Barely days after proudly pledging her support for the rights of disabled people on International Day for Persons with Disabilities, Department for Work and Pensions minister Maria Miller has now announced that Disability Living Allowance, used by disabled people to pay for everyday things like heating or specialist equipment, is “unsustainable”, with the government launching a consultation on plans to scrap it and replace it with Personal Independence Payment.
On December 3rd, Maria Miller, Minister for Disabled People at the Department for Work and Pensions, said:
“The UK has a strong history of disability rights and this is recognised by the international community. We ratified the UN Convention last year, and we are now working with disabled people, organisations that represent them, business and the voluntary sector to ensure that the things we have committed to become a reality.
“We want disabled people to fulfill their potential.”
Support for disabled people to “fulfill their potential”, however, appears to have ebbed away to reveal a government who will not even protect the most vulnerable from the cuts.
The consultation document says that “the rising caseload and expenditure [of DLA] is unsustainable” and will introduce a new assessment from 2013 for all recipients. According to the Disability Alliance, this will have the “primary objective of restricting access to this essential benefit for disabled people”.
The government says that DLA will be reformed to make it a:
“…clearer, more targeted benefit, with an objective assessment. The reforms will also aim to help disabled people take part more fully in society.”
But Disability Alliance disagrees. Speaking to Left Foot Forward, director of policy Neil Coyle said:
“It is bitterly ironic that the government has chosen to announce radical cuts to disabled people’s support so soon after the International Day of Disabled People. It also seems ironic that one of Thatcher’s last acts was to introduce ‘The Way Ahead’ white paper which introduced DLA, but one of the first acts of the coalition government is to axe 20 per cent of the support it provides disabled people.”
What does not appear anywhere in this consultation document is the fact that the government were already planning to cut DLA, with the Treasury stating in the 2010 Emergency Budget that 20 per cent of DLA ‘caseload and expenditure’ would be cut. This is a point not missed by the Disability Alliance, as they argue that this new assessment:
“…has the primary objective of restricting access to this essential benefit for disabled people.”
91 Responses to “Supporting disabled people not sustainable says coalition”
Rich Watts
Thanks for this post – it’s important to cover this issue as disability often gets overlooked or misrepresented.
If it’s of interest, I’ve written a full analysis of the proposed DLA reforms here. By far the most worrying elements of this are the arbitrary 20% cut, the introduction of conditionality into disability benefits, and the proposal for this measure to cover not just the 1.8m disabled people of working age who receive DLA but also the 1.2m people under 16 and over 65 who also receive it.
Matthew Beevor
RT @leftfootfwd: Supporting disabled people not sustainable says coalition http://bit.ly/gLe4gP (FYI @catherinestribs)
UWMO
RT @Livable4All: UK cuts via @Dis_PPL_Protest #Disability Living Allowance deemed “unsustainable" http://bit.ly/iiTVjK Gov't will not pr …
Jane Ayres
RT @leftfootfwd Supporting disabled people not sustainable says coalition: http://bit.ly/fUkfS0 reports Rosanna Singler
George
What most people in the media fail to report is that Disability Living Allowance is not paid to people to prevent them from working. The benefit permits people to work, and indeed a lot of people who receive do work. The benefit is designed to pay for expenses that are incurred upon disabled people that act as a barrier to them living an independent life. For example, a person with mobility difficulties, may need taxi’s to get to and from work everyday, but an able-bodied person would not need this. If the disabled person did not get this they would not be able to work, and therefore, the benefit actually helps people live their lives independently and become part of society, unlike in former years when the cost of doing anything was so prohibitive, most people with serious health conditions were not able to dip into their savings, just to go to the local shops. This is reality. Many disabled people face a cost to do ordinary day to day things, and Disability Living Allowance was paid to help people overcome these barriers, and is not an income replacement for people who are not in work. The media fails to report and highlight this difference because there is a lot of hostility in many of the internet message boards about claimants being able to work – no one said that they don’t and rely on this money as their sole source of income. The reason this allowance is being targeted is because it actually entitles people to numerous other services, such as the taxicard, motability, etc. Each of these things help disabled people live independently, and in many cases the services provided prevent people from becoming unwell which would make them a bigger burden on society. The cost of administering a system of continuous tests is absurd and wasteful. They won’t have to check if someone with motor neurone dysfunction still has it after every three years. Either scrap the system altogether, or just let people with permanent disabilities claim this money without the stress of having to have constant tests.