February 2008

DWP’s cold comfort

Glad to see that the spin-doctors at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have attended their annual NVQ refresher courses in Sarcasm and World-Weariness.

For the umpteenth time since we began campaigning on the issue eight years ago, we asked the government why it was fair to give winter fuel payments to older people and not to severely disabled people under the age of 60.

Winter cold kills disabled people, the vast majority of MPs who receive the payments themselves back extending the payments, and new government figures prove disabled people are just as likely to be in fuel poverty as older people.

But that’s not good enough for the government. And certainly not for the DWP press officer our reporter spoke to.

“Hmmm, OK, do you want to give me your email address and phone number now,” he said, as if we had asked him to pogo backwards from Land’s End to John O’Groats, “because I imagine we will send you something along the lines of the last time you asked us this question.”

So glad you’re listening.


Gruesome sport

It’s been gruesome watching the government and the Conservatives outdo each other over who can be nastiest to disabled people on welfare reform.

They are now even using each other’s catch­phrases when they try to camouflage themselves with a few choice fluffy words.

Witness Mark Harper, the latest in a long line of Tory shadow ministers for disabled people, commenting on his party’s “work for welfare” plans: “We want to focus on what people can do, not what they cannot do.”

Rewind a couple of months and you find the DWP stating that the new work capability assessment will “assess what an individual can do – rather than can’t do”.

Not much sign of clear blue water there then…