22 November 2023 , 18:04
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Today was the day disabled people have dreaded all month. The culmination of the Tories’ latest drive to demonise us all as “workshy benefit shirkers”, Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement. Of course, we’d already had the announcement of the Chancellor’s and DWP’s joint “back to work” plan last week in which disabled people who had already been classed as unfit for work could potentially be forced to look for work. Then yesterday as an evil starter we had Laura Trott telling the media that people with mobility or mental health problems should “do their duty” and work from home or lose their benefits. But onto today.
Before Hunt took to the dispatch box, Rishi Sunak did his usual Prime Minister’s Questions where amongst other things he claimed the disability employment gap was closed and said he would be ensuring all families would be supported in paying their bills this winter. Then onto the main event. Hunt opened with some weird joke about his wife’s birthday and carried on with more jokes such as claiming the economy had grown and incomes were rising. He informed us he had a whopping 110 point plan to make all our lives better - unless you’re disabled that is apparently.
Okay so lets cover the “good” first. The chancellor will be raising benefits by 6.7% in line with inflation. This sounds great on the surface but in real terms it only averages out at about £470 a year or an extra £40 a month, not even enough for a family supermarket shop. And while the Chancellor seemed to announce it like some amazing thing he was doing for those poor down and outs, it’s only the uplift which happens every year anyway.
Disabled people were left increasingly with our nerves in tatters until the very end, when he finally came to welfare. He credited Ian Duncan Smith for creating Universal Credit, like that was something to be proud of and then moved on to bigging up his current counterpart Mel Stride. He said those signed off work sick were a “waste of potential” and that it was “morally wrong” that 100,000 people were on benefits without having to look for work. Funny I think it’s morally wrong to force those who have already been declared unfit for work into jobs that could kill them.
Hunt went on saying that he wanted “treatment rather than time off” to be the focus and would give 500,000 people mental health support, but there was no talk of how this would happen or the huge waiting lists. Then came the killer blow to disabled campaigners, which we had been trying to stop from happening. He announced that those unemployed due to sickness and disability would be required (read: forced) to look for work. If in 18 months the DWP deemed an individual hadn’t looked for a job hard enough they’d be made to mandator work placements and “skills courses” and face sanctions.
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Of course there was no mention of how disabled people will be supported into jobs, if they’ll be accessible or if they will suit their needs. Nor was there any mention of what the “skills courses” would be on or who would be running them. The chancellor also casually forgot that many on unemployment benefits are already skilled workers who either lost their jobs because of the state of the economy or were disabled by the pandemic. There was also no mention of whether the work placements would be paid.
Even more worryingly, If a sick or disabled person has no contact with the DWP for 6 months they will be kicked off benefits. At this, the Chancellor was met with jeers from the opposite benches including SNP member Stephen Flynn who repeatedly shouted “nasty party”. It’s a sentiment I have to agree with and more so, to watch the chancellor crack jokes whilst announcing what was essentially a death sentence for disabled people was absolutely galling.
The Tories are trying to make this seem like they care about disabled people, but this is once again proof of how much they punish disabled people and attempt to turn the public against us. The chancellor can claim to want to support people into work as much as he likes but he must know as well as I do that some people are simply too ill to work. However, where we differ is that I think these people deserve a government that will support them enough and not allow them to starve to death because they can’t work.
The important thing to remember here is that these plans won’t come in overnight, with most having a start date of at least the middle of next year and some not even pegged until 2025. That’s why it’s so important that the public has the chance to get these inhumane, heartless creatures out. We need a general election, now.