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”
Selohesra
John Hargraves – what is the fascination on this site with knowing people’s real names. Knowing your name does not really tell me anything about you – I suspect many people in the world share your name so it certainly does not uniquely identify you. In reality you are as anonymous putting a regular Christian name and surname on your post as someone posting under a pseudonym . Indeed you could argue that my psuedonym which mirrors how I feel about our politicians from all the mainstream parties tells you more about me than your name does about you – unless of course you are the Hargraves who appeared on Out of Town & How – in which case I salute you.
Anon E Mouse
John Hargrave – You attribute things to me that I have simply not said and things the author of this article has no evidence to state as fact.
How many people have been evicted from their homes John Hargrave? Are you so naive to believe that a government would allow this to happen? Grow up please and stop the theatrics – this is a serious issue to people with disabilities not a game to try to make people forget how bad Labour were in office.
Robert above is bang on when he comments that Labour want’s to pay other peoples money to greedy landlords but all that will happen is the greedy landlords will lower their rents which are frankly obscene.
The validity of my argument is not affected by my identity. Unless of course you intend to try a Labour smear on my character and not the points I make.
If you don’t believe that will happen ask Peter Watt, Alistair Darling, Gillian Duffy or David Kelly’s widow. Play the ball and not the man please…
Ummah
RT @leftfootfwd: The shocking impact of Osborne's heartless cuts on the disabled: http://t.co/2EYhBHp by @suey2y
Ralph Baldwin
Deeply amusing that people who are at the lower end of the income scale (or who claim to be) are attacking each other when they should be supporting one another. Ironic isn’t the word. Whether you are a homeless ex-forces living on the streets, a disabled ex-firefighter injured dwhilst trying to do your job, a minimum wage employee, a self employed business person struggling, your goals should be one and the same. Instead of blubbing and dribbling and attacking each other, I suspect there is more than one malajusted freak who is simply unsympathetic to the plight of others in a childish manner and merely trying to elevate themselves from their own toilet life by xxxxing on the heads of others.
Well done by the way Sue I contacted the Royal British Legion and they are monitoring the Government and its Welfare reform Bill at present and I have managed to find others to who believe we Brits should stand up for each other.
DavidG
Mouse: From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. If you are assessed as being able to pay tax, and if someone else is assessed at needing support due to their disability to live in a house you could not afford, because they need the space or the facilities, then how is that a problem? You are being asked to pay according to your ability, they are being supported to the extent of their needs, it is the very definition of socialism at work. What exactly is your problem with living up to the socialist ideal?
” that is not a “poison pen” from Cameron and to suggest so is deceitful and pathetic from the commentator. ”
If someone sets out to demean a whole segment of disabled people as not worthy of the support of the state, repeatedly insinuates that disability benefit fraud is rife, when in fact it is the lowest of all benefit fraud except for the pension, when the tabloids dance to their master’s tune, bragging that 75% of people are being rejected and are therefore frauds, never mind that the figure is nowhere near 75%, never mind that many of the withdrawn claims are solely there because the DWP insist on them being made (break a leg on JSA and you’ll be told to claim ESA while you’re unfit for work, but you’ll be recovered before your WCA is due), never mind that many legitimate claimants are driven out of the system as I so nearly was (http://wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com/2011/04/wca-sick-joke-or-national-disgrace.html) and never mind that the hacks deride terrible disabilities like epidermylosis bulosa as ‘blisters’ then how else should we label it but ‘poison-pen’? Disabled people have seen a steady decline in their acceptance in the community as a result of this campaign against us, as reflected in the attacks I and others have experienced. In fact to label it as ‘poison-pen’ does the severity of the hatemongering scant justice. If anything is pathetic, it is your assertion that nothing whatsoever is true. Try experiencing things from the side of the disabled person, Mr Mouse, and you will soon realise that the situation is not simply bad, but far worse than I have managed to paint it.
“And for you to suggest I was stating something not true is offensive and just plainly dishonest.”
You have been told the truth by those experiencing it at first hand and continue to deny it, how else should we categorise your honesty? The evidence is there to see, on WTB, the Broken of Britain, DPAC and the blogs and postings of individual disabled people. Are we all engaged in a sustained campaign of lies, or might the problem lie with your denial of the truth? Or as disabled people are we simply unworthy of being listened to?