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Welfare Reform Bill's Assault on Disabled People - Why I Protested This Weekend

Posted: 30/01/2012 00:00

On Saturday afternoon I, along with a couple of hundred other people, spent two hours sitting in the middle of the road at Oxford Circus.

Why? To draw attention to the cruelty of the government's assault on disabled people in the Welfare Reform Bill, which finishes its journey through parliament this coming week. The government claim that "the most vulnerable will be protected", and the press keep repeating that line.

The thing is, it's not true. The press has a louder voice than those of us on the receiving end of the cuts, so most members of the public believe the government rhetoric to be true and fully support the changes.

The House of Lords have accepted amendments that will slightly dilute some of the cuts, but the government has vowed to undo them when the bill returns to the commons for reviewing these amendments on Wednesday.

The bill originally wanted to limit Contributory Employment and Support Allowance to one year, and the Lords amended this to be a limit of a minimum of two years and to exempt people with cancer from the limit. This still means that if you develop Parkinson's or MS and are still too ill to work after two years and you have a partner who earns more than £7,500 a year that you'll lose your income; but at least two years is better than one, right?

At the moment there's an income support top-up called the Severe Disability Premium for people who are, well, severely disabled. The clue is in the name. The government are removing that. The Lords didn't even put forward an amendment on that one because it would go over the proposed welfare budget.

The government plans to half tax credits for disabled children. This is despite the fact that 40% of disabled children already live in poverty before the cut comes in. The Lords voted on this and agreed to allow the cut.

Then there's Disability Living Allowance (DLA) which the government is abolishing and replacing with a new benefit called Personal Independence Payment (PIP). In doing so they plan to cut the DLA bill by 20% despite the fact that only 0.5% of claims are fraudulent (see the table on page 12 of this pdf). That's half a million genuinely disabled people losing the money we need to pay for things like wheelchairs and assistance to get out of bed.

The government are selling these reforms as being about weeding out fraud: As you can see from the four cuts I've listed, that's not the case. The cuts are about removing support from people who really need it: And I will be one of them.

I have a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta. I've had somewhere between 55 and 60 fractures in my 32 years, mostly before the age of 10 but I had a rather bad 2011 in which I managed five fractures. I'm loath to define myself as 'vulnerable', but most people would consider it an appropriate label for someone who once broke her back by sleeping in an awkward position.

Unless I've got any fractures I can walk a tiny bit and I use a manual wheelchair outside of my flat. For DLA purposes I'm considered "virtually unable to walk". Though I can walk a little bit it places so much stress on my impaired joints that they swell and become immovable quickly.

My joints also dislocate easily and my left knee sometimes pops out of its socket while walking. I once tore a tendon out of a metatarsal - pulling the tip of the bone off with it - simply limping along normally. I'm also wearing my joints out. Doctors hate wheelchairs, they see them as a sign of admitting defeat, but I've been told to use mine more than I do because I'm rapidly wearing my joints out despite still only being in my early 30s.

Because I can walk a tiny bit, even though I shouldn't, I will be losing the higher rate mobility component and with it my Motability car. I will be rendered incapable of getting shopping home because I can't carry shopping and use my hands to propel my manual wheelchair. I will also be unable to bring home the vast amounts of medication I need.

I get the care component of DLA for supervision because my bones break so easily. There is no mention of needing constant supervision in the proposed PIP criteria. Because I can feed myself, even though I once broke my arm eating, I will get no recognition for that. Because I can take myself to the toilet, even though I once broke my leg washing my hands after, I will get no recognition for that. Because I can get myself in and out of the shower, even though I once broke... you get the idea.

It's not just me. There are 500,000 other people with similar stories who'll be losing out too. 500,000 with desperately bleak futures.

So I protested this weekend. Luckily it was all very peaceful, but the need to be heard to stop these reforms was so important that it justified the risk of breaking a bone or two. It wasn't without cost, as most people who've broken a bone can tell you: Old fracture sites hurt in cold weather. Unlike most people; my skeleton is covered in old fracture sites.

Disabled people have been campaigning on this for 18 months. It's taken until this month for campaign groups like UK Uncut and 38 Degrees to join the fight. With the bill finishing its passage this week it looks like the 11th hour attempt to stop the devastating bill is probably too late.

There's a government petition to get the bill paused for review, especially important in the light of the damning Spartacus Report, but in a country of 62 million people only 25,000 care enough about disabled people to take two minutes out of their day to sign. It may have become so late that fighting has become futile but I still can't give up.

Not when I, and thousands like me, have so much to lose.

 

Follow Lisa Egan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lisybabe

On Saturday afternoon I, along with a couple of hundred other people, spent two hours sitting in the middle of the road at Oxford Circus. Why? To draw attention to the cruelty of the government's as...
On Saturday afternoon I, along with a couple of hundred other people, spent two hours sitting in the middle of the road at Oxford Circus. Why? To draw attention to the cruelty of the government's as...
 
 
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03:57 PM on 03/01/2012
Im a disabled man Suffer with Type one diabates...How do i prove i got a progressive conditions when even the Goverment are ignoring GP's Medical advisors when you send in reports, The revolving door senario has started and all of you who listen to the media lies of storys like benefits claiming 30k i hop you can keep a few quid in your pocket now (which you wont because in april more tax is being added scource:bbc http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12321524)

hope you can help people when they also come homeless, Remember Voting Tory and lib dem acheives...
09:53 PM on 01/31/2012
i agree with you totally my husband is blind through diabetes and going on kidney dialysis soon
its disgraceful that people like you have to sit medicals with permanent progressive conditions
whenyou appeal and win they will send you back for another medical there is a website called
benefits and work costs 19 approx per year i wish you well all the best you can download the wca
book also you can film them for your medical
12:01 AM on 01/31/2012
I am an ex-soldier who suffers from disability, both mental and physical. I take treatments regularly for the ailments i have. I also take risks with myself in trying to remain active and disregard myself as disabled (even though i need treatments to do this). It seems as though many are caught between a rock and a hard place. For although disabled, treatments can help you continue a life of sorts. The skinny is, if you walk just a couple of hundred yards because treatments enable you to do this, or if you cook your own meal because treatments enable you to do this, then you may under the new rules lose your benefit. The problem is that you are unfit for work and are disabled but it may mean you have to look for work because the treatments enable you to do perhaps something. That is like saying, Cancer therapies enable you to have good days so we will take your benefits away. I think what is needed is Clarity within the rules of benefits, I am unable to work, but now find claiming so stressful for the little i can do may mean i lose what income there is. I was in Gulf War One, my feet are damaged and i have a diagnosis of PTSD and now Schizophrenia, these are just some of the ailments i suffer. But I am left wondering what the new rules will mean for me. Clarity, is most definitely needed!
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04:33 PM on 01/30/2012
"To draw attention to the cruelty of the government's assault on disabled people in the Welfare Reform Bill, which finishes its journey through parliament this coming week." - Lisa Egan, Writer, blogger and activist. Why do you not change your activist methods from protest to actions. You as a person taake up the slack where you think the government is failing. Why depend on the government for what you yourself can do !?
05:40 PM on 01/30/2012
I would imagine because like everyone else, she pays the taxes that we all do, and elects officials like we all do who are supposed to represent our needs, and then try to find a way to make that work. "Taking up the slack" doesn't sound like it's going to change her skeleton to unbreakable diamond.
11:32 PM on 02/29/2012
I'll become activist then,,, i'll take up the slack.. just one small thing.... I can't walk and I spend my life in severe pain, and poverty. The little I have keeps getting taken away from me and needing to be appealed for, the late payment and overdraught charges incurred by this regular re-assesment ( because miracles do happen you know and the damage that took 1 1/2 out of my spine may go away) are never re-imbursed. Believe me if I or any of thousands like me could, we bloody would. Because funnily enough, regardless of what the media would have you believe, there is not one of us that wouldn't swap disability for health in an instant.
12:36 PM on 01/30/2012
Once again - less than 0.5% Fraud. Over 500,000 disabled people will loose benefits, that's right over 500,000 DISABLED people the governments own numbers, the disabled community and charities know the number will be considerably more. Educate yourself on a range of disabilities and look at what is needed to be done to claim ESA and DLA and what changes have been made before you start spouting ignorance around. Anyone at any time in their life can become disabled or sick, left up to the government and the brainwashed we will see many disabled and ill people DEAD! Some reading for you so you can see what goes on in the real world and no I don't have CFS/ME. http://www.democraticgreensocialist.org/wordpress/?page_id=1716
http://www.investinme.org/index.html
12:28 PM on 01/30/2012
I have P.P M.S. because I stay in my comfort zone most of the time noone sees my staggering and bumping into walls I am a very proud and independant person when I do occsonally go out it can then take3 hours to get ready . That is because of fatigue and mobility so people say to me (oh you do look well ) I try not to moan so I just smile .I am a very young OAP !!!!!! so please think of other people like me who may be younger than I am who will have benefits stopped.These allowancies we get are sometmes a great help to our quality of life . It took me 3 years to accept that yes I did need help and to apply for attendance so please because our illness is a silent one do think of people who have no hope of cure but try to keep smiling.
11:35 AM on 01/30/2012
Well done Lisa! The article is excellent, however for some sections of the population who think other people are getting more than them, I think the media has won. As for it being an assault on non disabled people who pretend to be disabled - if it really was that easy, why isn't everyone doing it? There speaks a person who has never been to an examination of a disabled person for benefit. Or, if Lisa could get a job doing 2 hours date entry - who exactly is going to employ her? Come on, I want a list! The rants against the disabled and immigrants (and god forbid if you happen to be a disabled immigrant!) are pathetic and it would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Personally I believe Cam ought to start building the gas chambers, and put the bankers in first! I don't see why the disabled should be held to ransom because he's got a bad case of transference.
09:13 AM on 01/30/2012
its bloody disgusting what there are doing to our own people and immigrants can come in and claim all sorts and nothing done about that and some people out there will agree with this bill
09:31 AM on 01/30/2012
What, all 180 of them? The numbers of "immigrants taking benefits" turned out to be such a shockingly small number (considerably less than Brits) the government has faced a reprimand for being misleading. They were trying to find someone new to blame, and it didn't work.

Rather than go all "us vs them" - realise there IS no "them". It's all us. Please sign the petition and get it out there to people. Be one of the few people who actually cares
02:03 PM on 01/30/2012
As I said some people will agree with the bill so you like your taxes going to anyone that walks into the uk I have signed the petition I also wish that I could live as well as your 180 immigrants some live in million pound houses I believe
07:22 AM on 01/30/2012
The benefits system got in a mess because the assessment done by ATOS otherwise known as MEDICAL SERVICES does not take a claimants medical history into consideration. And if the claimant gives specific information for instance closed head injury the medical assessor just writes the patient believes their problems started due to an injury. Too much money is now being wasted on appeals due to this method of assessment, for people who are long term sick it merely excerbates their illness, if this government wanted to save money and award benefits to people who where suffering from real medical conditions it would use an assessment which is based on proper Medical Evidence provided by our excellent and hard working Consultants and GPs.
04:42 AM on 01/30/2012
I think this a brilliantly written article. I agree with what has been said. I have many friends who are genuinely disabled and not able to work, but not all wheelchair users with conditions that cause daily chronic pain and difficulties on a daily basis who are worried sick on how they will live when all the changes. Chronic pain is not visible and unless you are a sufferer how can you judge. There are people who are not genuine but all disabled people are going through the mill for the minority who are not ill.
ThinkCreeps
Seriously, it's time.
12:58 AM on 01/30/2012
It's not an assault on disabled people - it's an assault on non-disabled people who claim to be disabled.
03:35 AM on 01/30/2012
thats fine BUT how do you only target the pretenders ?? without bringing extreme worry & hardship on the genuine, please read my original comments which should explain our problems !!!
09:34 AM on 01/30/2012
Only .5% of those are fraudulent. There is a benefits hotline as well to report people who may be on the fiddle, and official figures from THAT seem to point to 97% of those calls are purely malicious (neighbours arguing, bigots reporting 'them foreign with the wheelchair", etc). Out of all the calls only 1% turn out to be based in any sort of fact. That's right. However the other 99% of people who weren't even remotely fraudulent then get reported, got through the stress of having their benefits cut (gone food, gone rent, gone everything) until an investigation takes place which could take months to do, costs considerable amounts of cash to perform, and then tends to be wrong.
12:07 PM on 01/30/2012
HOW SO VERY TRUE !!!! as you state "MOST" reported "FRAUD" is completely based on malicious gosip, fueled by the incessant press reports released by this hatefull,lieing manipulating government,they have "ADMITTED" the percentage is only .5% carefull manipulation MAKE IT LOOK more like 50% those that do the reporting are known to be either malicious or are acting on second hand incorrect information, makeing things even worse the removal of the "ONLY" income the accused has,it takes months for the investigation to be completed & 9 out of 10 times found in the claimants favour anyway !! usually reported "FACTS" are proven to be incorrect,whether these are malicious or just misinterputation of the facts is basically irrelevent as not only has the damage been done as to the persons reputation within the comunitity,but more to the point within the "DWPs" records, making them a easy target in the future for even the slightest whisper,the accused then has to go through all the rigmaroll of trying to prove each & every benefit claim once again but this time also fighting the distrust of the DWP staff & revue board as this investigation is plainly shown on the claimants forms,this is completely wrong ! yes we all know there is fraud going on & HAS TO BE STOPPED !!! mainly because it makes the genuine claimants a target for these "so called public spirited "witch hunters" but remember fraud is not only restricted to the disabled,MPs,managers,even mayors are involved!
ThinkCreeps
Seriously, it's time.
05:06 PM on 01/30/2012
Medical claims are best not decided by a nosey neighbor. However, the lead-swingers may evaporate if they need to prove their case to someone medical, thereby protecting the genuinely needy and the taxpayers from fraud.