Miller reform plans get predictable cold shoulder

Ian Macrae

The Government has published its response to the consultation on reforming Disability Living Allowance (DLA).

According to Maria Miller, Minister for Disabled People (pictured) almost 5,000 individuals and more than 500 disability organisations responded to the consultation.

But some disabled people believe that the Government has been highly selective in finding support for the approach to reform which had been outlined prior to the start of the consultation process.

Kaliya Franklin of the online campaigning group The Broken of Britain told Disability Now: “We are very concerned that the Government seems to have cherry-picked the responses they like and ignored the rest, resulting in a consultation response that fails to recognise the issues raised by disabled people.”

Giving more details of the response, Maria Miller said: “During the consultation period we received many letters and emails from individuals and disability organisations who said that the benefit needs to be updated and made easier to understand.”

She confirmed that DLA would be replaced by the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and confirmed that this new benefit would be subject to “more transparent assessment” which even existing DLA recipients would have to undergo.

This will do nothing to allay the concerns of those who feel that this approach represents a medicalisation of entitlement to extra payment which activists and allies view as a recognition of the additional social costs of disability.

Richard Hawkes, Chief Executive of Scope (The charity which publishes Disability Now) said: “Daily life costs more if you are a disabled person, and for many Disability Living Allowance is a real lifeline. We recognise that it needs modernising, but we are concerned that reform is motivated by a desire to cut costs rather than improve the system. The Government’s response to its consultation doesn’t allay those fears”.

Further affirmation of the Government’s intent to focus PIP more tightly on medical evidence and personal impairment emerged in other comments made by the Minister. She said: “There will be no automatic entitlements where people with certain health conditions or impairments automatically receive specific rates of benefit, as we don’t want to define people by their disability. Instead we will look at each individual case and the impact of a person’s impairment on their ability to live independently.”

But commenting on the Government’s response, Neil Coyle of the Disability Alliance told us: “The Government has failed to respond to questions focussing on the potential knock-on costs to other public services of cutting direct help for disabled people. DWP also remains reluctant to publicly estimate how many disabled people might lose help as a result of the cuts, which include abolishing low rate care payments. Our analysis shows that removing all support from the 643,000 people receiving low rate care payments (including associated mobility awards) would cut £1.4 billion – only two thirds of the Government target.”