Thursday 31 July 2014

Confirmed - The FULL Impact of Cuts Disabled People Face

Since the coalition came to power, sick and disabled people have claimed we are being fundamentally harmed by the coalition welfare reforms. Not scroungers or skivers, but  people living with long term serious illnesses like me, or who live with physical disabilities. Adults AND children. Young and old. People with terminal conditions, people with kidney or heart failure, people waiting for transplants and even people in comas. None have been spared. The government repeatedly assure you they have. 

The government have of course denied that they are putting an unreasonable share of austerity cuts on us. Repeatedly and often aggressively. This is how they respond to the UN of all people :


Since 2011, almost every main voice involved in the services and systems that support sick and disabled people have argued that we must know how all of the changes TOGETHER have affected us so particularly. 

Everything we rely on has been cut severely - in some cases by up to 40%. Disability benefits, sickness benefits, social care services, housing support, legal aid for tribunals, respite care, the independent living fund, council tax relief, higher education funding, everything. 

It is very possible that if you were affected by one of the changes, you were affected by several or even all of them. 

Whilst the government paid lip service to assessing what impact their reforms would have on sick and disabled people, they only did so one by one. They always claimed it was impossible to assess them all together and specifically, how they would affect disabled people when combined. 

It has been a long and dishonest journey. As with so many things, the government have done everything in their power to keep the figures from the public. 

They said that it wasn't possible despite a petition gathering over 100,000 signatures calling for what they called a "cumulative impact assessment" or CIA. 

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154 (Scroll down for gov response)

The government treated the debate it generated in parliament - a debate sick and disabled people themselves worked so hard for - like a Punch and Judy show of partisan nonsense. You can watch it for yourself if you click on the following link :


They said it wasn't "robust" when both the very well respected Dr Simon Duffy from the Centre for Welfare Rerform and the equally well respected think tank Demos produced models they believed were viable. 

And finally, just 2 days ago, Lord Freud, the failed millionaire ex-banker who re-designed our entire welfare system in just 3 weeks, wrote an official response to the SSAC, the government's own Social Security Advisory Committee, who also called for a CIA relating to disability, confirming yet again, that he believed it was impossible to assess all of the changes sick and disabled people have faced and claiming that the IFS, the all powerful Institute for Fiscal Studies, agreed with him. 

This was yet another lie from Freud - there is no other word for it. As the IFS have confirmed 

“We can’t find anything we have written down saying we can’t do a CIA....We do think it is possible to do a CIA of tax and benefit changes for the disabled population as a whole."

As it happens, they did one themselves for Wales

Today, at the request of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, (EHRC) NIESR, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research have produced a definitive CIA and it is shocking equalityhumanrights.com/commission-welcomes-report-financial-policy-making-and-modelling-cumulative-equality-impacts …
"Figure 4.9 shows that households with disabled children lose out by more in cash terms than households with disabled adults, with households with disabled children and adults losing out by more than either group – around £1,500 per household per year on average. 
 "Households with no disabled adults or disabled children in the 7th and 8th deciles [wealthier households] actually gain slightly from the reform package, whereas households with disabled adults or children (or both) lose out. At the bottom of the distribution, households with no disabled people, or with disabled adults, do not lose as much on average as households with disabled children, or both disabled adults and children. In percentage terms the distributional effects are fairly regressive across all four groups, with households with disabled adults and children doing worst of all up to the top decile."
As one of the authors, Jonathan Portes says in an article for the Guardian today 
"Modelling the cumulative impact is feasible and practicable – at least by gender, age, disability and ethnicity. Our model isn’t perfect and could be improved, but it can be done.....Families that have a disabled adult or child lose perhaps five times as much proportionally as better-off able-bodied families."
There is now absolutely no doubt at all that sick and disabled people have been hit over and over again by a barrage of cuts and the more vulnerable the family; the more disabled people within it; the more they have lost. 

The DWP, Iain Duncan-Smith, Lord Freud and many right wing media outlets have kept this information from the public through every possible means. They will probably do so again today. 

But over 100,000 people signed the WOW petition. 


Think tanks and charities and many journalists know that this is hugely significant. And as ever, we can and will make our own news. 

PLEASE, CROSS POST THIS IF YOU HAVE A BLOG, WRITE ABOUT IT IF YOU HAVE A COLUMN, FIND A SLOT FOR IT IF YOU ARE A PRESENTER, TWEET IT OR SHARE IT IF YOU ARE A SOCIAL MEDIA USER, SEND IT TO EVERYONE AND ANYONE YOU THINK MIGHT CARE OR WHO COULD HELP YOU GET IT TO A WIDER AUDIENCE. 

YOU CAN USE THE BUTTONS BELOW THIS ARTICLE TO SHARE IT TOO. 

We now know that this government have harmed the very people they promised us they would protect. They have harmed the very people that voters never wanted to be harmed. They have lied about the harm being done at every stage and have actively tried to keep it from both parliament and the media. 

If ever a story needed to be seen and understood, it is this. If you never bothered to click on the links in an article for more information before, click on these. It is a shameful and repellant story and those responsible have no place whatsoever within 100 miles of Westminster. 







17 comments:

  1. Shared to F/B, Twitter, google & reblogged on mentalillnessgodandme.blogspot.co.uk

    P.S, Not sure if you're already aware, but If you add a pic to your posts, even just a random pic ie; flowers, or a plain background with a headline; then ppl can also share to pinterest, which reaches another wide audience :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tweeted (with plea to RT) and Google+ed with plea to re-share. I'm flat out with work just now so can't promise to reblog but will try to make some time if I can (am on endless deadlines just now - sorry!).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your posting permissions haven't been revoked on Where's the Benefit; you're free to cross-post this to the blog there.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Will spread it as far as I can. Thank you Sue.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The government have of course denied that they are putting an unreasonable share of austerity cuts on us. Repeatedly and often aggressively. This is how they respond to the UN of all people :


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681313/The-Brazil-Nut-strikes-IDS-anger-former-Marxist-Raquel-Rolnik-attacks-benefit-cuts.html

    with reference the above what IDS fails to understand is that many sick and disabled people have died in going through welfare reform

    these are innocent people just like in any war zone and under UN laws and regulations no government has the right to to put in place any law that is detrimental which could lead to their citizens deaths

    we have had Hitler and Muammar al-Gaddafi / Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad
    Syria, President and now along with IDS who have continually broken all human rights of it's citizens and have always acted in denial

    IDS has repeatedly broken those UN rules hence many sick and disabled have died over the past four plus years and it's about time he stood trial like so many despots have done throughout history and so that liberty of the weakest in society can be restored and that they can live in piece and only that god can take their lives not IDS and co

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. today IDS along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and that of Vladimir Putin President of Russia still continue to ignore the UN to go on their merry way to destabilize in the case of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and that of Vladimir Putin President of Russia their countries and in IDS THE SICK AND DISABLED

      Time and time again the UN have told them all of their shortcomings which means the deaths of the innocent be they at home or from abroad but with their mentality's of gods knows what there are all hell bent in one way or another in the killing and suffering of others and at the end of the day that's the bottom line

      There grip on power and destruction in all forms will go on and on forever and a day and it's very hard for anyone to broker any sort of deal that protects innocent lives

      All we can hope for is that the UK wakes up fast and throws IDS out of government and all of those that think like him as there will be many mp's just like him just waiting in the wings to kill off all sick and disabled at the next election

      the innocent in the middle east and Russia the uk's sick and disabled future remain uncertain and it could quite well mean that for many like we have seen all to often in the past their days will numbered

      Putins beliefs like IDS are the same bend to their will or suffer

      Delete
  6. Thank you, Sue, for another excellent blog. We have mentioned Dr Simon Duffy’s report, A Fair Society? How the Cuts Target Disabled People, on page 75 of our new book Evil at the Heart of Capitalism.

    Readers of your blog might like to have a look at our wide-angle examination of why such abhorrent, hateful and discriminatory attitudes have come to characterise our capitalist society. We argue that capitalism is of itself inherently evil, and that all those people who do not directly devote their lives and resources to making rich people richer (the people who own everything, that is) are going to have a very rough time of it.

    Please find electronic copies of Evil at the Heart of Capitalism here http://1drv.ms/1vmQVOv, and please use the links on our blog here http://bit.ly/1kjGvKq to find the paperback edition.

    If anyone would be interested in offering any sort of write-up, review, or response to our book, we still have review copies of the paperback available. Send your request via a comment to our blog via the second link, above.

    Daniel Miles & Karl Gruber

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your last two paragraphs are a perfect summary of the current government and the way they have treated the disabled in this country.

    They and the people that have known what is going on but said and done nothing should be ashamed for the rest of their lives.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think they should be sent 100 miles from Westminter in an easterly direction...Middle of the North Sea with Lead Boots and no Water Wings!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sue

    Another excellent blog, as I am a wordpress user I have had to copy and paste this into my blog so have linked back for them to read the rest.

    Hope that is OK for you x

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm glad you are speaking up about this, many are happy to labour user the illusion that the cuts are necessary and fair. Happy to share data and encourage people to question and challenge these things in the hope that they are not allowed to continue unchecked.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I bet IDS cares more about what he gains from his dead Aunt Bessie's will than who dies as a result of evil government policies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. IDS cares for no one martin and is a disgrace to all of man kind

      the sad fact thou as we see all to often in the news today of all the bloodshed in the world there are many like him in the world all doing their damnedest to make people suffer and succeeding

      The world will never be rid of the likes of IDS the world has always had this type of person in one way or another and only god knows where it will all end

      only the people can demand change you are at the end of the day only as good as your leader in David Cameron

      his outlook and style is as bad as this country has ever seen but at the end of the day that's what the public chose

      the world needs to wake up and to start putting in to power as mp's only those with a history of a humanitarian outlook with a vast knowledge of field work undertaken along with a good sense of political balance and diplomacy

      Delete
  12. So true Nick, so very very true.

    ReplyDelete
  13. IDS is only as bad as his boss who allows him to reign and it's from him where the orders on how to treat the sick and disabled come from. Not until the whole of this diseased dictatorship has been flushed away to the sewer from whence it came, and replaced with one made up of humanitarianism - not self and greed - will our vulnerable citizens among us, who also have a right to life, be saved.

    ReplyDelete