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”
TiddK
Anon. Thank you for enlightening me about Godwin’s Law. However, the fact that I had no idea what it was proves I was NOT invoking it. And I did NOT call you a Nazi – go back and READ this time. I suggest that you also go and actually read my blog that I linked to above. You might be enlightened as to the agenda behind behind not only the right-wing tabloid press, but also the Coalition Govt, AND New Labour who actually started the whole ESA business. (No, I didn’t vote for Gordon Brown).
If you are not trolling, then I apologise for accusing you of it, but you have to admit that someone who sticks to a contrary line in the face of facts presented by others, is certainly behaving like one. Be that as it may. I withdraw that.
You say, “What is wrong with hard working taxpayers expecting some competence in the distribution of the money we worked for?”. You imply – as does Cameron and every other Govt spokesperson, and the entire right-wing press, THAT SICK AND DISABLED PEOPLE ARE NOT TAXPAYERS!!!!! FIRST – let me agree with your sentiment. Only a fool would not want to see competence in the administration of public finances. Waste not, want not. SECOND – I am not working (I have had progressive MS for over 10 years and it gets worse by the month, let alone years), but I PAY TAXES!!! To enumerate : Council Tax, VAT on nearly everything I buy, on my savings, on my insurance policies, excise duty on the occasional drink I allow myself, a HUGE amount of excise duty when I buy petrol for my legs (Yes, my car is my legs), oh and lest we forget – notionally on my Incapacity Benefit, for which the DWP send me a P60 every year. So, *I* am a taxpayer too.
But perhaps you meant only those who pay Income Tax? Poor dears. The lowest rate of Income Tax for generations, after the cosseting of the last x number of Chancellors, not to mention a shibboleth of “every other damn tax can be increased but NOT Income Tax.”
So please, if you intend to stay here and argue your corner, please argue with some intelligence, and assume some intelligence on the part of your readers. And if you put forward an unarguable case for cutting the benefits of the genuinely sick and disabled (as is actually happening) then I will have no reply. But until that day, please do us the courtesy of Googling some facts :
Paul Gregg’s verdict on ESA testing (designer of ESA, the replacement for Incapacity Benefit)
Professor Harrington (independent report into the efficacy of ESA assessments)
UNUM in the USA (parent company of ATOS Healthcare)
David Cameron’s pre-election speeches on protecting the disabled
Ed Miliband’s position on welfare “reform” (aka cuts – he’s for it – see, I didn’t vote for Gordon..)
Disability Historian
‘People need to work to give their lives meaning.’
Maybe, maybe not. It used to be fashionable for many millions of women not to work outside the home. Were their lives ‘meaningless’? Meaning is what you make of it. My life does not lack meaning because I have no job. It may lack meaning because I am numbed by painkilling drugs, unable to engage with my environment due to incorrectly administered drugs hat have caused more damage to function and memory. I am none the less valuable for that. ‘Obviously if they are truly disabled they should be helped’
If I hear that used as a get-out-of-gaol-free-card for offensive opinions one more time I will scream! Every time someone says that they are trolling the genuinely disabled people they claim to support, maybe it’s the years of offensive comments along the lines of’ you’re not that disabled’, ‘there’s nothing wrong with you’,etc that people with heart conditions, brain tumours and fairly apparent disabilities like C.P. have to listen to. We are not in a competition to see who is the most disabled and if we were would not ask the kind of people who usually give their opinions to be our judges.
I do not suppose that the writer of this article was arguing for no checks at all, though this is a common misconception of what we want. Talk of sweeping assumptions. Ms Mouse seems to think that many mildly ill people will remain unchecked. I doubt that very much. In the interests of a balanced argument, (I am a scholar, not a politician)I will admit that at one stage I was not checked for 7 years. However, maybe I SHOULD have been assessed to see if my Cerebral Palsy, brain tumour, learning disabilities and severe fatigue caused by a multitude of drugs had miraculously left me with the capacity to be outside the home unsupervised or able to ‘work’ at anything for more than a few minutes at a time. To give another example, how is it ‘kind’ for the parent of a child with profound permanent disabilities to be multiply harassed/assessed to see if they’ve ‘got better’? How can it be kind to suggest the state should make checks on people who will obviously be in the same position in 30 years time. Imagine the scene please, ‘Excuse me, does your child still have profound disabilities?’ ‘Yes, she is still deaf, blind, doubly incontinent with a mental age of four and severe epilepsy. How kind of you to ask.’
We all have aspirations and yes, people should aspire to be the best they can but when their best is still not enough to match up to that of able-bodied people or to make them acceptable to employers the ‘aspiration’ of helping to get them off benefits’ is taxpayers spite masquerading as laudable hogwash. And not very convincing hogwash. Ms Mouse may have been unconvinced by this article but I remain unconvinced that anyone who speaks of the ‘truly disabled’ in such tones has any idea of what they are talking about. I am truly disabled’yet I do not believe Ms Mouse and her ilk support me one iota. Nor do I wish to be supported by them.
Anon E Mouse
TiddK – Your posting requires a more considered response from me. I will get back to you late afternoon / evening – just pushed for time today and I need to check a couple of things with reference to waht you’ve said to make sure my next post is accurate.
Disability Historian – Your response leads me to believe you haven’t bothered to follow my string of posts here but anyhow.
You may not consider that people’s lives can have meaning via their work -fair enough but that is how most people define themselves. I’m an engineer and the first people ask if I meet them for the first time is what I do. I have yet to see a single example of someone not having their job discussed whilst being descriptive.
That is not to say that if a person is not able to work because of a disability or lack of available employment there is anything wrong with that – it’s just how it is.
You try to imply that since I say “if they are really disabled” that means something else. Not to me it doesn’t and if you read my previous postings you would see that was the case.
You say: “I do not suppose that the writer of this article was arguing for no checks at all, though this is a common misconception of what we want. Talk of sweeping assumptions”.
When did I make that assumption? You have assumed that is what I have said when it clearly isn’t because you haven’t bothered to read my posts and you have then gone into a rant about something I haven’t said – it’s called “Strawman”. What type of a scholar are you Disability Historian?
Regarding this article there is nothing to be “convinced” about. From the headline onwards it has no basis in fact and just cites newspapers as government policy rather than newspaper articles or postings on this very site which are essentially Labour supporting opinions not fact.
At no point have I said the disabled shouldn’t get benefits because I believe they should. For anyone to suggest otherwise is dishonest and unfair. If you have a complaint about the unfairness of the assessments then make that case but do not start shrieking about something you think I’ve said when I ask perfectly reasonable questions about the article in question – which is essentially anti government, Labour supporting hogwash…
TiddK
I will await your considered response Mr Mouse. However, just to challenge the last sentence of your previous post : “the article in question … is essentially anti government, Labour supporting hogwash”. Actually no – if you go and re-read it, you will see that it is an article about the MEDIA, especially the Press. Certain “facts” presented by them are plain wrong, and the article’s writer simply corrects them.
Anon E Mouse
TiddK – I need to check through your links is all. You’ve been polite enough to list them – I’ll extend that courtesy by reading them.
Regarding your last post 60, The very first sentence of Sue’s article states:”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…”
Which government minister articulated anything at all along those lines? Also she continues: “wheelchair-fairy”
Please. This is a serious issue that clearly affects peoples lives and deserves more than a trivial remark like that. Frankly I wouldn’t expect such a remark from a sixth form student.
She then states that the papers have the type of allowance wrong. And? (It’s a mistake I assume) Are the three points they make true or not? That’s the important thing surely, not if someone got something wrong at a paper.
• 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.
Are these statements right or wrong TiddK? – I assumed they were correct – not that I based any of my comments on them. My point is more general about people with disabilities in general – not some sort of victim mentality or anything just that fraud is unacceptable and if someone is not entitled to a benefit then they shouldn’t get it.
On the specifics here I think the point Sue should have made was about the good or bad points of the assessments and not whether the government has the right to insist on them or not. Her political leanings ruin what could have been a thoroughly worthwhile article instead of this ill conceived biased diatribe against the popular press. (In my opinion)