Tagged with Disability

Atos campaigners win huge victory

atos bigEver since the days of Jo Moore who infamously emailed on the day of 9/11 that “today is a good day to bury bad news”, governments thereafter have tended to follow her advice. Hence on the day when Prince George’s arrival was announced to the world, the government cunningly buried the bad news (for them) that the work capability assessments were going badly wrong and would have to be re-thought.

Of course the government didn’t admit to making any mistakes themselves – it was all the fault of Atos! What a surprise! Atos staff, we’re told, had turned in some ‘unacceptably poor’ work standards and would have to be re-trained – ignoring the fact that it has taken them over 2 years to notice this. Continue reading →

Atos: Minister finally agrees to meeting

It’s taken long enough, like 6 months, to coax the Minister responsible for Atos under IDS, Mark Hoban, finally to come round to receiving a delegation from those with deep and lengthy experience of Atos/DWP procedures over WCA. But it look as though he is now prepared to see us soon after Parliament returns on 2 September.It has been a convoluted journey. First he tool exception to certain words used by Prof. Peter Beresford in his foreword to the People’s Review of WCA written by the Spartacus network, a report of more than 100 pages.

That caused me to apply for an Adjournment debate in the House to press the Minister on why it was not reasonable to reject a delegation to discuss a carefully drafted report of over 100 pages because of a single sentence that wasn’t even part of it. The Minister however did not attend because his plane developed engine trouble in Glasgow, but his junior minister read out his speech and after repeated pressure seemed to agree to a meeting provided it was a ‘constructive engagement’. Continue reading →

ATOS and government treatment of disabled people

Research published in March by the think-tank Demos and by the disability charity Scope, which my hon. Friend Mr Bain mentioned earlier, revealed that by 2017-18, 3.7 million disabled people will collectively lose £28 billion as a result of the Government’s cumulative benefit changes. If Scope and Demos can do a cumulative impact assessment, why cannot the Government? That is a staggering expropriation from arguably the most deprived and disadvantaged section of the entire population and it is perhaps worth rehearsing quickly the range of the cumulative impact: the incapacity benefit reassessment; the reassessment of the personal independence payments; the overall cap; the universal credit; the time limitation of employment support allowance; the change to local housing allowance; the bedroom tax; the abolition of the independent living fund; the 1% cap on benefit uprating; the localisation of and 10% cut in council tax benefit; and the 1% cap on various benefits and tax credits. That is the range of it. Continue reading →

What did disabled people do to deserve this?

The scale of what is about to hit the disabled is without precedent since the 1930s, and to rub salt in the wound they will be hammered on the same day that 14,000 millionaires in Britain get a tax break worth an average £2,000 a week to each of them (a rise in their income averaging £108,000 a year). On 6 April disabled people will be faced with a cascade of cuts simultaneously in up to 7 benefits, worse thananything experienced during the 1930s.

Research has found that 700,000 will lose £4.4bn from time-limiting of employment support allowance to 1 year, 600,000 will lose £2.6bn from reassessing personal independence payments (already a major reduction on the disabled living allowance they replaced), 825,000 will lose £2.4bn from changes to local housing allowance, and 1 million will lose £1.7bn will lose from freezing child benefit. Including some additional benefit losses, 3.7 million disabled people are expecrted to be deprived of £28.3bn over the next 5 years.

Continue reading →

Up your bedroom tax, Duncan Smith!

So public and political pressure does work, even against this government. You can always tell when a Minister’s in trouble – they get irritable and tetchy, as Duncan Smith has been over the last several days. Just 3 weeks before the hated bedroom tax comes into force, he has been forced to make some concessions.

He has just announced that foster carers (as ong as they have fostered a child or become a registered carer within the past 12 months) and parents of teenage military personnel (living at home but away on military operations) will be exempted. He has also said that discretionary payments should be available to support those whose homes have had significant disability adaptations and those with long-term medical conditions “that create difficulties” in sharing a bedroom. But for the DWP and someone like IDS, that careful wording provides lots of caveats if official decide to apply them. Continue reading →