If the Welfare Reform Bill passes, the results will be horrific and at the Department for Work and Pensions, they are confident that it is a price worth paying.
Sue Marsh blogs at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
Recently, it was reported that Crisis, the charity for the homeless, had warned 11,000 young disabled people were at risk of losing their homes due to the coalition’s housing benefit cap:
“Although 4,000 of the most vulnerable disabled claimants will be exempt because they need help through the day or night, most ill and disabled people will be forced to move into cheaper accommodation, often outside the area where they live.”
Those aged 25-34 will now only be able to rent shared accommodation rather than a one bed flat, on average, losing £41 per week towards their rent. The article makes the point that:
“This disturbing cut will force people suffering serious physical disabilities or mental illness to share with strangers, even if it damages their health.”
Well, yes it will and it is shocking. Not too shocking of course until we start to see things that make us feel uncomfortable. Not too shocking until we pass twisted bodies on the streets, their collecting cup lodged into their wheelchair handles, but shocking nonetheless.
Actually the really shocking thing is the accumulation of all the cuts faced by sick or disabled people and the effect it will have on their lives and almost certainly, their homes.
We already face the squeeze that able bodied people face. The VAT rise, the high inflation, the public sector cuts, the pay freezes, but overwhelmingly this group already live in poverty. On top of all of this, Scope report that sick and disabled people will lose £9.2 billion over the term of this parliament.
“The government’s proposed welfare reforms will see 3.5 million disabled people lose over £9.2 billion of critical support by 2015 pushing them further into poverty and closer to the fringes of society.”
The figure 9.2 billion is more than 10 per cent of Mr Osborne’s entire UK cuts to reduce the deficit. A full 10% taken from those with extra costs, extra needs and very, very difficult lives; it doesn’t matter how often I write it, I am shocked and terrified by its implications.
That’s 3.5 million people. Again, I write it and can hardly believe it’s true. Many don’t yet know what they face. Some will never know – their disabilities are too severe – but they will be affected just the same.
I have no idea how many of those 3.5 million will lose their homes, but the maths seems fairly clear. The entire cost (xls) to the welfare budget of sickness and disability benefits is £16 billion. 9.2 billion is over half of that.
I’m sure that unlike me, you won’t want to read this lengthy transcript of the Welfare Reform Bill committee, currently on its last stages through parliament, but I wish you would. After all these points were made and more, after a full discussion of the horrors that lie ahead for the sick and disabled, the poverty they are facing, the categorical failure of work programmes to help when their benefits are removed, Chris Grayling, Minister of State for Work and Pensions, had little to say.
To summarise, his answer was “I don’t care, we can no longer afford it…”
I don’t exaggerate – I wish I did. You can read it for yourselves. So, if I were you, I’d get used to seeing sick or disabled people on the streets. If this bill passes, the results will be horrific and at the DWP, they are confident that it is a price worth paying.
152 Responses to “The shocking impact of Osborne’s heartless cuts on the disabled”
Sue Marsh
Selohesra – I’m just an ordinary woman trying to change something I see as potentially very damaging to our society. I’m proud when other, much more prominent, blogs ask me to write for them and of course, who wouldn’t want to spread their own message far and wide?
Clare Jordan
RT @leftfootfwd: The shocking impact of Osborne's heartless cuts on the disabled http://t.co/SPaouro
Sue Marsh
Anon – You can’t just reply “not true” unless you’re right!!
Try this http://fullfact.org/search/node/incapacity%20benefit The inaccuracies fed to the press by the DWP over this issue now run into 4 PAGES – almost all upheld by the Press Complaints Commission. I believe this may be the “poison pen” campaign DavidG refers to and the evidence would seem to back him up
DavidG
Mr Mouse: Disablist? Sue was accused of holding her position to exploit disabled people for political ends. When you understand that Sue is disabled and speaking for and with the support of disabled people then that is clearly disablist, it seeks to deny her disability and tarnish her motives.
Drawing attention to the poison-pen campaign against us isn’t lying, you can see Cameron’s contribution on the BBC news site and IDS’s latest broadside in the Saturday hate-rags. Your agreement with their message may blind you to the reality of what it means for actual disabled people, but that doesn’t make the message for us any less real or any less hateful. I talk about this poison-pen campaign in greater depth in my blog posting at http://wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com/2011/06/another-poison-pen-letter-from-ids.html
Scaremongering? I and many other people have been abused in the street, earlier this year someone tried to frame me for benefit fraud. The fear is very real and entirely justified. http://wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-wonder-what-you-were-thinking.html http://wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com/2011/02/hate-from-government-hate-on-street.html
Ethnic cleansing. I use the term with full knowledge of the implications, because I feel that is precisely what we disabled people are being exposed to as we are demonised for political ends. With the WCA carefully designed to exclude some of the most disabling of all effects of incapacity, and an active campaign to turn us into figures of hate I can draw no other conclusion than that the intention is to ethnically cleanse the benefit system of entire categories of disabled people.
You can continue to deny the need of disabled people for disproportionately high support from HB, and the disproportionate effects of cutting that support, but that just shows that you concern isn’t about need at all. As you yourself said, “Isn’t the Labour Party supposed to represent the less well off or are those days long gone?” Clearly in your case they are. But given your denial of any threat against disabled people, even in the face of the facts, perhaps the Labour Party and ‘to each according to their needs’ was never for you in the first place.
Anon E Mouse
Sue Marsh – As shocking the response from DavidG was regarding his “Ethnic Cleansing” as a description of government cuts I do not understand why you have linked me to a site that prints facts from newspapers.
Personally I have never elected a single newspaper hack to act as a servant of the people as I do the government.
Not even Gordon Brown’s personal friend, Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail was elected by anyone – mind you neither was Brown but at least we enjoyed booting him and his cronies out of office – something we can’t do with newspapers.
Anyway my comment was: “poison-pen campaign from Cameron, IDS and Grayling cynically preaching that we are all scrounging layabouts” and I have seen no evidence whatsoever from anywhere that that is true.
Once we start electing the newspaper staff I’ll agree with you Sue Marsh.
Anyway you seem to be ignoring my question about the fairness issue for minimum wage workers like myself…