Spring Statement Discussion (link to documents here)

The bigger problem is that so many of the papers are either ignoring that or are genuinely confused by the difference. The misinformation in the press of late has been so intense, in order to turn public opinion against those claiming.

It happened in 2011 right before the government austerity closed my workplace. There was a concerted campaign against public sector workers, quoting the salaries of chief executives and claiming that we had all these extra privileges and higher pay rises and so on (I think the phrase was pigs in the trough, actually). At that time public sector workers had been under a pay rise freeze for years, and in my case, I was working 25 hours a week (the maximum I can manage with my disability, factoring in transport as an extra as well), and the amount I earned in a year was less than the cost of a new car at the time.

The people who lost their jobs in austerity were those of us who were patching up the frontline services after years of cuts and not the ones who were earning the big money.

Just like the people who are going to lose their benefits are the most vulnerable, not the (alleged) fraudsters (who probably don't exist anyway).

I did notice with distaste the suggestion that people will just 'claim for more severe disabilities' to keep PIP. The implication being we all just lie on our PIP forms to get more money. Even though the DWP's own official fraud figure is 0%.

Feeding the media misinformation is a surefire way to get the gullible on board with cuts that will doubtless lead to loss of life. The abuse against disabled people on social media lately (most of it from people who haven't the first clue and have just copy pasted opinions from the Mail or some other right wing paper) has been really disgusting.

It isn't rocket science, either, that the 3.2million who are going to lose out are those at the poor end of the spectrum. The ones who will benefit will be in the upper wage brackets. The ones who can actually get working from home jobs, or who can relocate at a moment's notice to take a better job - or the ones who are employed because recruitment favours those who can babble about themselves for hours rather than do the job they're interviewing for.

Adding in a few thoughts before I finally go to bed…

Firstly - they might take the PIP and other stuff to primary legislation, the Lords kicked about and kicked out the monitoring of bank accounts because they saw it as prompting potential legal action. They highlighted this as an issue even if it became law. So even if they made it law in a ridiculous "Rwanda law" way, that doesn't mean the fight is necessarily done. The actual qualification thing might be put into law, but there is the potential to challenge what the assessment criteria are (and we know they discriminate against invisible disabilities) and also how the DWP are awarding them (to ensure they are not downgrading people to save money).

We actually have a sort of precedent for this, when Cameron et al tried to remove 'psychological distress' from PIP to reduce the number of claimants and was forced to back down because it discriminated against certain disabilities. It's not quite the same but it does mean that if their suggestions disproportionately impact certain disabilities, it could be harder to get it through without amendments.

So there are still areas they can contest, even if the 4 points becomes fixed. Plus, if the monitoring bank accounts law could have been challenged legally even after becoming law, I am not sure why this one could not be too. I think maybe in the case of the other law it was the potential for individual claimants bringing legal action - which would also be an option, if several individual claimants took the DWP to court over points not being allocated correctly, or whatever. But I'm not a lawyer. So. Onto my other point…

Government keeps talking about severe disabilities, but the Equalities Act mentions a substantial and long-term impact. It does not use the term 'severe'. This is a government opinion, or assumption, but with regard to equality, they surely have to prove that having many criteria at 2 points each is not commensurate with a disability that has a 'substantial and long term' impact. This is not the same thing as the 'severe' disability argument they keep painting. Nobody knows what a severe disability is, not really - afaik there's no official definition :/

I do miss the DDA, though. At least then we had an act that was designed to protect us, whereas right now we're the afterthoughts of the Equalities Act, and govt policy indicates they don't think our rights matter very much.