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
It is a shame that the style of writing has been discussed more than the points of importance here. It is a shame there has been name calling and nit picking. It seems there is a genuine wanting to understand.
The assessments are harming people.
The cost of these assessments and tribunals is costing more than is being saved.
The fear that ill and disabled people are feeling due to experiencing unfair assessments is causing exacerbated conditions and in too many cases resulting in severe poverty and distress to add to the conditions. Some people are dying before their tribunal. It is a huge shame on this nation what is happening to the genuinely ill and disabled because the media and the governments have both worked on twisting the jealousy and how unfair it is that people on benefits can afford this that and the other while ‘hard working’ people have to struggle. Many on benefits are living in shocking conditions. I know mine shock many people and some judge me as not acceptable because of them, whereas it is testimony to the neglect I have been shown by services now being cut even more.
The climate we are living in undermines the self worth, well being and quality of life for all those who are being scrutinised and continually being forced to quantify why they are in the position they are in. They say beggars can’t be choosers. I didn’t ever want to be a beggar but as a person who is ill that is what I have become. A beggar that the system will punish at every turn they can it so often seems. A beggar that everyone seems to think they can judge and advise on the best way to get better.
The prejudice encountered is getting worse, the relief at finding understanding and compassion often means tears with a nicer feeling.
Anon E Mouse
Elaine – You raise good points and I fully agree that the system of assessment looks like it does need revision…
Sam Barnett-Cormack
These hypothetical 500,000 people are no more ‘ready to start work immediately’ than they ever were. All that’s happened is the goal-posts have moved. People with a given set of problems were considered unfit for work, now suddenly they’re fit for work…
Never mind the fact that, as supported by the high success rates at tribunal, many are found ‘fit for work’ despite the fact that, per the legal criteria, they are not.
TiddK
Anon. You wanted facts. Here are some facts.
I’ve SEEN the revised assessment form – the official document – signed off in January 2011 for use by HCPs (Healthcare Professionals) from this month, April 2011. I’ve read through it, scoured it with a fine toothcoomb. I know what they are testing for and, by omission, what they are not.
Now as I said above, I have progressive MS. My main symptoms are – Fatigue – Spasms – Incontinence – Cognitive ‘misfiring’ – Weakness. What I will be tested for, under the revised system, is : Incontinence, and Weakness (to the extent that it affects walking, standing, bending, kneeling). The three kinds of MS fatigue I experience every day? Nope. Spasms? Nope. Cognitive malfunction (where it is less than to make me a sociopath, psychopath, or autistic)? Nope.
Extending this to all diabetics, people suffering Parkinsons, Muscular Dystrophy, Motor Neurone, Fibromyalgia, and heaven knows how many other serious conditions, will not have major symptoms / symptom groups tested for. And THAT is the hidden truth behind all those headlines presented above in the article.
Yes, the press made serious errors in naming the kind of benefit – DLA instead of Incapacity Benefit. What makes you think the other ‘facts’ presented are equally reliable? 500,000 people ASSESSED as ready to start work immediately does not mean they are. Many of their symptoms will not have been tested for or taken into account. Many will appeal against the decision, and around half will win their appeals. “People are more likely to die on a lifetime benefit than get a job?” Actually, the ONLY lifetime awards that are made are of DLA. DLA is awarded to people whether IN work or NOT in work, so that piece of reporting is logical nonsense.
Carry on researching. No-one here has told you a lie. Just because the website is the opposite of your own politics, does not mean that we here blogging are talking rubbish. Keep digging. The truth is out there and you’ve been told part of it already.
Anon E Mouse
TiddK – Thank you for your response – I have a relative with the same condition as you have. He’s in year 3, is wheelchair bound and not doing well. I worked with the disabled for a couple of years for Social Services (just teaching general email, word processing – simple stuff really) and three or four also had MS and it wasn’t good. You have my best wishes for your situation.
You have also responded and I agree with the majority of your reply. I also agree that if the papers can make one mistake then they can make more than one but that doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t have the right to assess individuals – it should.
I do however believe that if the assessment is not suitable and from peoples responses I have no reason to believe that they are incorrect, then that is the case that should be made.
Because of the silly language of this article it has devalued the content which is a shame.
I have read Sue Marsh’s blog (via Éoin Clarke and his Green Benches) on a few occasions and just feel if she made a more generalised point instead of the dogmatic Labour stuff which really is unattractive her case would be better made.
I have never said that people were talking rubbish, just that to dismiss a policy just because a government they didn’t vote for brought it in is pretty pathetic and means any genuine point made gets lost in the fog.
(Btw I voted Labour my whole life until they forced Brown on us with his clamp down on civil liberties, his employee McBride smearing Cameron around the time his disabled son died and all the other disgraceful actions against the country and now I am so disillusioned I cannot see me ever voting for that bunch of hypocrites again. For a party that used to represent the working class they should be ashamed of themselves.)