Manchester councillor Amina Lone finds worrying practice in the Government's altered system of assessing and paying disability benefits
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One of many recent protests against disability benefits assessment tests. Photograph: Philip Kirk/Corbis
The welfare reforms enacted by the coalition government have proved to be controversial; but none more so that the shift from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independent Payments (PIPs). Each share many similarities, for instance the inclusion of a daily living allowance and mobility component that are essential to ensure that individuals can maintain control over their own lives by taking responsibility through personal choice.
However, organisations such as Disability Rights UK believe that the main driver is to cut allowance and reduce public expenditure. Whilst reducing the deficit is of course critical for our economy, it is also a political choice about who carries the responsibility for achieving this. This seems confirmed as the government announced that more than 300,000 disabled people will have their benefits cut although the change has been delayed for two years.
In a speech to parliament yesterday Esther McVey MP, the welfare minister, declared that the PIPS will be 'more transparent, objective and fair,' and that 'everyone will be assessed as an individual.' However, Atos - the organisation that is implementing such assessments – appears to have not yet received this instruction.
Speaking to a number of people who have had to deal with Atos in terms of their eligibility for DLA, I have been shocked at the way the assessments are carried out. There seems to be a complete lack of professional understanding of hidden disabilities, especially in the case of mental health illness. One case I am currently involved in through my role as a local councillor, has a claimant being placed in the 'fit-to-work' group even though she has a brain tumour (for which she is due to go into imminent surgery), has a severe strain of bi-polar and has serious knee problems that need operating on. To top it off, she has been advised she will be left permanently deaf from the brain surgery. Her first appointment with Atos was scheduled for the week after her brain operation and when she said she could not attend, she was informed that this was her choice and if she didn't attend she would be putting her benefits at risk.
And this case is just the tip of the ice-berg. I know of at least two other local cases where the claimant has lost their benefits and have not turned to any professionals for advice or support. What will happen to these hidden people and how will they be measured in the Government's statistics of successful getting people off benefit?
The mass of welfare reforms which are like a tidal wave hitting the poorest in our communities seem to be on a one-way course to increase poverty. The majority of people who are on benefits are in fact working - and are not the feckless work-shy the government falsely refer too. However the disability cuts are going to impact on some of the most vulnerable members of of communities and often some of the most discriminated against in our society. How does this square with Cameron's own rhetoric of his government being fair and all in it together?
Furthermore, many of these welfare reforms simply seem unsustainable. If Atos is wrongly assessing people with no expertise in hidden or mental disabilities and deeming these people fit for work, how do they know how long these people will be able to stay in work?
The strategy is looking very short-term and incredibly reactionary especially when you consider the revolving door element that could come in to play if someone is misdiagnosed as fit for work, somehow manages to get a job and has to leave that job within six months because they are unable to continue the job due to their illness. How many employers are going to tolerate someone who suffers from a hidden disability or a mental illness? Illnesses like bi-polar disorder are unpredictable and many people who have it cannot plan for their future precisely because of that.
These cuts are punishing those who have often done nothing wrong but have had the misfortune to be born with a disability that they could not control. Maybe that is Cameron's next policy initiative: Make sure you get your genes right otherwise you are going to be stuffed when you get out in to the big bad world. Cameron's own version of the evolutionary theory.