any positive relationships with any of their work coaches.

Price said that, if she was able to speak directly to Sir Stephen Timms, Labour’s minister for disability and social security, she would tell him that “the current system is not fit for purpose, and it’s not just the systems, it’s not just the job centres, it’s the attitudes towards people who need benefits”.

She added: “So many of [the focus group participants] were aware that this was a political choice that people in power were making.

“Not just about how much they should receive, but also about how it was framed, and how they were kind of labelled as scroungers.

“Most of them wanted to work, they wanted to find a way, but they felt as if it was employers that were putting up barriers, rather than them not being able to find work.”

In a blog for Inclusion Scotland, Price wrote: “Universal Credit in Scotland is a punitive system that subjects claimants to relentless scrutiny and impossible standards.

“This impacts every aspect of their lives, with decisions made by the DWP affecting mental and physical health.

“The system not only fails to support disabled people who wish to work but also disregards those who cannot.”

The focus groups were the first phase of a five-year, €3 million research project led by King’s College London (KCL) and seven other research organisations, and in collaboration with seven organisations that work with claimants in the UK, Spain, Hungary, Norway and Estonia, including Inclusion Scotland.

The project is funded by the European Research Council, and led by Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger, from the Centre for Society and Mental Health and KCL’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

The research is comparing the experiences of claimants in different countries, examining the impacts of these experiences on mental health and work, and looking at how policies influence these experiences.

When the study was announced last year, Professor Baumberg Geiger said: “To date, most research has looked at whether these systems reduce poverty and encourage people to work.

“These are important, but from speaking to claimants, we know that other things matter too – whether benefits provide dignity, security and feel fair; or whether people feel stigmatised, insecure, and unjustly treated.”

19 December 2024

Streeting set to announce next stage in long-term social care plan within weeks

The government is set to announce the next stage in developing its 10-year plan for social care within weeks, the health and social care secretary has told MPs.

Wes Streeting told members of the Commons health and social care committee yesterday (Wednesday) that he planned to publish further details on how the government would approach devising a long-term solution to the social care crisis “in the new year”.

In July, research by Disability Law Service found that disabled people across England were continuing to face unlawful discrimination and inequality on an “unparalleled” scale due to “unjust” social care charging policies.

Days later, the new Labour chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told MPs that it would “not be possible” to take forward reforms to adult social care charging that had been repeatedly delayed by successive Conservative governments.

The reforms – although widely seen as regressive and unfair – would have introduced a lifetime cap of £86,000 on how much anyone pays for social care in England.

The reforms were based on some of the recommendations made by the 2011 Dilnot commission on care funding.

Streeting said yesterday that there was “no solution to the crisis in the NHS that doesn’t also involve a solution in social care”, while social care “is important in and of itself, whether that’s supporting disabled people of all ages, or supporting people in later life”.

He said the new government had taken “significant and important steps” in its first five months in office, including measures in the employment rights bill that will “deliver not just better pay for care workers” but also “better career progression and recognition”.

He also said the budget had provided “the biggest expansion of carer’s allowance since the 1970s”, an increase of £86 million in spending on the disabled facilities grant, and an extra £680 million ringfenced funding for social care.

Streeting said these measures do not “represent the solution to the care crisis”, but he added: “We’ve been in government for five months. I don’t think those four things are a bad start, but there is more to do.”

He said he accepted that, without government action, there would be “continued mismanaged decline”.

Streeting said the government needed a 10-year plan for social care to sit alongside the 10-year plan for health and that he would be “setting out in the new year how we will build that plan”.

He claimed there was cross-party “ambition” on social care, with all parties saying they wanted to “work together to fix the care crisis and that’s what we want to do”.

And he said he wanted “all parties in parliament to be… engaged and involved in that, as I think that’s an opportunity to build consensus”.

But asked by Labour’s Josh Fenton-Glynn if the government would be “setting out a comprehensive plan”, or merely announcing a new commission to examine the social care crisis, Streeting said only: “It means we’re setting out how we’ll go about building the 10-year plan in the new year.”

19 December 2024

Disabled woman says council helped drive her to suicide attempts over ‘impossible’ care assessment deadlines

A local authority’s actions helped drive a disabled woman to attempt to take her own life, after it imposed an “impossible” two-week deadline upon her as part of a discriminatory social care assessment process.

Clare*, from Cambridgeshire, who has multiple health conditions, including a visual impairment, was told she needed to fill out an inaccessible form as part of a financial assessment.

She was told that if she wanted to keep more than £28 of her £110.40 a week daily living personal independence payment (PIP) she would have to provide detailed receipts, invoices and figures.

But she was given only two weeks to fill out the form and provide the evidence, even though council staff were aware of her history of mental distress and self-harm.

Her case is just the latest to expose the financial hardship and emotional harm caused by cash-strapped councils charging working-age disabled people for their care and support.

Cambridgeshire County Council had asked Clare to provide details of her disability-related expenditure (DRE), disability-related costs that can be considered when assessing how much a disabled person can afford to pay in care charges.

Even though she sent digital evidence showing DRE of thousands of pounds over the previous year, the council insisted she still had to complete its inaccessible form.

Because of her visual impairment, she needed a support worker to help her put the evidence together and fill in the council’s form, which had to be printed out and filled in by hand, and she found the process “too overwhelming and distressing to do quickly”.

She also found there was not enough space on the form to include more than a tiny proportion of all her disability-related expenses.

The distress caused by the council’s actions has now triggered two suicide attempts in the last few weeks, she says.

Now she wants to see all local authorities introduce safeguarding measures that would ensure they pay particular care when dealing with financial assessments of disabled people with a history of mental distress or self-harm, and others concerned about the assessment, and give them at least three months to complete the form and provide the necessary evidence.

The council was aware of her history of significant mental distress and suicide attempts when it imposed its original two-week deadline for her to provide detailed proof of her DRE in early September, she says.

But for the last three months, the council has refused to allow her a more reasonable deadline, other than allowing her a couple of short extensions.

It did offer support from her social worker to help her fill out the form, but Clare said this would have risked a conflict of interest as the social worker had previously dismissed many of the expenses she was hoping to claim for.

The whole three months was spent “panicking” about the “impossible deadlines”, she said.

She had asked to be warned when the last extension was due to expire, so she could request another one, but she said the council instead went ahead and disregarded all her DRE and charged her the full £138 a week – more than she receives in PIP – as a contribution towards a package of just 14 hours of council-funded support.

Clare said: “I told my social worker how suicidal it was making me and how I couldn’t sleep and was having panic attacks.”

The receipts she has collected – with the assistance of her support workers, who she has had to pay for this work – show she is spending far more every month trying to address the disability-related needs she faces in her daily life than she receives in benefits, the only income she receives.

She said: “My income is not enough to live on, really, but social services want all the PIP and a huge amount of what’s left as well.

“I have begged and pleaded with them, but they have no mercy on disabled people.”

The full-time university student is being left increasingly in debt by the council’s continuing refusal to make reasonable adjustments for her, and she has recently had to apply for another credit card so she can afford to eat and continue to study.

She has had to spend thousands of pounds in the last year on disability-related expenditure such as humidifiers, microwave steriliser bags, vinyl gloves, water filters and distillers, wash cloths, heat masks for warm compresses, citric acid for descaling and cleaning dehumidifiers, taxi receipts, supplements, food deliveries, as well as purchases of specialist headphones, screen protectors and audio equipment that she needs because of her visual impairment.

Clare told the council that its deadline “set me up to fail and sets me up for further reduced quality of life where I would have another appeal taking over my limited time and forcing me to engage with disability rights advice, legal rights advice, and providing mountains of evidence to overturn a discriminatory decision”.

Her ordeal has convinced her that every council should introduce a system that adds a marker on the files of disabled people who receive care and support and need “additional support” or express distress about the process.

This would impose a duty on the council to ensure the disabled person was able to cope with the financial assessment process and the “overwhelming, distressing form” and offer them support and the necessary deadline extensions.

She said: “I think the additional support marker would mean fewer people would try to harm themselves or take their own lives and would be less likely to be forced to refuse care because of the unaffordability of care charges.

“In a fair world, councils would not be charging vulnerable disabled people for care.

“At the very least, they could harm a few less people through denial of care and driving them into unbearable poverty and debt using social care charges.”

Anne Pridmore, founder and director of Being the Boss, who has provided advice to Clare, said: “Disabled people do not want to be living in a negative frame of mind.

“It accentuates your impairment if you’re having to provide evidence to support your claim.

“It’s far, far too complicated.”

Pridmore, who is running free online workshops for users of personal assistants with fellow disabled expert Iggy Patel, through the Bringing Us Together network, said: “Most disabled people are stressed out anyway with all they are going through.

“Everything you buy to do with disability is expensive so to have to prove that you’re using X number of incontinence pads a week in order to claim [DRE], that’s very, very stressful.”

She said the experiences of people who have been at their workshops showed the concerns about the DRE process that Clare has raised were “really widespread”.

Cambridgeshire County Council refused to discuss Clare’s case, even though she had provided permission for it to do so.

Instead, it said in a statement: “We understand how stressful and challenging financial assessments around social care can be, which is why the council’s adult social care team work with individuals on care and support options.

“Whilst we don’t comment on individual cases, the team always look at ways they can support and be more flexible to meet a person’s particular needs.

“Although there is a standard two-week deadline for financial assessment referrals, extensions are often given and other ways to support people are also offered, such as in-person support.

“We continue to work with and support the person to conclude their financial assessment process.”

*Not her real name

Further information on the campaign to end care charging is available here and here and here, and there is guidance on DRE here

The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind, SOS Silence of Suicide and Rethink

19 December 2024

Two reports expose serious and critical barriers disabled people still face in their daily lives

Two new reports from organisations founded by disabled entrepreneurs have highlighted some of the “serious” and “critical” barriers disabled people are facing in their daily lives.

The reports were produced by accessible travel company Wheelie Good Travel Company (WGTC) and accessibility information provider AccessAble.

The WGTC report, Disabled Passenger Airport Assistance – The Need to Change, shows many disabled passengers face barriers such as inadequate staff training, inconsistent accessibility infrastructure, shortages of essential equipment, delays in receiving assistance, and safeguarding concerns.

Of 275 respondents to the WGTC survey, 97 per cent of them reported negative experiences while travelling through UK airports.

A major area of concern was in communication, with concerns about the “lack of information, inappropriate and disrespectful language and attitudes towards disabled travellers”, and poor quality information that left them “feeling stressed, anxious, disempowered, abandoned and frustrated”.

Passengers reported being left on a plane for up to three hours after arrival, with no information about the reason for the delay or how long they would have to wait.

One said: “I was left on the plane for over two hours; no-one informed us of how long the delay would be or why. I felt abandoned.”

More than half (53 per cent) of the respondents reported a lack of continuity of airport assistance by providers, ranging from “being abandoned part way through the journey of care” to a “complete breakdown of communication between different agencies”.

Nearly two-fifths (38 per cent) of respondents reported staff being rude or disrespectful to disabled passengers they were assisting, with one reporting being “treated like an inconvenience and a nuisance”.

Among problems with a lack of equipment, survey respondents reported a shortage of wheelchairs, ambulifts (used to take passengers with mobility impairments on and off flights), aisle chairs, hoists and slings.

One in 10 (10 per cent) of the respondents said they had experienced poor manual handling when being transferred between their wheelchairs and their aircraft seat.

And 13 per cent said they had experienced either damage to their wheelchair or mobility equipment or it being lost by the company responsible for baggage handling.

The survey results suggested that the best three airports for providing an acceptable level of assistance were Manchester, Heathrow and Gatwick.

But they also showed Heathrow, Manchester and Gatwick to be the three airports where disabled passengers were most likely to report an unacceptable level of assistance.

The report said this showed the inconsistency in the standard of service provided, causing “anxiety and increased stress” to disabled passengers.

One respondent said: “You never know what standard of assistance to expect and it can vary wildly at the same airport from visit to visit.

“It sometimes feels like a lottery.”

Another said: “When it is good it can be very good and when it is bad it can be very bad.”

The report makes more than 25 recommendations, across communications, equipment, manual handling, loss and damage to equipment, continuity of support through an assistance journey, and staff training.

It concludes that there are “serious issues and concerns about the way airport assistance is currently managed and operated” and “an urgent need to change the current system”.

Jon Fletcher, WGTC’s founder and chief executive and the report’s author, said travelling “should be a seamless experience for everyone”, but the findings show “there is still a long way to go”.

He called on the government, airlines, and airport operators to collaborate on producing “actionable solutions” to the concerns raised in his report.

Meanwhile, AccessAble’s survey has revealed “critical gaps in accessibility information, staff training, and venue practices, all of which contribute to an ongoing barrier to inclusion”.

More than three-quarters (77 per cent) of those who took part in the survey said they had abandoned plans to visit a venue because they could not find information on its accessibility, but almost all of them (96 per cent) said that having this information in advance would make them more likely to visit.

The survey had been open from late 2023 until the middle of this year, and it received more than 1,000 responses, with more than four-fifths (81 per cent) of respondents disabled people.

One in five (18 per cent) of those who took part rated the “disability awareness” of staff at venues as poor or extremely poor, while three-quarters (73 per cent) had had to leave a venue because it was not accessible to them.

Of those who took part in the AccessAble survey, more than half (56 per cent) said they had experienced disability discrimination when visiting a venue, while more than two-thirds (68 per cent) believed non-disabled people were not aware of the barriers that disabled people face.

Dr Gregory Burke, the disabled founder and executive chair of AccessAble, said the survey results “clearly highlight the urgent need for businesses, organisations, and venues to prioritise accessibility”.

He said: “Providing accessible services is not only a moral imperative but also a strategic advantage.

“It can lead to enhanced business outcomes by reaching a larger market, mitigating legal risks, and building stronger customer loyalty.”

19 December 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

For almost two decades, passengers at a town’s main railway station have repeatedly been promised lifts – but they have never arrived. Travellers at Luton, named among England’s 10 worst stations in 2009, still face flights of stairs to reach most platforms. Network Rail plans to start preparatory work in the spring but did not know how long the project would take or how much it would cost: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj49d77wpwwo

19 December 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

MPs join activists and families in call for public inquiry into years of DWP deaths

MPs have joined disabled activists and bereaved families in calling for a public inquiry into the years of deaths linked to the actions of ministers, senior civil servants and advisers at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Disability News Service (DNS) has shown how the department spent more than a decade covering up evidence that links its actions with hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths of disabled social security claimants.

Documents secured through freedom of information requests, inquest reports, and investigations by DNS and bereaved family members show how DWP destroyed incriminating records, failed to share crucial evidence with its own independent reviewers and grieving relatives, and even lied to a coroner.

Much of the evidence is included in the book The Department*, written by DNS editor John Pring and published in August.

Next week, DNS plans to bring together key evidence from the book, as well as important new information secured since The Department went to press, in a detailed explanation of why a public inquiry is needed.

This week, MPs joined the fight to persuade the government to order a public inquiry through an early day motion (EDM) tabled by John McDonnell, the former Labour shadow chancellor, who currently sits as an independent MP and has supported the disabled people’s anti-cuts movement for more than a decade.

He focuses in his EDM on the book’s “shocking evidence” of harm caused by the work capability assessment (WCA).

Among that evidence is research by public health experts from the universities of Liverpool and Oxford, who showed in 2015 that, across England, the reassessment through the WCA of disabled people receiving the old incapacity benefit was associated with an extra 590 suicides between 2010 and 2013.

McDonnell calls in the EDM for the government to set up an independent public inquiry into the role played by ministers, civil servants and advisers “and their culpability for the suffering” identified in Pring’s book.

So far, the EDM has been signed by five other MPs: Labour’s Jon Trickett, Mary Kelly Foy and Ian Lavery, SDLP’s Claire Hanna, and DUP’s Jim Shannon.

McDonnell said on Tuesday, at a vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice, that it was “difficult to describe the scale of the suffering” caused by the WCA, including “tragically, a large number of disabled people losing their lives”.

Disabled people and allies were taking part in the vigil as a two-day high court hearing began into a case taken by disabled activist and author Ellen Clifford that challenges proposals by the last government to tighten the WCA (see separate stories), which have yet to be ruled out by the new government.

Disabled activist Rick Burgess, who helped persuade the Oxford and Liverpool academics to carry out the 2015 research, said: “A responsible government would actually want to learn what had gone wrong.

“A public inquiry is an ideal way of doing that, a democratic way of doing that, a transparent way of doing that.”

Mark Harrison, from the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance of disabled people’s organisations, said an inquiry was “essential if we are to understand what has gone so horribly wrong in the DWP that has led to so many unnecessary benefit-related deaths”.

Families whose relatives died due to DWP’s actions are also backing the call for a public inquiry.

Joy Dove, whose daughter Jodey Whiting took her own life in February 2017, 15 days after her employment and support allowance was wrongly stopped by DWP for missing a WCA, has been calling for an inquiry for more than five years.

She said: “We need to find out who was responsible for what happened.

“There have been inquiries into Hillsborough and the Post Office scandal.

“Now we need an inquiry into the deaths caused by DWP, including Jodey’s.”

Alison Burton, whose father-in-law Errol Graham starved to death after DWP wrongly stopped his benefits when he missed a WCA, said the families of those who died are being denied justice.

She believes a public inquiry would learn lessons and provide the transparency necessary to stop the “public misconceptions about people who are on the benefits system” and reduce “the hate created by the previous government”.

Imogen Day, whose sister Philippa’s death was caused by widespread flaws and failings in the personal independence payment assessment system, said an inquiry was “sorely needed” because of the “sheer amount of deaths” and serious harm caused to claimants.

She said: “If we don’t find out how it happened, we are not going to find out how to stop it, how to prevent it ever happening again.”

Dr China Mills, who leads Healing Justice Ldn’s Deaths by Welfare project – which uses a digital timeline to track the slow, accumulated violence caused by the social security system over the last three decades – said: “Thanks to the ongoing investigations of Disability News Service we know there have been hundreds of investigations into serious harm and deaths (internal process reviews), and yet these have never been made public, not even to the families of those who have died.

“I don’t believe we’ll find justice from unjust systems, and I don’t think an inquiry alone would deliver justice.

“But it’s an important step for many disabled people and bereaved families as a means to surface currently unseen evidence, to investigate the depth and scale of harm caused by the DWP, and to move us closer to building life-affirming welfare systems.”

Another to call for a public inquiry is Dr Jay Watts, a consultant clinical psychologist and disabled activist, who has played a crucial role in highlighting the impact of DWP’s actions over the last decade.

She believes an inquiry is “essential” and that DWP’s “unrelenting assault on disabled and claimant communities” has damaged hundreds of thousands of lives, “reducing them to a state of hypervigilant anxiety and despair”.

She said the “truth and reconciliation process” of a public inquiry “would begin to heal the deep fissures of distrust and fear between disabled communities and the state”.

DWP had failed to comment on the EDM and the call for a public inquiry by noon today (Thursday).

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press 

12 December 2024

Court hears disabled activist’s challenge to ‘cataclysmic’ cuts to out-of-work disability benefits

The high court in London has this week heard a legal challenge that aims to expose how the last Conservative government used a “sham consultation” to try to push through “cataclysmic” cuts to disability benefits of nearly £3 billion over four years.

The plans to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA) were announced in the 2023 autumn budget, and they would see more than 400,000 disabled people losing out on £416 a month by 2028-29, with many claimants facing strict new conditions and the risk of sanctions.

The new Labour government has promised to make the same overall level of savings but has yet to say how it will do this and if it will implement the WCA cuts.

The judicial review case is being taken by disabled activist and author Ellen Clifford, who is challenging the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over a “rushed and disingenuous” consultation that was held last year before the reforms were announced in the budget.

Before the two-day hearing began on Tuesday, disabled activists and allies from groups including Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Inclusion London, WinVisible, Black Triangle Campaign and Changing Perspectives joined representatives from unions Unite, Equity and PCS in a vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Clifford, who is supported by solicitors from Public Law Project, said before the hearing: “More than 400,000 people will be worse off by £416 a month if the changes proposed in this consultation go ahead.

“And then there is the risk that people will lose even more money if they are sanctioned for not being able to comply with conditions they will now need to fulfil in order to receive their benefits.

“To be blunt, this would be cataclysmic for Deaf and disabled people in the UK and would push many into destitution.”

Clifford believes the true motive of the consultation was to cut spending on disability benefits, rather than trying to get more disabled people into work, while the consultation document failed to provide any “meaningful information about the likely impact of the proposals”.

She said on Tuesday: “I am very glad that we will finally be heard in court today.

“This is a necessary first step in Deaf and disabled people working towards a system that prioritises our lives, rather than cuts or savings.

“Going forwards, we hope there is real co-production in designing a social security system that is a benefit to society and which prevents rather than causes harm.”

John McDonnell, Labour’s former shadow chancellor but currently sitting as an independent MP, who attended the vigil, said he believed the judicial review was “one of the most significant cases for disabled people that I have seen in the last couple of decades”.

He told Disability News Service (DNS): “I think if we are successful, which I think we will be, it could force a whole rethink both in terms of the cuts themselves and also future policy.”

He later told the vigil that The Department*, written by DNS editor John Pring and published in August, had exposed the “brutality” of the work capability assessment and its impact on disabled people, and how it caused many deaths (see separate story).

McDonnell said the last government had been aware of these fatal links and so “you would have expected them to take seriously the discussions and consultations that they had with wider society but also in particular disabled people.

“This legal action demonstrates that they had a complete disregard for consultations, discussions, engagement.

“They had a disregard for the implications of the work capability assessment.”

He said the last government had also shown “a complete disregard for the human suffering that took place and the many lives that were lost”.

Clifford’s case, he said, would “demonstrate just how callous that government measure was, but also their complete disrespect for the very people this policy hurts”.

The proposed cuts will make it more difficult for disabled people to use the protection of the WCA’s “substantial risk” safety net and will make changes to the assessment’s “getting about” and “mobilising” activities.

Paula Peters, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said last year’s “inadequate” consultation was “insulting to the thousands of Deaf and disabled people who the changes will harm” and “misrepresented the proposals as a move to support more benefit claimants into employment, without giving us all the information on how we will be affected”.

Andy Mitchell, co-founder of Unite’s Cut Sanctions Not Incomes campaign, said: “The fact that disabled people have been forced to go to court to challenge a misleading consultation on a policy that will have a devastating impact on so many of us is yet more evidence of how our voices, needs and lives are ignored.”

Austin Harney, from PCS, a member of the TUC disabled workers’ committee, said his union – which represents many frontline DWP workers – was pushing for there to be a “major campaign” to address how disabled people are treated in jobcentres and how DWP is “attacking” disabled benefit claimants.

He told the vigil that it was “cowardly and inhumane, not only by the previous government, but this current government’s not showing any sign that they’ll do something about it”.

Claire Glasman, from the disabled women’s organisation WinVisible, said the substantial risk rule helped many of the women in their network who were survivors of violence, including refugees, those who have fled domestic violence, and women who were abused as children.

And Adam Gabsi, chair of Inclusion London, said the proposed changes to the WCA send “a dangerous message that the government is willing to ignore the lived realities of disabled people in favour of reducing costs.

“I strongly urge decision-makers to reconsider these proposed changes and engage meaningfully with disabled people and their representative organisations.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “We can’t comment on live legal proceedings.”

The department claims it has been clear that the WCA is not working, which it says is why it plans to publish a green paper in the spring on reforming the disability benefits system.

It claims that its plans to support more disabled people into work – including through its Get Britain Working white paper – will reduce spending on benefits, and it claims it will work closely with disabled people and their organisations as it develops its proposals.

It also claims that the secret internal process reviews it carries out into deaths linked to its actions allow it to learn how to improve its processes, and it claims it is cooperating with the Commons work and pensions committee’s inquiry into its safeguarding failures, and that it is looking forward to receiving and responding to the committee’s report.

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press 

12 December 2024

Activists ask why a Labour government is ‘gleefully’ backing Tory plans to tighten work capability assessment

Disabled activists have questioned why a Labour-run department was in the high court this week defending cuts proposed by the last government which would cause “human suffering” among hundreds of thousands of claimants of out-of-work disability benefits.

They spoke during a vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday as disabled activist Ellen Clifford and her lawyers from Public Law Project were preparing to challenge the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over a “rushed and disingenuous” consultation on plans to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA).

The plans were announced in the 2023 autumn budget, and would see more than 400,000 disabled people losing out on £416 a month by 2028-29, with many also facing strict new conditions and the risk of benefit sanctions that could see them lose even more money.

Clifford says the changes would be “cataclysmic for Deaf and disabled people in the UK and would push many into destitution”.

Labour’s work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, has promised to make the savings promised by the Conservatives, who pledged to cut spending by £2.8 billion in the four years to 2028-29 by tightening the WCA.

Kendall said the government would make these savings by “bringing forward our own proposals”, but she has yet to rule out the WCA changes.

Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, told Tuesday’s vigil that it was “incomprehensible that the new Labour government is picking up these plans and seemingly running ahead with them in glee”.

She said: “We know this is slash and burn austerity. We know that a punitive welfare regime does not work.

“It does not get people back into jobs. It does the complete opposite.

“It pushes people away from work, it makes people ill, and it makes people poorer.

“We have 15 years of evidence to show that now.”

She added: “This Labour government needs to show us that they are different than the Tories.

“This Labour government needs to pause these plans and start working with us, not against us.”

Among others supporting Tuesday’s vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London were disabled activists and allies from groups including Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), WinVisible, Black Triangle Campaign and Changing Perspectives as well as representatives from the unions Unite, Equity and PCS.

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, who had travelled from Edinburgh to attend the two-day hearing, said: “All of us have been campaigning now for 15 years against the injustice of the work capability assessment, which is nothing less in most cases than a disability denial factory with its foundations in the American insurance system.

“What we did not expect was for a new government to come in and continue with the Tories’ plans to cut an extra three billion from the support that disabled people need to live with dignity.”

Claire Glasman, from WinVisible, said: “I think Ellen’s judicial review is a point for everyone to focus on to stop the Labour agenda of continuing with the Tory cuts.

“Before they were elected we knew they were going to be tough on welfare and it’s actually worse than we expected.”

The proposed cuts will make it more difficult to use the protection of the WCA’s “substantial risk” safety net and will make changes to the assessment’s “getting about” and “mobilising” activities.

Emma Cotton, a social security adviser with Equity, said: “The government is here today to defend this, and it does so against the mounting evidence of benefit deaths, many of which can be linked to the failure to apply the substantial risk rules, the substantial risk rules that the government propose to make even tougher.”

She said the government was taking these measures even though the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities called on the last government in a report earlier this year to take “all legislative, policy and administrative measures to prevent, review and respond to occurrences of ‘unexpected deaths’ and ‘benefit deaths’”.

John McDonnell, Labour’s former shadow chancellor but currently sitting as an independent MP, said he wanted to “educate this government that disabled people will not stand by and witness again the human suffering that the WCA has caused”.

Andy Mitchell, co-founder of Unite’s Cut Sanctions Not Incomes campaign, said the new government “should be looking to end rather than increase conditionality and sanctions, which are proven to move individual claimants further from employment while causing avoidable harm”.

A DWP spokesperson said: “We can’t comment on live legal proceedings.”

The department claims it has been clear that the WCA is not working, which it says is why it plans to publish a green paper in the spring on reforming the disability benefits system.

It claims that its plans to support more disabled people into work – including through its Get Britain Working white paper – will reduce benefits spending, and it claims it will work closely with disabled people and their organisations as it develops its proposals.

It also claims that the secret internal process reviews it carries out into deaths linked to its actions allow it to learn how to improve its processes, and it claims it is cooperating with the Commons work and pensions committee’s inquiry into DWP safeguarding failures, and that it is looking forward to receiving and responding to the committee’s report.

12 December 2024

Lukewarm reception for rail company’s plan to improve passenger assistance

A train company’s “action plan” to improve its much-criticised passenger assistance services has been given a lukewarm reception by disabled campaigners.

The Office of Rail and Road, the rail regulator, has told Northern that its latest plan for improving the assistance it provides disabled passengers is “acceptable”.

The regulator’s concerns about the publicly-owned operator’s performance date back at least five years.

ORR research (PDF), published in July, found that nearly one in five (18 per cent) disabled passengers who booked assistance at a station managed by Northern, and responded to a survey, did not receive any of that assistance.

And only 74 per cent of disabled passengers travelling through Northern stations were met for their assistance in a “reasonable timeframe”.

ORR had written to Northern about its concerns in July, but the regulator said Northern’s initial response failed to provide reassurance that it understood the causes of its poor performance, that it had “robust plans in place to secure improvements”, or that it had made “appropriate progress” against actions it had planned previously.

ORR had previously raised concerns with Northern in 2019 and 2022 and had been promised that action was being taken.

The regulator said in a follow-up letter in September (PDF) that Northern’s previous plans to improve its services had “either not been fully implemented or not been successful in tackling the underlying causes of failed assists”, and it demanded an improvement plan.

Now ORR says Northern has produced an “acceptable action plan” for improvements over the next year.

Among the promises in its plan, Northern says it will work on: reviewing how it staffs assistance at the 10 stations where it receives most assistance requests, including Leeds; setting up a new team to provide support by phone and WhatsApp to passengers who need assistance; and trialling a new process that will allow passengers at unstaffed stations who have not pre-booked assistance to alert train conductors to their presence at that station.

It will also work on ensuring that all reports of failed assistance are “recorded, investigated and the root cause identified”.

If Northern fails to improve its performance over the next 12 months, ORR may take formal action against the train operator.

Accessible transport campaigner Doug Paulley has experienced a series of failures with passenger assistance on Northern services, including being left locked on a train at Leeds station last year.

He said this week that Northern had “a major, major attitudinal problem towards passenger assistance and certainly towards seeing it as a core part of their job”.

He said the actions promised by Northern to improve its passenger assistance were “a bit wishy-washy”.

He said: “It felt like there was nothing revolutionary in those specific requirements and neither were they particularly specific.

“They were all things that Northern should have been doing anyway.”

He added: “I generally find that the individual staff members, with the odd exception, are really decent people who care about access and who work damn hard, including the guards and station staff, but there is a wider organisational issue.

“To me it stinks of a cultural problem further up.”

Flick Williams, a disability rights campaigner and retired disability equality trainer and access consultant, said: “I welcome the plans for Northern to improve the reliability and consistency of its passenger assistance. But the proof of the pudding comes later.

“A plan is just a plan until we see real improvements to the service offered.”

Northern had failed to comment on the ORR announcement by noon today (Thursday).

Stephanie Tobyn, ORR’s director of strategy, policy and reform, said: “After recent constructive discussions with Northern, we welcome its plan which recognises where it can improve upon its assistance reliability.

“The onus is now on the operator to fulfil what it has set out to achieve. We will monitor its progress over the coming months.”

Meanwhile, ORR has launched a two-month consultation on a new annual assessment that will rate how train companies provide assistance to disabled passengers.

The new assessment will be applied to train operators and Network Rail, and ORR says it will strengthen its ability to hold operators to account for poor performance, highlight good practice to share across the industry, and drive improvements in passenger assistance.

12 December 2024

Rosalie Wilkins: Disabled peer had ‘unwavering belief in justice and equality’

Friends and former colleagues are mourning the loss of a disabled peer and broadcaster who played a key role in fighting for disabled people’s rights in the House of Lords.

Baroness [Rosalie] Wilkins, who died on 1 December, at the age of 78, had become involved in disability politics soon after becoming disabled at university in 1966, campaigning with the Disablement Income Group, and working for the Central Council for the Disabled (which later became RADAR).

She began her career in television in 1972 with a documentary she presented for World in Action on a village for disabled people in the Netherlands.

This led to her presenting ITV’s fortnightly LINK magazine programme from 1975 to 1988.

Jane Campbell and Mike Oliver later wrote in Disability Politics that LINK had been “the vanguard of disability programming in the UK”, “remarkably ahead of its time”, and had “responded to the lead of the emerging disability movement”.

Its first programme featured Vic Finkelstein – one of the pioneers of the disability movement – discussing the social model of disability.

Baroness Wilkins described in Disability Politics how she had introduced LINK’s executive producer Richard Creasey to Finkelstein, a meeting which “very much turned LINK around”, as it originally had been set to be a “very traditional” series.

She later became a freelance television producer and presenter, producing documentaries that highlighted the movement’s development, before working for the National Centre for Independent Living, and then being made a life peer in 1999, where she sat on the Labour benches.

In her maiden speech, on 23 November 1999, Baroness Wilkins focused on the independent living movement, highlighting how centres for independent living had “sprung up around the country” since the 1980s.

She referenced disabled people’s organisations such as the West of England Coalition of Disabled People and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, and called on her government to promote the “social inclusion of disabled young people leaving care”.

In the post-2010 years, she spoke out frequently on the impact of the coalition government’s austerity cuts, and how they would affect disabled people, including with accessible housing, support for disabled pupils, disability benefits, and on hostile rhetoric about benefit claimants in national newspapers.

Her final speech in the Lords was on 25 June 2015, and it focused on housing for disabled people.

She spoke of the “catastrophic” impact of the shortage of accessible housing, and of how a Conservative government policy to weaken accessible housing standards “put accessible home building at risk” at a time when disabled people were “facing a growing crisis in finding suitable accommodation”.

She said the government’s policy was “economic folly” and that ministers had “decided to favour the short-term profits of private developers, for which not only our generation but future generations will pay the price”.

She retired from the Lords the following month.

Baroness Wilkins also served as a board member, vice-chair and chair of the London-based disabled people’s organisation Action on Disability (AoD, formerly Hammersmith and Fulham Action on Disability, HAFAD).

Among her other roles were positions on the Central Health Services Council, the BBC General Advisory Council, and the Prince of Wales’ Advisory Group on Disability, and she was president of the College of Occupational Therapists for five years.

Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK and previously chief executive of AoD for 13 years, described Baroness Wilkins as an “extraordinary advocate, mentor, and friend” who would leave a legacy as a champion for disability rights.

He said she had displayed a “quiet strength” and was “thoughtful, measured, and deliberate in her advocacy”.

He said: “It was this quiet determination that made her such an effective leader.

“She could dismantle opposition with logic, build bridges with empathy, and inspire action with her unwavering belief in justice and equality.”

He said she “had a vision for a world where disabled people were not just included but celebrated – where accessibility was a given, and discrimination was a thing of the past”.

AoD said Baroness Wilkins had been “deeply involved” in local and national campaigns for disabled people and was “passionately dedicated to the work of HAFAD”.

David Buxton, the current chief executive of AoD, said he was “deeply saddened” by the news of her death.

He said: “When I think of Ros, my first memory is of her smile and laughter during the times we spent discussing disability issues and political challenges.

“My last memory of her is of her holding my hands firmly in her home and urging me that Action on Disability must return to its roots as a true disabled people’s organisation.

“She reminded me that at the heart of everything is the voice of disabled people – a voice we must listen to in order to shape a better and stronger future for AoD.”

Cllr Sharon Holder, AoD’s chair, added: “Although I never met Rosalie personally, I have heard so much about the incredible work she did for the local disabled community as a leader and campaigner.

“With great gratitude and honour, we will remember and celebrate Ros’s immense contributions to Deaf and disabled people, both locally and nationally.

“Her determination and energy shaped who we are today, and her legacy continues to inspire us to press on with the hard work needed to achieve true equity and inclusion in society.”

12 December 2024

Advice services run by disabled people under threat due to ‘constant challenge’ of securing funding

Advice services provided by disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) are under significant financial threat, despite a surge in demand for the support they provide, new research has shown.

More than nine in 10 (93 per cent) of the DPOs who took part in a survey reported increased demand for their advice services in the last year, but more than two-fifths said they were at risk of closure.

And of the 29 DPOs that took part in the survey, 17 said it was likely that they would have to cut their services in the next year.

The figures came from a survey of members carried out by the AdviceUK network, which includes 58 DPOs.

One of the DPOs that contributed to a report on the research (PDF) was Equal Lives, whose advisers helped with nearly 900 issues last year, including benefits, social care, workplace accessibility and discrimination.

Sarah Little, advice and membership team manager for Equal Lives, said securing sustainable funding was “a constant challenge”.

She told AdviceUK: “Reduced local authority funding is forcing us to cut key services like welfare benefit form filling and appeal representation.

“The uncertainty of our funding with short-term contracts makes it difficult to plan ahead and doesn’t provide the stability we need to grow and innovate.

“Without reliable funding, our advice service faces a precarious future − potentially leading to staff restructuring or even closure.”

Andrew MacKay, chief executive of Disability Law Service, told AdviceUK’s researchers that legal advice services at his organisation were a “lifeline” but were under threat.

He said: “The lack of long-term funding is a constant strain on our resources and staff.

“Unfunded programmes like our community care and housing helpline risk closure without new support.”

Caroline Collier, from Inclusion Barnet’s Campaign for Disability Justice, told Disability News Service (DNS) this week: “At Inclusion Barnet, we know our local users really appreciate being able to talk to peer advisors who understand the barriers they face.

“More than that, we know that the fraying of the social security safety net – something the Campaign for Disability Justice is desperately concerned about – means skilled, appropriate advice is more important than ever.

“That’s why it’s hugely concerning to hear that 41 per cent of the DPOs surveyed were unsure their advice services would continue.

“We’re grateful to AdviceUK for highlighting this situation, but this goes wider even than advice services, important though they undoubtedly are.

“The Campaign for Disability Justice believes that, 20 years on from Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People (PDF)*, we need a new, ambitious strategy to revitalise DPOs, with a coherent plan to ensure they are commissioned to provide the local services disabled people need.”

The AdviceUK report also includes an advance statistic from a forthcoming report** by Disability Rights UK (DR UK) on how the “current funding landscape is structurally inequitable, inaccessible and fails to recognise the unique contributions and needs of DPOs”.

The DR UK figure shows that 90 DPOs between them received only 2.7 per cent of the total value of government contracts awarded to nine disability charities that are not led by disabled people, between April 2022 and March 2023.

Rebecca Tayler Edwards, DR UK’s DPO development manager, told DNS that, as laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), decisions affecting disabled people must not be made without the direct participation of disabled people.

She said: “By sidelining DPOs, governments and funding organisations violate the spirit of the UNCRPD and undermine the fundamental rights of disabled people to self-representation and self-determination.

“We demand an equitable distribution of funding to our communities based on the principles of empowerment, self-determination and support at home.

“Current funding models are setting back the full inclusion of disabled people.

“Non-disabled led organisations appropriate our language of empowerment yet do not enable disabled people to have access to decision-makers or people in power.

“In the context of a professionalised sector, organisations not led by disabled people financially benefit from talking about our oppression in the same society in which they are privileged by it.

“As organisations led by and for disabled people, we are coming together to demand funding justice for our sector.”

AdviceUK has released a short film to highlight the role DPOs play in supporting disabled people, and it is calling for improved funding and support for the wider advice sector through its Advice Saves campaign.

Liz Bayram, chief executive of AdviceUK, said: “Deaf and disabled people’s organisations (DDPOs) offer a lifeline, providing essential advice, support and advocacy to enable people to live independent and fulfilling lives.

“Yet our research shows they are at breaking point.

“We are calling for sustainable funding solutions, and support for recruiting, training and retaining skilled staff to ensure the future of these vital services.”

She added: “With a government review underway on supporting disabled people in work, it is vital that its recommendations genuinely meet the needs of Deaf and disabled people and ensure that those who may be unable to work are not forgotten.

“At a time of rising demand and shrinking resources, DDPOs are the last line of support for many.

“We cannot afford to let these lifelines disappear.”

*A white paper, published by the Labour government in January 2005, which set out “an ambitious vision for improving the life chances of disabled people so that by 2025 disabled people have full opportunities and choices to improve their quality of life and will be respected and included as equal members of society”

**The Funding Gap: The Financial Disparity Between Disabled People-Led and Non-Disabled People-Led Charities in the UK, to be published by DR UK next month

12 December 2024

Concern over government’s ‘terrible joke’ appointment of rail access ‘ambassador’

Disabled campaigners have questioned the government’s decision to appoint a senior rail executive as one of its new disability and access ambassadors.

Alison Smith, the accessibility and inclusion lead for the Great British Railways Transition Team, who previously had a similar role at Network Rail, has been appointed as the rail ambassador.

Although the appointment was not announced on the website of the government’s Disability Unit, it was released on social media.

Among those questioning the appointment was Doug Paulley, who has spent years successfully challenging the rail industry over its access failures.

He described her appointment as “a terrible joke”.

He told Disability News Service of an incident that took place several years ago, after he had complained about two Network Rail employees who made abusive comments about him on social media.

He said Smith had asked him to read out the abusive messages in a meeting, and later, after Network Rail agreed to address his concerns, she failed to take any significant action to ensure those measures were carried out.

There are also concerns about comments Smith made in a parliamentary evidence session last year.

Just 12 months ago, she defended Network Rail’s practice of building new inaccessible footbridges, when she was giving evidence to MPs on the Commons transport select committee.

Last year, the public body, which owns and runs most of the country’s rail infrastructure, had admitted it would be building at least 17 inaccessible footbridges across England, Scotland and Wales in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

When asked to justify building inaccessible bridges, Smith told MPs that they were often in locations that could not provide power for a lift, and that ramps “can be very substantial bits of infrastructure not always supported by the community”, so Network Rail made decisions that were “in the best interests of the taxpayer”.

Paulley said these comments made her an inappropriate choice as the government’s new disability and access ambassador for rail.

He said: “I have absolutely no confidence at all that she will in any way champion disabled people’s rights.”

Sam Jennings, a disabled activist whose website #DisabledByTheRailway highlights the access barriers faced by disabled rail passengers, said: “The comments she made about inaccessible bridges just made me breathe fire.

“I just don’t see how someone who makes comments like that can be an appropriate choice as an access ambassador.”

She added: “It’s disappointing that we keep seeing the same names shuffled around the industry like a revolving door.

“There needs to be wholesale change and reform to the attitudes of everyone in the industry and it’s getting tiresome to see this never taken seriously enough.”

Flick Williams, a disability rights campaigner and retired disability equality trainer and access consultant, also questioned if Smith was “the right pick” for the role.

She said: “She forgets that railways divide communities, and inaccessible bridges impose a disability apartheid.

“The Equality Act is not something you can pick and choose from when it suits and ignore it when it doesn’t.

“If she doesn’t understand the importance of Network Rail being an inclusive, good neighbour to communities, perhaps she is not the right pick.”

In response to the concerns, a Network Rail spokesperson said in a statement: “We are delighted that Alison Smith has been appointed disability and access ambassador, representing the rail industry.

“With her extensive knowledge and experience as Network Rail’s head of customer strategy and now as GBRTT’s accessibility and inclusion lead, Alison will help build on the meaningful improvements in accessibility already seen across the rail sector, an understanding of the challenges faced and the commitment that rail travel should be accessible for everyone.”

There are currently 20 disability and access ambassadors, covering sectors such as advertising, arts and culture, banking, energy, housing, recruitment, retail and tourism.

The roles were created by the Conservative government to “drive improvements to the accessibility and quality of services and facilities in their sector for disabled people, as consumers and employees”.

But only a small number of the ambassadors chosen by the last government publicly self-identified as disabled people, and the Conservative government admitted that it did not even ask them if they were disabled people.

Disability News Service asked the Cabinet Office last year in a freedom of information request how many of its ambassadors identify as disabled people, and how many declined to provide that information when applying for the roles.

It replied: “Thank you for your request regarding the self-identification of the Disability and Access Ambassadors as disabled.

“This information is neither sought nor collected.”

The last government had claimed that its heavily-criticised National Disability Strategy would remove barriers to disabled people’s participation in public life.

Sir Stephen Timms, Labour’s new minister for social security and disability, said in November that he was looking for ambassadors who were “ambitious, passionate and dynamic, with strong networks in their sectors and the ability to reach out to a wide range of organisations to create momentum for change”.

12 December 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Two ministers are to be assigned to the assisted dying bill in a highly unusual move for a private member’s bill where the government is neutral – a sign that it will intensely monitor the details of such a significant change. The bill’s committee will have nine MPs who were opponents of the bill, including its most high-profile Conservative opponent, Danny Kruger, and 11 MPs who were in favour: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/11/two-ministers-to-sit-on-assisted-dying-bill-committee

An artificial intelligence system used by the UK government to detect welfare fraud is showing bias according to people’s age, disability, marital status and nationality, the Guardian can reveal. An internal assessment of a machine-learning programme used to vet thousands of claims for universal credit payments across England found it incorrectly selected people from some groups more than others when recommending who to investigate for possible fraud: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/06/revealed-bias-found-in-ai-system-used-to-detect-uk-benefits

A disability charity that provides services to people with learning difficulties says it may be forced to stop running at least 60 of those services because of increasing national insurance costs. Mencap is one of a growing number of care organisations warning they will have to axe vital services because of the impact of the budget. Businesses – including charities – currently pay a rate of 13.8 per cent national insurance on employees’ earnings above £9,100 a year, but that will increase to 15 per cent in April 2025, instead starting when wages reach £5,000: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy09dwlj2x2o

12 December 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Anger and concern over government’s ‘hand-me-down’ employment white paper

Disabled people and their organisations have pointed to “fundamental” and “very concerning” flaws in the government’s “hand-me-down” employment support white paper.

The long-awaited Get Britain Working white paper was launched by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall on Tuesday, and includes proposals for a national jobs and careers service, plans for central government to work more closely with mayoral and local authorities, and a focus on using the NHS to tackle the rise in “economic inactivity” (see separate story).

There is also the promise of a “youth guarantee” in England, so every young person aged 18 to 21 has access to “further learning, help to get a job or an apprenticeship”.

But the white paper fails to answer key questions about how disabled people on out-of-work benefits will be treated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), while it confirms that proposals for reforming the disability benefits system will not be published until next spring.

The attitude of disabled people and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) towards the white paper was not helped by the prime minister’s decision to write a column for the Mail on Sunday.

The article criticised the last government’s “shirkers” rhetoric but then pledged to “get to grips with the bulging benefits bill blighting our society” and to “crack down hard on anyone who tries to game the system”.

This allowed the newspaper to run a front-page story that claimed “Starmer declares war on benefits Britain”.

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People said yesterday (Wednesday): “If the government was sincere in working with disabled people to improve our lives it would first agree a co-production process with our organisations towards designing a new disability strategy.

“Instead, we are hit with these hand-me-down relics of a discredited policy approach together with toxic messaging in hostile media from the prime minister.

“It is hard to see any difference between this and the last government.”

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said she was particularly concerned by the white paper’s emphasis on increasing engagement between disabled people on out-of-work benefits and employment support services, particularly those disabled claimants “who do not currently have any contact with Jobcentre Plus”.

She said: “These plans are only going to ramp up most people’s anxiety levels and probably make them even more ill.

“Any additional engagement with DWP or other services should be voluntary and initiated by disabled people who would like to work, not forced on them.”

And she highlighted the double impact of the white paper and tomorrow’s parliamentary debate and vote on Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill.

Burnip said she was concerned that this combination was “telling disabled people that if they don’t work, their lives are worthless”.

She pointed to a Labour advert that claimed the government’s “plan to get Britain working” would offer a “pathway back to work” for disabled people “who don’t want to be written off”.

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, said it was “deeply offensive and degrading” to refer to disabled people as “‘written off’, as if our lives have no meaning or purpose and that we exist on the margins, on the scrap heap of society”.

Although the government insists it will consult disabled people on its plans, through a new panel, disabled activists pointed out that proper co-production of policy should start at the beginning of the process, and not when a white paper had already been published.

Fazilet Hadi, head of policy at Disability Rights UK (DR UK), said: “Given that disabled people are the subject of the white paper, it is disappointing that we weren’t engaged with prior to its publication.

“There is mention of setting up a disability advisory panel to assist with the changes, which is welcome, but it is likely that this will have limited influence.”

She added: “Local disabled people’s organisations should be funded to engage with local job plans.”

Inclusion London said it was concerned that promises of consultation “come against the backdrop of a pre-stated commitment to deliver Conservative cuts of £3 billion from health- and disability-related social security payments.

“It is very difficult for disabled people and our representative organisations to see this as a good faith exercise of genuine consultation, when vital parameters have already been set without our input.”

Bill Scott, an independent policy consultant and previously head of policy at Inclusion Scotland, said the new panel “gives the appearance of co-production but avoids the substance” as the white paper proposals “have been arrived at with zero to minimal input from disabled people and their representative organisations.

“Any consultation with DDPOs* now will at best result in tinkering at the edges and at worst provide legitimacy for policies which punish rather than provide genuine support to young disabled people.”

There are also concerns that the government has yet to announce how it will find the £2.8 billion in savings by 2028-29 that the last government promised to find by tightening the work capability assessment.

And there was no mention in the white paper of how the Labour government plans to reform personal independence payment (PIP), following the last government’s controversial consultation that included a proposal to replace cash payments with a voucher system.

The government’s plans in these areas will not be published until the spring, and even then only in the form of a green paper that will be put out for consultation.

Inclusion London welcomed the white paper’s proposals to move away from enforcing benefit conditionality and DWP’s “punitive approach” that has been “dangerously traumatising” for disabled people and to move instead towards “genuine support”.

Julia Modern, Inclusion London’s senior policy and campaigns manager, said: “We’re pleased, for example, to see a commitment that there will be no national or local targets for Jobcentre Plus staff to apply sanctions; however, we believe there should be no place for sanctions at all in an effective social security system and we urge the government to move away from this failed policy entirely.”

Inclusion London also noted the “difference in language” between how the white paper refers to disabled benefit claimants and employers.

Modern said: “While the former must fulfil ‘obligations’ to receive assistance, the white paper discusses only how employers should be ‘supported’.

“This is despite employers having existing legal obligations to provide reasonable adjustments, a fact that is never mentioned in the paper, which also does not name the legislation, the Equality Act 2010 (passed by a Labour government), that enshrines this duty.”

Fazilet Hadi, from DR UK, raised concerns about the further reforms to come.

She said: “Whilst it is positive that the white paper is couched in more supportive and enabling language, it is difficult to fully believe in the change of tone, when proposals on benefit cuts are round the corner.

“Combining jobcentres with the careers service, devolving job plans to local and regional government and introducing a youth guarantee, are on the face of it positive; however, there are huge societal barriers to overcome if the dial on disability employment is to shift.

“Low educational attainment, inadequate social security levels, lack of health and social care support, discriminatory attitudes, inaccessible transport, and inaccessible jobs, remain very real barriers.”

Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales, said the white paper contained few details on how government reforms would affect disabled people.

She called on the government to “take a more robust approach, working in coproduction with disabled people to redesign the benefits system to one that is supportive rather than punitive as well as to creating workplaces that are inclusive not discriminatory.

“Meanwhile, ministers must take urgent action to tackle the cruelty in the way the current system operates and prevent further tragic loss of life among disabled claimants.”

Bill Scott, who is former chair of Scotland’s Poverty and Inequality Commission, said his initial impressions of the white paper were that it contains “a number of positive proposals”.

But he said he was “really concerned that the announced increased investment in employability services and mental health support is completely inadequate to address the scale of the problems faced by young disabled people.

“That may result in young disabled people, particularly those with learning difficulties or mental health issues, being blamed for their failure to take up work and subjected to even higher rates of sanctions.”

Ken Butler, DR UK’s welfare rights and policy adviser, said: “A fundamental problem with the white paper is what it doesn’t say.

“While the government says that it wants to engage with disabled people, there was no such pre-white paper engagement.

“It is also silent as to whether benefit sanctions will be scrapped, and [whether] all participation by disabled claimants with the reforms proposed will be solely voluntary.

“In addition, what it doesn’t acknowledge is that the social security system itself is an obstacle to disabled people finding employment.

“So long as benefits inadequacy exists, disabled people will continue to struggle, so impeding their ability to gain employment.”

And he said there was “genuine concern that still undisclosed work capability assessment and personal independence payment reforms will result in reduced eligibility numbers and a drop in benefit levels paid”.

John McArdle was even more critical.

He said he believed the white paper was simply “preparation for and a smokescreen for swingeing cuts that will further impoverish and immiserate disabled people and irrefutably lead to countless more benefit deaths” and which were “based in a neoliberal ideology, a clear political choice to blame and punish disabled people for economic failure”.

*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations

28 November 2024

Employment white paper promises ‘fundamentally different’ approach, but fails to answer key questions

A new government white paper has promised a “fundamentally different” approach to employment support, including “tackling ill health as the biggest driver of inactivity”, but it has left critical questions unanswered about Labour’s plans for disability benefits.

Disabled people and their organisations pointed yesterday (Wednesday) to “fundamental” and “very concerning” flaws in the white paper, with one disabled people’s organisation describing the proposals as “hand-me-down relics” of the last government’s “discredited” approach (see separate story).

The Get Britain Working white paper includes plans to “transform” jobcentres so they move away from a focus on “box ticking around monitoring benefit compliance” and instead become part of a national jobs and careers service, with a “stronger focus on skills and careers”.

It says: “Checking work-related requirements will move from the foreground to the background of the customer-work coach relationship.”

Jobcentre Plus is likely to be rebranded as part of the white paper’s proposals, some of which will cover England only, while others will apply to the UK, to England and Wales, or to England, Scotland and Wales.

The white paper also focuses on the need to fix the NHS by cutting waiting-lists “so people can get back to health and back to work” and sets out plans to work more closely with mayoral and local authorities to “design and deliver” employment support.

Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said in a written statement to parliament on Tuesday that there were now “a near record 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness or disability” and claimed there was a “growing and unsustainable problem of people being out of work due to poor health”.

The white paper repeatedly mentions the need to tackle the rise in “economic inactivity” – the number of people who are not in work and not looking for work – particularly those with long-term sickness; young people not in education, employment or training; and women carers.

The phrase “economic inactivity” is mentioned 89 times in the white paper, with the government describing the need to reverse the increase as a “national priority”, with long-term sickness-related economic inactivity “at a near-record high”.

The government now plans to give new funding, powers and responsibilities to tackle economic inactivity to mayors and local areas, as well as Wales.

There is also the promise of a “youth guarantee” in England, so every young person aged 18 to 21 has access to “further learning, help to get a job or an apprenticeship”.

And there will be an independent review – running until next summer – into “the role of UK employers in promoting healthy and inclusive workplaces”, including what can be done to increase the recruitment and retention of disabled people.

But there are also huge gaps in the white paper.

Although the government says it will “establish a panel to consult disabled people as part of our wider efforts to ensure that the views and voices of disabled people are put at the heart of the design and delivery of our reforms”, this is only happening now the white paper proposals have been published.

There is also no mention of the significant and continuing safeguarding concerns linked to the Department for Work and Pensions, both through its benefits assessment and conditionality regimes and its universal credit working-age benefits system.

There is little or no information about the government’s plans for imposing conditions and sanctions on those receiving out-of-work benefits.

The white paper says the government wants “to ensure that more people are engaged with support that can help them to work”, but there is no discussion of what kind of pressure will be imposed on claimants to ensure this engagement takes place, although it does say ministers want a new system that “empowers people to feel able to engage with employment support and try work without fear of losing benefit”.

There is also no mention of a possible “duty to engage” with such support for all those who are economically inactive, an idea floated by former New Labour health secretary Alan Milburn in a report backed by Kendall in July.

Kendall promises only a green paper and public consultation next spring on the government’s plans for reform of the disability benefits system, which will include details on whether it plans to replace or reform the work capability assessment (WCA), and is likely to include further details on conditionality.

Because these proposals will be laid out in a green paper, which tend to set out proposals “which are still at a formative stage”, this suggests that any changes are still years away.

There is also no mention in this week’s white paper of where the government plans to find the £2.8 billion in savings that the last government promised to find by tightening the WCA.

This would have seen 424,000 disabled people lose their entitlement to extra support of up to £4,900 a year by 2028-29.

28 November 2024

DWP must take urgent safety steps on large payments, says coroner after suicide, five years on from earlier inquest warning

A coroner has told the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to take urgent safety measures following the suicide of a man who became paranoid after suddenly receiving £5,000 in benefit arrears, five years after a similar call by another coroner.

Richard Brookes took his own life on 25 January, just weeks after DWP paid the first instalment of the £37,000 they owed him into his bank account.

Coroner Anna Morris has now told DWP, in the latest of a series of prevention of future deaths (PFD) reports sent to the department by coroners over the last 15 years, that she believes its safeguarding processes in such situations are flawed.

When it was asked to respond to the report this week, DWP provided a deeply misleading background note to Disability News Service, claiming wrongly that the coroner had said DWP followed its processes correctly.

The coroner’s report comes five years after another coroner sent a similar PFD report to DWP, following the death of Alexander Boamah, who had also died soon after receiving a large payment of benefits arrears.

That coroner wrote in 2019 of “the potential that individuals, without capacity to manage their finances, may come into receipt of funds which place them at particular risk”, with DWP subsequently promising to update policy and guidance “to ensure necessary safeguards are in place”.

This month’s inquest into the death of Richard Brookes shows DWP failed to introduce the “necessary safeguards” to prevent further deaths.

The inquest heard that after the £5,000 appeared in Brookes’s account on 8 December 2023, he became paranoid about the source of the money, and sent text messages to his sister in the days before his death which indicated he did not know where the funds had come from.

Brookes, who appears to have lived in the Stockport area of Greater Manchester, had a diagnosis of possible paranoid schizophrenia and was taking antipsychotic medication at the time he received the money.

Morris said it appeared that a call to him from DWP was either not understood fully or fed into a period of “delusional thinking”.

Under DWP’s Guidance for Making Large Payments, he should have received a call from DWP’s customer experience and advanced support team (CEAST), to assess how best to make the payment.

But there is no record of the content of that conversation, and what steps were put in place to ensure he understood what he was being told.

The arrears had started to mount up in 2016 when he was transferred from disability living allowance to personal independence payment, but did not receive the severe disability payment he was entitled to on top of his employment and support allowance.

It was not until last November that DWP spotted the error, and calculated he was owed over £37,000 in arrears that had built up over those seven years.

The coroner concluded that Brookes had intended to take his own life.

In her PFD report, sent to DWP, she said she believed there was “a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken”.

She said DWP had made “a large payment of money to a vulnerable adult who was then required to self-manage that money.

“In these situations, it is important that there are robust systems in place for ensuring that the requisite assessments and checks are made of an individual to ensure that large payments can be made in a way that does not increase any vulnerability.”

But she said evidence showed that payments can be made “without there being a full note on the system of the content of the call with the individual”.

She added: “I am therefore concerned that there is no way that an agent, quality assessor or team leader can properly evaluate whether any agreement made between the DWP and an individual regarding repayment has fully considered all the relevant factors regarding their vulnerabilities before a large payment is made.”

But she also said DWP did not appear to be able to audit its other large payments to check whether similar failures had happened in any of those cases.

DWP will now have to respond to the coroner’s report.

When asked for its response to the report, why it did not appear to have implemented the changes recommended by the coroner in 2019, and why there was no recording of the CEAST call, DWP incorrectly stated that new processes introduced after Alexander Boamah’s death were followed and that coroner Anna Morris had noted this in her report.

DNS pointed out that this was deeply misleading because what Morris had said in her report was that it was “not possible to evaluate what was said, how long the call took and what steps were put in place to ensure that Rick understood the information within the call”.

She also said that it was “not possible to assess what Rick was asked about his state of mind, any vulnerabilities he was experiencing and his ability to safely manage the receipt of large payments of money”.

DWP also said that not all calls to and from the department are recorded, and it claimed that if a call recording had existed, it would have been submitted as evidence to the inquest.

A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “Our thoughts are with the family and friends of Mr Brookes.

“We will review the coroner’s report and respond in due course.”

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, said: “This is yet another tragic case of a death that could have been avoided had the department heeded the recommendations of PFD reports issued by coroners over the past 15 years.

“It is simply unacceptable that in spite of DWP’s protestations to the contrary, the same errors are made time and time again and disabled people are dying as a result.

“We consider that these systemic failures constitute a grave and systematic violation of disabled people’s human rights, in particular the right to life.

“The department must be held accountable for this trail of bureaucratic violence and neglect.

“It is now crystal clear to all that the department is incapable of self-regulation in fulfilling even a minimum duty of, and standard of, care to severely disabled people that we are entitled to require from a public authority.

“It is simply not fit for purpose.

“We submit that the only way forward to ensure that this duty of care is discharged is to establish an independent inspectorate, perhaps similar in form to Ofsted or the General Medical Council.

“As a precursor, [there must be] a full public inquiry into the department’s appalling litany of failures, leading to countless deaths of disabled people over the past 15 years.

“This inquiry requires to be urgently and immediately constituted to establish all the facts surrounding these tragic deaths and to work at pace to address the issue of how a DWP inspectorate can best operate to prevent further tragedies such as this one from ever happening again.”

The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press 

28 November 2024

Anger over ‘abhorrent’ assisted suicide poster campaign at Westminster tube station

London transport bosses have refused to apologise for plastering the walls of a London Underground station with posters calling for the legalisation of assisted suicide.

Disabled activists were horrified by the sight of poster after poster greeting passengers walking through a tunnel at Westminster tube station this week, in the lead-up to tomorrow’s vote by MPs on Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s terminally ill adults (end of life) bill.

The posters were designed by the pro-assisted suicide campaigning organisation Dignity in Dying, with one of the designs showing a photograph of a woman with terminal cancer dancing joyfully in her kitchen.

The sight of so many Dignity in Dying posters on both walls of the tunnel led disabled activists to label it the “Westminster death tunnel”, and warn of the potential impact on passengers with mental distress.

Campaigners later pasted posters for the Samaritans helpline over every one of the posters, although they were later removed.

Paula Peters, a disabled activist who campaigns against the legalisation of assisted suicide, called for the “immediate” removal of the posters.

She said: “It is absolutely appalling of Dignity in Dying to use Westminster and Oxford Circus stations to advertise for their campaign with their insensitive ads.

“Are they aware that in the year up to March 2024 (PDF), 68 people in mental distress attempted to take their own lives on London Underground, and 24 succeeded?

“That London Underground train drivers, platform staff and ticket line staff are traumatised by each incident of the act of suicide and suicide attempt on the network?

“This is totally insensitive of Dignity in Dying to use the London Underground in this way; they have scant regard for the passengers who have taken their own lives and the workers who have been traumatised.

“This is also insensitive of Transport for London (TfL) and the mayor of London.”

She said the posters appeared to breach TfL advertising standards.

Accessible transport campaigner Tony Jennings said he was “appalled” by the “abhorrent, coercive poster campaign” and said the posters would be “triggering” for those with mental distress and “need removing urgently”.

He called for TfL to “remove the tasteless posters” and for the RMT union to support that call.

Disabled activist Natalya Dell said that for those who experience mental distress, the posters “could be really triggering and upsetting”.

She said: “I think with an issue where there are strong feelings and a lot of painful memories [and] experiences on both sides, that is not something that needs to be on TfL’s advertising.

“It is too nuanced and painful an issue for posters.”

Dignity in Dying refused to explain why it placed so many of its posters in a location so strongly associated with suicides, whether it stood by that decision, and whether it would apologise and remove them.

But a spokesperson said in a statement: “Our Let Us Choose campaign features real people who want a change in the law on assisted dying, either because they are terminally ill and want the choice, or because their loved one wanted the choice but was denied it.

“The campaign uses positive imagery of these people living life on their own terms, alongside messages about why they are campaigning for greater choice.

“It is fully compliant with the Committee of Advertising Practice code.

“For some of our posters to be vandalised in this way is disappointing, and understandably upsetting for those pictured.

“We are in contact with them and we are making sure that they are being supported.”

TfL claimed that the DiD advertising campaign complied with its advertising policy (PDF) and the Committee of Advertising Practice code.

Its policy states that an advertisement will be considered “unacceptable” if it “is likely to cause widespread or serious offence to reasonable members of the public” or is “unacceptable for some other substantial reason”.

TfL refused to say if it thought that so many posters calling for assisted suicide to be legalised at Westminster station was appropriate, whether it was concerned about the impact on people in mental distress in a London Underground station, or who at TfL approved the campaign.

But a TfL spokesperson said in a statement: “We reviewed this advertising campaign against both our advertising policy and the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) code, and it was found to be compliant.”

RMT had not commented by noon today (Thursday).

The office of the mayor for London, Sadiq Khan, refused to say if he thought that so many posters calling for assisted suicide to be legalised at one Underground station was appropriate, and whether he was concerned about the impact on people in mental distress in an Underground station.

But a spokesperson for the mayor said in a statement: “The mayor has no involvement in approving or deciding which ads run on the TfL network, and TfL’s policy reflects legal requirements.”

The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind, SOS Silence of Suicide and Rethink

28 November 2024

Council suddenly pulls funding from disabled woman despite seven-year accessible housing nightmare

A local authority has suddenly pulled the plug on funding that would have ended the seven-year accessible housing ordeal of a disabled woman and her family.

Afsheen Durrani, her husband Imran, and their two children, were finally told in March this year that contractors would begin work on building a ground-floor extension and wet room, seven years after they first appealed to the council for help.

But after months more delays, they were told last week by a council officer that Labour-run Hounslow council could no longer afford to carry out the £40,000 work on their council-owned home.

The work had been approved by the council, although it is not yet clear if it was being paid for through council funding or the government’s disabled facilities grant (DFG) programme, which provides hundreds of millions of pounds every year to help councils fund access improvements to disabled people’s homes.

The Durranis have been seeking a solution to their housing nightmare for seven years, because Afsheen has multiple health conditions, including diabetes, a heart condition, brittle bones, asthma, and osteoarthritis, and is waiting for dialysis and for kidney and pancreas transplants.

The bathroom is on the first floor of their end-of-terrace home, and the council concluded it was not possible or suitable to install a lift or stairlift, or a downstairs bathroom.

Afsheen and Imran now sleep in the ground-floor living-room, which has been turned into a bedroom.

But every time she needs to use the toilet, her husband needs to support her up the stairs to the bathroom, lifting her up each step one at a time.

The council has already accepted she is at risk of falls, following an occupational therapy assessment.

Imran, a former revenue officer for the council, has developed severe muscular problems due to his full-time caring duties.

Their living arrangements mean they cannot entertain friends and family in their home.

They first applied for help with adaptations to their home in April 2017, but after options like a stairlift or a lift were ruled out, the council suggested they move to an accessible property.

Hounslow council eventually accepted that none of the properties they were offered were suitable for Afsheen.

But they also failed to tell the family about the DFG system.

Early last year, the council was forced to apologise and pay the family £250 compensation – on the orders of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman – because of its failure.

The family were told the extension and wet room would cost £40,000, so they applied through the council for a grant to cover the work, although it is not clear whether this was a DFG.

The council approved the £40,000 grant – certain to be many times cheaper than building a new accessible property – in February 2023, and after more than a year of further delays, they were finally given a date in March 2024 for the work to start the following month.

But last week, after months of poor communication and further delays, they were told that Hounslow council was abandoning the project because it no longer had the money to fund the work.

Afsheen told Disability News Service that she has been driven to the point of despair by the seven-year delay and the way they have been treated by the council.

She said: “It’s terrible, especially after seven years of waiting. They don’t care about our situation.

“It’s so difficult doing daily things. Going to the toilet is a mission for me.

“I was going to have my freedom and my dignity…”

Asked how he felt about the way they had been treated, Imran said: “I don’t have the words.

“My wife has suffered so much, I have suffered so much, my children.”

Hounslow council has so far failed to explain why the grant was suddenly withdrawn; how the council justified leaving the family in such an inaccessible and unsafe situation for the last seven years; and what action it was planning to take to provide safe, accessible housing for the Durranis.

Despite Afsheen providing written permission for the council to discuss their case, the council said it would be a “breach of privacy” to do so.

Instead, it produced a statement which failed to mention them by name, or comment on their situation.

Cllr Sue Sampson, the council’s cabinet member for housing management and homelessness, said: “The council is committed to championing equal access for all of our residents with disabilities.

“We work hard to ensure adaptation needs are met and have completed 174 adaptations within the housing stock to support residents with their housing needs this year alone.

“However, the current housing aids and adaptations budget is only £1.2 million, while requests for adaptations have risen by 15 per cent on last year, and unfortunately that means demand outstrips the budget and we have to assess cases based on priority and risk.

“As part of our development programme, we ensure that a proportion of our new affordable housing provision is accessible housing.

“Since March 2024, 31 new wheelchair-adapted homes have been handed over to be let.

“We also ensure all new developments in the borough meet planning requirements and planning policy on the provision of wheelchair-accessible homes.

“Forty-two new wheelchair-accessible homes are expected among the homes currently under construction by the council.”

28 November 2024

Disabled Labour MP uses memorial lecture to push government to implement UN disability convention

A disabled Labour MP has vowed to push her government to implement the UN disability convention into UK law, as she delivered a lecture set up to remember a much-admired activist.

Marsha de Cordova, the MP for Battersea, was delivering the first annual Ruth Bashall Memorial Lecture.

She also promised to continue to support the campaign for a public inquiry into the years of deaths caused by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The lecture was hosted by Stay Safe East, a disabled people’s organisation which provides advocacy and support to Deaf and disabled victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence, hate crime and harassment, and other crime in London.

Ruth Bashall, who died last November, was co-founder of Stay Safe East, as well as a long-standing director, chief executive and then policy manager of the organisation, and the idea of an annual lecture in her name was suggested by her friend and fellow disabled activist Kirsten Hearn.

Hearn said she had “wanted a space in which to honour Ruth’s life which reflected her contribution and would mark her legacy by encouraging Deaf and disabled people to present ideas about oppression, discrimination, harassment and hate and what to do about it nationally”.

In her lecture, de Cordova spoke about the ongoing barriers disabled people face across independent living, transport, housing, employment and education, with many living in poverty, while she said disabled women were more than three times as likely to experience domestic abuse than non-disabled women.

She also said that disabled people were too often “left feeling as though they’re not going to get the right support or the right outcome when they report hate crime to the police”.

De Cordova said that many disabled people were now “struggling after 14 years of austerity, as well as the impact of the pandemic”.

And she highlighted how a series of Conservative-led governments had created a “hostile environment for disabled people” through cuts to social security and local authority funding.

She said: “They were cruel and they were callous and it didn’t matter how many times they were warned about the damage their policies would cause, they did not listen.”

She said the harm they had caused and their “grave and systematic violations” of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities “could have been prevented had they chosen to see us as equals and see us as humans”.

She said she would “continue to fight” for the UN convention to be implemented into UK law.

De Cordova said she also wanted to keep pressing her government to examine policy areas in which it could incorporate parts of the convention into UK law, such as education, independent living and social security and support for disabled people.

Until that happens, she said, “we are not going to achieve equality and justice for us all”.

In response to a question from Disability News Service, she said she still believed there needed to be a public inquiry into the deaths associated with DWP because “somebody need to be held to account”.

She said: “My view hasn’t changed on that and it won’t ever change on that because we all know the impact that the Department for Work and Pensions’ policies have had on disabled people.

“The last 14 years have probably been the worst.

“I’ve heard of so many lives that have been lost as a result of hostile policies that have had a devastating impact.

“No government should ever have been allowed to get away with some of the violations [of the UN disability convention] that the Conservatives – with the support of the Lib Dems for five years – did to our community.”

De Cordova said she was “so inspired and impressed” by Stay Safe East’s work, particularly as it is led and controlled by disabled people.

And she praised Ruth Bashall’s work, which she said was “an inspiration to many”, and said she had “put solidarity into action” and “really was a voice for the voiceless”.

Savi Hensman, chair of Stay Safe East, said that Bashall was “deeply compassionate, committed to solidarity, and with a passion for social justice, as well as practical caring and changing policy structures and attitudes”.

A long-term client of Stay Safe East said in a statement read out at the event that Bashall had saved her life through the support she provided, and that she was an “extraordinary person” and had empowered her, taught her resilience, and helped her to live and “not to just exist”.

28 November 2024

Disabled musicians face discrimination, harassment, racism, and debt, says new report

A new report has revealed the widespread discrimination, sexual harassment, racism and financial problems faced by disabled musicians.

The report found that one in six (16 per cent) disabled musicians who are open about their impairment or health condition had experienced disability-related discrimination at work.

The proportion rose to 38 per cent of disabled musicians who identified as transgender.

More than half (57 per cent) of those disabled musicians who took part in the survey said they faced disability-related barriers that had affected their career and aspirations, with nearly one in 10 of this group (nine per cent) saying it was unlikely they would be working as musicians in a year’s time.

Nearly a quarter (22 per cent) of disabled musicians said they were in debt, in contrast to 13 per cent of non-disabled musicians, with an average pay gap of £4,400 between disabled and non-disabled musicians who earn all their income from music.

The report also says that nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of disabled musicians said they had been sexually harassed at work, compared to 13 per cent of non-disabled musicians.

And the report found that 27 per cent of disabled musicians had experienced racism at work, compared with seven per cent of non-disabled musicians, highlighting another of the areas of intersectional discrimination exposed by the report.

A previous report by Attitude is Everything and Black Lives in Music – Unseen Unheard – found 70 per cent of black disabled music creators and professionals had experienced racism or racial bias towards them, and 22 per cent had accessed counselling as a result.

The new report, Musicians’ Census: Disabled Musicians Insight Report, is based on a survey carried out last year by The Musicians’ Union and the charity Help Musicians, which saw responses from nearly 2,600 disabled musicians.

LLinos Owen, who plays bassoon with Welsh National Opera, said: “We live in a civilised society where asking for help and reasonable adjustments shouldn’t be seen as a nuisance, but I have noticed this can be the case, particularly in freelance roles.

“If I made a request but had to push back on a poor response, I would fear that I might not get booked again.

“It makes me realise how much I have to rely on goodwill, rather than it being a principle.”

She said that “most of the individual managers I have dealt with have been brilliant, going above and beyond and they have genuinely wanted to help me.

“However, when they get a ‘no’ or a poor response from the venue, it makes me nervous that they won’t feel comfortable to advocate further for me.”

Another female musician, aged between 35 and 44, said: “I am autistic and my social difficulties negatively impacted my ability to keep work – I was regularly discriminated against and the impact on my mental health was traumatic.

“I am very, very happy working in education where I am treated with professional dignity and respect.

“This was completely absent from my performing career and destroyed my love of my instrument.”

The Musicians’ Union and Help Musicians worked with the disabled-led accessible music charity Attitude is Everything to launch the report.

Naomi Pohl, the union’s general secretary, said: “The music industry is beginning to take steps to address accessibility and ensure more inclusive workplaces, but there is a long way to go and more progress is urgently needed.”

Paul Hawkins, Attitude is Everything’s head of skills development, said the industry, funders and government could all make it easier for disabled musicians to make a living.

He said: “Faster support for Access to Work and more flexibility around benefits for musicians who work irregular hours or apply for career development funding are vital, as are funders providing additional support for access costs, which has been introduced by members of our Next Stage Talent Development Group.

“Additionally, we encourage the industry to create a culture of disclosure via access riders, such as those developed by The Musicians’ Union and to ensure that the networking opportunities, conferences and workshops – as well as events themselves – are as accessible as possible for disabled musicians.”

28 November 2024

Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week

Former prime minister Gordon Brown has declared his opposition to the legalisation of assisted dying, saying the death of his newborn daughter in January 2002 convinced him of the “value and imperative of good end-of-life care”. He also said that “with the NHS still at its lowest ebb, this is not the right time to make such a profound decision. Instead, we need to show we can do better at assisted living before deciding whether to legislate on ways to die.”: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/22/gordon-brown-improve-end-of-life-care-rather-than-allow-assisted-dying

Campaigners including bereaved families met with MPs to voice their concerns about a mental health trust. Members of the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk travelled to London on Monday. Six prevention of future death reports have so far been sent to the service in 2024 – more than the total it received in 2022: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39nyy30pxjo

The children’s commissioner for England has called for an urgent review of the use of restraint and “calming rooms”, after leaked CCTV footage showed autistic children being pushed into a padded space where they were left distressed, self-harming and sitting in vomit. Footage obtained by the BBC as part of a three-year investigation into allegations of abuse and mistreatment of vulnerable children at a north London special school between 2014 and 2017 reveals for the first time the graphic reality of what happened: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/nov/27/watchdog-appalled-restraint-autistic-children-london-school

An autistic man has spent more than 10 years behind bars under joint enterprise laws for murder after his friend stabbed a man to death during a fight. Under the controversial joint enterprise law at the time, Alex Henry and another associate were deemed by the jury to have been able to foresee that their friend had a knife, with the prosecutor arguing “friends tell each other everything”. The jury were not told he was autistic and they had been incorrectly directed on the law: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alex-henry-joint-enterprise-murder-united-nations-b2618711.html

28 November 2024

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

“COVID Action are holding masked demonstrations on Thursday 21 November at 9am and 1pm outside the Covid Inquiry, Dorland House, 121 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, W2 6QG. There are 2 demonstrations to allow Long Covid sufferers or people with disabilities time to attend and to get maximum publicity. This will be a peaceful masked demonstration.

Please bring your banners, leaflets, badges and any supporters.

Register here for the Zoom webinar on 20th November, hosted online at 6pm.