Sue Marsh reports on the Mail and Telegraph misreporting of disability benefits.
Sue Marsh blogs at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
Oh how very depressing days like today are if you’re sick or disabled. Disability campaigners spend months trying to build up awareness of sickness (ESA) and Disability (DLA) benefits, only to have their work totally undone in just a few minutes by a government intent on twisting the facts to suit their agenda and a media who don’t even know the difference between the two benefits.
“Two million claimants on disability living allowance face being stripped of payments”, shouts the Telegraph, whilst listing a range of at best dubious claims from the Department for Work and Pensions.
The most persistent of these claims is that claimants are simply given DLA by the wheelchair-fairy based on no evidence and are never checked again.
This is nonsense. Claimants must fill in a 40-page form accompanied by evidence from consultants and health professionals. Their claims are reassessed regularly, usually every three years unless an indefinite award has been granted.
The Mail go further, claiming:
• Up to 500,000 are ready to start work immediately;
• People on lifetime benefit are more likely to retire or die than get a job;
• 38 per cent just need the right support to get back to work.
Sadly, the Daily Mail actually have the wrong benefit.
Letters aren’t, as they claim, being sent out today to people claiming DLA asking them to submit reassessments. Letters however are being sent to those claiming Incapacity Benefit summoning them to assessments for the migration to Employment Support Allowance (ESA).
In a staggering bit of misreporting, the Mail also claims:
“Out of the 1,626 people assessed in Burnley and Aberdeen a third of those questioned were taken off the DLA and instead put onto Jobseeker’s Allowance.”
No, that would be Incapacity Benefit too.
Of the 500,000 “ready to start work immediately”, the Mail forgets to point out that assessments have been called “unfit for purpose” by every main investigation into them, including the Citizens Advice Bureau and the government’s own advisory committee. whilst 40% of these “miracle cures” are being overturned at tribunals, costing the taxpayer £19.8 million.
Most people awarded DLA for life have severe, degenerative conditions that will never improve such as cerebral palsy, severe learning disabilities, total paralysis or kidney failure. The government seems unduly shocked that people with lifelong disabilities should receive awards for life.
Surely constant reassessment of those people whose conditions will never improve is the single most ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money since someone decided MPs ought to get expenses on top of their already generous salaries?
Coalition plans to reform ESA and DLA are flawed and many of us spend our lives trying to inform people and fight for modifications to the welfare reform bill that could end up saving great distress.
This level of reporting is not only lazy, but it could be dangerous. Sadly, all the while the DWP are happy to twist the figures themselves; I can’t imagine things will improve.
121 Responses to “Right wing press need to check facts before screaming at disabled”
Sue Marsh
Offices can be modified for wheelchairs. Those who are blind or cannot hear can use aids to help them.
If you spend all day vomiting into a bowl, it’s not so easy.
10 million people live with chronic illnesses and often, auto-immune conditions are actually made worse by working. Yet most people with “long term variable” conditions are being found fit for work.
In fact, the figure is much closer to 1.5 million being found fit for work as those put into the work capability group will have just one year when the changes come in to find employment. Sadly, cancer, bowel disease COPD, MS, Parkinson’s and many other conditions don’t keep a diary.
The basis I can say that the assessments are getting it wrong is that 40% of decisions go to appeal with up to 80% of decisions overturned – many don’t even bother appealing and no-one keeps records on what happens to them. People are dying before their tribunals.
Anon E Mouse
Sue Marsh – No one is suggesting that a person who has the type of disability that you describe is fit to work and shouldn’t be supported. Clearly they are not fit to work and deserve all our support.
But there are people in this country that are fit to work – they appear in magistrates courts regularly for lying to get benefits when they do not have bad backs – whatever. It is straight forward fraud.
This does the people with genuine disabilities no favours. If the assessments are incorrect then the system needs to be sorted out.
This country cannot afford to pay benefits to people who are being dishonest – it isn’t fair on those genuine cases but to argue (as you seem to be) that the state does not have the right to ensure hard earned taxpayers aren’t having their money stolen by deceitful benefit cheats is also not right.
At some point in the past the Tories used IB as a means of massaging the employment figures and that situation needs to be addressed.
From your description of your illness I would suggest you have nothing to be concerned about, since you are doing nothing wrong…
Daniel Pitt
RT @leftfootfwd: Right wing press need to check facts before screaming at disabled: http://bit.ly/ehtIkb says @suey2y
TiddK
Anon E Mouse, you say “People need to work to give their lives meaning”. That almost exact dictum was inscribed (in German) over the gates of Auschwitz (Arbeit macht frei). That whole exercise began with Nazis testing out their death camps on mentally and physically disabled people. Disinformation and propaganda against the Jews followed.
Am I saying the Coalition Govt are Nazis? No, of course not. Yet there are striking parallels in the disinformation being thrown around by the authorities. The disabled – thanks to the right-wing press you apparently champion – have become “the new Jews”. http://wp.me/p1knur-4
And why, because the Government wish to give us dignity, self-respect, and fulfilment? No, of course not. They just want to save money, and targeting the sick, the disabled, and those least able to stand up for themselves (unlike students and trades unionists) are the easiest way to achieve that.
Look, you are free to go on believing the lies of your beloved Daily Mail. That’s your privilege. But don’t come here and troll against people who are more deserving of compassion and care than that. And if you care to find out FACTS, then go to the Broken Of Britain blog. It’s all there.
scandalousbill
Anon,
You say:
“I just think that people need to work if they can and whilst it is difficult when unemployment is high and yes there are easier ways to save money, the incentive to work must be paramount.”
Aside from the right wing press the IDS/Grayling grovel buffs, who gave you the impression that people either on DLA or IB were workshy. First, the denial that employers do not seriously discriminating against physically or mentally challenged individuals is pure rubbish.
My experience from my volunteer work with the disabled, (I too instruct on IT skills for a charity my wife supports), is much different than what you have outlined. Those who make it to the interview stage, seldom get much further. None of this is due to a lack of effort or desire on their part.
As an IT professional I am sure you will appreciate that, to be blunt, the training that is available for these people from current providers is simply crap, (unless you are prepared to argue that the ability to create a hotmail account is a critical item industry has been lacking to date). The syllabuses I have seen provide no basic MS Office, Excel, Dreamweaver or Java. C++ etc training, have not even a base for perquisite consideration by professional qualifications such as MSC, CNA, Prince2, ITIL etc. No matter what advanced level they purport to prepare people for, they are professionally dead ended and singularly targeted for the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder.
You may have been fortunate to witness the few exceptions in the supermarket you mention, or in the IT positions mentioned, but I think you would be very hard pressed to supply any statistics that prove this to be a general rule. I think the situation is more aptly characterized by people who wish to work being impeded by institutional and prejudicial barriers.
Secondly, it seems to me, that people with chronic disorders have afflictions that are of long term duration. The notion that they have been on long term assistance for a blister on their finger is pure rubbish. Again, there may be the odd exception, but it is most certainly not the rule. The common excuse given in this regard is based upon fabricated insurance concerns.
The current policy changes do very little to support the people concerned and IMHO are more intent on applying sanctions and pressure on people who are very vulnerable indeed. I fail to see how this will make those effected feel better about themselves.