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”
Elaine
oh I won my tribunal, CAB were amazing and actually treated me with dignity and respect, they knew I should never have been put through this. The tribunal judge looked embarrassed as he told me I would be getting continual assessments. I was in a blur by that time, lack of sleep running up to it after 9 months of feeling like I was being accused of lying and every day trying to distract myself from rehearsing the tribunal, worrying they would see me as more able than I have had to admit to myself I would like to be and the system expects me to be, no matter what condition I have had to learn to live with.
The sick and tired get sick and tired of being sick and tired and being told they are lazy or don’t worry if you are genuine you will be taken care of. ACTUALLY NO if you become ill you are treated as scum.
I needed to say that! Ill people are human beings too, they deserve dignity and care. They are being abused by the system and society far too much and people who are blinkered to this just do not want to believe it but don’t worry one day it could be you and then you will find out.
Yvonne Lee
RT @leftfootfwd: Right wing press need to check facts before screaming at disabled http://bit.ly/hy8tWV
Anon E Mouse
Elaine – You say; “Ill people are human beings too, they deserve dignity and care”
Absolutely agree…
Elaine
There are those who would also use me as an example of someone they know who is on the sick and has been spotted a few times a year looking like there is nothing wrong. They may have even said that the day i went to tesco clutching a cushion to my body with my upper arms if they didn’t look beyond the scarf that was mainly covering it up. Although the staff were fabulous that day and even though I was obviously distressed they treated me with dignity, served me and when I was served asked if I was okay and did I need a seat, drink of water. Had they asked first I may have run out of the shop and found the next time even more daunting.
Mostly if I have managed to get out of the house without close scrutiny and understanding you may be excused for thinking I am not suffering or will not suffer later for the activity of shopping or doing what most people take for granted. I may of may not smell as I may or may not have been able to bathe. It is often a choice of what activities I do and sometimes shopping means no cooking or making a cuppa unless I manage to co-ordinate with putting the essentials away.
Sometimes I am clean and tidy and outside the house and it doesn’t feel like I am carrying about 3 times my weight, which is funny because I am very underweight. And sometimes I may look too cheery and too light-hearted to be really ill. We never really know the full story of each other. I do not fit many stereotypes but people like to think they can spot the ones who are and maybe some of them are kind of pulling the lead as the saying goes but it is due to low self esteem for some I know that being abused as a child caused and lack of any care or understanding of that leads to further inability to get past that and more looking like a complete mess up to the rest of the world who has no idea.
We are so quick to judge and decide what people need to do to be acceptable. I am not acceptable to many because I am not able to maintain my physical, mental and emotional health enough to work and I can’t always explain that to the satisfaction of people who have power to make decisions about my life. That is a horrible way to live and I would never choose it. You can’t bully sick people to being able to work. You can’t bully a person then tell them it is their fault they are unable to sleep properly and eat properly but also deny it is a problem. We are all responsible for our contributions to the community around us and many of those who are able bodied are angry because they are getting so much stress they may join those who are ill and are scared of it. There is a climate of belittling conditions or the capacity of a person they deem to be fit and healthy or just being a bit hysterical about nothing, after all so and so down the road is depressed and works so why can’t you? So and so does little jobs here and there…I may in some phases of my conditions be able to do something without it half killing me, I can’t sustain it. Some people may also do odd jobs here and there and be able to sustain that work, or they may not be able to. The system is making it harder again to get back on ones feet after a fall, it was already hard enough.
dafyddyoung
RT @leftfootfwd: Right wing press need to check facts before screaming at disabled http://bit.ly/hy8tWV