Hundreds rally in Manchester against disability cuts
Article published: Monday, October 24th 2011
Over two hundred people rallied in Manchester’s Albert Square on Saturday in opposition to government cuts to support for disabled people. Similar demonstrations were held across the country as part of a national day of action called for by the Hardest Hit campaign.
Demonstrators waved banners stating “don’t take our independence” and “don’t push us into poverty” in protest against far-reaching changes to the benefits system. Campaigners say the reforms will leave disabled people and their families worse off by £9 billion over the next four years.
Over 5,000 people attended simultaneous protests called for by the Disability Benefits Consortium and the UK Disabled People’s Council in 12 cities across the UK. Speaking at the Manchester demonstration, disability rights activist and Broken of Britain founder Kaliya Franklin said “these so-called reforms hit our ability to live independently in society. We will not sit quietly by.”
Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh, who plays Hayley Cropper in the long-running soap, also addressed the rally. Speaking to MULE, she explained how “it seems to me that this government is intent, as it always has been, on looking at the people who are the most vulnerable in our society, the people at the bottom of the pile.”
She added, “I think that it’s a very clever strategy to stop people looking at the people at the top of the pile who are running the country, the billionaires, the bankers, the offshore tax accounts, the people who are the real benefit scroungers in this land.” Hesmondhalgh, who earlier that morning had attended the funeral of veteran Coronation Street actress Betty Driver, said “I just wanted to lend my support and solidarity. I’ve been at Betty’s funeral today and I’ve come from there and I’ve come here with a bit of Betty’s spirit.”
The protests follow on from earlier demonstrations held in May, and come as the House of Lords debates the government’s Welfare Reform Bill. Under the provisions of the Bill a wide variety of schemes including Job Seeker’s Allowance, disability support transfers such as Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit and tax credits will be combined into a single ‘Universal Credit’ for people either out of work or on low incomes.
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) claims the current system reduces incentives for unemployed claimants to enter the workforce through leaving some individuals either slightly or no better off if they accept paid work, and intend to impose tougher “sanctions” for people who do not find work. Announcing the Bill in February, DWP Minister Iain Duncan Smith said “our reforms will end the absurdity of a system where people too often get rewarded for doing the wrong thing, and those who strive to do the best by their families get penalised.”
Incomes for many families in work remain low and few jobs are available however, with Trades Union Congress research finding five unemployed people for each job vacancy. Calculations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies predict “a decade of rising poverty” as new tax and benefit changes such as the switching of means-tested benefits from the higher Retail Price Index to the lower Consumer Price Index will “more than offset the impact on poverty of Universal Credit.”
Moreover, charities and disability rights activists dispute the assertion that people with disabilities are reluctant to work. A survey conducted by the Disability Benefits Consortium found that while 61 per cent of people with disabilities were not in employment, only 4 per cent of that figure said they did not want to work. Of those in employment only 2.5 per cent said they would be financially worse off if they worked more hours, while only one in ten of those not in work said they would have less money if they were employed.
In contrast, one in five people with disabilities in employment said “their impairment or health condition meant they could not work more hours”, with nearly a third of those not in employment stating that their condition means “they cannot work at all”. Furthermore, disabled people are twice as likely to have no qualifications as the rest of the population according to the Labour Force Survey and a study by Personnel Today found that 92 per cent of employers believed “there was still discrimination against disabled people in employment and recruitment.”
Other provisions in the Bill include the withdrawal of the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) from residents in publically funded care homes, used to fund accessible transport such as specialised wheelchairs or taxis. DLA, intended to supplement the extra living costs of disability, is itself to be cut by 20 per cent and replaced by a new ‘Personal Independence Payment’. Many details of the new scheme including help to carers remain unclear, and in a statement to Parliament Carers UK warned that the 6.4 million carers in the UK, the majority of which are women, “could be particularly hard hit by the proposed reductions in spending.”
Many at the rally also spoke out against the process used to determine access to Employment Support Allowance (ESA), a scheme introduced under the last Labour government to replace Incapacity Benefit. Overseen by the multinational private company Atos, the work capability assessment scheme has come under sustained criticism for providing inaccurate judgements of disability. According to the most recent available figures dating back to August 2009 40 per cent of claimants appealed assessment decisions with a 40 per cent success rate, with the Scottish Citizens Advice Bureax achieving a successful appeal rate as high as 70 per cent for clients they represented.
‘Contribution based’ ESA calculated on National Insurance payments for those on ESA who are expected to seek work is also to be time limited to one year. The move prompted disquiet from the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee, which noted how claimants “may find it much harder to move into employment even though they may have done everything required of them to find work.”
At the end of the time period any who have not been able to secure employment will be moved onto a means-tested system, which the Disability Benefits Consortium criticised as damaging the independence of families, pointing out how if a claimant has “a partner who works, meaning they don’t qualify for income-related ESA, they may be better off financially if their partner stops working so they qualify for benefits.”
Mencap campaigns volunteer Thomas Butler, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, made a speech in which he warned of how the impact of cuts and privatisations would undermine the level of independence won by disability campaigners. “We need to fight this gross conception that we want to sit around all day” he said, adding that “we need to have equality as well as no discrimination.”
Local MPs Tony Lloyd and Paul Goggins also spoke at the rally. Goggins criticised plans to close the publically funded Remploy printing plant in his Wythenshawe constituency, set up to provide employment opportunities to disabled people, while Lloyd told demonstrators that the claim that people on disability benefits were “scroungers” was “not just a myth but a downright political lie to do down not just you but anyone who uses the welfare state.”
Richard Goulding
More: Cuts, Manchester, News, Welfare
Comments
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‘don’t take our independence’
What do they mean?
Surely cuts to benefits will increase the independence of many people with alleged disabilities.
The overuse of disability and incapacity benefits has helped produce the dependency culture in the UK.
I have a disabled nephew and his benefits are not threatened. That’s because he is disabled, and incapable of work and independent living – and it doesn’t take a panel of doctors or other experts to see that. He’s not one of the millions of modern type of disabled or incapable people which the state has created over recent years, many of whom seem to have very little wrong with them at all.
My father, now 80, was offered disabled status by his doctor in 1986 because he had, and still has, a leg which won’t bend properly which makes life a bit difficult for very limited activities like getting in and out of a car, bending to lift heavy objects or playing sport. However, his walking and work was unaffected and he still rides a slightly adapted pushbike. He refused disabled status, but the fact that the doctor offered it shows just how easy it became to get labelled as disabled and eligible for all sorts of benefits and other perks like a subsidised car.
Comment by simon on October 25, 2011 at 6:08 pm -
WE MUST ALL ORGANISE TO SMASH THE CORRUPT TORY BASTARDS FOREVER…
Comment by JEMMIE on November 11, 2011 at 12:26 am
The comments are closed.
