Number 10 denies Cameron misled MPs on DLA spending

The prime minister has been caught out for the second time giving MPs misleading information about cuts to disability benefits.

David Cameron had been asked last week about the impact on disabled people of the so-called “bedroom tax” – new regulations which will see housing benefit cut for families in social housing who are judged to have more bedrooms than they need.

But in a bid to defend the government’s overall record on disability benefits, Cameron claimed that government spending on disability living allowance (DLA) was rising, even though it is falling.

He told Labour leader Ed Miliband, who had asked the question: “The last thing he said before sitting down was that we are cutting the money going to disabled people. That is simply not the case.

“In 2009-10, the money spent on disability living allowance was £12.4 billion. By 2015 it will be £13.3 billion. There is no cut in the money going to the disabled.”

But Cameron failed to tell MPs that forecasted spending on DLA this year, 2012-13, is £13.6 billion. This means – according to the Department for Work and Pensions’ own figures – that spending on DLA will fall over the next two years.

A spokesman for Number 10 said the prime minister was pointing out that spending on DLA would rise over the course of this parliament, between 2010 and 2015.

He said: “That is often how we talk about spending, in terms of over a period, rather than year on year.”

Asked whether it was reasonable for the prime minister to use figures from three years ago, rather than the most up-to-date statistics, he said: “Yes, he was referring to the period over this parliament. That’s why he gave the date from 2009-10.”

Cameron had also claimed at last week’s prime minister’s questions that “people who need round-the-clock care” would be exempt from the bedroom tax, which come into force on 1 April.

But although disabled people who need a spare room for an overnight paid care worker will be exempt, those who rely on their partners for their support will not.

14 March 2013

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

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��ood the serious impact of these changes on some of the most vulnerable people in society, and would urge them to think again.”

Despite the decision to drop the appeal, Duncan Smith claimed there had been “no climb-downs at all” by his department.

He told Channel 4 News: “These are adjustments already because of the court case over the severely disabled children for local housing allowance [housing benefit] so this is nothing to do with it. This is a reality. We simply put the guidance out there to say this reality exists.”

It is still unclear what impact the appeal decision will have on a different court case, an attempt by 10 individuals and families to seek a judicial review of the impact of the bedroom tax on disabled people.

Anne McMurdie, who represents three of the claimants – a disabled man with a mental health condition, the father of a disabled child who shares caring duties with the child’s mother, and a disabled woman cared for by a parent in a significantly-adapted property – said the government’s announcement was “not entirely clear in many respects as to how it will work and who is covered”.

McMurdie, from Public Law Solicitors in Birmingham, said the government had until the end of Monday (18 March) to produce its written response to the judicial review claims.

She said: “At that point we hope to have a clear picture about what concessions or exemptions apply in these cases and to whom and whether the regulations themselves will be amended. Once we have this info we can decide how to go forward.”

14 March 2013

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

Labour conference: Disabled activist shames ‘flustered’ Miliband

A prominent disabled activist has launched a highly critical attack on Labour leader Ed Miliband during a televised question and answer session over his failure to speak out on the government’s hated “fitness for work” tests.

The session took place at the Labour conference, but the audience included members of the public who were not party members.

One was Kaliya Franklin, the disabled blogger and activist who co-founded The Broken of Britain, who accused Miliband – to loud applause from the audience – of failing to speak out for disabled people because of hostile media attacks that have labelled benefits claimants as “scroungers”.

She told him that the issue of disabled people being the “hardest hit” by the cuts had been “airbrushed almost entirely from the conference”.

Miliband claimed he was not afraid to use the word “disability” and was “determined to say that disabled people need support and help and compassion”, but that “you have got to separate out ill-health and disability from worklessness and the decision not to work”.

He claimed he was not “trying to sweep this under the carpet”.

But Franklin accused him – again, to loud applause – of “reinforcing the destructive rhetoric that is coming from the coalition government at a time when sick and disabled people desperately need a champion to stand up for us”.

Miliband accepted he should have said in his main conference speech that “you have to defend people with disability and ill-health and say that they shouldn’t be under attack”, but said he “genuinely” didn’t think that “saying you are tough on abuse of the benefit system is a non-Labour thing to do”.

Franklin, who blogs at Benefit Scrounging Scum, said: “We got the reaction we expected. He didn’t know what to say. He was completely flustered and lost the plot.

“He didn’t really have an answer. I had a go at him and said he was part of the problem because he had used part of this rhetoric himself.”

In a speech in June, Miliband horrified disabled activists by accusing some incapacity benefit (IB) claimants of failing to “take responsibility” and of “shirking their duties”.

Franklin said: “It was clearly one of the questions he didn’t want to deal with.”

She added: “I told him we have had enough of this, that he was not talking about us or supporting us, and he is complicit in this when he knows fraud levels [for IB] are negligible.

“When I hammered him about the fraud rates he didn’t roll his eyes and say, ‘oh, for God’s sake, will you go away,’ but for a moment the mask slipped and that was his expression.

“I just don’t think he cares. It’s not something that is one of his particular passions and he wants it to go away.”

But she added: “We had a forthright discussion and he did actually have to come out and say for the first time that he should have said in his speech that sick and disabled people needed protection.”

And she welcomed the Labour leader’s pledge to meet with her to discuss her concerns in more depth.

After her exchange on Wednesday evening, Franklin was swamped by members of the media intent on interviewing her about her concerns, but almost nothing has yet been written or broadcast about her exchange with Miliband.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Miliband ‘suggests IB claimants are shirking their duties’

Labour leader Ed Miliband has horrified disabled activists by using a major speech to blame some incapacity benefit (IB) claimants for failing to “take responsibility” and “shirking their duties”.

In a speech at a community centre in London – described by one commentator as “an attempt to rejuvenate his ailing leadership” – Miliband talked about a man he had met when campaigning for May’s local elections, who told him he had been claiming IB for a decade because of an injury at work.

Miliband claimed he knew there were “other jobs” the man could do and that it was “just not right for the country to be supporting him not to work, when other families on his street are working all hours just to get by”.

The Labour leader went on to say that such IB claimants were “just not taking responsibility” and were “shirking their duties” and that he understood why other people – those who “act responsibly” – were “getting angry”.

Furious disabled bloggers accused Miliband of feeding discrimination and the demonisation of disabled people that has resulted from politicians and the media describing disabled benefits claimants as “workshy scroungers”.

Sue Marsh, blogging at Benefit Scrounging Scum, said there was a “collective gasp of horror” from sick and disabled people when a transcript of the speech was posted on the internet.

Kaliya Franklin, at The Broken of Britain, said Miliband had characterised IB claimants as “irresponsible scroungers” who should “just try harder”, and said he had “hammered home” his message in the first paragraph of his speech that the Labour party was “more than happy to be seen as the party demonising disabled people”.

She wrote: “The increasing scrounger rhetoric is terrifying to those of us knowing that no matter how much we wish to work, how much we try, not only is the system stacked against us, but that the health issues we face are inescapable.”

David Gillon, blogging at Where’s the Benefit?, wrote that disabled people were facing “day to day discrimination” because of being branded “workshy” by the Department for Work and Pensions’ “campaign of demonisation”, and that Miliband had “worsened the acceptance of every disabled person in the country”.

Lisa Egan, also blogging at Where’s the Benefit?, said Miliband’s anecdote “sums up the Labour party’s attitude to ill and disabled people: No qualifications in assessing people’s health but meet someone for a minute and deem them ‘fit for work’ without any additional info besides that minute meeting.”

She added: “No wonder strangers in the street feel it acceptable to deem someone a ‘scrounger’ when our political leaders are doing the same.”

Egan pointed to a disabled blogger who described last month how a young man had shouted “scrounging c**t” at him when he was out walking with his stick.

Miliband’s press secretary declined to comment.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

TUC protest: Disabled people send powerful messages to government

Disabled people who took part in the huge TUC protest march and rally in London have sent a series of powerful messages to the government about the impact of the cuts on their lives.

They told Disability News Service during Saturday’s event why they had joined the hundreds of thousands of other protesters who took part in the March for the Alternative.

Linda Burnip, a founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, which played a big role in supporting disabled people to take part, said: “I am hoping to send a really powerful message to all politicians, including Ed Miliband [the Labour leader], that we are not going to be messed around with.”

Stuart Bracking, a member of the Unison union, said he was demonstrating to protect services and to protest about cuts to disability benefits.

He said: “I have been on demonstrations over the last 20 years and the visibility of disabled people is much higher on this demonstration than it has been over the last 20 years.”

Doug Whalley, who lives in a residential home, said he believed disabled people were being “unfairly punished” for “something that wasn’t our fault”.

He said the proposal to stop paying the mobility component of disability living allowance (DLA) to people in residential care was “really sick”.

And he appealed to the government to “stop making up stuff about disabled people and tax the bankers, not the people who can afford it least”.

Deborah Sowerby said she felt as if she was “among friends” on the protest, and added: “There has not been enough of this coming together. There are a lot of us and we are not going anywhere and that is why we are here today.”

Adrian Whyatt, from the London Autistic Rights Movement, said: “We need to try and get them to see these cuts are not working.”

He said disabled people were being “targeted” by the government, and pointed to the mobility component decision, and problems with the notorious work capability assessment.

Sian Vasey, director of Ealing Centre for Independent Living, said she was worried about cuts to social services, and added: “If they dismantle everything they are only going to have to rebuild it again.”

Marian O’Brien, coordinator of Ealing User Involvement Service, said her message to the government was to not privatise services.

She said: “We want to keep our welfare state. The ‘big society’ will not happen because they are cutting back on funding. They are dismantling the welfare state bit by bit.”

Anne Pridmore, chair of Being the Boss, which supports disabled people who employ personal assistants, said she believed the cuts had put disabled people’s rights back 20 years, while the government’s reforms were about “trying to get big businesses rich”.

She said: “I am so angry. In three years’ time it looks like I will end up in an old people’s home. Without support, people will not be able to get up in the morning. If disabled people have not got the support packages they will not be able to go to work anymore.”

Her colleague Jan Turner said: “I am here because of the service cuts, because of all of the money they are spending on the census and the Afghan war and the Gaddafi war and all the tax evasion.

“I think they are doing unnecessary cuts to people who are vulnerable. I am doing it for other people who can’t protest.”

Sheila Blair, also from Being the Boss, said: “I volunteer with a lot of organisations. What I don’t want is for a lot of organisations like the ones I volunteer for to get to a position where they have no staff and everything is done by volunteers in the name of the ‘big society’, which is a lot of shit. I just get very angry about it all.”

Frank Lerner, a retired head teacher, said: “Everything I have ever worked for in my life is being destroyed. I just think that this government is out to destroy the infrastructure of our society for their own easy ends.

“The cuts are nothing to do with what is needed, they are to do with what they want to achieve. It is dogma rather than necessity.”

Raymond Johnson, from People First (Self Advocacy), said he believed the banks should be forced to make cuts rather than disabled people.

He said: “Obviously there are lots of people here against the stupid cutbacks. Saying ‘we are all in this together’, I don’t think so. There are a hell of a lot of people here.”

Sandy Marks said she was protesting “because I can and because when they have finished with us I will not be able to”.

Sarah Fisher, from Knutsford, Cheshire, said: “The banks got us into this mess but it is the ones who are least able to cope with cuts who are going to be paying for it. There is no fairness in what is happening.”

She added: “I am hoping that this will help. I think if nothing else it will give a wake-up call to the government in that not everybody is behind this ‘we are all in this together’.”

Lisa Egan, co-founder of the Where’s the Benefit? blog, said she was there “to protest against the cuts, because I need the welfare state and the NHS in order not to die”.

Louise Hickman, from Hackney, said she had joined the protest because of the “vulnerability of support for disabled people in further education”.

Olcay Lee said: “We are here to stop the cuts if we can.”

Her husband, Andrew, director of People First (Self Advocacy), said: “Disabled people didn’t actively put us in this mess.

“We are very concerned that cutting services for disabled people, there is no logic to where the cuts are actually being made.

“Yes, we need to get the country into a better shape but disabled people need the right support. Without the right support there will be more money [needed] to clear up the mess.”

Andrew Hart said he was at the protest as a disabled trade union member, the trustee of a voluntary organisation that was suffering from the cuts, and the father of a son with autism, who was facing the loss of education maintenance allowance (EMA) as he prepared to start sixth form college.

Riven Vincent, from Bristol, the disabled mother who caused a media storm after saying she had asked her council to take her disabled child into care because of a lack of respite, called on the government to rethink its DLA reforms, and its plans to remove the mobility component from those in residential care.

She said: “I am marching because of the cuts that will affect disabled people, including my daughter Celyn (Williams).

“I have met David Cameron and he promised none of his cuts would affect disabled people and he has lied.”

Dean Thomas, from Nottingham, said he was on the march “because I can be here. For other people who can’t be here. The cutbacks are focused on the most vulnerable people in society. They are completely wrong.”

John, who asked not to give his surname, said he had joined the march because services were under threat.

He was scornful of David Cameron’s “big society”, and said: “The expectation that there will be all these volunteers to do the jobs is a bit false. There are already volunteers in society. How many more are there going to be?”

Margie Hill, from Knowsley, Merseyside, a member of the Unison union who works in local government, said she believed the government wanted to target disabled people, and was going to “try to pick them off, get rid of them” and “scupper our benefits”, while any new jobs would go to non-disabled people.

Catherine Callaghan, also from Knowsley, has been made redundant from her job with Greater Merseyside Connexions Partnership, which she said had cut more than 40 per cent of its workforce.

She had worked there with disabled young people, and said the loss of EMA meant young people would be “dropping out in their droves from education, hanging round the streets and there will not be people like us to interact with them to get them back on track”.

Jonathan Bartley, who is not disabled but cornered David Cameron in front of TV cameras before last year’s general election about his battle to secure a mainstream school place for his disabled son, Samuel, said his wife had lost her job at Sure Start.

He added: “Clearly it is affecting our family, our whole community, and it is very important that the government understands that this is not what the country voted for.

“What seems to be happening is the poorest and the most vulnerable are paying the price for the financial crisis they didn’t get us into.”

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Benefit reforms ‘will cost disabled people £9 billion’

Government benefit reforms are set to cost disabled people more than £9 billion over the next five years and push them “further into poverty and closer to the fringes of society”, according to a respected think-tank.

The Destination Unknown report, by Demos, says the welfare reforms are set to hit 3.5 million disabled people by 2015.

The losses are partly caused by a planned change to the way benefits are increased – or uprated – annually, from the use of the retail price index to the lower consumer price index (CPI).

Many disabled people are also set to lose out through the reassessment of disability living allowance (DLA) claimants, as the government moves to cut DLA costs by 20 per cent.

And many will be affected by the reassessment of long-term claimants of incapacity benefit (IB), through the controversial work capability assessment (WCA), with the first pilots beginning in Aberdeen and Burnley this week and national retesting starting next spring.

The report says that a typical disabled man and his wife, who is his carer and is also disabled, would lose £3,143 over the next five years through the uprating change.

A disabled man on employment and support allowance – the replacement for IB – would be nearly £1,300 worse off by 2015, with the possibility of further losses if his DLA was reduced or stopped.

And a disabled person moved from IB to jobseeker’s allowance because he was found “fit for work” after a reassessment would lose nearly £9,000 by 2015.

Among its recommendations, the report calls on the government to reform the WCA, and allow disabled people to take a lump sum from their future housing benefit entitlement to buy their own homes.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said they “don’t recognise” the figures in the report and could not “pre-judge” the results of next week’s government spending review.

Richard Hawkes, chief executive of the disability charity Scope, which funded the report with the Barrow Cadbury Trust, said: “Benefits are not optional extras – they are vital lifelines to help disabled people participate in our society. 

“Without them, hundreds of thousands of disabled people will be forced into a cycle of long-term unemployment, poverty and social exclusion.”

The report’s publication came as Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, told MPs that 900,000 people had been claiming IB for more than 10 years, while the government had spent a “staggering” £133 billion on incapacity benefits in the past 10 years.

Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader, told the prime minister in the Commons this week that his party backed the government’s reforms to IB and DLA.

He said he would “work with him” on the reforms “because they are important reforms and they need to be done”.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Labour conference: Miliband’s tacit approval for welfare reforms

Labour’s new leader has resisted the opportunity to criticise the coalition government over its incapacity benefit (IB) reforms.

In his set-piece speech to the conference in Manchester, Ed Miliband said that many people were in “genuine fear” about the “impact” of the new work capability assessment (WCA).

But he said IB reform was “one of the hardest issues for our party” and there was “a minority” of people who had become trapped in the benefits system, which was “not in their interests or the interests of us as a society, and we are right when we say it must be challenged”.

He said: “Reforming our benefits system must not be about stereotyping everybody out of work. It must be about transforming their lives.”

He said he would “look closely” at the coalition government’s plans for benefit reform that he hoped would be “not arbitrary cuts to benefits but a genuine plan to make sure that those in need are protected and that those who can work have the help in order to do so”.

Miliband also told the conference that he would not “oppose every cut the coalition proposes”.

He added: “There will be cuts and there would have been if we had been in government. Some of them will be painful and would have been if we had been in government.”

But he said the coalition government should not reduce the deficit “without learning the basic lessons of fairness”.

Miliband also used the example of a female care worker he met during his leadership campaign – who was “barely paid the minimum wage” – to illustrate his call for a living wage for all workers.

He said: “She is doing one of the most important jobs in our society, and if it was my mum or dad, I would want anyone who cared for them to be paid a decent wage.”

The disabled Labour peer Baroness Wilkins said afterwards that it was a “splendid” and “optimistic” speech.

She said Miliband could not have opposed the coalition’s plans for IB reform because Labour “did start this process” when in government.

But she added: “It depends on how it is done. [There must be] enough staff in the support process to help people back into work.”

Maria Brenton, chair of Hammersmith and Fulham Action on Disability and a Labour member, said Miliband had had to be “realistic” in his speech when talking about challenging coalition cuts, as a Labour government would have had to make cuts itself.

But she said she agreed with him when he said he “disagrees with the pace of the deficit reduction”.

Olwyn Emery, a disabled Labour delegate, said the speech was “pretty inspiring” and “exactly what we needed”.

She said it would have been “foolish” for Miliband to “simply go against everything”. “We have to be seen to be credible. But I am absolutely certain that he will be looking to fight the cuts that will be affecting the most disadvantaged.”

But she did call for the party to put more of a focus on the disability equality agenda, rather than focusing on women and black and minority ethnic issues.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

Labour conference: Funding of care and support is ‘at top of agenda’

The funding of care and support for disabled and older people is now firmly at “the top of the political agenda”, according to Labour’s former health secretary.

Andy Burnham told a Labour conference fringe event organised by the Care and Support Alliance that he was “unshakeable” in his view that there needed to be a “National Care Service” to run alongside the National Health Service.

Burnham said such a service should be free at the point of use and that funding it through a “care levy” on people’s estates after they die – an idea attacked by the Conservatives before the election – was “the fairest way to reform social care”.

And he said it was “wonderful” that the new Labour leader, Ed Miliband, had said that a National Care Service was an idea that he wanted to explore.

Shadow health minister Barbara Keeley told another conference fringe event that spending cuts would lead to most councils restricting care only to those with “critical needs”.

She said local authorities were tightening eligibility, cutting services and introducing higher charges. She added: “In some cases, all of these are happening.”

Richard Howitt MEP, Labour’s spokesman on disability in the European parliament, said some people had warned that social care would be “reduced to an emergency service”.

Meanwhile, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said this week that it had closed eight agencies providing care and support in people’s homes, and 34 care homes, in the last year.

In six cases, CQC issued a legal notice to close the service. In the other cases, the owners closed or sold the service following CQC enforcement action.

Problems included verbal and psychological abuse of service-users, poor hygiene and a lack of medical and nursing care.

Another 51 services – including 11 agencies providing care in people’s homes and one agency providing nursing care – closed after the CQC rated them as “poor” and demanded improvement.

The CQC’s new registration system launches this week (1 October) for adult social care services, and includes new “essential standards of quality and safety”.

The commission said this system would be “even tougher on poor care, with a wider range of enforcement powers”, including on-the-spot fines, warning notices and suspension of registration, as well as prosecution and closure.

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com