My high heels benefit ban

When Anna Morris was examined by a doctor as part of her disability living allowance application, she didn't expect to be grilled about her high heels

You might have thought that, despite recent moves by the government to take control over our lives, what we choose to wear would at least be safe.

You might have allowed yourself a bit of a giggle over the thought of a What Not To Wear patrol pounding our streets, imposing fines on disabled women for wearing the wrong thing. Comedy script-writers could do it justice, I’m sure.

I’m afraid, though, that for some of us, it’s not the stuff of comedy sketches. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has apparently banned high heels for disabled women.

I learned about this bizarre development when a DWP doctor, who was examining me for my disability living allowance (DLA) application, gave her clinical reasons for my mobility problems as…my high heels.

Not my neurological condition or the bone abnormality of my knees. My high heels.

This doctor’s dodgy diagnosis was repeated throughout her examination as the cause of my impairments no less than five times.

And in her zeal to deny me DLA, this doctor, who, I’d imagine, makes a very nice living out of seeing people like me, went further.

She could not blame my little black suede shoes for the rest of my bone abnormality so she just denied its existence. She concluded that these abnormalities that I was born with, did not, in fact, exist.

And a second doctor agrees with her.

To me, this is a denial of the disabled experience and an attempt to cut back on benefits.

It means that I am left with £54 a week to live on. In fact, I don’t even have that much. I pay £4 a week to pay off a council tax debt, and another £30 a week to pay off an electricity debt. I expect my phone to be cut off any day now. This leaves me with £20 a week.

Of course, there is a sub-text to all of this: if those in authority deny your impair­ment, it only leaves your own belief that you are a disabled person. Or, as my second doctor put it, my “story”.

It also means that disabled women applying for DLA will have to abandon all hope of expressing their femininity and asserting their personal sense of style.

When that DWP doctor drew my attention to her own drab, mannish shoes, I did not realise that those hideous items were considered regulation uniform.

I seem to have worried that DWP doctor in other ways, too: I was too well-presented; I was too happy; I was too optimistic; I was too confident. All frowned upon by the DWP, so it would seem.

I might have been refused DLA, but at least I have the personal satisfaction of knowing that I rattled that DWP doctor all the way to her flat, beige shoes.