The shocking impact of Osborne’s heartless cuts on the disabled

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”

  1. scandalousbill

    Anon,

    You ask:

    “Do you think it’s fair that minimum wage workers should allow greedy landlords to take all their taxes to provide housing for others that they themselves cannot ever even hope to afford?”

    No, not at all.

    Nor do I think that it is fair that young locals from Somerset, Dorset, etc, be priced out of their local housing market because some toff city traders want a summer home. But that is not the point at hand.

    What I asked you was to back up your assertions that disabled groups outlined in the Scope document fell into your notion of rents at rates you could only dream of being subsidized by the government and also to provide some reasonable argument and evidence to back up your assertion that the draconian welfare policies of the Tory coalition will not result in disabled persons facing eviction.

    BTW 13 eastie:

    You say:

    “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.”

    With regard to this point, you might recall that Sue in the OP cited the Scope report that notes
    :
    “The £9 billion of cuts will affect every aspect of the day-to-day support disabled people rely on to live – including housing, living costs and social care support. Examples of this are, by 2015:
    • 170,830 families where both parents care for a disabled child will lose £520 million
    • 516,450 disabled adults whose partner is a full time carer will lose £1.258 billion
    • 98,170 single disabled people will lose £127 million
    • 114,066 disabled people moved from incapacity benefit (and ESA) to Job Seekers allowance will lose £994 million
    http://www.scope.org.uk/news/disabled-people-hit-by-welfare-cuts

    Given your statement cited above, could you provide some evidence or references to support your contention as opposed to the right wing drivel in your post. Or do you maintain that Scope was merely referring to seniors?

  2. Elaine

    Sue I’m too tired and unwell to add anything useful here. I would go into details about how being declared fit for work, the breakdown and waiting 10 months for tribunal and 8 weeks for reinstatement and now waiting for the next medical forms to fill in and the next test where I get lied about unless anything has changed and how stressed the thought of it being the same assessor again and it being worse than if it were the man who raped me, who at least wasn’t being paid for out of tax payers money to degrade me. Oh the taxpayers money wasted on bad assessments and tribunals, the extra money cost to the nhs. The horrific human price of further debility due to the process of begging for a pittance. Being turned down for help through the cuts, which the man from social services told me would have been there if they had assessed me when they were supposed to 4 years ago…I may be well enough to pay tax now had I been properly supported years ago. The support has been too hard to access for many years, they are making it more difficult. You see people who are genuine are the ones not well enough to jump through the hoops, the minority who are pulling a fast one have the mental capacity to know what to say and how to say it. If you are genuine and doing your best to get better so you can work, rest and play on a regular basis then you are declared fit for work even when you can’t bathe as much as you would like or sleep upstairs in a clean bed due to your health….sorry I am emotional, this is affecting me and many more and Sue knowing you are fighting for all of us when it costs you so dear in energy is inspiring and you know many of us appreciate it.

  3. jenna

    To Anon E Mouse

    You claim over and over again that you are a minimum wage tax payer. What job exactly is it that you do that ennables you to post on here ALL DAY and other days when you keep attacking Sue??? Does your boss know how much time you spend on here? Or perhaps this is your job.

    I am disabled. I can assure you that what Sue says is very real. The disabled are constantly attacked in the media and it is always as a result of regular press releases from the DWP with deliberately innacurate information. Both the Mail and Telegraph have recently had to print retractions and been admonished by the Press Complaints Commission. Regurgitating press releases without checking the facts is not journalism it is propaganda – aimed at people like you – who swallow every word of it.

    This has nothing to do with wanting to elect a Labour government. The disabled will never forget that it was they who first started the legislation for the Work Capability Assessment, now in full flow. I have never voted Labour in my life. I now many disabled people who have always been Conservative voters but they swear never again. We have a dilemma , shared by the country as a whole, in that people have been disenfranchised. There is no party fit to vote for. If you think performing fake medicals on truly sick and disabled people is a good way to save money, then just be prepared that tomorrow or next year, it could be your turn. Being a tax payer does not exempt you from sudden illness or accident that will change your life forever, just as it did mine. That is something that most people in favour of all these cuts to the disabled never like to think of. Sickness and disability like earthquakes, is always something that happens to someone else.

    No one is defending the few cases where people are getting huge sums in housing benefit to live in large houses. But this number is extremely small and over exaggerated in the press for effect. The “mansion” case was in fact a large family of asylum seekers and the local authority had a duty to house them under the law. No one with common sense sees that as a fair way to deal with the over immigration to this country. But what you must realise is that the vast majority of the Housing Benefit bill is actually made up from people in low paid work, such as you claim to be, who need help to make up their rent.

    Why do you not campaign for more social housing to be built?Capitalism is supply and demand. Rents will fall when the supply is adequate. The doubling or even tripling in some areas of house prices in just over 12 years is the real cause of the high cost of housing benefit. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was encouraged to become a Buy to Let landlord – artificially inflating the housing market again – in the hope of a rent to pay the mortgage while reaping in the reward of thousands in property price increases. Rents become proportionate to the value of the house price.Greed as always is at the centre of everything.

    Of course nothing will be done to increase the supply because this would lead to a fall in house prices which those who have them want to see increase still further. It is insanity. The young can no longer get on the housing ladder. Penalising the disabled will not help this situation one bit.

    Do you not find it odd that with nearly a million 16-24 year olds without employment, the government is only investing £60 million in apprenticeships. yet the cost of assessing the disabled as fit for work is £500 million per year to a foreign owned computer company? Plus all the cost of tribunals to correct their decisions, where 40-70% of appeals are succesful. Then there is the contracts with the mostly private work provider companies who will be paid £14,000 for every disabled person they place in a job. All this to get a million disabled into “work” they cannot do and are becoming even sicker under the sheer terror of knowing their means to live is being taken away. If a million healthy young people cannot find employment, why do you think billions are being spent trying to force the disabled into work? It is simply government policy to start the privatisation of the welfare state. As a low paid worker, you should be worried. The next step is to make everyone take out private income protection insurance – companies like UNUM are already in place to do so. national Insurance will no longer cover you should misfortune befall you, no matter how many contributions you have paid. If you paid attention you would know that in the last 2 years many workers like yourself have become ill and then found they were refused any help and signed as fit for work even if terminally ill or awaiting operations.

    You really do need to wake up to the fact that the government is using you to pit the working poor and middle classes against the sick and disabled and each other. No one is attacking the bankers anymore are they? Or blaming the world recession which began in the subprime mortgate market of the USA. No, like you, attention has neatly been diverted into attacking the sick and vulnerable. Shame you have fallen for it. You don’t honestly think your taxes are going to go down do you?

    How about you blog on a site calling for corporate tax evaders to pay their tax, instead of just the minions who do the actual work for them, like you? That would solve the national debt and plenty to spare. You are attacking the wrong people, just like you have been brainwashed to.

  4. 13eastie

    @62 Bill

    It was the OP who decided to obsess over a spurious “homelessness” issue regarding young, disabled, adults (my military record would confirm that I used to be one of them, though I’d be the first to concede I’ve been fortunate to have been able to move on without issues). I’m not sure why it would offend people so much that I point this out.

    I dealt specifically with this gross misrepresentation. I did not suggest that the cuts would be without ill effects.

    With regards cuts to the other benefits that it is obvious will be to the detriment of those who receive them, the simple fact is that virtually no-one in the country is better off after Brown’s maleficence as never-elected Prime Minister. Unless you have a vaccine with which to inoculate every single interest whiner against Labour’s maladroit carnage, the economic reality is that they will, like the rest of us who have had tax increases and seen real incomes diminish, tighten their belts.

    I say this with the proviso that (and especially since this will be done on medical advice) migration of those able to work, from a category that encourages them not to to one which compels them to attempt to do so, is a good thing for all genuinely disabled people.

  5. Gary Hills

    2.Anon E Mouse what a horrible way to think. It is not those that are sick and disabled who caused the greed and incompetence of the bankers. Yet if this useless government wanted to cut Housing Benefit bills it would not target those who need to claim.

    It would make the limit of what is paid binding on the landlords so they cannot set rents above the means of the average amounts. No person should be forced to lose their home for the sake of ideology. For that is what this is really about. Forget the billions and billions swindled from the British people by rich tax dodgers. No instead focus on those who already live hand to mouth who struggle to get by. Demonise them and treat the like dirt just so Cameron and Osborne can deflect from their rich tax dodging chums.

    £9.2 billion is what those with the least are going to lose. Yet Vodafone alone was left of in paying £6 billion in unpaid tax by George Osborne. So no it’s not those who are sick and disabled who should pay the price but the criminals who have money but think they are too important to pay any tax.

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