Fifteen days in May

Harold Wilson’s dictum that “a week is a long time in politics” has become a cliché. But in the Cameron/Clegg, so-called, “new politics”, it doesn’t appear to be any less true than it was when he coined it.

The two coalescing parties have managed to hammer together bits of their respective policies and ambitions at a speed which would have had DIY legend Barry Bucknell gasping with astonished admiration as they produced something which has the appearance of cohesion.

Now cohesion is all well and good if what it delivers is what everyone wants. But, in the case of this week’s two big events, the spending cuts and the much-trailed Queen’s Speech, it’s a case of so far, so predictable as far as thinhgs affecting disabled people are concerned.

The Department of Work and Pensions, although not hardest hit in the cuts round is still required to contribute more than half a billion to the £6.5bn total. Meanwhile local authority funding from central government is likely to feel the impact of the savings the Department for Communities and Local Government – the hardest hit of all – is required to make. This in turn has the potential to hit locally funded care provision, budgets and ultimately individual options.

In the Queen’s Speech, it appears that the fears expressed by me following Iain Duncan-Smith’s appointment as Work & Pensions Secretary were well founded. The approach to welfare reform will be based on reducing the benefits bill by placing much greater emphasis on moving people into work.  Inroads are thought to be likely to be made as the 2.5m current recipients of Incapacity Benefit are scrutinised under the much-criticised Work Capability Assessment.

Lastly, reform of the social care system seems once again to have been kicked into the long grass with talk of, but no movement towards the establishment of a social care commission.

“Cuts with care”?  I don’t think so.