Miller hits choppy water on cuts

With the reality of coalition welfare reform plans beginning to hit home, Sunil Peck reports from a Westminster meeting where disabled people weren't the ones feeling besieged

In recent weeks, Conservative politicians have tended to remain in the background while the Lib Dems have taken the flack for the welfare cuts announced by the Treasury.

But during a recent meeting of all party parliamentary groups concerned with disability, Maria Miller, the Tory MP and minister for disabled people, spoke face to face with campaigners, MPs and peers concerned about cuts to the welfare system.

A packed room listened while Miller, speaking a few days after the Comprehen­sive Spending Review was published, said that savings were vital with the deficit costing the country £43 billion in interest.

She said that although the cuts would be tough on disabled people, the Government had tried to be fair when deciding where the axe should fall.

Audience members were not impressed. Lord [Brian] Rix, who is president of the charity Mencap, rubbished the “we’re-all-in-this-together” line pushed by the Coalition and expressed anger that 60,00 disabled people in residential care would be unable to afford to go out because of cuts to their Disability Living Allowance (DLA).

The audience responded with enthusiastic applause.

There was also applause for former Labour minister for disabled people, Anne McGuire, who questioned the move to impose a limit of one year on claimants in the work-related category of Employment and Support Allowance. It would take many of them a lot longer than that to find work, she said.

Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson was greeted warmly for drawing attention to the plight of disabled jobseekers who are desperate for work but are denied jobs because of discriminatory attitudes among employers.

Miller, who was under pressure to give short answers because of time constraints, addressed all the points put to her, but instead of approvals, only prompted laughs of incredulity.

She justified cutting DLA for people in residential care on the grounds that the money is duplicated in care packages. She then suggested that giving local authorities control over their budgets would ensure that disabled people did not miss out on any of the £1 billion that has been pledged for social care and support services but not been ring-fenced.

With local authorities cutting support services and unemployment rising, it’s no surprise that many disabled people fail to see how the Government’s talk of creating opportunity and promoting independent living can be plausible.

With this disparity, reflected in the meeting, about what constitutes fairness, the question is how many disabled people will be forced into poverty before the coalition Government has a change of heart?