I’m disabled because I had polio as a child in the 1950s, fortunately just after the invention of the NHS so I had the best treatments available. NHS physiotherapy and surgery has been available all my life to solve the problems that ageing bones create.
But I’ve always worked – not hard physical work but teaching and writing, so I’ve never depended on the other invention of the 1940s, the welfare state, for basic survival.
But others do. To me it’s a sign of civilisation, that we care for the people who cant look after themselves.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead thought that the first sign of civilisation was a fossil of a man with a healed broken femur, our longest leg bone, 15 thousand years old. His community must have cared for him while he recovered – and protected him from predators who would see him as easy meat!
Because I am relatively lucky as a disabled person, I feel I should try to speak for the disabled people who cant speak for themselves and seem to be easy targets for cuts in our welfare state.
Let me take you into the life of a carer for some of the most vulnerable in our society. This is an extract from a letter to his MP. Names are changed.
“My wife and I are full time carers for our two severely disabled children, Harry and Sally. They both have autism and severe learning difficulties; both are non-verbal and require help and support with every aspect of daily life. They can never go out alone or be left alone. Our daughter can display particularly aggressive and challenging behaviour.
“They will never be able to live independently, or in supported living. Their only option would be residential care. Our plan is to look after them at home, where they’re safe and happy, as long as we possibly can. Our job is 7 days a week and it’s 24 hours a day because they’re both awake all night.
“I can honestly tell you that our household, with the increase in the cost of living, particularly energy and food, is just about surviving. We manage on a very low income.
“Recently Kent County Council removed protections for the most disabled and contributions for care costs went up, in some cases 900%. The most disabled were paying around £35 per week and it’s gone up to around £90 per week from disabled people’s benefit payments leaving them very little to live on. Cash strapped local authorities are doing this up and down the country.
“We were dismayed and horrified regarding the welfare changes proposed by the government. It cannot be right, under any circumstances, to cut payments for the most disabled people who cannot work. It is beyond immoral and quite frankly, I was sickened to hear two Labour front benchers state, when asked about the proposed welfare changes, “There’s a clue in our title, we’re called the Labour Party, we’re the party for working people”.
Do they realise how divisive and dangerous it is to talk about the “skivers versus strivers” and how it affects disabled people’s mental and physical health?
Of course we want to support disabled people moving into work if they can, so that the benefits bill comes down but that’s achieved by reducing NHS waiting lists, providing adequate mental health support, skills training, and an industrial strategy.
By cutting benefits all you achieve is increasing poverty for the most vulnerable in society.
You’ll hear talk about tough decisions, but it’s not a tough decision, it’s an easy one because disabled people can’t defend themselves. It makes them a soft and easy target. If benefit support is cut further, I don’t believe it’s too dramatic to say it will cost lives and the government will have blood on its hands.
In 2019 the ‘Disability Benefits Consortium’ made up of over 80 disability charities commissioned a report that concluded that: “Changes to the welfare system over the past ten years have left disabled adults four times worse off financially than non-disabled adults.
“Cutting benefits to the most vulnerable in Britain is a betrayal of working people and disabled people and has to be a red line for any MP’s with a moral conscience.”
Does this make you angry? People are fighting back! Join us!
Thanet Disabled People Against the Cuts Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/306371969507029/?ref=share
Access Thanet Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2001299366859918/?ref=share
Christine Tongue is a founder member of disability campaign group Access Thanet
What this government is doing to the most vulnerable is scandalous. Everyone apart from the very wealthy are worse off. Scary to think how Labour used to be for less well off & now Starmer is as dishonest & corrupt as the Tories were.
Why was no-one wearing face masks at this protest, yet were requested to do so at the protest in Margate?
Nice to see Christine complaining against Labour for a change.
She rants about everyone.
So in the harrowing example given , what would the proposed benefit cuts amount to? Such alarmist examples are pointless in the absence of some actual numbers and from my understanding of the proposed changes , those in the example would have little to fear.
The huge increases in claims since covid is neither explainable nor affordable and seems to be something that has afflicted the UK more than any other nation. That too many found that a life being paid to sit at home doing nothing was much more agreeable than going back to work and a claim for menatal health issues is seemingly a passport to a life paid for by others is something that can’t be allowed to become too widespread.
All right wing parties, tories, reform and fake Labour see disabled people as a financial issue and an easy way to cut the so called black hole. In reality they need the money as a lifeline to survive. If we need extra revenue I support the Green Party policy of a wealth tax . Tax the greedy not the needy
Anyone who cannot work should be given the support they need to live their life with dignity.
The previous IoTN article though – highlighted a 25 year old man who has never worked due to anxiety and ADHD.
That is frankly ridiculous and undermines the entire concept of the welfare state. People like him should take a look at themselves and build a bit more resilience rather than living off the hard work of tax payers.
If they earned a wage, they could afford more, would have less anxiety due to having more money, and they’d enable the state to put more welfare towards supporting those with more serious mental and physical and mental health conditions.
Exactly,BH.Well said