Cider with Georgie

Following Chancellor Osborne’s “unavoidable budget”, I was in two minds about doing a web story praising the Government’s decision to reverse the rise in duty on cider.

This reversal of a commitment from the previous government could clearly be sold as great news for the community of disabled benefit scroungers which the coalition clearly believes exists and who’ll doubtless take advantage of the newly reduced price by blowing their DLA on Scrumpy Jack.

After all, what else can have motivated the decision to make Disability Living Allowance subject to a medical assessment for all new and existing claimants from 2013? The implication is clear. Too many people, believes the government, have found ways of exploiting the existing system and dodging under the DLA entitlement fence when there’s absolutely “nothing wrong with them”. Just like those people later in the week who’ll try to bunk into the Glastonbury site without paying.

If you need further proof of the government’s seemingly unshakable belief in this whole subculture of scroungers, fraudsters and benefit blaggers, look no further than the Budget Book which clearly says that the new DLA assessments are designed to ensure that the benefit goes to those with most medical need.

This, remember, was a benefit created out of the social model of disability and introduced as a way of enabling people to meet the extra costs of disability. That’s to say, overcoming the access and attitudinal barriers which arise when you have a condition or impairment, not out of having it.

And if you want more proof on the belief that underpins this whole DLA review process, consider this. Lord [David] Freud is launching an investigation into why only 17 per cent of DLA recipients are in work. Given previous approach to and philosophy on benefit and welfare reform, Lord Freud clearly hasn’t been persuaded that there isn’t a shadowy conspiracy by people with dubious claims to being disabled to defraud the government of trouserloads of money.

Surely the true answer to his question lies with precisely those barriers, in particular the ones to employment, which DLA was designed to help people overcome.