Category: Sickness and Disability

Shut The Door On Your Way Out Campaign

April 24, 2016August 27, 2016 · 12 Comments ·

: We call for his resignation.

This cross-border Campaign aims at naming and shaming those colluding in the cuts to disabled people instead of addressing disabled people’s rights. We will be writing a series of letters asking for the resignations of those not defending our rights as appointed to do so.

This letter is to the Chair of EHRC.

Dear Lord Holmes of Richmond,

I wish to draw your attention to the functions that were delegated to the Disability Committee and the Commissions duties as they relate to “disability matters” in:

Promoting understanding of the importance of equality and diversity
Encourage good practice
Promoting equality of opportunity
Promoting awareness and understanding of rights
Enforcing equality law
working towards the elimination of unlawful discrimination and harassment
Promoting understanding of good relations

Let me draw your attention to an article printed in the Guardian by the EHRC on 01.03.2016 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/01/equalities-watchdog-criticises-planned-cuts-to-work-support-allowance

The very body you are a Commissioner for, the EHRC, say that the proposed cuts to ESA will disproportionately affect disabled people, widen inequalities and undermine the UK’s Human Rights obligations.

How can you be seen to be promoting the above when you went on to vote for these cuts to both ESA and PIP as a Conservative Peer, your actions will have a detrimental effect on disabled people’s lives, to both Independent living and will undermine the UK’s Human Rights obligations.

As a disability rights campaigner I am calling for your immediate resignation of the position you hold as Disability Commissioner and Chair of the Disability Committee for EHRC as alongside my peers and other user led organization’s we think you are no longer worthy of this position.

Look forward to your reply

Susan Archibald
Disability Rights Campaigner.

Please sign the petition and support this campaign – Campaigners Demand For Lord Chris Holmes Resignation.

Supported by:

Dr Stephen Carty -Black Triangle Campaign

Professor Peter Beresford, Co-Chair, Shaping Our Lives

Mo Stewart –Disabled Veteran/Researcher

Dr Simon John Duffy – Centre of Welfare Reform

Gail Ward – Cross Border Alliance

John McArdle-Black Triangle Campaign

Pat Onions – Pats Petition

Rosemary ONeill – Carerwatch

Frances Kelly – Carerwatch/Dead Parrot Campaign

Linda Burnip – DPAC

Debbie Jolly – DPAC

Anita Bellows – DPAC

Merry Cross – DPAC

Rick Burgess – DPAC Manchester

Paula Peters – DPAC

Annie Bishop – Involve North East & Cumbria for deaf, blind and people with disabilities

Carole Robinson – Bolshy Divas

Tracey Flynn – Bolshy Divas

Catherine Hale – Disability Researcher

C Richardson – Disability Researcher

Stef Benstead – Disability Researcher

Jayne Linney DEAP

Sue Livett-Campaign for a Fair Society England

Michelle Mayer

Rosemary Trustam-Publisher Community Living Magazine

Jo Walker

Sue Jones – Psychologists against Austerity/Human Rights/Policy Researcher/Writer

Again, if you want to sign our petition please click the link here.

The real economic free-riders are the privileged, not the poorest citizens

April 1, 2016April 28, 2017 · 20 Comments ·

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The government’s undeclared preoccupation with behavioural change through personal responsibility isn’t therapy. It’s simply a revamped version of Samuel Smiles’s bible of Victorian and over-moralising, a Conservative behaviourist hobby-horse: “thrift and self-help” – but only for the poor, of course.

Smiles and other powerful, wealthy and privileged Conservative thinkers, such as Herbert Spencer, claimed that poverty was caused largely by the “irresponsible habits” of the poor during that era. But we learned historically that the socioeconomic circumstances caused by political decision-making creates poverty. Meanwhile, the state abdicates its democratic responsibilities of meeting the public’s needs and for transparency and accountability for the outcomes and social consequences of its own policies.

Conservative rhetoric is designed to have us believe there would be no poor people if the welfare state didn’t somehow “create” them. If the Tories must insist on peddling the myth of meritocracy, then surely they must also concede that whilst such a system has some beneficiaries, it also creates situations of insolvency and poverty for others.

In other words, the same system that allows some people to become very wealthy is the same system that condemns others to poverty.

This wide recognition that the raw “market forces” of the old liberal laissez-faire (and the current starker neoliberalism) causes casualties is why the welfare state came into being, after all – because when we allow such competitive economic dogmas to manifest, there are invariably winners and losers.

That is the nature of “competitive individualism,” and along with inequality, it’s an implicit, undeniable and fundamental part of the meritocracy myth and neoliberal script. And that’s before we consider the fact that whenever there is a Conservative government, there is no such thing as a “free market”: in reality, all markets are rigged for elites. For example, we have a highly regulated welfare state that enforces “behaviour change” via a punitive conditionality regime, coercing a reserve army of labour into any available work, and a highly deregulated labour market which is geared towards making profit and is not prompted to provide adequately for the needs of a labour force.

Society as taxpayers and economic free-riders – a false dichotomy

The Conservatives have constructed a justification narrative for their draconian and ideologically-driven cuts to social security by manufacturing an intentionally socially divisive and oversimplistic false dichotomy. Citizens have been redefined as either taxpayers (strivers) or economic free-riders (skivers). Those people currently out of employment, regardless of the reason, are categorised and portrayed through political rhetoric and in the media as economic free-riders – the “something for nothing culture.”

However, not only have most people currently claiming social security, including the majority of disabled people, worked and contributed tax and national insurance, people needing social security support also contribute significantly to the Treasury, because they pay the largest proportion of VAT, council tax, bedroom tax, council care costs and a variety of other stealth taxes.

A massive proportion of welfare expenditure goes towards paying private companies and organisations to “get people back to work” and in rewarding shareholders with savings from the systematic reduction in benefits. This approach has not helped people out of employment to find secure, appropriate work with acceptable levels of pay, because it rests on a never-ending reduction in the value of the minimum benefit level, which was originally calculated to meet subsistence costs – only those costs of fundamental survival needs, such as for fuel, food and shelter – so that those in poverty are made even poorer, less able to meet basic needs, to serve as an “incentive” to make the advantages of any work, regardless of its quality, pay and conditions, appear to be greater than it is.

This is what Conservatives mean by “making work pay.” It’s exactly the same disciplinarian approach as that which was enshrined in the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act – the principle of less eligibility. The 1834 Act was founded on a political view that the poor were largely responsible for their own situation, which they could change if they chose to do so.

Seriously, does anyone really imagine that people actually choose to be poor?

The impact of this approach on the large numbers of disabled people in particular, who had no choice but to seek welfare in the Workhouse, was that they were treated very harshly and depersonalised.

It’s also clear that the underpinning Poor Law Amendment categories of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor – another false dichotomy – and the issue of eligibility for social security is still on the Conservative welfare policy agenda. Worryingly, the current trend is for the government to create stereotypes, frequently portraying the recipients of types of support, such as Disability Living Allowance, as passive or inactive economic free-riders, when in fact the Allowance was paid to some individuals working in the paid labour market, and the withdrawal of such funds, prevents them continuing with such paid work. More recently, the difficulties that many disabled people have encountered in accessing Personal Independence Payments (PIP) because of increasingly narrow eligibility criteria, have meant that many who depend on the income to meet the additional costs of living independently, such as specially adapted motability vehicles, have been forced to give up work.

The state confines its attention mainly to re-connecting disabled people deemed too ill to work with the labour market, without any consideration of potential health and safety risks in the workplace, as a strategy of “support.” Without any support.

As previously summarised, the Conservatives justify the draconian cuts to support as providing “incentives” for people to work, by constructing a narrative that rests on the false and socially divisive taxpayer/free-rider dichotomy: cant

By “trolls” Michael Fabricant actually means disabled people and campaigners responding to his tweet.

Of course one major flaw in Fabricant’s reasoning is that many people passed as fit for work are anything but. The other is that disabled people pay taxes too.

The increasing conditionality of welfare mirrors the increasing conditionality of the labour market

Under the guise of lifting burdens on business, the government has imposed burdens on those with disabilities by removing the “reasonable adjustments” that make living their lives possible and allowing dignity. The labour market is unaccommodating, providing business opportunities for making profit, but increasingly, the needs and rights of the workforce are being politically sidelined. This will invariably reduce opportunities for people to participate in the labour market because of its increasingly limiting terms and conditions.

Of those that may be able to work, over time, their would-be employers have not engaged with legal requirements and provided adjustments in the workplace to support those disabled people seeking employment. The government have removed the Independent Living Fund, and reduced Access to Work support, Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is very difficult to access because of the stringent eligibility criteria, whilst the disability benefit Employment Support Allowance was also redesigned to be increasingly difficult to qualify for.

Policies, which exclude disabled people from their design and rationale, have extended and perpetuated institutional and cultural discrimination against disabled people.

The universal character of human rights is founded on the inherent dignity of all human beings. It is therefore axiomatic that people with medical conditions that lead to disabilities, both mental and physical, have the same human rights as the rest of the human race. The United Nations is currently investigating this government’s gross and systematic violations of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and a recent report from the House of Lords Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability, investigating the Act’s impact on disabled people, has concluded that the Government is failing in its duty of care to disabled people, because it does not enforce the act. Furthermore, the Select Committee concludes that the government’s red tape challenge is being used as a pretext for removing protections for disabled people. This is a government that regards the rights and protections of disabled people as nothing more than a bureaucratic inconvenience.

The inflexibility of the labour market isn’t an issue for only disabled people. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) intends to establish an “in-work service”, designed to encourage individual Universal Credit claimants on very low earnings to increase their income. Benefit payments may be stopped if claimants fail to take action as required by the DWP. The DWP is conducting a range of pilots to test different approaches but there is very little detail about these. The new regime might eventually apply to around one million people. In december last year, the The Work and Pensions Committee opened an in-work progression in Universal Credit inquiry to consider the Department’s plans and options for a fair, workable and effective approach.

The Conservatives continue to peddle the “dependency” myth, yet there has never been any empirical evidence to support the claims of the existence of a “culture of dependency” and that’s despite the dogged research conducted by Keith Joseph some years ago, when he made similar claims. In fact, a recent international study of social safety nets from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard economists categorically refutes the Conservative “scrounger” stereotype and dependency rhetoric. Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Gabriel Kreindler, and Benjamin Olken re-analyzed data from seven randomized experiments evaluating cash programmes in poor countries and found “no systematic evidence that cash transfer programmes discourage work.”

The phrase “welfare dependency” diverts us from political discrimation via policies, increasing inequality, and it serves to disperse public sympathies towards the poorest citizens, normalising prejudice and resetting social norm defaults that then permit the state to target protected social groups for further punitive and “cost-cutting” interventions to “incentivise” them towards “behavioural change.”

Furthermore, Welfare-to-Work programmes do not “help” people to find jobs, because they don’t address exploitative employers, structural problems, such as access to opportunity and resources and labor market constraints. Work programmes are not just a failure here in the UK, but also in other countries, where the programmes have run extensively over at least 15 years, such as Australia.

Welfare-to-work programes are intimately connected with the sanctioning regime, aimed at punishing people claiming welfare support. Work programme providers are sanctioning twice as many people as they are signposting into employment (David Etherington, Anne Daguerre, 2015), emphasising the distorted priorities of “welfare to work” services, and indicating a significant gap between claimant obligations and employment outcomes.

The Conservatives have always constructed discourses and shaped institutions which isolate some social groups from health, social and political resources, with justification narratives based on a process of class-contingent characterisations and the ascribed responsiblisation of social problems such as poverty, using quack psychology and pseudoscience. However, it is socioeconomic conditions which lead to deprivation of opportunities, and that outcome is undoubtedly a direct consequence of inadequate political decision-making and policy.

It’s worth bearing in mind that many people in work are still living in poverty and reliant on in-work benefits, which undermines the libertarian paternalist/Conservative case for increasing benefit conditionality somewhat, although those in low-paid work are still likely to be less poor than those reliant on out-of-work benefits.

The government’s Universal Credit legislation has enshrined the principle that working people in receipt of in-work benefits may face benefits sanctions if they are deemed not to be trying hard enough to find higher-paid work. It’s not as if the Conservatives have ever valued legitimate collective wage bargaining. In fact their legislative track record consistently demonstrates that they hate it, prioritising the authority of the state above all else.

There are profoundly conflicting differences in the interests of employers and employees. The former are generally strongly motivated to purposely keep wages as low as possible so they can generate profit and pay dividends to shareholders and the latter need their pay and working conditions to be such that they have a reasonable standard of living.

Workplace disagreements about wages and conditions are now typically resolved neither by collective bargaining nor litigation but are left to management prerogative. This is because of deregulation to suit employers and not employees. Conservative aspirations are clear. They want cheap labour and low cost workers, unable to withdraw their labour, unprotected by either trade unions or employment rights and threatened with destitution via benefit sanction cuts if they refuse to accept low paid, low standard work. Similarly, desperation and the “deterrent” effect of the 1834 Poor Law amendment served to drive down wages.

The global financial crisis presented an opportunity for Conservative supporters of labour market deregulation to once again champion “economic growth” at any costs by “lifting the regulatory burdens on business.” Neoliberal commentators argued that highly regulated labour markets perform reasonably well during boom periods but cannot cope with recessions – and that therefore the UK and other developed economies need to deregulate their labour markets to ensure a strong economic recovery (even though the UK already has one of the most deregulated labour markets in the developed world).

The “problems” with labour market regulation are seen by Conservatives as being rooted in:

The social security system which provides a safety net and maintains basic living standards for those who are out of work, by reducing the gap in living standards between those in and those out of work, it diminishes the incentive to find or keep jobs. Where the safety net is financed by taxes on wages, it also raises total labour costs.
Minimum wages which may “price workers out of jobs” if set at levels above those prevailing in an unregulated labour market.
Employment protection legislation, such as restrictions on the ability of employers to hire and fire at will, also raises labour costs, diminishes flexibility and willingness to hire, thus reducing employment. (See Beecroft report)
Trade unions which raise wages to levels which “destroy jobs and reduce productivity and efficiency through restrictive practices.” (See Trade Union Bill).

Regulation of the labour market, however, is crucial to compensate for the wide inequality in bargaining power between employers and employees; to realise comparative wage justice; to increase employee’s job security and tenure, therefore encouraging investment in skills (both by the employer and employee), which has a positive impact on labour productivity and growth, and to ensure that a range of basic community, health and safety standards are observed in the workplace.

In the Conservative’s view, trade unions distort the free labour market which runs counter to New Right and neoliberal dogma.

Since 2010, the decline in UK wage levels has been amongst the very worst in Europe. The fall in earnings under the Coalition is the biggest in any parliament since 1880, according to analysis by the House of Commons Library, and at a time when the cost of living has spiralled upwards. And whose fault is that? It’s certainly not the fault of those who need financial support to meet their basic survival needs despite being in employment.

So we may counter-argue that:

Genuine minimum standards, including minimum wages are needed. Without them the lower end of the market becomes casualised, insecure and sufficiently low-paid, which in turn also produces major work incentive problems. On the other hand, regulation that protects or gives power to already powerful groups in the labour market creates serious inequality in access to work. Additionally, the creation of special types of labour exempt from normal regulation is particularly unhelpful. It often tends to reinforce the privileged status of core workers while generating jobs which are unsuitable vehicles for tackling the problem of social exclusion.
The benefit system needs to take into account that those who take entry-level jobs may require additional help from the welfare state to support their families. Without this type of benefit, adults in poorer families will be the last to take such relatively low-paying entry-level positions. Furthermore, a highly conditional social security system that provides below subsistence-level support also serves to disincentivise people because financial insecurity invariably creates physiological, psychological, behavioural and motivational difficulties, people in circumstances of absolute poverty are forced to shift their cognitive priority to that of surviving, rather than being “work ready.” This was historically observed by social psychologist Abraham Maslow in his classic work on human motivation and well-evidenced in research, such as the Minnesota semistarvation experiment, amongst many other comprehensive studies.
Employment taxes, on both employers and employees, should be progressive to support the creation of new jobs rather than making the already employed work longer hours. Yet the UK system also has numerous large incentives to offer employees insecure and short-hour contracts. This is remarkably short-sighted and counterproductive.

The balance of “incentives” in Conservative policies.

The following cuts came into force in April 2013:

1 April – Housing benefit cut, including the introduction of the ‘bedroom tax’
1 April – Council tax benefit cut
1 April – Legal Aid savagely cut
6 April – Tax credit and child benefit cut
7 April – Maternity and paternity pay cut
8 April – 1% cap on the rise of in working-age benefits (for the next three years)
8 April – Disability living allowance replaced by personal independence payment (PIP), with the aim of saving costs and “targeting” the support
15 April – Cap on the total amount of benefit working-age people can receive

In 2012, Ed Miliband said: “David Cameron and George Osborne believe the only way to persuade millionaires to work harder is to give them more money.

But they also seem to believe that the only way to make you (ordinary people) work harder is to take money away.”

He was right.

Here are some of the Tory “incentives” for the wealthy:

Rising wealth – 50 richest people from the Midlands region increased their wealth by £3.46 billion to a record £28.5 billion.
Falling taxes – top rate of tax cut from 50% to 45% for those earning over £150,000 a year. This is 1% of the population who earn 13% of the income.
No mansion tax and caps on council tax mean that the highest value properties are taxed proportionately less than average houses.
Benefited most from Quantitative Easing (QE) – the Bank of England say that as 50% of households have little or no financial assets, almost all the financial benefit of QE was for the wealthiest 50% of households, with the wealthiest 10% taking the lions share
Tax free living – extremely wealthy individuals can access tax avoidance schemes which contribute to the £25bn of tax which is avoided every year, as profits are shifted offshore to join the estimated £13 trillion of assets siphoned off from our economy
£107, 000 each per annum gifted to millionaires in the form of a “tax break.”

Disabled people have carried most of the burden of Conservative austerity cuts:

The Conservatives are on an ideological crusade, which flies in the face of public needs, democracy and sound economics, to shrink the welfare state and privatise our essential services.

In a wealth transfer from the poorest to the very rich, we have witnessed the profits of public services being privatised, but the losses have been socialised – entailing a process of economic enclosure for the wealthiest, whilst the burden of losses have been placed on the poorest social groups and our most vulnerable citizens – largely those who are ill, disabled and elderly. The Conservative’s justification narratives regarding their draconian policies, targeting the poorest social groups, have led to media scapegoating, social outgrouping, persistent political denial of the aims and consequences of policies and reflect a wider process of political disenfranchisement of the poorest citizens, especially sick and disabled people.

This is juxtaposed with the more recent gifted tax cuts for the wealthiest, indicating clearly that Conservatives perceive and construct social hierarchies with policies that extend inequality and discrimination. The axiom of our international human rights is that we each have equal worth. Conservative ideology is fundamentally incompatable with the UK government’s Human Rights obligations and with Equality law. The chancellor clearly regards public funds for providing essential lifeline support for disabled people as expendable and better appropriated for adding to the disposable income for the wealthy.

Public policy is not an ideological tool for a so-called democratic government to simply get its own way. Democracy means that the voices of citizens, especially members of protected social groups, need to be included in political decision-making, rather than so frankly excluded.

Government policies are expressed political intentions regarding how our society is organised and governed. They have calculated social and economic aims and consequences. In democratic societies, citizen’s accounts of the impacts of policies ought to matter.

However, in the UK, the way that policies are justified is being increasingly detached from their aims and consequences, partly because democratic processes and basic human rights are being disassembled or side-stepped, and partly because the government employs the widespread use of linguistic strategies and techniques of persuasion to intentionally divert us from their aims and the consequences of their ideologically (rather than rationally) driven policies. Furthermore, policies have become increasingly detached from public interests and needs.

We elect governments to meet public needs, not to “change behaviours” of citizens to suit government needs and prop up policy “outcomes” that are driven entirely by traditional Tory prejudice and ideology.

proper Blond

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Call for submissions – inquiry launched into employment support for disabled people

March 30, 2016March 30, 2016 · 19 Comments ·

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Disability Employment Gap 2015. Source: UK Parliament.

Inquiry background

The Work and Pensions Committee has launched an inquiry into the Government’s commitment to halve the “disability employment gap.” According to the most recent data, 46.7% of disabled people were in work at the end of 2015 compared to 80.3% of non-disabled people. In order to close this gap, the Committee says an extra 1.2 million disabled people would need to be supported into work.

The Committee’s welfare to work report, published in October 2015, raised concerns about the lack of success of existing employment programmes in supporting disabled people into sustained employment.

The Government has since announced:

A new Work and Health Programme to replace the current generalist Work Programme and specialist disability Work Choice programmes
A real terms increase in spending on the Access to Work Programme, which provides practical support for disabled people, beyond the “reasonable adjustments” required to be made by employers
A White Paper to be published this year which will “set out reforms to improve support for people with health conditions and disabilities, including exploring the roles of employers, to further reduce the disability employment gap and promote integration across health and employment.”

Concerns raised over Disability Confident campaign

In addition, the DWP’s Disability Confident campaign, launched in 2013, aims to promote the benefits of employing disabled people to employers.

However, concerns have been raised about the abolition of the Work Related Activity component of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) worth £29.05 per week – and its equivalent in Universal Credit – for new claimants from April 2017, and the potential effects of this measure on disabled people’s ability to overcome their barriers to working.

Call for written submissions

The Committee invites written submissions addressing the following points:

Steps required to halve the disability employment gap:

To what extent are the current range of proposed measures likely to achieve the Government’s ambition of closing the disability employment gap?
Should the Government set interim targets along the way to meet the commitment to halve the disability employment gap? What should they be?

Support for employers:

How effective is the Disability Confident campaign in reducing barriers to employment and educating employers?
What more could be done to support employers?

Effective employment support for disabled people:

What should support for people with health conditions and disabilities in the proposed Work and Health programme look like?
How should providers be incentivised to succeed?

Likely effects of proposed ESA reform:

What are the likely impacts on disability employment of the abolition of the Employment and Support Allowance Work Related Activity component?
What evidence is there that it will promote ‘positive behavioural change’? What evidence is there that it will have unintended consequences, and how could these be mitigated?

Aim of the inquiry

The Committee intends to consider possible improvements in:

the DWP’s employment support programmes for disabled people
Support for employers to take on disabled people
Disabled people’s access to the labour market more broadly

The Committee will also examine possible adverse consequences of the Government’s current approach, particularly around proposed changes to ESA, and how these might be addressed.

Chair’s comment

Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee said:

“The Government has made a welcome commitment to help more people with disabilities into a position where they can find and then keep a job. If it can successfully be seen through, this commitment could signal a major stride towards achieving full employment in our country.

The really important part now is to back-up this commitment with a series of reforms that are tailored to each person’s own skills and ambitions, as well as those conditions that currently limit their ability to work, so that each person can follow a feasible journey into work. We hope the evidence we receive will enable us to help the Government in its search for such a reform package.”

Send a written submission through the disability employment gap inquiry page.

Further information

The deadline for written submissions is Monday 9 May 2016.

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The new Work and Health Programme: government plan social experiments to “nudge” sick and disabled people into work

The biggest barrier that disabled people face is a prejudiced government

Let’s keep the job centre out of GP surgeries and the DWP out of our confidential medical records

Latest DWP information release reveals a huge rise in the numbers of sick and disabled people being sanctioned

G4S are employing Cognitive Behavioural Therapists to deliver “get to work therapy”

The biggest barrier that disabled people face is a prejudiced government

March 29, 2016October 4, 2016 · 19 Comments ·

The very act of renaming incapacity benefit support for sick and disabled people “employment and support allowance” signaled the political intent to make that support precarious, with an aim of pushing people previously exempted from work on medical grounds from lifeline social security protection into work on political grounds, regardless of the consequences. The word “allowance” means the amount of something that is permitted, especially within a set of regulations or for a specified purpose. This language shift signaled the increasing contingency of support for disabled people.

It also reduced and transformed the sick role, making it increasingly transitory, redefining chronic, incurable conditions as somehow transient, and marking a shift from medical definitions of sickness and disability to psychopolitical redefinitions, which are ultimately aimed at pushing forward a small state neoliberalist agenda. Welfare provision is being steadily dismantled.

However, changing the name and making the eligibility criteria for support much more stringent has not helped sick and disabled people into work. It has simply created circumstances of further disadvantage, hardship and distress for many people.

It hasn’t worked because many of those people affected by the nudge-styled rebranding of their lifeline support and draconian cuts to “incentivise” people to take up and cherish the Puritan work ethic, as the paternalistic Conservatives think we ought to, are simply too ill to work.

Of those that may be able to work, over time, their would-be employers have not engaged with legal requirements and provided adjustments in the workplace to support those disabled people seeking employment. The government have removed the Independent Living Fund, and reduced Access to Work support, Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is very difficult to access because of the stringent eligibility criteria, whilst the disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance was also redesigned to be increasingly difficult to qualify for.

But political word games, and intentions to attempt to shrink the categories of what is deemed “illness and disability” along with the ever-shrinking state, don’t cure illness and disability, and it’s offensive to witness a very wealthy first world so-called democratic government viciously hounding and shamefully coercing a group of people, negatively labeling them as a “burden on the taxpayer”, and forcing them to take any low paid, insecure work, without any support whatsoever, despite the fact their doctor and the state, via the work capability assessment, have deemed them already to be unfit for work, whilst at the same time leaving this group on an isolated, ever-shrinking island with ever-decreasing lifeline support.

Perhaps PIP ought to include invisible bootstraps in the aids and appliances categories.

This is juxtaposed with the recent gifted tax cuts for the wealthiest, indicating clearly that Conservatives perceive and construct social hierarchies with policies that extend inequality and discrimination. The axiom of our international human rights is that we each have equal worth. Conservative ideology is fundamentally incompatable with the UK government’s Human Rights obligations and with Equality law. The chancellor clearly regards public funds for providing essential lifeline support for disabled people as expendable and better appropriated for adding to the disposable income for the wealthy.

Most people (over three-quarters ) who are disabled became so during their working life. There is an implicit political prejudice regarding disability, evident in policy-making, which is that it is an undesirable state and somehow preventable. There is another more explicitly stated prejudice, which relates to the oversimplistic false dichotomy of society. Citizens have been redefined as taxpayers or economic free-riders. However, not only have most disabled people worked and contributed tax and national insurance, people claiming social security also contribute significantly to the Treasury, because we pay VAT, council tax, bedroom tax and a variety of other stealth taxes.

The state confines its focus and responsibility mainly at re-connecting disabled people with the labor market, without any consideration of potential health and safety risks in the workplace, as a strategy of “support,” and justifies the draconian cuts to support as providing “incentives” for people to work, by constructing a narrative that rests on the bogus and socially divisive taxpayer/free-rider dichotomy:

“You answer if a disabled person can’t work there is NO cut but if they can but won’t, why should taxpayers subsidise them & trolls go mad!”

— Michael Fabricant (@Mike_Fabricant) March 26, 2016

By “trolls” Michael Fabricant actually means disabled people and campaigners responding to his tweet.

What happens to those people that can’t work or cannot find an understanding employer, prepared to make reasonable adjustments in the workplace?

On becoming ill – it can happen to anyone

I am medically ill and my illness (lupus) affects my mobility, focus and general wellbeing. I am restricted in what I can do, and the symptoms and exacerbations are very unpredicable. However, it is economic, political and cultural forces which have created and continue to create my ongoing disability and social marginalisation, not my illness. Many of my problems are compounded because of an unadapted physical environment, a lack of resources and the attitudes of others, particularly the current government’s.

I don’t accept that health problems ought to be seen as the cause of the socioeconomic deprivation and exclusion that many of us are experiencing, because the real cause is entirely political. Policies, which exclude disabled people from their design and rationale, have extended and perpetuated institutional and cultural discrimination against disabled people.

My own illness arose partly because of a genetic predisposition, partly because of my gender and hormonal events which often trigger the illness, and probably a variety of other complex reasons, none of which specialists fully understand yet. Prior to becoming very ill, I led a very active and healthy life. I worked hard in a job I loved. My diet is and always has been balanced and healthy, I enjoyed outdoor activities such as climbing, abseiling, archery and walking. I was never inactive or overweight, and I am not stupid when it comes to health issues. Lupus isn’t a “lifestyle choice” and it didn’t arise because of something I did wrong.

All the same, I frequently get well-meaning but bad advice to try different diets, “natural” herbal remedies (people forget that they contain chemicals) – usually the immune- enhancing ones like echinacea, which my rheumatologist has already advised could be very dangerous – and the best one of all: “You should stop taking the heavy duty medication and ‘cleanse your system’.” That would be medication that I take to keep me alive because I tried and ran out of all the other options. I usually recommend a simple course of water melons for such “experts”, to be taken at four hourly intervals, rectally.

Like many other ill and disabled people, I have worked for most of my life. My work was rewarding, and the professional roles I took up have entailed developing inspirational ways to support and enable others, from voluntary work with Women’s Aid and Victim Support, to salaried youth and community work, social work, mental health work and delivering training. I worked whilst being ill for a number of years.

By 2010, I simply couldn’t work any more. My previous and mostly background joint, nerve and muscle pain suddenly became all consuming. My ankles, knees, wrists and fingers swelled. I caught a cold at work which turned to pneumonia on two occasions in 2009. I had apparently random finger abcesses, inexplicable kidney infections, and bruised every time I was touched. I had severe nerve pain in my face and optic nerves, which affects my vision. My hips and lower spine became stiff and painful, my shoulders became frozen. I had a painful rash across my face that looked like eczema, only it wasn’t. I was profoundly tired all of the time, and weighed less than eight stones. My GP ran some tests and everything came back lupus, with complications such as a severe autoimmune bleeding disorder, very low immunity to infection and neurological involvement.

Working put my safety, health and wellbeing at substantial risk. It also potentially exposed other people to risk, too, because of the impact of my illness on my judgments, reliability and consistency, eyesight, ability to supervise, mobility and so on. A tribunal agreed with this assessment in 2012.

It was a very painful recognition that I could no longer work, my decision to leave was very difficult, compounded by a sense of loss of self worth and meaning. I felt that my experience, developed skills, not to mention time and effort invested in studying for a highly vocational Master’s degree, were meaningless and unavailing. However, I was completely unprepared for the damaging impact of the political othering and socioeconomic outgrouping that followed from 2010.

And the poverty. I came to feel that I had been politically redefined as somehow “deviant” by 2012. A much needed transformation to add to the grieving process for the person I was before my body became a traitor. Cheers, Mr Cameron, for the milk of human blindness. The Sex Pistols got it a bit wrong back in the last days of counter-culture and agitprop: it’s not just anarchy that we need for the UK, it’s a modicum of empathy, too.

Doctors and rehabilitation professionals continually recommend medical treatments and practices even though they know that these will not necessarily improve my quality of life. Most of the treatments for autoimmune illnesses such as lupus are largely experimental: comprised of chemotherapies and immune suppressants that carry their own life-threatening risks, and being ill with lupus and other autoimmune illnesses presents a constant and difficult process of weighing up of such risks – life threats from the illness versus life threats and serious life-changing risks from the treatments.

The dangers that arise when everyone thinks they are an expert on illness and disability

That didn’t stop a job advisor, during my time in the employment support allowance work-related activity, group telling me I should take the chemotherapy methotrexate because her friend with rheumatoid arthritis had some benefit from it. Methotrextate helps around 25% of people taking it, to various degrees, but it cannot cure the illness. Side-effects include sudden death, blindness, liver, kidney and heart failure, lung fibrosis, thrombocytopenia – a serious bleeding disorder which I already have – and death from an overwhelming infection, which I am already susceptible to, since my immune system is easily compromised and broken, amongst many other problems.

As it happens, I had already tried methotrexate for many months, administered by injection into my stomach. It didn’t work and the side-effects were truly diabolical, adding to my existing misery and multiplying symptoms. Another treatment, considered far less risky, called hydroxychloroquine, damaged my retina because I was prescribed too high a dosage, I’m now partially sighted.

However, the unqualified advice from a job coach overlooked that I have a different illness than her friend, and that methotrexate is a black box drug with life-threatening side-effects. Everyone seems to think they are a medical expert nowadays, and that’s the government’s doing, since they have been redefining illness and disability, making it a moral and public matter rather than a private, medical issue. Such political negative role-modelling has permitted a rise in expressions of social prejudice towards disabled people, which is why hate crime has risen significantly since 2010 and is now at the highest level since records began.

We are either deserving or non-deserving, abled or disabled, never just ill or physically disadvantaged. Our lives have somehow become public property, with all manner of unqualified people feeling entitled to intrude at an intimate level to tell us how to “manage” our illness better. Or to transform media tropes and political folk devils into forms of justification for abuse.

Job centre staff it seems will recommend anything, including unqualified advice about medical treatments, regardless of the risks that may be involved, to coerce people from what was once a social safety net and into any job, regardless of its appropriateness, quality, pay, security, and importantly, it’s potential impact on people’s health and safety.

Last October, I flagged up the extremely worrying government plans to place job coaches in GP practices, with provision made for job centre staff to “update” people’s medical files. The government hadn’t announced this “intervention” in the lives of disabled people, nor had we been consulted or involved in its design. I found out about it quite by chance because I read Matthew Hancock’s recent conference speech: The Future of Public Services.

I researched a little further and found an article in Pulse which confirmed Hancock’s comments: GP practices to provide advice on job seeking in new pilot scheme.

The government plans to merge health and employment services, and are now attempting to redefine work as a clinical outcome. Unemployment has been stigmatised and politically redefined as a psychological disorder, and the government claims somewhat incoherently that the “cure” for unemployment due to illness and disability, and sickness absence from work, is work.

This is why I visit my doctor and not David Cameron or George Osborne when I need advice, support and treatment related to my medical (and not political) condition.

It’s a prejudiced government that has edited the script regarding sick roles – we no longer have medical sick notes, they have been replaced by political fit notes. The subtext is that we must participate in the world of mainstream work without any choices, without reasonable adaptations and without support. Without any acknowledgement of illness and disability, in fact. Or, we have to accept being redefined, our identity rewritten as “dependent”, “impaired” “unfit for work” as a trade-off for a degree of meagre support.

All of our previous achievements and contributions are forgotten. We once celebrated the achievements of disabled people, but now, we cannot, because disabled people are systematically repressed. We are politically defined as either fit for work (and thus not seen as “disabled”) or not. There are no other options for us, unless we happen to be very wealthy as well as ill.

Singing the body politic in our own voices

We don’t fit with neoliberal dogma and the Tory ideals of “individual responsibility”, competition, a “small state” and compulsory (low) paid employment to enhance profits for the elite’s old boys network. Any positive association with impairment, such as reasonable allowances made or degrees of freedom from the Tory notion of “social obligations” and “responsibilities,” is prohibited. We are faced with an overly simplistic, terribly reductive and dehumanising either/or choice.

We are deemed either fit for work, or too disabled to work, with no accommodation made for what we may be able to contribute in myriad ways to society, nor is our past accumulative experience and skill regarded as a valuable. The moment there is a hint we may have some kind of tenuous work-related capability, all support is withdrawn. However, once we are deemed unfit for work, we are denied full citizen’s status and economic inclusion.

This narrow political approach does nothing to enable and support people, nor does it reflect human diversity. It simply disables us further and denies us autonomy and the right to define ourselves. It’s an approach that actually punishes people for the abilities, experience and skills that they have, stifling human potential. The moment those abilities and skills are revealed at a work capability assessment, all support is withdrawn and those qualities remain unfulfilled. Instead of investing in personal development and extending opportunities, the government is simply cutting social security and public service costs at our expense. It’s not actually their money to cut.

We are expected to participate in an unaccommodating and increasingly competitive job market or suffer the dehumanising consequences and impoverishment of claiming social security long-term. And the people profiting from this are the competing, vulture capitalist private “service” providers.

There is no support for creating circumstances where our skills may be transfered. There is no support to help anyone adapt their skills and experience to fit future employment. Access to higher education has been restricted because of the steep rise in cost, especially for mature and disabled students. There is nothing in place to ensure that employers recognise disabled people’s skills and experiences and make adaptations to accommodate people wanting to work, and no safety net at all to encourage personal development for disabled people, since all support is tied to rigid definitions of disability. You can either work or not.

Under the guise of lifting burdens on business, this government has imposed burdens on those with disabilities by removing the “reasonable adjustments” that make living our lives possible and allow us some dignity. The labor market is hostile and unaccommodating, providing business opportunities for making profit, but increasingly, the needs and rights of the workforce are being politically sidelined. This will invariably reduce opportunities for people to participate in the labor market because of its increasingly limiting terms and conditions.

This highlights the paramount importance of shifting the political focus to the pressing need to change a disabling culture and to actually listen to our lived experiences, including us in policy design from that of merely coercing us into fitting reductive Conservative definitions to accommodate and fit in with a neoliberal model of society.

We have smug, wealthy and healthy Conservatives redefining disablity, our identity is ascribed by others who have handed us a socially devalued status: we are being told who we are and how we must be.

Citizen’s “needs” are being aligned with politically defined neoliberal outcomes. Those most acutely aware of this are those politically assigned a lower status in the increasingly steep socioeconomic hierarchy. Stigma and othering is used politically to justify the hierarchy and the consequent crass inequalities, which are designed and mediated through policies, not citizens.

Stigma arises because of the perceptions of the oppressor, not those being oppressed. But perhaps it’s time that people who are “working hard” to contribute to the increasingly enclosed economy paused and observed what is going down, because disabled people are not the only ones being stigmatised and radically reduced by a particularly toxic combination of social conservatism and neoliberalism. Punitive and coercive welfare conditionality, including sanctioning, has recently been extended to those in low paid employment and part-time work, as tax credits and additional support vanish under the guise of “universal credit”. The bedroom tax is likely to be extended to the elderly. How does this in any way ensure that “work pays”? All this will do is increase the precariousness of people’s situations and substantially increase their vulnerability.

The recognition and celebration of human potential, diversity and equal worth has been superceded by an all-pervasive Puritan “hard work” ethic. Our worth is being defined purely in terms of our economic contribution. We are measured out in pounds and pennies whilst making billions for a handful of other people. That is a value that comes exclusively from the dominant paradigm-shaping elite – the ones who actually profit from your hard work.

You don’t.

The government’s new “health and work” programme is actually workfare for sick and disabled people. Apparently, slave labor for big business is good for our “health” and has the added bonus of adding substantially to profits for friends of the Conservatives. It’s amazing how quickly the public have accepted the political semantic shifts, such as “work programme” – compulsory labor for no wage, which was originally about “exploitation” and has now been redefined as “work experience”. Apparently that is also “fair”, “inclusive”, “good” for our health and “makes work pay”.

Makes work pay for whom?

Disability can no longer be considered solely as a medical problem, affecting only a minority of the population. It must be seen for what it is: as a civil rights issue as central to mainstream political discourse. This government uses draconian policies to act UPON disabled people, it does not value our lived experiences nor does it listen and RESPOND to us. It’s a government that simply tells us how we must BE. That is profoundly undemocratic, it discriminates against us and excludes a social group on the basis of a protected characteristic.

There are and have been a lot of ways to define disability, it has variously has been defined through the eugenic model, a medical model, charity model, rights-based model, social model and a radical model. Now it’s time for a disabled people’s model, founded on our lived experiences and varied needs.

Understanding that oppressive situations have not arisen through any fault of our own, and that the oppression is real and has a basis in sociopolitical prejudice and discrimination provides us with the courage needed, and a more solid ground on which to fight for liberation. It always seems to be the case that fighting social injustice is left to the very people who have been excluded and systematically deprived of a political voice and power, it’s always down to us to make others listen. Yet it is invariably the case that when one social group is targeted for political prejudice and discriminatory policies, it affects everyone. Historically we have learned it quickly follows that other groups are singled out, too.

The United Nations is currently investigating this government’s gross and systematic violations of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and a recent report from the House of Lords Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability, investigating the Act’s impact on disabled people, has concluded that the Government is failing in its duty of care to disabled people, because it does not enforce the act.

Furthermore, the Select Committee concludes that the government’s red tape challenge is being used as a pretext for removing protections for disabled people. It’s a government that regards the rights and protections of disabled people as a mere bureaucratic inconvenience.

There’s a certain irony regarding the Conservative preoccupation with preserving social order: their rigid ideologically-driven policies create the very things they fear – dissent, insecurity, disorder and the raising of public awareness and recognition of a pressing need for social change and reform. It’s seems to be the case that Conservative governments prompt a growth of social challenges that encourage the flourishing of the very radicalism and revolutionary ideas that they fear and loathe.

That is what happens when people are oppressed.

Picture courtesy of Robert Livingstone

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Department for Work and Pensions Recruits Staff To Reduce ESA And PIP Appeal Success Rates

March 25, 2016March 27, 2016 · 11 Comments ·

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Legal Aid funding became unavailable for welfare cases at First Tier tribunal in April 2013, because of the Conservative-led Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). This included Legal Aid for appealing all benefit decisions. Legal Aid at Second Tier tribunal may be available if the case is about a point of law. Political lip service was paid to the legal human rights implications regarding the violation to the right to a fair trial (Article 6 of the ECHR), equal access to justice , and the Act provided that funding may be granted on a case-by-case basis where the failure to provide legal aid would be a breach of the individual’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or the rights of the individual to the provision of legal services that are enforceable European Union rights.

The Lord Chancellor’s Exceptional Funding Guidance (Non-Inquests) clarified that in determining whether Article 6 ECHR would be breached, it has to be shown that the failure to grant funding would mean that bringing the case would be “practically impossible or lead to an obvious unfairness in proceedings” (para 63). But Ministry of Justice figures showed that from 1 April 2013 to 31 December 2013, of the 1,083 applications determined, funding was granted in only 35 cases (3% of cases). This indicates that the criteria are being applied in an intentionally “overly restrictive manner” and, in the case of welfare benefits, all 11 applications were refused: Exceptional Case Funding Statistics – April 2013 to March 2014.

Considering this in a context that includes the introduction of the Mandatory Review, in 2013, and in light of more recent events, I think it’s fair to say that the Conservatives have shown they are determined to take away money that provides essential support from disabled people in particular, one way or another, no matter how much it costs to do so.

Many thanks to Benefits and Work for the following information:

The Department for Work and Pensions has been given £22 million to recruit presenting officers in an effort to reduce the number of claimants winning their personal independence payment (PIP) and employment and support allowance (ESA) appeals.

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) “Economic and Fiscal Outlook” document lists the following amount:

“£22 million to DWP to recruit presenting officers across 2016-17 to 2017-18 to support the department in personal independent payments and employment and support allowance tribunals.”

Buzzfeed is reporting that the money will pay for 180 new presenting officers.

The number of PIP appeals is expected to skyrocket over the coming two years as the forced move from DLA to PIP takes place.

In addition, the proportion of successful PIP appeals has increased with every quarter since the benefit was introduced. PIP claimants won in 60% of cases from July to September 2015, up from 56% in the previous quarter.

58% of ESA cases are also won by the claimant.

The DWP is also concerned by the way that tribunal judges have been interpreting the very badly drafted PIP legislation in favour of claimants. In particular, the widening of what counts as aids and appliances for PIP activities by judges is what led to the disastrous attempt to change the point scores for PIP.

In theory, presenting officers should act a s a ‘friend of the court’, helping judges to reach a fair decision. In reality, they will be sent by the DWP to try to discredit claimants and argue as forcibly as possible for the DWP’s interpretation of the law to be accepted.

Attending an appeal tribunal is likely to be an even more gruelling process for claimants over the next few years.

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Update

Recovery In The Bin is a mental health social justice group, who are fundraising to help train 16 volunteers to support people with mental health difficulties before and up to ESA/ PIP tribunals. They say:

“Here’s what we’re doing about it

We have asked Welfare trainer Tom Messere, author of the Big Book of Benefits, if he would train 20 volunteers in the basics that they will support people up to these tribunals to give them a bit more of a fighting chance. And whilst we have Tom at our disposal we are also we will be training the volunteers to help fill out the often complex and confusing forms, so that less have to go to tribunal in the first place. The training will be on ESA and PIP, form filling, getting any available medical and informal evidence correctly pitched (what the person needs to ask for), possible calls, key pointers for accompanying, and up to tribunals.

You can join us

We are hoping you can donate to help pay for the training, the venue, transport and accommodation for Tom, and as we are recruiting volunteers, many on low incomes themselves, and as we will need to have representatives in as many places as we can (sorry, we wish we could provide for everywhere) then we are trying to raise as much help for their travel as well.

As such we are looking to raise £2250.”

You can support Recovery In The Bin in their aim to provide support for people who need to fight at tribunal for their ESA and PIP award, and donate here

The government is failing in its legal duty of care to disabled people

March 25, 2016November 19, 2016 · 12 Comments ·

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The House of Lords Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability investigating the Act’s impact on disabled people has concluded that the Government is failing in its duty of care to disabled people. From taxi drivers refusing to take disabled people, to “disgraceful” accessibility at sports grounds, to pubs and clubs failing to provide disabled toilets, the report, entitled The Equality Act 2010: the impact on disabled people, says practice in all areas must be improved.

Comment of Baroness Deech, Chairman

“Over the course of our inquiry we have been struck by how disabled people are let down across the whole spectrum of life.

“Access to public buildings remains an unnecessary challenge to disabled people. Public authorities can easily side-step their legal obligations to disabled people, and recent changes in the courts have led to disabled people finding it harder to fight discrimination.

“When it comes to the law requiring reasonable adjustments to prevent discrimination, we found that there are problems in almost every part of society, from disabled toilets in restaurants being used for storage, to schools refusing interpreters for deaf parents, to reasonable adjustments simply not being made.

“In the field of transport alone, we heard of an urgent need to meet disabled people’s requirements – whether it’s training for staff or implementing improvements to trains and buses – and we’re calling for all new rail infrastructure to incorporate step-free access in its design from the outset.

“The Government bears the ultimate responsibility for enabling disabled people to participate in society on equal terms, and we believe it is simply not discharging that responsibility. Not only has the Government dragged its heels in bringing long-standing provisions of the Act into force, such as those requiring taxi drivers to take passengers in wheelchairs, but has in fact repealed some provisions which had protected disabled people. Intended to reduce the regulatory burden on business, the reality has been an increase in the burden on disabled people.

“The Committee would like to see changes right at the top of Government and is calling for the Minister for Disabled People to be given a place on the Cabinet’s Social Justice Committee.

“It’s time to reverse the attitude that disabled people are an afterthought. Many of the changes we suggest are simple and do not require legislation. We hope the Government will implement them quickly.”

Findings in the report include:

Transport

The Government should bring into force immediately provisions in the Act obliging taxi drivers to take passengers with wheelchairs. In cases where taxi drivers fail to comply with the Act local authorities should withhold the licences of drivers.

All new rail infrastructure must build into its design step-free access; retrofitting of stock with audio/visual annunciators must be prioritised; training for all rail, bus and coach staff must be made a legal requirement.

Sports grounds

These have been described as “disgraceful” by the Minster for Disabled People and new measures are needed. Ministers must report on the progress made on stadia, following the Premier League’s promise to upgrade all their stadia by August 2017.

Housing and public spaces

Many restaurants, pubs and clubs are difficult to access, with many not providing basic facilities such as a disabled toilet. Local authorities should be allowed to refuse to grant or renew these premises’ licences until they make the necessary changes.

The design of new buildings is another area where local authorities could require new buildings to be wheelchair accessible or adaptable, simply by revising their planning policies.

Communications and democratic inclusion

Communications is an area where disabled people are still being failed. We recommend that all Government departments, local authorities and public bodies review how they communicate with disabled people, and that disabled people must be involved in this process.

The law and enforcement

Developments in recent years have made fighting discrimination more difficult for disabled people. New tribunal fees, less access to legal aid, and procedural changes have combined to create barriers to the effective enforcement of disabled people’s rights. Changes are recommended to combat this.

The Equality Act 2010 was intended to harmonise all discrimination law and to strengthen the law to support progress on equality.

Over the past nine months the Committee has been examining the Equality Act 2010 and in particular its impact on disabled people, looking at areas such as:

·   Implementation
·   Enforcement
·   Reasonable adjustment
·   Transport
·   Communication
·   The Equality and Human Rights Commission
·   Discrimination and the judicial process

During the course of the inquiry the Committee received nearly 180 pieces of written evidence and heard from more than 50 witnesses, among them the Government Equalities Office, the Office for Disability Issues, Disability Rights UK, RNIB, Scope, MIND, British Deaf Association, the Bar Council, Law Society, Discrimination Law Association, Law Centres Network, People First Advocacy, Business Disability Forum, Association of Convenience Stores, Trade Unions Congress, Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, campaign group Transport for All, NHS England, Care Quality Commission, Ofsted, the Independent Parental Special Educational Advice, Association of Train Operating Companies, Confederation of Passenger Transport, Housing Law Practitioners Association, Lewisham Shopmobility Scheme, National Association of Licensing and Enforcement Officers, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Carers UK, and officials from the Department for Transport, Department for Education, Department of Health, Department for Communities and Local Government, and Department for Work and Pensions.

The Committee took evidence from Government ministers Rt Hon Nicky Morgan MP, Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities, Department for Education; Justin Tomlinson MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Disabled People, Department for Work and Pensions; and Andrew Jones MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department for Transport.

The Committee also heard first-hand testimonies from disabled people as well as visiting a user-led support organisation for disabled people, Real.

Watch the Chair of Equality Act 2010 and Disability Committee Baroness Deech and member of Committee Baroness Campbell of Surbiton discuss the findings of the report, ‘The Equality Act 2010: the impact on disabled people.’ Film with British Sign Language.

Government inaction is failing disabled people

Summary of the Committee’s recommendations.

Iain Duncan Smith abandoned his own sinking ship

March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 · 13 Comments ·

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Analysis of George Osborne’s budget from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Stephen Crabb has been appointed as the new work and pensions secretary, after Iain Duncan Smith resigned in a flurry of controversy on Friday.

Mr Duncan Smith has said the latest planned cuts to disability benefits were “not defensible” in a Budget that benefited higher-earning taxpayers.

David Cameron said he was “puzzled and disappointed” that Mr Duncan Smith had decided to go when they had agreed to have a rethink about the policies

Iain Duncan’s Smith’s letter of resignation must be a BIG embarrassment to the Government. It was certainly designed to inflict maximum damage particularly on Chancellor George Osborne. I’ve previously noted that the Chancellor has a tendency to regard the Department for Work and Pensions as little more than an annex to the Treasury, and the welfare budget as the Treasury’s disposable income, but I never anticipated that Duncan Smith would come to say that he sees it that way, too. This is, after all, a minister that has invented statistics and told some pretty far-fetched fibs to prop up justifications of his policies that entail some pretty draconian measures, such as sanctions and work fare, after all.

Yet surprisingly, Duncan Smith has also quite willingly and very publicly provided the government’s opponents with ammunition. He has effectively denounced not only Osborne’s budget, but also, his targeted austerity measures, yet curiously, Duncan Smith has until now been one of the most ideologically devout Thatcherite Conservatives, which is reflected in every policy he has formulated.

He has basically said what many of us have been saying for a long time: that the cuts are political and not because of economic necessity, nor will they help the economy. He also as good as said he doesn’t think we are “all in it together”. It turns out that Osborne blamed Duncan Smith for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) cuts. But Duncan Smith has been a very quiet man recently, often conspicuous by his absence during parliamentary debates, with Priti Patel left defending the ESA cuts in particular in the Commons.

However, the Department for Work and Pensions did a review of PIP last year, and that’s where the “justification” for the cuts came from – a sample of just 150 people, which was hardly a representative sample. It’s difficult to imagine that IDS didn’t order that review. But it was Osborne who announced the cuts to PIP, not Iain Duncan Smith. Just who carries the original responsibility for the proposed PIP cuts is probably never going to be fully untangled from the crossfire of accusations and counter accusations. But surely Cameron is ultimately responsible for Conservative policies?

In his resignation letter, Iain Duncan Smith says:

“I have for some time and rather reluctantly come to believe that the latest changes to benefits to the disabled, and the context in which they’ve been made are, a compromise too far. While they are defensible in narrow terms, given the continuing deficit, they are not defensible in the way they were placed within a budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers. They should have instead been part of a wider process to engage others in finding the best way to better focus resources on those most in need.

I am unable to watch passively while certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self imposed restraints that I believe are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest.

Too often my team and I have been pressured in the immediate run up to a budget or fiscal event to deliver yet more reductions to the working age benefit bill. There has been too much emphasis on money saving exercises and not enough awareness from the Treasury, in particular, that the government’s vision of a new welfare-to-work system could not be repeatedly salami-sliced.

It is therefore with enormous regret that I have decided to resign. You should be very proud of what this government has done on deficit reduction, corporate competitiveness, education reforms and devolution of power.

I hope as the government goes forward you can look again, however, at the balance of the cuts you have insisted upon and wonder if enough has been done to ensure ‘we are all in this together’ “

You can read the letter in full here

You can see Cameron’s response in full here

Many Conservatives have suggested that Duncan Smith – a supporter of Brexit – had been looking over several weeks for an opportunity to resign, and claimed that he wanted to find a moment when he could inflict maximum damage on the campaign led by Cameron and Osborne to keep Britain in the European Union. But writing in the Observer, Bernard Jenkin, a Tory MP and chair of the Commons public administration select committee, says that Duncan Smith was not prepared to tolerate another raid on the disability budget.

Referring to the prime minister’s letter to Duncan Smith, in which Cameron said he was “puzzled” by the resignation, Jenkin says: “What that letter does not make clear is that the £4bn savings in the budget from welfare still stands and, once again, Iain was being told to find similar cuts from other benefits for working-age people – including for the disabled – again undermining the positive incentives that make it worthwhile for them to take work. That is what he finds morally indefensible.”

However, Debbie Abrahams, the shadow minister for disabled people, who has faced Duncan Smith many times during Commons debates and Work and Pensions Committee inquiries, says she does not accept the reasons Iain Duncan Smith has given for resigning, and believes he chose to resign so he could “embarrass the government as much as he can”.

She adds that planned cuts to disability benefit payments in the Budget were “grossly unfair” and would hit “the most vulnerable in society at the same time the highest earners are getting tax cuts”.

She says she is grateful that many Conservative MPs are critical of the proposals, but adds:

“We must make sure that this last cut that has been announced around Personal Independence Payments is stopped and does not carry on.”

The resignation is particularly surprising given that, just hours earlier, the Treasury shelved the proposed cuts to PIP – following threats of a Tory backbench rebellion. Three Tory MPs – including mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith – have also been asked to resign as patrons of disability charities over their support for the recent welfare cuts. The complete failure of the austerity project is finally unravelling the Conservatives, and at a time when the Brexit faction of the party is already causing considerable disarray.

Even some of the most loyal Tories were finding it difficult to defend taking money away from sick and disabled people – particularly since many of those who receive PIP are in work, and in fact some rely on it to stay in work. The cuts to ESA and PIP take place in the context of a Tory manifesto that included a pledge not to cut disability benefits. In fact in March last year, the Prime Minister signalled that the Conservatives will protect disabled claimants from welfare cuts in the next parliament (this one). Cameron said the Conservatives would not “undermine” PIP, which was introduced under the Coalition to save money by “targeting those most in need.” Now it seems those most in need are not the ones originally defined as such.

Controversially, the cuts to disability benefits were planned to fund tax cuts for the most affluent – the top 7% of earners. The Chancellor raised the threshold at which people start paying the 40p tax, in a move that will see many wealthier people pulled out of the higher rate of income tax, in the coming budget. Mr Osborne said that he wants to “accelerate progress” towards the Conservative’s manifesto pledge of raising the threshold for the 40p rate to £50,000 in 2020. The average annual income in the UK is around £27,000.

The Labour Party have urged Stephen Crabb to appear before MPs on Monday to announce formally that the cuts to disability benefits had been dropped. Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “His very first act as secretary of state must be to come to parliament on Monday to announce the full reversal of cruel Tory cuts that will see 370,000 disabled people lose £3,500 a year.”

He also urged Crabb to “stand up to a Treasury that is intent on cutting support for those most in need to pay for tax breaks for those who least need them”.

The main retaliation from the Conservative frontbench has been that Duncan Smith knew about the disability cuts (which he did) and that this is an act of mischief and sabotage designed and timed to destablise Cameron regarding Europe. It may well be. But the divisions had already caused wobbles, Duncan Smith just delivered a swift and hefty kick to the “in” crowd.

However, it’s also clear there has been a rising tension between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions for some time. Duncan Smith felt that the benefits system could be scaled back only so far. Osborne and Cameron would prefer to see the welfare state completely dismantled.

Nonetheless, we have witnessed Duncan Smith’s long term disconnection from the impacts of his policies. He has persistently refused to engage with critics raising serious concerns about the consequences of the welfare “reforms”. He has refused to carry out a cumulative impact assessment of his policies and absolutely refused to monitor the impacts, most of which have been dire for sick and disabled people, and when the specifics of negative consequences were pointed out to him, he has typically reacted with denial, anger and accusations of “scaremongering.”

Duncan Smith used the mantra “there’s no proof of causality” to dismiss those who recognised a correlation between his welfare “reforms” and an increase in premature mortality rates and suicide. He has consistently and quite unforgivably shown that he is more concerned about hiding evidence and stifling criticism than he is about conscienciously investigating the harmful and sometimes devastating consequences that his policies have had on many people.

On the day he resigned, Duncan Smith’s department lost a four year legal battle to keep the many potentially humiliating problems with Universal Credit from the public.

Whatever the reasons may be for Duncan Smith’s resignation, he has certainly highlighted very well that Conservative budget decisions are partisan, taken for party political interest rather than with consideration for the national interest. But in more than one way.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that it is Iain Duncan Smith’s “reforms” that have prompted a United Nations inquiry into grave and systematic violations of the human rights of disabled people. It’s highly unlikely that Duncan Smith’s reputation will be enhanced in the long-term regarding his legislative legacy, particularly regarding disabled people. He has collaborated with other ministers in designing and extending techniques of neutralisation to attempt justify what are extremely prejudiced, discriminatory and punitive policies aimed at the poorest citizens.

This is a man who has removed people from a structural socioeconomic context and then intentionally blamed them for their individual socioeconomic circumstances, most of which have been created by this government’s actions since 2010. Every single Conservative budget has taken money from the poorest and gifted it to the wealthiest. It’s inconceivable that Tory ministers don’t understand such policies will invariably extend and perpetuate inequality and poverty.

Duncan Smith has damned himself, but nonetheless, a Conservative minister resigning and stating that it is because of a Conservative budget, publicly citing reasons that correlate with the opposition’s objections regarding the government’s ideologically driven and targeted austerity, is a particularly damning turn of events for the Conservative Party as a whole, that’s for sure.

Now that Duncan Smith has publicly denounced the Conservative austerity project, I wonder if he will also recognise and embrace the rational expertise and economic competence of a real party of social justice, which rescued this country from the consequences of a global recession by the last quarter of 2009, whilst Osborne had us back in recession by 2011, and lost us our triple A Fitch and Moody credit ratings after promising not to. I wonder if Duncan Smith now supports the fair party with a track record of verifiable economic expertise – that would be the Labour Party.

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Picture courtesy of Robert Livingstone

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Government plans further brutal cuts to disability support

March 13, 2016March 13, 2016 · 37 Comments ·

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Disabled people are already carrying a disproportionately high burden of the austerity cuts, despite government claims of economic recovery.

Government ministers are planning to cut a key element of the Personal Independent Payment (PIP). Last year a consultation indicated that the Conservatives were considering ways of reducing eligibility criteria for the daily living component of PIP, by narrowing definitions of aids and appliances.

From January 2017, the cut is likely to hit people experiencing incontinence, who struggle to dress themselves, and those facing other fundamental barriers to health and essential basic care. The cut, it is estimated, will affect at least 640,000 disabled people by 2020.

Controversially, it is alleged that the cuts to disability benefit will fund tax cuts for the most affluent – the top 7% of earners. The Chancellor is set to raise the threshold at which people start paying 40p tax, in a move that will probably see many wealthier people pulled out of the higher rate of income tax, in the coming budget. Mr Osborne says he wants to “accelerate progress” towards the Conservative’s manifesto pledge of raising the threshold for the 40p rate to £50,000 in 2020, it is understood.

Meanwhile, under the plans announced on Friday, sick and disabled people will be much less likely to receive essential disabled benefits if they use aids such as a handrail or a walking stick to get dressed or use the toilet.

The Department for Work and Pensions reviewed a sample of 105 cases of people who had scored all, or the majority, of their points for PIP due to aids and appliances, in order to assess the extent to which the award may reflect extra costs.

The review led the government to conclude that PIP “doesn’t currently fulfil the original policy intent”, which was to cut costs and “target” the benefit to “those with the greatest need.” That originally meant a narrowing of eligibility criteria for people formerly claiming Disability Living Allowance, increasing the number of reassessments required, and limiting the number of successful claims.

Prior to the introduction of PIP, Esther McVey stated that of the initial 560,000 claimants to be reassessed by October 2015, 330,000 of these are targeted to either lose their benefit altogether or see their payments reduced. Of course the ever-shrinking category of “those with the greatest need” simply reflects a government that has simply made a partisan political decision to cut disabled people’s essential income to fund a financial gift to the wealthiest citizens. There is no justification for this decision, nor is it “fair.”

The government now claim that the proportion of people awarded the daily living component of PIP, who scored all of their points because they need aids and appliances, has more that tripled, from 11 per cent in April 2014 to 35 per cent in 2015.

The PIP assessment currently examines an individual’s ability to complete ten daily living activities and two mobility activities. Regular reviews were also introduced by the last government to ensure that claimants continue to receive the “right level of support.”

The increase has largely been driven by a significant and sustained rise in relation to activities one, four, five and six: preparing food, washing and bathing, dressing and undressing, and managing incontinence and toileting. Around three-quarters of those who score all of their points through aids and appliances score the minimum number of daily living points needed to qualify for the standard rate of the daily living component.

The government ridiculously claim that the “evidence” presented to the review suggested that in some instances points were being awarded “… because claimants chose to use aids and appliances, rather than needed them.” And noted that in many cases “ these were non-specialised items of very low cost.”

However, it’s very difficult to justify cutting support for people who require aids to meet fundamental needs such as preparing food, dressing, basic and essential personal care and managing incontinence.

Ministers have now announced their intention to cut PIP for people who currently receive it to help them afford specially-adapted appliances and equipment. Examples of qualifying equipment currently includes adapted cutlery for people who find it difficult to hold things for long periods of time and specially-designed household items for people less able to stand.

Justin Tomlinson, the disabilities minister, said that the cuts to funding for aids and appliances for the disabled could save about £1bn a year and was announced the week before the budget. Charities warned that the cuts to personal independence payments (PIP) would be devastating after the move was confirmed by Tomlinson on Friday.

Tomlinson, said: “The introduction of Personal Independence Payment to replace the outdated Disability Living Allowance for working age claimants has been a hugely positive reform.

But it is clear that the assessment criteria for aids and appliances are not working as planned. Many people are eligible for a weekly award despite having minimal to no extra costs and judicial decisions have expanded the criteria for aids and appliances to include items we would expect people to have in their homes already.

We consulted widely to find the best approach. And this new change will ensure that PIP is fairer and targets support at those who need it most.”

Only a Conservative minister would claim that taking money from sick and disabled people is somehow “fair,” and they frequently do. The cuts of £120 a month to the disability benefit employment support allowance (ESA) are also claimed to be “fair.” and “supportive.” Though I have yet to hear an explanation of how this can possibly be the case. Ministers claimed that people subjected to the ESA Work Related Activity Group cuts could claim PIP if they required support with extra living costs, but now we are told that PIP is to be cut, too.

Bearing in mind the Department for Work and Pensions “review” was based on a sample of just 105 people, it’s very difficult to see how further inhumane cuts to the lifeline income for this group of amongst the most disabled citizens can possibly be justified. How did ministers “plan” the assessment criteria for aids and appliances to work, exactly? People qualifying for PIP need extra support in meeting their living costs.

A coalition of 25 disability charities has written to the Government to warn against plans that would strip some disabled people of a key payments meant to help them live more independent lives.

The Disability Benefits Consortium wrote to Justin Tomlinson, to argue that proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment – or PIP – assessments would have a “severe impact” on people’s security and make it harder for them to find work.

Debbie Abrahams, the shadow disabilities minister, said: “Removing support for people who need help to use the toilet or dress is an attack on dignity.”

“These further cuts would represent another huge blow, making life even more difficult for many people who already facing huge barriers.”

Phil Reynold, policy and campaigns adviser at Parkinson’s UK, said: “If someone needs aids and appliances to carry out the most basic tasks that most people take for granted then they clearly need ongoing support to live independently, which is often expensive. They should not be penalised by making personal independence payments even more difficult to claim.”

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of the MS Society, said: “This decision could have a devastating impact on the lives of people with MS. In the worst cases, they could lose up to £150 a week.

PIP is an essential benefit which goes towards the extra cost of being disabled. The new plans will fail some of the most vulnerable people in society and we have serious concerns about the future health and welfare of those affected.”

The government is currently being investigated by the United Nations because of serious allegations that many of us have made regarding the welfare “reforms”, which have extended gross and systematic abuse of the human rights of disabled people. The UK is the first country to be subject to an investigation regarding the government’s failure to meet legal obligations to uphold disabled people’s human rights. In the 6th wealthiest nation of the world, and a so-called liberal democracy, this treatment of an already marginalised and protected social group is utterly shameful.

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A black day for disabled people – disability benefit cuts enforced by government despite widespread opposition

March 8, 2016February 26, 2017 · 28 Comments ·

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“The fact is that Ministers are looking for large savings at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable. That was not made clear in the general election campaign; then, the Prime Minister said that disabled people would be protected.” – [Official Report, Commons, 2/3/16; cols. 1052-58.]

A coalition of 60 national disability charities have condemned the government’s cuts to benefits as a “step backwards” for sick and disabled people and their families. The Disability Benefits Consortium say that the cuts, which will see people lose up to £1,500 a year, will leave disabled people feeling betrayed by the government and will have a damaging effect on their health, finances and ability to find work.

Research by the Consortium suggests the low level of benefit is already failing to meet disabled people’s needs.

A survey of 500 people in the affected group found that 28 per cent of people had been unable to afford to eat while in receipt of the benefit. Around 38 per cent of respondents said they had been unable to heat their homes and 52 per cent struggled to stay healthy.

The Government was twice defeated in the Lords over proposals to cut Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for sick and disabled people in the work-related activity group (WRAG) from £103 to £73.

However the £30 a week cut is set to go ahead after bitterly disappointed and angry peers were left powerless to continue to oppose the Commons, which has overturned both defeats. The government has hammered through the cuts of £120 a month to the lifeline income of ill and disabled people by citing the “financial privilege” of the Commons, and after Priti Patel informing the Lords that they have “overstepped their mark” in opposing the cuts twice.

The Strathclyde review, commissioned by a rancorous and retaliatory David Cameron, following the delay and subsequently effective defeat of government tax credit legislation in the House of Lords, recommends curtailing the powers of Upper House. Strathclyde concludes in his report that the House of Lords should be permitted to ask the Commons to “think again” when a disagreement on proposed legislation exists, but should not be allowed to veto. MPs would ultimately make a decision on whether a measure is passed into law. The review focuses in particular on the relationship between the Commons and the Lords, in relation to the former’s primacy on financial matters and secondary legislation, and serves to highlight the government’s very worrying increasing tendency towards authoritarianism.

The cuts to ESA and proposed and probable cuts to Personal Independent Payments (PIP), take place in the context of a Tory manifesto that included a pledge not to cut disability benefits.

Yesterday in the House of Lords, independent crossbencher Lord Low of Dalston warned: “This is a black day for disabled people.”

Contrary to what is being reported, it won’t be only new claimants affected by the cuts to ESA. Firstly, it may potentially affect anyone who has a break in their ESA claim (and that could happen because of a reassessment with a decision that means needing to ask for a mandatory review), and secondly, those migrated onto Universal Credit will be affected. The benefit cap will also cut sick and disabled people’s income if they are in the ESA WRAG.

Paralympic gold medallist Baroness Grey-Thompson said she was bitterly disappointed that this “dreadful and punitive” part of the Bill was going ahead.

Parliamentary procedure had prevented her putting down another amendment opposing the move, which will have a harsh, negative impact on thousands of people’s lives.

Already facing a UN inquiry into grave and systematic abuses of the human rights of disabled people, Cameron remains completely unabashed by his government’s blatant attack on a protected social group, and the Conservatives continue to target disabled people for a disproportionately large burden of austerity cuts.

The Government have been accused of failing to fulfil their public sector equality duty. Under the Equality Act 2010, the Government must properly consider the impact of their policies on the elimination of discrimination, the advancement of equality of opportunity and the fostering of good relations. This is shameful, in a very wealthy first-world democracy.

The “justification” the Tories offer for the cut of almost £120 a month to the lifeline support of people judged to be unfit for work by their own doctors AND the state, is that it will “help people into work”. I’ve never heard of taking money from people who already have very little described as “help” before. Only the Conservatives would contemplate cutting money from sick and disabled people, whilst gifting the millionaires with £107, 000 each per year in the form of a tax “break”.

Reducing disabled people’s incomes won’t “incentivise” anyone to find a job. It will just make life much more difficult. The government have made the decision to cut disability benefits because of an extremely prejudiced ideological preference for a “small state” and their antiwelfare agenda. There are alternative political choices that entail far more humane treatment of sick and disabled people. The fact that ministers have persistently refused to carry out a policy impact assessment indicates clearly that this measure has got nothing to do with any good will towards disabled people, nor is it about “helping” people into work.

The cut simply expresses the Conservative’s contempt for social groups that are economically inactive, regardless of the reasons. Sick and disabled people claiming ESA have already been deemed unfit for work by their doctors, and by the state via the work capability assessment. Simply refusing to accept this, and hounding a group of people who are ill, and who have until recently been considered reasonably exempt from working, is an indictment of this increasingly despotic government.

I can’t help wondering how long it will be before we hear about government proposals to cut the financial support further for those in the ESA support group. There does seem to be a recognisable pattern of political scapegoating, public moral boundaries being pushed, and cruel, highly unethical cuts being announced. Social security provision is being dismantled incrementally, whilst the Conservative justification narrative becomes less and less coherent. Despite the arrogant moralising approach of Tory ministers, and the Orwellian rhetoric of “helping” and “supporting” people who are too ill to work into any job, or face the threat of starvation and destitution, none of this will ever justify the unforgivable, steady withdrawal of lifeline support for sick and disabled people.

Baroness Meacher warned that for the most vulnerable the cut was “terrifying” and bound to lead to increased debt.

Condemning the “truly terrible” actions of the Treasury, she urged ministers to monitor the number of suicides in the year after the change comes in, adding: “I am certain there will be people who cannot face the debt and the loss of their home, who will take their lives.” Not only have the government failed to carry out an impact assessment regarding the cuts, Lord Freud said that the impact, potential increase in deaths and suicides won’t be monitored, apart from “privately” because individual details can’t be shared and because that isn’t a “useful approach”.

He went on to say “We have recently produced a large analysis on this, which I will send to the noble Baroness. That analysis makes it absolutely clear that you cannot make these causal links between the likelihood of dying—however you die—and the fact that someone is claiming benefit.”

Actually, a political refusal to investigate an established correlation between the welfare “reforms” and an increase in the mortality statistics of those hit the hardest by the cuts – sick and disabled people – is not the same thing as there being no causal link. Often, correlation implies causality and therefore such established links require further investigation. It is not possible to disprove a causal link without further investigation, either.

Whilst the government continue to deny there is a causal link between their welfare policies, austerity measures and an increase in premature deaths and suicides, they cannot deny there is a clear correlation, which warrants further research – an independent inquiry at the VERY least. But the government are hiding behind this distinction to deny any association at all between policy and policy impacts. That’s just plain wrong.

Insisting that there isn’t a “causal link” established, whilst withholding crucial evidence in parliament and from the public domain is what can at best be considered the actions and behaviours of tyrants.

Thatcher’s policies condemned for causing “unjust premature death”

MP attacks cuts hitting disabled people – Debbie Abrahams

Leading the debate against the Welfare Reform and Work Bill – 3rd reading – Debbie Abrahams

My speech at the Changes to Funding of Support for Disabled People Westminster Hall Debate – Debbie Abrahams

The government need to learn about the link between correlation and causality. Denial of culpability is not good enough.

The new Work and Health Programme: government plan social experiments to “nudge” sick and disabled people into work

A Critique of Conservative notions of “Social Research”

The DWP mortality statistics: facts, values and Conservative concept control

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Pictures courtesy of Robert Livingstone

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G4S are employing Cognitive Behavioural Therapists to deliver “get to work therapy”

February 25, 2016March 30, 2017 · 69 Comments ·

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Background

Last April, more than 400 psychologists, counsellors and academics signed an open letter condemning the profoundly disturbing psychological implications of the government’s austerity and welfare reform measures. The group of professionals said that over the past five years the types of issues causing clients distress had shifted dramatically and now include increasing inequality, outright poverty and that people needing support because of structural problems, such as benefits claimants, are being subjected to a “new, intimidatory kind of disciplinary regime”.

The signatories of the letter, published in The Guardian, express concern over chancellor George Osborne’s plans, laid out in the latest budget, to embed psychological therapy in a coercive back-to-work agenda. Osborne said the government will aim to give online CBT to 40,000 recipients of Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, people on the Fit for Work programme, as well as putting therapists in more than 350 job centres.

The letter stated that the government’s proposed policy of linking social security benefits to the receipt of “state therapy” is utterly unacceptable. The measure, casually described as “get to work therapy,” was discussed by George Osborne during his last budget.

The letter’s signatories, all of whom are experts in the field of mental health, have said such a measure is counter-productive, “anti-therapeutic,” damaging and professionally unethical. The intimidatory disciplinary regime facing benefits claimants would be made even worse by further unacceptable proposals outlined in the budget.

I raised my own concerns about Osborne’s proposals in March last year. Amongst the groups represented by the signatories were Psychologists Against Austerity, Britain’s Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy, Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility, the Journal of Public Mental Health, and a range of academic institutions including Goldsmiths, Birkbeck, the University of London, the University of Amsterdam, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Brighton.

The proposals are widely held to be profoundly anti-therapeutic, potentially very damaging and professionally unethical. With such a narrow objective, the delivery will invariably be driven by an ideological agenda, politically motivated outcomes and meeting limited targets, rather than being focused on the wellbeing of individuals who need support and who may be vulnerable.

A major concern that many of us have raised is regarding consent to participation, as, if benefit conditionality is attached to what ought to be a voluntary engagement, that undermines the fundamental principles of the right to physical and mental care. Such an approach would reduce psychologists to simply acting as agents of state control, enforcing compliance and conformity. That is not therapy: it’s psychopolitics and policy-making founded on a blunt behaviourism, which is pro-status quo, imbued with Conservative values and prejudices. It’s an approach that does nothing whatsoever to improve public life or meet people’s needs.

The highly controversial security company G4S are currently advertising for Cognitive Behavioural Therapists to deliver “return-to-work” advise in Surrey, Sussex and Kent.

The Role Description:

Manage a caseload of Customers and provide return-to-work advice and guidance regarding health issues.
Targeted on the level, number and effectiveness of interventions in re-engaging Customers and Customer progression into work.
Focus on practical techniques that enable them to manage their conditions to enter and sustain employment.
Work with Customers on a one-to-one basis and in groups to provide support on a range of mental health conditions. Refer clients to relevant external health or specialist services as required
Conduct bio-psychosocial assessments via face-to-face and telephone-based interventions and produce tailored action plans to support Customers in line with contractual MSO.
Deliver specific health for employment workshops and input into delivery models to support achievement of MSO
Build relationships with key stakeholders including GP’s, employers and relevant NHS bodies
Identify and build relationships with other organisations that contribute to the successful delivery of the programme.
Expected to contribute substantially to the development of the service. Including the routine collection, review and feedback of activity/data, ensuring that activity targets are adhered to.

Basic Requirements

Experience of delivering CBT.
Evidence of understanding of Welfare to Work and the issues that unemployed people face.

This is yet another lucrative opportunity for private companies to radically reduce essential provision for those that really need support, nonetheless, costing the public purse far more to administer than such an arrangement could possibly save, despite the government’s dogged determination to rip every single penny from sick and disabled people and drive them into low paid, insecure jobs.

G4S priorities and the ideological context

“We are saving the taxpayer £120 million a year in benefit savings.” Sean Williams – Welfare to Work, Managing Director, G4S.

Welfare to work schemes exploit unemployed people desperately seeking work. Work programmes are mandatory, if people refuse to participate, they face sanctions, entailing the withdrawal of their lifeline benefit, which was originally calculated to meet basic physiological needs only. Workfare is unpaid labour provided as a handout to business, tax payers are subsidising the wage bill of the private sector. Workfare also serves to drive wages down, it is a disincentive for employers to create jobs that pay a fair wage.

Anti-workfare group Boycott Workfare say that workfare replaces jobs and undermines working conditions and wages. A research report in 2012 found a Work Programme success rate of just 2.3%. Given that 5% of people who are unemployed in the long term would be expected to find employment if left to their own devices, the Work Programme is considered less successful than leaving people to make their own choices regarding their own work experiences.

Work as a “health” outcome

The Conservatives have come dangerously close to redefining unemployment as a psychological disorder, and employment is being redefined as a “health outcome.” The government’s Work and Health programme involves a plan to integrate health and employment services, aligning the outcome frameworks of health services, Improving Access To Psychological Therapies (IAPT), Jobcentre Plus and the Work Programme.

But the government’s aim to prompt public services to “speak with one voice” is founded on questionable ethics. This proposed multi-agency approach is reductive, rather than being about formulating expansive, coherent, comprehensive and importantly, responsive provision.

Psychopolitics is not therapy. It’s all about (re)defining the experience and reality of a social group to justify dismantling public services (especially welfare), and that is form of gaslighting intended to extend oppressive political control and micromanagement. In linking receipt of welfare with health services and “state therapy,” with the single intended outcome explicitly expressed as employment, the government is purposefully conflating citizen’s widely varied needs with economic outcomes and diktats, isolating people from traditionally non-partisan networks of relatively unconditional support, such as the health service, social services, community services and mental health services.

Public services “speaking with one voice” will invariably make accessing support conditional, and further isolate already marginalised social groups. It will damage trust between people needing support and professionals who are meant to deliver essential public services, rather than simply extending government dogma, prejudices and discrimination.

Conservatives really seem to believe that the only indication of a person’s functional capacity, value and potential is their economic productivity, and the only indication of their moral worth is their capability and degree of willingness to work. But unsatisfactory employment – low-paid, insecure and unfulfiling work – can result in a decline in health and wellbeing, indicating that it is poverty and growing inequality, rather than unemployment, that increases the risk of experiencing poor mental and physical health.

Moreover, in countries with an adequate social safety net, poor employment (low pay, short-term contracts), rather than unemployment, has the biggest detrimental impact on mental health.

There is ample medical evidence (rather than political dogma) to support this account. (See the Minnesota semistarvation experiment, for example. The understanding that food deprivation in particular dramatically alters cognitive capacity, emotions, motivation, personality, and that malnutrition directly and predictably affects the mind as well as the body is one of the legacies of the experiment.)

Systematically reducing social security, and increasing conditionality, particularly in the form of punitive benefit sanctions, doesn’t “incentivise” people to look for work. It simply means that people can no longer meet their basic physiological needs, as benefits are calculated to cover only the costs of food, fuel and shelter. Food deprivation is closely correlated with both physical and mental health deterioration. Maslow explained very well that if we cannot meet basic physical needs, we are highly unlikely to be able to meet higher level psychosocial needs. The government proposal that welfare sanctions will somehow “incentivise” people to look for work is pseudopsychology at its very worst and most dangerous.

In the UK, the government’s welfare “reforms” have further reduced social security support, originally calculated to meet only basic physiological needs, which has had an adverse impact on people who rely on what was once a social safety net. Poverty is linked with negative health outcomes, but it doesn’t follow that employment will ameliorate poverty sufficiently to improve health outcomes. In fact record numbers of working families are now in poverty, with two-thirds of people who found work in 2014 taking jobs for less than the living wage, according to the annual report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation a year ago.

Essential supportive provision is being reduced by conditionally, by linking it to such a narrow outcome – getting a job – and this will reduce every service to nothing more than a political semaphore, and service provision to a behaviour modification programme based on punishment, with a range of professionals being politically co-opted as state enforcers. The Government is intending to “signpost the importance of employment as a health outcome in mandates, outcomes frameworks, and interactions with Clinical Commissioning Groups.”

The fact that the Conservatives also plan to make receipt of benefits contingent on participation in “treatment” worryingly takes away the fundamental right of consent. I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Work and Pensions last year to ask for details of their methods of gaining claimant consent, their ethical framework and safeguards regarding the trialing of the new Work and Health programme. My request was rather unreasonably refused on the grounds of cost. I also sent the same request to the Cabinet Office, since the Behavioural Insights Team are involved in the design of the trials. Worryingly, the Office did not have the information.

Therapy in job centres and employment advisors in GP surgeries will not address inequality, and the social conditions that are the consequence of political decision-making and imposed economic frameworks, so it permits society to look the other way, whilst the government continue to present mental illness as an individual weakness or vulnerability, and a consequence of “worklessness” rather than a fairly predictable result of living in a highly unequal, competitive society, and arising because of experiences of living stigmatised, marginalised lives because of politically expedient policy-directed material deprivation.

Private firms like G4s, awarded multimillion-pound contracts to run the Work Programme, advised that there should be many more cases where claimants have their benefits stripped as punishment for failing to seek work. G4S earned £183m to help unemployed people to find work through the Government’s Work Programme. During the first eight months of the programme G4S asked benefit offices to sanction 7,780 claimants. In fact the company has effectively sanctioned many more people than it has “helped” into work.

There really should not be a role for G4S in the health service. G4S has left a wake of atrocities committed against vulnerable people in the UK and in other countries, including human rights abuses: exploitation, torture, causing deaths and forcing anti-psychotic injections on vulnerable prisoners to ensure they are passive and compliant.

Here is little information about G4S’s track record of working with vulnerable individuals and marginalised social groups, though this list is by no means exhaustive:

Human rights abuse allegations

Disabled ex-serviceman Peter McCormack, aged 79, was chained to a prison officer employed by G4S for eight days while in Royal Liverpool University Hospital after a heart attack in March 2012. The restraint was removed only briefly for him to take off his upper clothing, and when he was under heavy sedation undergoing an heart procedure. But he remained chained even when using the toilet and shower. McCormack, who has a disability as a result of being shot through the knee while serving with the Royal Engineers during the 1956 Suez crisis, spent 14 days attached by his wrist to a 2.5 metre closet chain, despite having been described as a model prisoner. Judge Graham Wood QC ruled in September 2014 that “During this time he was humiliated and his dignity was affronted.” Mr McCormack was detained because he may have faced a modest criminal sentence at most for breach of a regulatory offence in relation to his business.

McCormack was awarded £6,000 compensation for breach of his human rights. The judge criticised the evidence given by G4S’s then head of security, saying it was “less than impressive … It is a reasonable conclusion that she simply ignored a recommendation from a security manager.”

Unacceptable use of force by UK Border Agency

In October 2012 the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick published his inspection report into the G4S-managed Cedars Pre-Departure Accommodation UK Border Agency (UKBA). G4S were criticised for using “non-approved techniques” during one particular incident in which a pregnant woman’s wheelchair was tipped up whilst her feet were held. The incident used “non-approved techniques” causing significant risk to the baby and was a “simply not acceptable” use of substantial force. Hardwick said: “There is no safe way to use force against a pregnant woman and to initiate it for the purpose of removal is to take an unacceptable risk.”

Significant force was also used against six out of the 39 families, including two children, at the centre, which holds families for up to a week, the report said.

Judith Dennis, of the Refugee Council, called for UKBA to heed the report’s recommendations, which include that force should only ever be used against pregnant women and children to prevent harm.

Jerry Petherick, managing director of G4S custodial and detention services, said the welfare of people in its care was its top priority.

The unlawful killing of Jimmy Mubenga

In October 2010, three G4S-guards restrained and held down 46-year-old Angolan deportee called Jimmy Mubenga on departing British Airways flight 77, at Heathrow Airport. Security guards kept him restrained in his seat as he began shouting and seeking to resist his deportation. Police and paramedics were called when Mubenga lost consciousness. The aircraft, which had been due to lift off, returned to the terminal. Mubenga was pronounced dead later that evening at Hillingdon hospital. Passengers reported hearing cries of “don’t do this” and “they are trying to kill me.” Scotland Yard’s homicide unit began an investigation after the death became categorised as “unexplained”. Three private security guards, contracted to escort deportees for the Home Office, were released on bail, after having been interviewed about the incident.

In February 2011, The Guardian reported that G4S guards in the United Kingdom had been repeatedly warned about the use of potentially lethal force on detainees and asylum seekers. Confidential informants and several employees released the information to reporters after G4S’s practices allegedly led to the death of Jimmy Mubenga. An internal document urged management to “meet this problem head on before the worst happens” and that G4S was “playing Russian roulette with detainees’ lives.” The following autumn, the company once again faced allegations of abuse. G4S guards were accused of verbally harassing and intimidating detainees with offensive and racist language.

In July 2012, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced its conclusion that there was “insufficient evidence to bring any charges for Mr Mubenga’s death” against G4S or any of its former employees. On 9 July 2013 an inquest jury, in a nine-to-one decision, found that Mubenga’s death was caused by the G4S guards “using unreasonable force and acting in an unlawful manner.”

Exploitation

In August 2014, G4S was again criticised for using immigrant detainees as cheap labour, with some being paid as little as £1 per hour. The Home Office defended the practice, and said: “The long-standing practice of offering paid work to detainees has been praised by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons as it helps to keep them occupied whilst their removal is being arranged. Whether or not they wish to participate is entirely up to the detainees themselves. This practice is not intended to substitute the work of trained staff”

Abuse of vulnerable young people at Medway Secure Training Centre in Kent

A BBC Panorama investigation into abuse at a young offenders unit in Kent, run by security firm G4S, exposed child neglect and abuse. The Panorama programme provided shocking footage at Medway Secure Training Centre in Rochester following reports from a whistleblower. Shot by an undercover journalist who posed as a security officer, the footage shows staff using excessive force to restrain youngsters, bullying, lying when reporting incidents and boasting about hurting the inmates. The film shows a a senior officer restraining a 14-year-old boy by pressing his fingers on his throat.

One boy had injured himself by cutting his arm and staff piled on to restrain him, then left him in a cell crying, despite knowing that the boy’s mother had recently died and he was grieving. G4S employees boasted not only about harming children but also falsifying records so the company was not fined for losing control. Footage showed a vulnerable boy who was having his room cleared of anything he could harm himself with, was apparently choked and slammed on a bed.

The programme also revealed officers lying about incidents to cover up their actions.

G4S has been paid £140,000 per year per child held in Medway.

Among the allegations relating to ten boys aged 14 to 17, uncovered by Panorama and now subject to investigation are that Medway staff:

Slapped a teenager several times on the head
Pressed heavily on the necks and throats of young people
Used restraint techniques unnecessarily – and that included squeezing a teenager’s windpipe so he had problems breathing
Used foul language to frighten and intimidate – and boasted of mistreating young people, including using a fork to stab one on the leg and making another cry uncontrollably
Tried to conceal their behaviour by ensuring they were beneath CCTV cameras or in areas not covered by them

South Africa prison torture and abuse accusations

In October 2013, the BBC reported that there are allegations of prisoners being tortured at Mangaung Prison in South Africa. The security firm G4S was given the contract to run the prison in 2000. The BBC cites research from the Wits Justice Project at Wits University in Johannesburg, claiming that dozens of the nearly 3,000 inmates at the G4S prison have been tortured using electroshock and forced injections. As of October 2013, G4S said it was investigating the allegations.

Leaked footage revealed that complaints of forced injections – that is, involuntary medication with powerful anti-psychotic drugs, with serious side effects, we true.

Emergency security team warders have further said that they would assist in administering forced injections up to five times a week.

Human rights abuse and violence at Manus Island Asylum Centre

G4S provided security in the Manus Island asylum processing centre in Papua New Guinea, and failed to maintain basic human rights standards and protect asylum seekers from harm, the complaint lodged to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) alleged.

In 2008, Aboriginal elder, Mr Ward, cooked to death while being transported by G4S, more than 220 miles across searing Goldfields in a badly maintained van with faulty air conditioning in January 2008. He had third degree burns from contact with the searing hot metal floor of the van. The guards driving the prison van did not stop to check his welfare or see if he needed a toilet break, food or water until, they say, they heard a thud from the back. Even then they didn’t unlock both the cell doors, and instead threw water on Mr Ward through the chained-up inner door. The Department of Corrective Services, the prisoner transport contractor – G4S, and the prison van driver Graham Powell were also prosecuted by WorkSafe. Corrective Services and G4S were each fined $285,000 for their role in Mr Ward’s death. Mr Powell was fined $9000. Prison officer Nina Mary Stokoe was fined $11,000 for her role in the death of Mr Ward.

The Australian government nonetheless contracted G4S to oversee management and security at the Manus Island centre from February 2013 to March 2014, despite this.

Rachel Ball, the director of advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre, said under government-endorsed OECD guidelines, multinational companies were obliged to respect human rights and avoid contributing to human rights abuses.

“In February this year G4S guards at the detention facility on Manus Island went on what can only be described as a violent rampage,” she said.

“Reza Berati was killed, one man lost his eye, another had his throat slit, and 77 others were treated for serious injuries including head wounds, a gunshot wound, broken bones and lacerations.

“G4S was directly involved in this violence through its role in arbitrary detention and poor conditions that led to the unrest, and through the direct participation of its employees in the violence.”

Ball said the company had not been held to account for its role in the violence, prompting the joint complaint between her organisation and the British non-government organisation Rights and Accountability in Development.

Conditions in the camp have also been strongly criticised by UN agencies and human rights groups.

Fraud allegations

In July 2013, British Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, asked the Serious Fraud Office to investigate G4S for overcharging for tagging criminals in England and Wales, claiming that it and rival company Serco charged the government for tagging people who were not actually being monitored, including tags for people in prison or out of the country, and a small number who had died. G4S was given an opportunity to take part in a forensic audit but initially refused.

Following the completion of a review by the Cabinet Office into major contracts across government, Francis Maude and the Cabinet Office announced in December 2013, that their review had “found no evidence of deliberate acts or omissions by either firm leading to errors or irregularities in the charging and billing arrangements on the 28 contracts investigated.”

In March 2014, G4S agreed to pay a settlement of £109 million to the government, incorporating a refund for “disputed” services and reimbursement of additional costs.

Scandal also followed G4S’s management of London Olympic security, back in 2012 when it failed to deliver enough guards to police the games. As a result 3,500 military troops were drafted in.

Despite these issues, G4S won significant new work for the British government in 2014 including selection by the Department for Work and Pensions to manage community work placement contracts, a deal providing healthcare services for prisons in the north east, and patient transport for the NHS.

G4S’s involvement in the recruitment of cognitive behavioural therapists to work with vulnerable unemployed people is a very worrying development.

—

Mindful of the company’s failure to fully investigate its ethical practices, RT compiled a list of past instances G4S has broken standards.

The Guardian: Outsourced services fail the vulnerable – “Red front doors in Middlesbrough, red wristbands in Cardiff. Not long ago another group of vilified people were also made to mark their doors and wear a distinctive badge – the yellow star. Who is advising Clearsprings?” And G4S. Dr Jonathan Fluxman

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Background

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Human rights abuse allegations

Unacceptable use of force by UK Border Agency

The unlawful killing of Jimmy Mubenga

Exploitation

Abuse of vulnerable young people at Medway Secure Training Centre in Kent

South Africa prison torture and abuse accusations

Human rights abuse and violence at Manus Island Asylum Centre

Fraud allegations

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