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”
DeusExMacintosh
Even the Independent called it INVALIDITY benefit?! *headdesk*
TiddK
Anon E Mouse. First, I have absolutely no idea what Godwin’s Law is. Second, you repeatedly spout about “fraud” and “dishonesty” as if you had some basis of fact for it. Here are the facts : DLA has the lowest level of benefit fraud of them all (less than 1%). FACT. Incapacity Benefit had a lower rate of fraud than Housing Benefit, Income Support, Council Tax Benefit, all put together. FACT. The occasional case appearing in your local magistrates court does not entitle you to generalise.
You have been told in this blog what the facts are. You’ve been told by people who deserve your RESPECT, your COMPASSION, and a minimum level of CARE and HUMAN DIGNITY. The fact that you ignore all these facts in favour of your own tired little theories proves only one thing : you are a troll.
annoyed!!!!! true disabled
IDEA….. Leave the real people who are disabled to get on with there lives,they don’t get enough to live on as it is & they are in poverty. I know as I am one of these people & have been for over 21 yrs.Lets see the M.P’S take a big cut in there pay like half, this would soon fill in the gaps. & NO perks for M.P’S
Claire
RT @leftfootfwd: Right wing press need to check facts before screaming at disabled: http://bit.ly/ehtIkb says @suey2y
Sam Barnett-Cormack
Let’s just get a couple of things straight, here…
DLA is an untaxed, non-means-tested benefit that is available to those in or out of work.
IB and ESA were/are benefits for those too ill or disabled to work. Many found unable to work by IB criteria are found able to work, or to have a limited capability for work (sometimes conflated as able to work in the press) – this does not have to be because they were lying originally, it’s simply because ESA uses narrower terms an a less nuanced assessment. It might be that IB had terms too loose (I won’t claim authority on that), but I am confident that ESA has terms that are too narrow (assessing mobility based on a hypothetical wheelchair even if you’ve been advised medically NOT to use a wheelchair, for instance), and these are made more narrow by assessments that ignore detail, and ignore information from doctors. How else would the success rate at appeal be so high? The government has said that Decision Makers shouldn’t just take the ATOS WCA result as gospel, and should consider other evidence – but so far they don’t seem to.
It is impossible to define a finite list that allows for all justifications of being unable to work normally, unless it leaves room for nuance that would make unjustified claims possible. Well, or by spending enough time on each case by assessors that you may as well just pay the unjustified claims, as it would be cheaper.
People can be ruled fit to work by the WCA, but only really be able to get a job if they had some perfectly forgiving employer. Variable conditions may require days off, even weeks, at no notice. My own condition (well, one of them) gives me great difficulty getting up in the morning, so any start time won’t be met reliably by me unless it’s in the afternoon.
As it happens, I’m pursuing self-employment, but I’ve had no support in so doing because I wasn’t in a target group. If we don’t get to a sustainable level of clients before the money we’ve set aside (from savings from before either of us were ill) for the business run out, then I’ll start looking for suitable work immediately (living in hope) but I’ll still apply for ESA (and keep looking for work), because the lack of jobs I could realistically do means that I can’t meet the expectations of JSA. Maybe if there were something between ESA Work Related Activity Group and JSA, that actually considered the difficulties in finding suitable work for people like us, it would be easier and less misunderstood.