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
Kate – I hope you;ll consider making a submission to the ESA enquiry. Just writing that is enough. http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/work-and-pensions-committee/news/announcement-of-esa-inquiry/
thomas Rae
take it that anon e mouse is actually in the employ of those running or monitoring this site,only logical explanation for their inclusion,also banning justified criticism,pointless excecise participating,wish I hadnt bothered,wont again
Anon E Mouse
Mason Dixon Autistic – On what basis do you falsely make your claim regarding how I see human beings Mason?
Please explain where I have dodged anything. At no point have I made any comment regarding people and their disabilities just the fact I believe the deserving should be helped and dishonest cheats shouldn’t. Please explain what’s wrong with that.
If people actually commented on my position rather than misrepresenting that position then making completely invalid remarks about their false premise they may realise my position isn’t a million miles from their own.
Unless of course they are making political points in support of the last thoroughly discredited government…
jmc
Its fairly simple all the private companies invited in to take over assesments of the sick and disabled are payed by results. Atos gets payed for finding people fit to work. It surprising finds that lots of people are fit to work. What a surprise. The level of sucess on appeals confirms this. I somehow dont think its the disabled commiting the fraud here. Its not a party politcial point as labour carried on with previous tory policy. I hoped things would change under milliband picking on the disabled tho seams to be a cut he supports.
Elaine
It seems that many people are more interested in arguing and being right than the human rights that are being denied to people too ill to work but declared fit and so unable to get any help that was previously on off as a recipient of ESA. I am one of many who were unfairly declared fit for work and who cost the NHS significantly more due to the process of abuse trauma this process puts us through. I am quite familiar with abuse trauma after rapes and neglect from the system when I first became ill. By the way if it was bad before being ill in this country it is now an absolute nightmare that is increasing many peoples suicide ideation alongside exacerbation of their physical, mental and emotional conditions. They are punishing the ill not helping them. The few that are managing to keep blagging it do so without the intense levels of stress that genuinely ill and disabled people are feeling at this unfit for purpose harassment, which is nothing about assessing the reality of difficult lives.
My tribunal was after 9 months of recovering from the effects of being declared fit for work when I was getting closer to that through my efforts to face fears of panic attacks, social exclusion, etc. I was unable most of last year to even sleep in my own bed as that was upstairs and the only place I felt safe was my sofa. To be told I am being lazy is something I am used to. I am also used to being told I am brave and most people who have gone through what I have would be sat rocking in a corner and unable to communicate. I am just a human being who would really like to be treated as one and given a little compassion and care to help me get at least fit enough to consistently be able to self care and not face death too many times a year. You see some people don’t see the difficulties I live with and some do. Sadly the ones who decide if I am fit for work are those who don’t see my reality even though I have tried explaining it to them they tick a box and hey presto i am just lazy and not trying to get back to a consistent healthy balance where I may be able to go back to selling my art and crafts, if anyone can still afford to buy things. I don’t need motivation, a stock that would fill a shop does that. The ‘help’ I have been given through the jobcentre has all put that back it has never helped me or supported me in a way that could actually give me the pleasure of getting away from that abuse.