The UN is damning about the effects of cuts on disabled people. If Theresa May wants to escape David Cameron’s toxic legacy, here’s her chance https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/08/un-report-austerity-disability-cuts-theresa-may ‘This government has to break with the shameful legacy of the previous regime, which demonised disabled people in receipt of benefits.’ A disability benefits protest on Westminster bridge in September. Photograph: Nick Ansell
In Theresa May’s first speech as prime minister, she spoke with feeling about fighting the injustices that poverty and inequality create – for those with mental health conditions and for those at the bottom of the heap. She has, since, made much of ending the “age of austerity” promulgated by her predecessor David Cameron’s government. So today’s devastating report from the United Nations, describing austerity policies as amounting to “violations of disabled people’s rights”, is a direct challenge to May The UN document provides a sobering end of school report for Cameron’s leadership. It lays bare the multiple injustices heaped upon disabled people and their families, detailing the effects of a range of measures affecting them that have been introduced since 2010. These include the bedroom tax and cuts to disability benefits and social care, which, the UN says, have disproportionately impacted on disabled people. The report says that the overall effect of a punitive regime has affected the rights of disabled people, so hard won, to live independently, to seek and stay in work and to be able to live an ordinary life. It concludes by calling on the government to carry out a cumulative impact assessment of all the measures, to give some sense of their effects. (Needless to say that in response to the report, certain newspapers have, true to recent form, sought to demonise the two UN envoys rather than analyse the findings, with clear parallels to the monstering of the judges involved in the Brexit judgment.) The government, for its part, has rejected the report out of hand. May’s reaction could have been a defining moment, where she positions herself more clearly in the centre ground, as heir to one-nation Conservatism. Her rupture with a cruel and unfair regime, under Cameron, which she has so clearly signalled, would be secured by reading and responding to the report with both compassion and action. It is, after all, common knowledge what the effects of disability benefit reforms have been. John Pring’s outstanding journalism at the Disability News Service, along with that of other disability activists, has demonstrated the shameful emergence of benefit-related deaths. And these deaths have a chilling effect on all disabled people who no longer feel that they can turn to our wealthy nation state and expect to be treated fairly and with compassion. But other effects are equally disturbing. New, stringent eligibility criteria, for example, mean that Motability (specially adapted) cars are being withdrawn in ever greater numbers, causing some disabled people to lose jobs that they loved. Nearly 14,000 people have now lost their cars due to the new guidelines. The cuts to benefits and social care budgets have been savage, too, and the result is that many disabled people have had to rely on family support – and some have even been forced back into institutional care. Advertisement The government will counter, of course, that it is taking action. Last month it scrapped repeat assessments for those with severe and lifelong conditions for the main out-of-work disability benefit, employment and support allowance (ESA). The assessments, however, remain in place for other disabled people. Damian Green, the new work and pensions secretary, has said of the changes to ESA: “I believe in a welfare state where you have got to be hard-headed, but you shouldn’t be hard-hearted.” Yet in its recent work, health and disability green paper the government suggested that all of those in the ESA support group might be forced to take part in work activity – although that group is not currently expected to do so, because it includes those with highest needs and terminal conditions. The government will, also, in its defence, point to the relaunch of its Disability Confident scheme to boost the employment of disabled people. Time will tell; in truth, the disability employment gap has widened, rather than reduced, under successive Conservative governments. Advertisement This government has to break with the shameful legacy of the previous regime, which demonised disabled people in receipt of benefits, made life for many a misery, failed to find them work and may well have driven some towards depression and even suicide. Instead of rejecting a sensible, sober report from a key international body, it should own up to the mistakes of the past, consider the report fully, and act on it. Disabled people became one of the last government’s favoured whipping boys. It is time to break with that cruel past. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. 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