Challenged on 'cheats', Miller blames media

Sunil Peck

It's not the coalition government's fault that disabled people have been demonised as 'cheats' and 'scroungers' under moves to reform the welfare state, the Minister for Disabled People has said. Instead she claimed the media was responsible for propagating this view.

Maria Miller made the comments at a joint meeting of all-party parliamentary groups including disability, autism, learning disability, Parkinson’s, and visual impairment and which looked at the impact of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) on disabled people.

Addressing Miller, the disabled MP Anne McGuire, who co-chairs the all party parliamentary disability group, said that she was "deeply concerned" about the context in which changes to the welfare system were being made as an "attack on the people who are scrounging on benefits".

She said: "I certainly have disabled people coming to my surgery who are deeply worried about the way in which this whole reform package has been put together.”

McGuire appealed to Miller to inject balance into the argument and said that the coalition government was "frightening" disabled people.

Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson added that there was  "underlying discrimination" among employers against disabled people who are desperate for work.

She said: "It's really painful to see that those people are being tarred with the brush of being scroungers when they genuinely want to be in work."

Miller said that she shared concerns about coverage of benefit abuse and fraud.

But she said that the rhetoric was being driven by the media and that it was "not particularly helpful to suggest that the government is putting forward that view".

She added: "It's one of our motivations for reforming Disability Living Allowance (DLA) because at the moment we have a benefit which is too open to abuse and the sorts of stories that drive such a negative impact and image."

The disabled conservative MP Paul Maynard urged Miller to "make sure" that there are "adequate communications" between the Department for Work and Pensions and the third sector in order that charities are "clear" that the coalition government is trying to support disabled people.

He said: "I've been approached in recent days by a number of people from the disabled community who have clearly misunderstood what it is you are trying to do. When I've tried to provide them with more information and understand why they have misunderstood, it's clear that they've been relying on many charities that now see their role more as a campaigning one than as service providers."

Miller said that organisations in the third sector were in a "unique and powerful position" to provide "factual information" on welfare reform because that information is often "distorted" by the media.

In the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), the coalition government announced that £2 billion would be invested in social care. But only £1 billion of that sum will be ring fenced.

Asked by Baroness Wilkins what assurances she could give that local authorities would not divert the other £1 billion away from funding support packages, Miller said that it was the job of local authorities to make sure that the money was not diverted.

In response to a question from Baroness Masham about who would assess the people who decide whether disabled people are fit to work under Work Capability Assessments (WCAs), Miller said that there would be an annual review as well as an "ongoing assessment of the way the system is working".

David Scott-Ralphs, Chief Executive of the charity SeeAbility, urged Miller to reconsider the plan to remove the mobility component of DLA for people in residential care because it would not save much money but would have a big impact on disabled people who would be unable to afford to socialise with their friends and families.

Miller said that people needed to look at the CSR as a whole rather than focussing on individual measures.

She said: "We're trying to take a financial crisis and keep the support that is much needed in place for disabled people. If you look at the other measures you can see how they will balance out the decision that we've made with DLA."