Responsible Reform: Frustration after media snubs ground-breaking report

Disabled activists who spent months preparing a hard-hitting report that reveals how the government misled parliament over its disability living allowance (DLA) reforms say they are mystified and frustrated by the media’s failure to cover the story.

Despite huge interest in the Responsible Reform report across social media – with the report “trending” on Twitter at number one and two for much of the launch day – there was almost no mainstream coverage on television or in national newspapers.

Sue Marsh, one of the disabled bloggers and activists who led the research, said the reaction to the campaigning report on Twitter “went beyond our wildest dreams”, and there was initial media interest in a report that had been researched, written and funded by disabled people themselves.

The report itself was backed by a string of disability charities and other organisations, and leading Twitter-using celebrities including Stephen Fry, comedian Mark Thomas, presenters Sue Perkins and Hardeep Singh Kohli, and Alastair Campbell, the former Labour Downing Street communications director.

But late on the day before the report was due to be published, the mainstream media interest began to evaporate, despite the campaign’s “very clear objectives” and “clear costed solutions”.

Marsh said: “It just seems to me that there is a red line, and journalists have decided that these welfare changes have to go through and they are not going to rock the boat. They all seem to think that the government has to be allowed to do this.”

The disabled peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson was one of those who commented on Twitter, questioning why the report wasn’t being covered on television news bulletins.

Sir Bert Massie, former chair of the Disability Rights Commission, said he was “disappointed but not surprised” at the lack of media coverage.

He said the kind of “counter-blast” delivered by Responsible Reform was so important because the government was undermining public confidence in the benefits system, for example by encouraging newspapers like the Daily Mail to run stories about “benefit scroungers”.

He said the government’s “gung-ho dogma” on welfare reform would “cause a lot of heartbreak and leave us with a worse system”.

Marsh said the failure of the mainstream media to cover the report – also known as the “Spartacus Report” – only reinforced the importance of social media to disabled campaigners and left the rest of the media looking “out of touch and behind the curve”.

She said: “We have been ignored by the media and politicians. We should be showing we have power and a voice of our own.”

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

DPOs set to submit evidence on media hostility to Leveson Inquiry

At least three disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) plan to submit evidence to a major inquiry to draw its attention to how some newspapers are stirring up hostility towards disabled people.

The Leveson Inquiry was set up to examine the role of the press and the police in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, with the first part of the inquiry examining the culture, practices and ethics of the media.

Disabled activists have repeatedly criticised newspapers like the Daily Mail for publishing offensive, disablist and inaccurate stories about disability benefits, particularly incapacity benefit, employment and support allowance and disability living allowance.

Now the UK Disabled People’s Council (UKDPC), Inclusion London and the Disability Hate Crime Network (DHCN) are all set to submit evidence to the inquiry.

Jaspal Dhani, chief executive of UKDPC, said: “Now the media are under the spotlight it is a fantastic opportunity for us to raise our concerns about how they are portraying disabled people.”

He said there was strong anecdotal evidence that disabled people were facing an increase in targeted hostility and hate crime as a result of stories that have been published in newspapers such as the Daily Mail.

He said: “When you look at the hostility and verbal abuse about people being ‘workshy’ and ‘scroungers’, where would people get those messages from?

“I think it is pretty safe to assume that a lot of those messages arise from certain sections of the press. Those kinds of messages have to influence people’s thinking.”

UKDPC is hoping other DPOs will contact it with newspaper stories they have found inaccurate, hostile and offensive.

Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said she hoped to submit joint evidence to the inquiry, alongside other campaigning organisations.

The evidence is likely to draw the inquiry’s attention to the government’s failure to counter “outrageous, inaccurate and hostile reporting” by some newspapers, and how some Department for Work and Pensions press releases appear to have contributed to those stories.

Lazard said there was a clear link between the press coverage and a rise in hostility, and added: “When we meet disabled people they are saying that the climate is significantly worse, they are far more fearful of how they are perceived.”

Stephen Brookes, a coordinator of DHCN, which also plans to submit evidence to the inquiry, said: “We have continually been told that the language that has been used about disabled people is demeaning and damaging, and it is a continual drip-feed of harassment.”

He said it was clear that some of the hostility facing disabled people “has originated through the papers”.

DPOs can email scans of newspaper articles or internet links to info@ukdpc.net or send them by post to Jaspal Dhani, UKDPC, Stratford Advice Arcade, 107-109 The Grove, Stratford, London E15 1HP.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

IDS ‘panders’ to Daily Mail again, hours after promising to change his ways

A cabinet minister has been heavily criticised after again appearing to encourage national newspapers to run stories attacking disabled benefit claimants.

Last week, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was criticised by the work and pensions committee for “pandering to the Daily Mail” and sending out misleading press releases about incapacity benefits.

Duncan Smith protested that he was unable to control how the media covered welfare reform stories, but promised that his department would improve the way it dealt with statistics on disability benefits.

Just 24 hours later, he provided quotes to selected news organisations – including the Daily Mail – suggesting that thousands of disabled people were receiving disability living allowance (DLA) they were not entitled to.

He told them: “At the moment, hundreds of millions of pounds are paid out in disability benefits to people who have simply filled out a form.”

The figures actually show that only 16 per cent of successful new DLA claims were awarded on the basis of just a claim form.

The Daily Mail reported that a “staggering 94 per cent of new claimants for Disability Living Allowance started receiving their payments after only filling out paperwork”.

But this paperwork can include a report from the claimant’s GP, their social worker, or a hospital, or even their application for employment and support allowance, the new out-of-work disability benefit, which has been heavily criticised for the severity of its assessment regime.

The newspaper said critics were warning that “thousands of benefits cheats were being allowed to ‘slip through the net’ while changes to the system come into force”.

Neil Coyle, director of policy for Disability Alliance, said many of the “16 per cent” were probably disabled people whose support needs were so high that they needed assistance from social workers to fill in their form, which was why government decision-makers did not need any further evidence of their impairment.

The government’s own figures show that overpayment of DLA due to fraud is just 0.5 per cent of spending.

Campaigners and politicians pointed out that the government’s release of the figures – and Duncan Smith’s comments – came just four days before the House of Lords was due to discuss plans in the coalition’s welfare reform bill to replace DLA with a new personal independence payment (PIP), and cut spending by 20 per cent.

Dame Anne Begg, the disabled Labour MP who chairs the Commons work and pensions committee, said she was “very, very disappointed” with the apparent behaviour of Duncan Smith and his Conservative ministerial colleagues.

She said: “Chris Grayling did it, Iain Duncan Smith did it on Wednesday. They are apologetic, and say that it is not them who are doing it and that they can’t control the press.

“Inevitably, a day later a press release comes out that manages to be interpreted by the media in a negative way as far as disabled people are concerned.

“I don’t know if it is coincidence or not. It has happened on more than one occasion. I am very, very disappointed that despite constant ministerial assurances that they are not doing it, this keeps happening.”

Dame Anne said she would be discussing the issue with colleagues on the committee.

The disabled peers Baroness [Jane] Campbell, Baroness [Rosalie] Wilkins and Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson all mentioned the Daily Mail story during debates on the bill in the Lords this week.

Baroness Wilkins, a Labour peer, called on the government to “rebut” these “wildly inaccurate press reports which are helping to stoke disability hate crime”.

When approached by Disability News Service, a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokeswoman declined to provide details of how the DWP and Duncan Smith had briefed the media on the DLA figures, although she did email his statement.

She declined to say whether the release of the figures was connected to this week’s discussion of the bill in the Lords; whether Duncan Smith would be taking any action to correct the Daily Mail story; whether he had personally briefed journalists on the figures; whether the latest press release cast doubt on the sincerity of his comments to the work and pensions committee; and whether he was concerned about a possible increase in targeted hostility towards disabled people as a result of the DWP’s media briefings.

Coyle said the government’s proposals to impose new regular assessments of all disabled people receiving PIP were “nonsensical”.

He said: “If you have a genuine medical condition backed up by independent medical evidence, why should the government waste tax-payers’ money and cause stress and anxiety to disabled people and their families, which can aggravate health conditions?”

Stephen Lloyd, the Liberal Democrat MP who accused Duncan Smith last week of “pandering to the Daily Mail”, declined to comment on the latest DWP press release.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Government ‘pandered to Daily Mail’ over work test stats

MPs have accused the government of “pandering to the Daily Mail” over the issue of incapacity benefit reform, after it published a misleading press release about the results of its “fitness for work” tests.

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was asked to explain the way his department had presented the latest figures on the work capability assessment (WCA), which tests eligibility for the new employment and support allowance (ESA).

Members of the Commons work and pensions committee claimed Duncan Smith’s department presented the statistics in a way that emphasised the number of people found “fit for work”, even though the figures actually showed increasing numbers of disabled people being found eligible for support and not fit for work.

The press release said that 38 per cent of claimants were being found fit for work, but then described this as a “majority”.

The Labour MP Sheila Gilmore said the press release, published on 25 October, “appeared to be yet again an attempt to convey a particular image of claimants that most were fit for work”.

She said the press release had selected a set of figures which “creates the impression of the fewest people being successful in getting the benefit and the notion that there’s an awful lot of people who are making some kind of spurious claim”, when the DWP could easily have highlighted different figures that provided a more accurate picture.

The Liberal Democrat committee member Stephen Lloyd accused the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of “going backwards and pandering to the Daily Mail”.

He said: “I find it unbelievably frustrating when a DWP press release calls 38 per cent a majority. I don’t want to play that game.”

Duncan Smith became the latest coalition minister to protest that he was unable to “control” how media organisations presented DWP figures.

But he added: “I personally thought all the figures are available and people can see how this thing is working quite straightforwardly, but if the committee feels we need to do more on this then we will do more on this.”

Dame Anne Begg, the disabled Labour MP who chairs the committee, also drew Duncan Smith’s attention to last month’s report by the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council (AJTC), which includes a case study on the implementation of ESA.

The report says the ESA’s introduction by the previous government “breached all of the AJTC’s principles for good administrative justice”.

It examines figures for 2009-10, before the coalition came to power, when one in seven decisions to find a claimant fit for work was found to be wrong on appeal.

Even where claimants scored zero points on the assessment (with at least 15 needed to claim ESA), 34 per cent of appeals were successful, while on average it took more than seven months to overturn an incorrect decision on appeal.

The report adds: “Looking behind the facts and figures, there is copious evidence that ESA claimants did not understand the purpose of the WCA, that nobody took time to explain it, and that it was carried out ‘mechanistically, impersonally and with a lack of empathy’.

“Similarly, there is copious evidence that claimants have been expected to attend assessment centres without appropriate facilities for disabled people. Given the purpose of ESA as a benefit, the apparent failure of design and planning is incomprehensible.”

The AJTC said it welcomed reports that people taking part in trials in Aberdeen and Burnley – which tested the reassessment of claimants of old-style incapacity benefit – had “experienced a better service”, but suggested that the current national rollout of the trials would need more resources if this improvement was to be maintained.

Dame Anne told Duncan Smith: “I’ve never seen such a damning report than the one the AJTC has put out about ESA. It is something that the claimants feel very strongly and it is something people write to us about and get the feeling that perhaps the government is a bit complacent.”

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

More news is bad news, says report

There has been a “significant increase” in the number of negative stories about disabled people in national newspapers over the last six years, according to new research.

The Bad News for Disabled People report, which compared articles from 2004-05 and 2010-11, found that the proportion of stories about disability benefit fraud had more than doubled.

When focus groups were asked to describe a typical story in the newspapers about disability, benefit fraud was the most common subject mentioned.

There were also more stories discussing the alleged “burden” that disabled people are placing on the economy, and a fall in the number of articles about disability discrimination.

All the focus groups used by the researchers thought fraud was much higher than its true level, with suggestions that as many as 70 per cent of claims were fraudulent, justifying this by referring to articles they had read in newspapers.

Government figures estimate that the overpayment of incapacity benefit due to fraud is just £20 million a year, or 0.3 per cent of spending.

The report, written by the University of Glasgow’s Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research and Glasgow Media Group and commissioned by the disabled people’s organisation Inclusion London, concludes that there has been a shift from a “largely patronising portrayal of disabled people” in 2004-05 to one where “the predominant focus has been on disabled people as scroungers”.

There has also been a sharp rise in the use of offensive language used to describe disabled people, with terms such as “scrounger”, “cheat” and “skiver” found in 18 per cent of tabloid articles about disability in 2010-11 compared to 12 per cent in the same period in 2004-5.

The Daily Mirror increased its use of “pejorative” – unpleasant or disparaging – language from 4.3 per cent to 8.8 per cent of articles, but the greatest increase was found in the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Sun.

There was a large fall in the number of articles in which the suggestion that disabled people were “deserving” claimants of benefits was a “dominant theme”, with such articles in the Sun falling from 7.9 per cent in 2004-05 to zero in 2010-11, in the Daily Express falling from 6.2 per cent to 1.1 per cent, and in the Daily Mail falling from 1.4 per cent to 0.8 per cent.

This coverage contrasted with the Guardian and the Daily Mirror, both of which ran stories expressing concern about the impact of cuts to disability benefits on disabled people.

Professor Nick Watson, of the Strathclyde Centre, said: “Much of the coverage in the tabloid press is at best questionable and some of it is deeply offensive.”

Researchers found a “significant increase” in the reporting of disability in the five newspapers over the last six years, with 713 disability-related articles in 2004-5 compared with 1,015 in a similar period in 2010-11.

Anne Kane, Inclusion London’s policy manager, said media coverage was becoming more offensive at the same time that disabled people were facing the “savage impact” of government spending cuts.

She said: “The researchers at Glasgow University have done a great service by analysing the disturbing way in which bad government policy finds its reflection in pejorative language and an increasing portrayal of disabled people as ‘undeserving’.”

A senior Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “It is difficult for us to comment on what stories the media run or choose not to run.

“Ministers have said repeatedly that what they wanted to do is get the system working the way it should do for people who need help from the welfare state. We are not interested in tarring people as fraudsters or anything like that.”

He denied that the government was failing to take any action when newspapers published inaccurate and hostile stories about disability benefits.

Although he could not say whether he and his colleagues had complained about particular stories or to particular papers, he said DWP press officers frequently phoned the media when they published or broadcast inaccurate stories.

He added: “We phone up journalists and we attempt to correct the stories. My team do it, I do it, we try and correct articles when we see inaccuracies.”

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Labour conference: Party ‘blocked attempts to debate work tests’

Labour has been accused of blocking attempts at its party conference to discuss the problems caused by the government’s controversial “fitness for work” tests.

Following successful moves by Liberal Democrat campaigners at their conference last week to overturn their party’s policy on incapacity benefit reform and the work capability assessment (WCA), disabled activists had hoped for a similar platform to raise the issue at the Labour conference.

But party managers refused to allow the leading disabled blogger and party activist Sue Marsh to speak during Monday’s “prosperity and work” debate.

The issue was also marginalised during the speeches of the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, and Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary.

Miliband referred to the need for the welfare system to reward “the right people with the right values” and said benefits were “too easy to come by for those who don’t deserve them and too low for those who do”, while calling for a system that “works for working people”.

He and Byrne both mentioned the impact of government plans to time-limit the contributory form of employment and support allowance (ESA) – the replacement for incapacity benefit – but only on “cancer patients”.

Byrne mirrored some of the hostile, disablist language used by newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, by telling the conference that voters at the last election “felt that too often we were for shirkers not workers”.

He also claimed that Labour “is and always will be the party of work”, and warned that there were “welfare cuts that we will have to accept”.

Neither mentioned the impact the test – introduced by the Labour government – has had on tens of thousands of disabled people who have been denied the benefits they need after being assessed for the government by the private company Atos Healthcare.

Marsh, who blogs at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger and is political strategist for The Broken of Britain campaign, said she was “desperate to show the people I write for that the party hasn’t given up on them”.

But even though she was mentioned by a speaker during the Liberal Democrat debate on the issue last week, she was not allowed to speak from the platform at her own party’s conference.

She also had a bid rejected by the party for the subject to be voted on as a potential topical “contemporary issue” for debate.

She accused her party of “marginalising the issue” and said she had shown her proposed speech to her regional director in a bid to secure a speaking slot.

She said she wanted to persuade her party to admit that while ESA had been “a good theory that not many disabled people disagreed with, it is not actually working in practice”.

And she warned that disabled people were “getting angrier by the day” over the issue of the WCA and incapacity benefit reform.

Stephen Timms, the shadow work and pensions secretary, told Disability News Service that the party was “very open to discussing it, very open”.

And Margaret Curran, the shadow disabled people’s minister, said there was “absolutely not” any plan to marginalise the issue at the conference, and added: “If there is, they have not told me.”

But Pam Thomas, a disabled Labour member of Liverpool City Council, said the test needed to be scrapped and replaced.

She said: “We may not all agree on many things just because we are disabled people but this is the one thing that probably unites us. The test is causing an awful lot of stress to people who can’t work.

“We have campaigned for the right to work. I feel that even though I have always worked and have been a disabled person, if I cannot work anymore I will be really stuck. I would have liked that to be debated.”

A Labour spokesman said: “Labour’s annual conference discussed welfare, public services and jobs on conference floor, and fringe events covered individual issues in detail.

“Unfortunately it is not possible to cover every issue in five days or for every speaker to be called in debate, so those motions which will be heard are selected by the delegates’ vote on the priorities ballot and speakers are called at the discretion of the chair.”

But when asked again whether the party deliberately sidelined discussion of the WCA issue, he declined to comment further.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Government ‘used Motability claims to stir up hostility’

The government has been accused again of stirring up hostility against disabled people and running a “deliberate smearing campaign”, after stories appeared in national newspapers about alleged abuse of the Motability car scheme.

A Sunday Times “investigation” claimed friends and relatives were misusing the cars that disabled people have obtained through the Motability scheme, while the Daily Mail described this misuse as a “scam”.

The Sunday Times claimed government officials were concerned that the disabled people’s car scheme had “mushroomed out of control” and was “so generous that it encourages people to submit spurious claims or to try to keep a benefit to which they are no longer entitled”.

The Mail said the government “hopes that its planned reform of the disability living allowance (DLA) will help stamp out such abuses by introducing closer scrutiny of the system and considering whether Motability is the best option for everyone”.

Many disabled activists are convinced that the source of the story was within the government, which they say is trying to soften up the public for cuts to spending on DLA and its replacement with a new personal independence payment (PIP).

Anne Novis, a leading disability hate crime campaigner, said the story “smacks of government preparing to withdraw DLA and Motability schemes or tighten them exclusively to those they deem ‘severely disabled’”.

She added: “Any scheme can be abused but the fact that this and other statements about disabled people’s benefits, allowances and support being misused are coming out from Whitehall almost every week indicates a deliberate smearing campaign against us as disabled people.

“We are cursed, reviled, demeaned at every turn because people now think they have ‘permission’ from government to treat us this way.”

Novis has given evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) inquiry into disability-related harassment that disabled people’s cars have been “repeatedly vandalized” and set on fire over the last few years.

She added: “For the government to now incite such misunderstandings about the Motability schemes will incite more hostility towards us yet again.”

Helen Dolphin, director of policy and campaigns for Disabled Motoring UK (DM UK), said she also believed the stories would stir up further hostility towards disabled people.

She said she said she would be “absolutely appalled” if the government was behind the stories.

Last week, DM UK completed its Alps Challenge, in which disabled volunteers recreated a 1,500 mile journey across the Alps in 1947 on a petrol-driven tricycle to highlight the importance of providing mobility support to disabled people.

Dolphin said: “The Alps Challenge was to demonstrate how far we had come since 1947, with fantastic adaptations and the fact that we do have Motability and DLA to pay for it, but it seems when you read articles like this that people would like us to step backwards to when we were pushing people around in little blue trikes.”

Motability said its scheme was abused only by “a small minority” of people, while the “overwhelming majority of our customers are hugely deserving individuals with real physical impairments”.

In 2010/11, about 800 people were removed from the scheme for abuse, out of 580,000 customers – less than 0.14 per cent.

Another 500 people were prevented from joining or renewing their agreements, but Motability said many of these were due to driving convictions and so unrelated to misuse.

A DWP spokeswoman said: “Motability is an independent charity which is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the scheme and DWP has regular reviews to monitor its performance.

“Motability provides a vital service for disabled people.  However, any misuse of taxpayers’ money is unacceptable and it is essential that we get the gateway to receipt of DLA right, which is why we are introducing the PIP.”

But when asked whether the story originated from the DWP and was another attempt to soften up the public in advance of cuts and reforms of DLA, she declined to comment.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Protesters call on Daily Mail to ‘stop the lies’ about benefits claimants

Disabled activists have demonstrated outside the offices of the Daily Mail to protest about the newspaper’s “disablist” and “defamatory” coverage of the government’s push to force people off incapacity benefits.

More than 70 people – including members of Disabled People Against Cuts, the Autistic Rights Movement and the Mental Health Resistance Network – protested outside the paper’s central London headquarters.

The action was part of a day of protests across the country, including demonstrations outside offices belonging to Atos Healthcare, which carries out medical assessments on claimants of disability benefits.

A series of Daily Mail articles about benefits claimants have angered disabled people since the coalition government came to power.

They say the stories and their “lurid” and “sensationalist” headlines – such as “76 % of those who say they’re sick ‘can work’” – label disabled people as cheats and scroungers and fuel hate crime.

One protester, Eleanor Lisney, from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “What they are doing is dangerous and it just encourages disability hate crime, because people that read the Daily Mail will think disabled people are shamming it and are just benefits scroungers.”

Another protester, Dave Skull, an activist with Mad Pride, said the Mail was “smearing all claimants as being criminals”, and added: “What they are doing is slanderous. It’s lies.”

Linda Burnip, from DPAC, said: “The lies and half truths that the Daily Mail has published have resulted in an increase of hate crime attacks against disabled people.

“We are not prepared to sit back and allow them to continue to peddle their disgusting disablist propaganda unchallenged.”

The Mail declined to comment on the protest, which came as the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) revealed that two articles in the paper had been found not to have breached its “Editor’s Code”.

A Mail news story, on 26 January, accused hundreds of thousands of disabled people of “trying it on” in a bid to secure disability benefits.

A column on the same day – with a headline stating “400,000 benefits cheats show scale of workshy Britain” – referred to unsuccessful claimants as “scroungers” who were “on the fiddle” and “defrauding the system”.

Campaigners had lodged complaints about the articles with the PCC on the grounds of accuracy, harassment and discrimination.

But the PCC said it “took the view that the newspaper was entitled to take the editorial stance that certain claimants ‘were trying it on’”.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com