There’s a growing sense of anger and concern among disabled people at the way they’re being treated by the government. A raft of policies, from welfare reform to cuts to social care, will damage their independence, and hurt them badly financially. Disabled people feel a strong sense of injustice at all of this, not just at the impact of the policies, but at the way that many now believe the government’s deliberately portraying them as scroungers as a result.
Leaving aside for a moment the utter unfairness of what the government’s doing, this seems risky politics. We saw that at its most misguided in the Welfare Reform Bill committee last week, as Chris Grayling sought first to avoid and then feebly to justify cuts to benefits for disabled children (the money’s to be recycled to the most severely disabled adults). Robbing one group of disabled people to pay for the costs of another is a thoroughly mean-spirited decision, one of which the government ought to be ashamed, and for which it will be rightly condemned.
Equally wrong-headed is the decision to remove the mobility payment in disability living allowance to people in residential care accommodation, on the largely spurious grounds that such costs are already met by local authorities. Witness after witness told the Welfare Reform Bill committee that they had never come across such examples of “double-funding”. Yet despite the outcry from members of all political parties, the government’s not really backed down. Yes, a decision to axe the payments has apparently been delayed. But the cut is still recorded in the budget red book, and clauses to achieve it remain in the Welfare Reform Bill. David Cameron’s responses to repeated challenges on the subject have displayed his total ignorance of the implications of the cut.
Then there’s the plan to reduce the disability living allowance budget by 20 percent overall, with a new gateway test for eligibility which will both reduce numbers entitled to DLA, and to the associated carer’s allowance. Meanwhile, the abolition of the independent living fund; cuts to local authority budgets which are significantly reducing provision of services like day centres, respite care, home care and residential provision; general cuts to benefits that disabled people rely on; the removal of funding for some educational activities for those on inactive benefits (including incapacity benefit); changes to the Access to Work budget (so that more onus to provide specialist equipment’s now with employers not the government); and the continuing lack of confidence in the new work capability test for employment and support allowance (which the government is determined to press on with, although many of the improvements recommended to ministers by Professor Malcolm Harrington have yet to be implemented), all add to the impression that the government’s either unaware of the cumulative impact of their policies on disabled people and their families, or it doesn’t care.
But the real worry among disabled people is that this may be deliberate – that they’re seen as “undeserving”, with only the most profoundly disabled worthy of state support. Given the shopping list of cuts to such support, it is hard to disagree. Disability has always brought with it a heightened risk of social exclusion, poverty and stigma, and Labour worked hard to address this, learning from the early outcry at our own plans for benefits cuts. Not all our polices enjoyed full support from disabled people (the work capability assessment and employment and support allowance were, it must be admitted, unpopular Labour inventions, serving the right objective of helping more disabled people into employment, but poorly executed at the start). But our ambition and goals were right. Now the Conservative-led government turns the clock backwards, and its values too are truly revealed. The indifference to the structural inequality that disabled people experience offers a starkly clear example of the way that this government believes its obligation is to help only those in deepest need.
Politically this must be made to come back to bite the government, very, very hard. But the responsibility rests with Labour, for if we fail to mount the most effective, critical and inclusive campaign that we can, we let down not just disabled people, but the very values that Labour stands for, the goal of an enabling welfare state, one that’s founded on inclusion and on rights. The government doesn’t believe in this, and it’s attacking the weakest link. That creates not just an opportunity, but the obligation on Labour to speak out.