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”
gwenhwyfaer
“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.”
Even if that did happen, it happened so long ago now that almost everyone who was so “massaged” either has already retired, or is so close to doing so that retesting them will make very little difference.
No, the vast – the OVERWHELMING – majority of those who will be retested are people who are quite genuinely off sick, and were already being regularly retested. They will now fall foul of the fact that the ESA rules of eligibility, which were already drawn far tighter than the already stringent rules for IB eligibility, have now been tightened so far that a huge percentage of those who were very legitimately regarded by medical professionals as unable to work will now be arbitrarily ruled “fit for work” because their assessors don’t tick the right combination of checkboxes. (Even, evidence suggests, when they should.)
Take a look at the current ESA criteria sometime. Google ‘ESA214’; you’ll find them. Consider what combinations of conditions are actually necessary to collect the requisite number of points across the categories. Consider the debilitating things that don’t even figure in the eligibility criteria, at all. Consider how able someone who should be in the support group is actually going to be to get this across to some spotty little “trained healthcare professional” who won’t even look up from their computer screen for the whole 20 minutes of the interrogation.
And then tell me that government is acting fairly, reasonably, and with our best interests at heart. If you can actually force the words out. But until you’ve actually done your homework – as most of us have done, because we do, you know, RELY on this stuff for trivialities and luxuries like food we can actually prepare – and don’t make basic mistakes like not being sure whether you’re talking about ESA, DLA or IB, whilst being absolutely positive that you know what’s going on in the lives of one and a half million people you’ve never ever met… until then, you have nothing interesting to say. And I think we’d all rather you said nothing than continued to say nothing interesting.
Anon E Mouse
TiddK – Don’t read The Daily Mail – never have. Not just because of Gordon Brown’s friendship with the editor but because as an ex Labour voter it wouldn’t be the done thing.
Whilst you start your Godwin’s Law diatribe against me, why don’t you actually read what my posts say and then retract your unfair remarks about what you think I’ve said.
If you think it’s OK to support people dishonestly obtaining benefits by deception that’s your privilege. But don’t come here and troll against people who are more deserving of compassion and care than that…
Janey
Okay, first of all, fraudulent claims are minimal. The DLA fraud rate is 0.05% (DWP Figures). There are people with disabilities capable of work. DLA is given to those people with disabilities to meet the extra costs of being disabled, whether they are working or not. Incapacity benefit is for those unable to work. Unfortunately, the new tests take little account of mental health problems, pain and, as pointed out fluctuating conditions. Surely those people in our society who are vulnerable are entitled to a reasonable standard of living? The government has an estimate of 16.5 billion in cuts, 3.5 billion of which it wants from the welfare budget. Just under a quarter of the total bill. Sorry, but that, along with the rhetoric the government is using, is victimisation.
Anon E Mouse
scandalousbill – It is quite clear that I am saying that the headline of this article is wrong and that whilst I fully support IB for those deserving I do not support those cheating the system and if that involves people proving that they are indeed entitled to that benefit they should receive it.
I know nothing of the schemes and their usefulness as a means of employment training but suspect you are probably correct in your assertion of them – I’ve yet to see a decent employment scheme from any government of any colour.
(Mind you I did enjoy the YTS thing I did between college and the armed forces)
vincents-biatch
Right wing press need to check facts before screaming at disabled | Left Foot Forward http://fb.me/L2GI8TjN @moronwatch moronic enough?!