Guardian article, by Frances Ryan, January 26 2016: Disabled people are accused of using aids they don’t need – to cut benefits again
A government consultation aims to cut welfare further by arguing that some people claiming disability benefits aren’t actually disabled
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) knows a good day to bury bad news. Veiled under the New Year holiday – in a consultation set to close next week – the government is quietly examining how to cut eligibility for its disability benefit, personal independence payment (PIP), which is also a passport to other benefits, such as carer’s allowance.
To grasp how this fits into austerity’s bigger picture, it’s worth going back to when the Conservatives began to sell the myth that Britain was filled with hordes of scrounging disabled people lining up to milk the state. Midway through the coalition government, Iain Duncan Smith’s DWP proudly began to scrap the disability living allowance (DLA) – which had, as of 2012, helped 3.2 million disabled people to pay for their additional care or mobility needs – and replace it with PIP.
Unlike the DLA, PIP is a points-based assessment, awarded on “descriptors” on a range of activities (such as washing and bathing) – a method of testing that campaigners long warned would be crude and inaccurate, just like with the infamous work capability assessment.
It gives an insight into the politics at work that, before a single disabled or chronically ill person had been tested, the DWP was predicting half a million claimants would lose their benefits as a result. Three years later – and with PIP beset by “chaotic” delays and rejections – the Conservative government appears to be trying to tamper with the way aids and appliances used by disabled people are considered in the PIP assessment.
Currently, disabled people can be eligible for the daily living component of PIP based solely on the fact they use aids and appliances to help them to prepare food, dress or wash. These could range from grab rails and shower stools to walking sticks or commodes that need to be regularly replaced, to an electric/reclining bed, screen reader, amplified telephone and infrared hearing system. Many of these could have an expensive initial outlay and ongoing insurance, electricity and maintenance costs.
But this month’s consultation proposes giving those who score all their assessment points from aids a reduced lump sum payment – potentially through the use of vouchers, rather than benefits – or changing the definition of what a disability aid is.
How can the government justify this? The DWP claims that evidence presented to a previous PIP review suggests some disabled people are receiving benefits but are using “non-specialist or low-cost items”, or aids that are “routinely available on the NHS and from adult social care” (the same social care system that’s facing a funding crisis). It goes as far as to say that in some instances points are being awarded “because claimants chose to use aids and appliances, rather than needed them”. According to this logic, disability is essentially a lifestyle choice – and those who choose it use aids they don’t actually need.
Indeed, read the “illustrative” examples the DWP provides in the consultation document – a hypothetical 58-year-old woman with osteoarthritis who “uses the sink for support when getting off the toilet, dresses sitting down and wears slip-on shoes for ease” – and it is easy to get the impression that what disabled people need is just a plucky attitude rather than social security.
Disability campaigners Spartacus Network surveyed disabled people in response to the consultation. They say the use of such examples were seen by some as a “deliberate attempt by the DWP to mislead the reader” into thinking claimants were facing no additional costs as a result of their disability.
From the start of the Conservatives’ “reform” of disability benefits, the narrative has been to present vast numbers of disabled and chronically ill people as either faking shirkers or passive victims with the wrong attitude.
This latest consultation is simply another – perhaps more blatant – tactic to shift responsibility away from the state. After all, the easiest way for a government to shred social security for disabled people is to present the argument that many are not actually disabled.
