Don't believe the Tory propaganda machine - this is the reality.
When Personal Independent Payments are introduced to replace Disability Living Allowance the 'lower DLA rate' of £20.55p per week will simply disappear. It won't exists any more - nada - gonski. Anyone currently getting this will lose it completely. There will be nothing to replace it. This is an allowance 'given' to help disabled people with their everyday extra needs such as incontinence pads or special toilet adaptations, keeping warm, or extra washing of soiled clothes etc. Local Authorities supply only so much. This is not given lightly and people have to be assessed by an independent medical examination. They only get it if their disability is confirmed.
Incapacity Benefit is also ceasing to exist - it will now be called Employment & Support Allowance. It will expire after 1 year. On expiry there is nothing to replace it. Again it is gone for good. Those on the top rate (£99.15p per week) because of their genuine illnesses (illnesses that have been doubly confirmed over the last year totally independently by a medical assessment agency actually employed by the government - a French company called ATOS) will lose it. It will simply disappear. These people are, by independently assessed medically confirmed definition the most disabled and vulnerable. They will be hit the hardest.
The vast majority of DLA/IB claimants are not thieves or cheats or scroungers. By the government's own statistical evidence just 0.05% of claimants are fraudsters. People who have paid their NI Contributions for 40/50yrs will lose that disability income after just 1 year whether their disability still exists or not.
As we all well know too many disabilities are chronic and actually deteriorate over time - they simply cannot get better. If that's the case how the hell can we as a society justify pushing people who have paid in to the system all their working lives (and yes I know there are some who haven't but by the governments own accepted figures the vast majority have) in to grinding poverty where the only way out will be to sell their homes and possessions just in order to live? People/couples and kids that will end up in social housing and receive housing benefit instead. This is cruel madness and driven by 19th Century Malthusean ideology and ultra right wing dogma.
A current example. The woman in question has just turned 46 years of age and is married to a 63 year old who works in B&Q for 28/32 hours per week because that's all he can get. She needs a hip replacement but has been told by the NHS that she is too young. She has needed this for the past 2.5yrs. She has Rheumatoid Arthritis. The other hip is beginning to deteriorate. There is no estimate on surgery time. She is on at least one stick but spends a lot of time on two or simply sitting in a chair in terrible pain and exhausted. This has also affected her gait (obviously) and has put extra pressure on both knees. She needs one knee replacement now but in approx 2 years time she will need the other done too. She is on high dose morphine patches. She is incredibly depressed (and who could blame her), on a cocktail of anti-depressants and was at the point of suicide some weeks ago. An increasingly regular occurrence for her.
When, with her sitting by the side of me and on speaker phone, we contacted the DWP she was told very impolitely that next May (although all her disabilities have been confirmed by ATOS) her ESA will simply end and that unless she is terminally ill she is regarded as fit to work. In fact it seems that as long as she can move her eyes she can be (perhaps) a proof reader or maybe an eye model for specsavers?
She has been registered without regard to her condition to attend job seeking classes with JC+ and is worried because if she doesn't attend (sometimes it will be that she cannot attend) they have threatened (in writing) to stop her benefits. There are precious few jobs out there for fit people. For her I would estimate that there are approximately none. Because her husband works (National Minimum Wage and only part time) they were told they must learn to manage. Their income will be cut as from May 2013 by £4,800 per annum. How the hell are they going to do that? And this is by no means an isolated case.
This is not just me reading newspaper headlines and government damning articles. Of course the Tory Party propaganda headlines will tell you these cases simply don't exist and all is well but that's the nature of propaganda isn't it. No - this is real life for her and many thousands of others. There but for the grace of god and all that eh?
I was forced off Incapacity Benefit when I was doing only 8 hours of paid work, yet I think it was the best thing to happen to my career. People like myself when I was on IB, even though we can work, have such problems with motivation due to discrimination, that mentally we can't work. It took me years to have the motivation and skill to go from working 5 hours as a volunteer on IB, to between 30 and 48 hours supported by Access to Work and Tax Credits.
ReplyDeleteThe Government need to realise it costs more to have disabled people in work and not less. I personally think it would be better for disabled people if IB/ESA were abolished and maybe replaced with Jobseekers Allowance or universal credit. Only there would be a 'Disability Premium' that gives disabled people more than non-disabled people. With a little bit of help and compassion all disabled people can go through the welfare to work journey I did - one only needs to look at Stephen Hawking for inspiration that one can be severely disabled but still work with help.
It was the Tories that created this generation of 'societally disabled' people, by putting people on IB in the 1980s and 1990s to mask the unemployment figures.