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”
13eastie
It is one thing for a left-wing blog to offer a platform to causes that we must assume it feels to be well-meaning from time to time. But I might not be the only reader who is struggling to see any benefit to anyone from the brain-dead poverty of objectivity that is now prevalent.
The OP published an article that can be encapsulated thus:
SHRIEKING HEADLINE: “Shocking Impact”! “Heartless Cuts”!
THE ACTUAL TRUTH: young, single, disabled people can continue to rely on tax-payers to provide housing for them if they need it, and to a standard similar to that commonly enjoyed by their able-bodied, self-sufficient peers.
LFF would do better to humour fewer of these single interest groups whose combined presence, rather than collectively volunteering any kind of left-leaning political alternative to the Govt, serves only to send the following messages:
1. We demand immunity to spending cuts
2. We fundamentally oppose all cuts
3. We are devoid of objective thought (our cause trumps all others and we just do not care about the nation’s economic problems)
4. Nothing that serves our self-interest can be unfair on anyone else in any circumstance
5. We are content for other people’s children to pay the price for our irresponsibility
Sue Marsh
13 Eastie – But that’s not what the article is about? It’s about the other cuts sick and disabled people face. The article I refer to at the beginning is not written by me, it is written and researched by Crisis. It claims that 7,000 out of 11,000 will not be protected from eviction. They conclude that this will lead to homelssness. I do not.
I conclude that cuts of 9.2 billion from a 16 billion budget will almost certainly lead to more homelessness though I clearly state that I couldn’t possibly guess how much. I point out that far from the 11,000 people mentioned by crisis, the other cuts will affect round 3.5 million.
My article is not about housing benefit, it is about cuts to vital support for the sick and disabled.
Sue Marsh
Oh, and I don’t write the headlines – we’ve had this criticism before, lol
willow jacky
well i for one am been forced out of the home i inherited due to my disability, debts, and cuts in services. I dont know where to go or to live. I have crippling problems with my spine, hands and feet, I cant even buy normanl shoes as my feet swell so much i have to buy shoes in the post from a disability shoe place, they cost a fortune i havent got to spend, but its this or walk around on crutches in the rain in slippers.
i dont have family support or friends living near by who help me, nor neighbours who help me, im alone except for one close friend who is learning disabled who goes shopping with me. Ive been attacked in the street when having vertigo attacks, people think im drunk when im not, and ive had my enefits taken from me and left to survive on a very small inheritance that has to pay for everything, thats adaptations, prescriptions, physio, taxi fare to hospital as i live miles from it and no bus service direct, taxi fare home from the emergency doctors at night if im taken ill, as they refuse to come out to me so i have to go 14 miles to them..add aids and adaptations, help with utting light bulbs in etc, i have to pay a handyman to do these things as i loose my balance when i climb steps, and someone to cut my garden hedges back off the footpath..its not fun, Im not allowed to drive and i will eventually go deaf with my condition and probably end up in a wheel chair as my immune system is attacking my body. No way would i be able to sharea house with anyone not close to me, due to been up all night in pain, needing to sleep with the radio on to drwon out the noises in my head, changing sheets daily when i get night sweats, and having incontinance aids all over the place…
13eastie
@59, 60
Sue – I’m happy to let you blame someone else for the hysterical headline under which your piece was presented. Presumably, if you think LFF is unable to present your case faithfully you will be seeking another outlet in future?
Nonetheless, I think you need to have another read of your article, Sue.
The first few paragraphs are dominated by a bogus housing issue. You are determined to have readers believe that:
“11,000 young disabled people were at risk of losing their homes due to the coalition’s housing benefit cap”
“the effect it will have on their lives and almost certainly, their homes.”
“I have no idea how many of those 3.5 million will lose their homes, but the maths seems fairly clear. ”
‘So, if I were you, I’d get used to seeing sick or disabled people on the streets.”
These are your words – they are not citations and they are not evidenced. You fail to explain how anyone at all will actually lose his home.
Moreover, you will be well aware that much of the proposed cost-saving is to be achieved by systematic case-review i.e. getting rid of bogus claimants (including many whose so-called “disability” is nothing more than a predictable and reversible consequence of irresponsible drinking / drug abuse / over-eating).
Such cases undermine the cause of those genuinely disabled through no fault of their own (and in whom you will have to take my word that I have a keen personal interest). They grew in number under Labour and it would be to your credit to acknowledge this and to recognise that there is an issue that, irrespective of any need for austerity, and out-with any political ideology, needs to be remedied.