Hi ,
Yesterday the government published the text of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, which will be the law cutting nearly £5bn of support from people with disabilities and long-term illnesses. Opposition to the bill's plans to push hundreds of thousands of people into poverty has led the government to offer what it's portraying as a major concession to rebels: a 13-week delay in when the cuts are implemented. We have decades of evidence from people with disabilities about the structural barriers they face getting access to safe housing, basic services, and employment. A 13-week delay isn't going to change any of that.
Part of this evidence is from our newly-published APPG on Poverty and Inequality report on the relationship between disability, inequality, and poverty (which is covered here in the Big Issue). Experts with lived and learned expertise, campaigners, and MPs gave us pages of testimony about the ways people with disabilities struggle with inequality, from the lack of accessible rented homes to the disability pay gap.
The people who responded to the inquiry are clear about the proposed cuts:
- “The proposals in the Green Paper would be a catastrophic additional blow, increasing ours and other disabled people’s poverty and inequality exponentially” (Lived experience submission)
- “Stopping me – and people like me – from getting daily living PIP is not going to get young people back to work, it’s not going to get people with anxiety back to work, and it’s not going to allow me to get back to work. It’s going to make people sick. Maybe worse.” (Lived experience submission)
- "It has been noted locally that while the ‘Pathways to Work’ Green Paper recognises ‘many people do not feel heard, do not trust the system and feel that their voices, views and evidence are not truly taken into account,’ of the 19 policies relating to welfare benefit changes, only 8 are open to consultation.” (Leeds City Council)
We know that austerity had a terrible cost to peoples lives, including hundreds of thousands of excess deaths. Many submissions received by this inquiry warned of the same thing, often with immense frustration that the state wasn't acting like their lives mattered. Meanwhile, the government has been extremely quick to act on the lobbying campaign from the richest, according to reporting in the Guardian that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is looking to launch a second round of tax breaks for the wealthy people affected by the non-doms tax changes.
This speaks to the profound inequality of power in the UK. People with disabilities and chronic illnesses, victims of the Grenfell fire and others affected by the cladding crisis, people hurt in the Windrush scandal or the Hillsborough disaster have been forced to fight for years for basic rights and justice, while lobbyists are able to create dodgy evidence and change a tax law in months.
It's time MPs listen to the rest of us. We're asking you to write to your MP using our tool to tell them why they shouldn't vote to cut support for people with disabilities. Instead, our government should tax the rich with windfall taxes on bank profits, wealth taxes on aristocrats inheriting fortunes, and taxes on the international corporations harming our planet.
We can invest in people and build a more equal society. |
