The great government take-away

With the coalition Government's spending cuts being branded an attack on disabled people, Paul Carter looks at the implications and reactions to two of the Government's major decisions

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, took to his feet to deliver the results of the coalition Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, most people in the country were bracing themselves for swingeing cuts to public spending and services.

However, it was to emerge that disabled people were to be particularly hit by measures in the Review.

Two announcements especially caused particular consternation, the first of which was the announcement that the length of time within which people placed in the “work-related activity group” can claim Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) is to be limited to one year.

This effectively means that from 2012/13 when the changes will be implemented, disabled people deemed fit to work but who have not found employment within one year will see their benefit stopped.

It should be noted that people in the “support group”, who are not required to seek work, will not be affected by the change.

Neil Coyle is Director of Policy at Disability Alliance, which works to relieve the poverty and improve the living standards of disabled people.

He says that the time limit on ESA announced in the spending review presents a very real risk of actually increasing disability poverty.

“Cutting disabled people off ESA after one year despite a lack of employment opportunities and reduced support to get jobs will impoverish thousands of disabled people and their families,” he says.

“This cut will additionally affect many of the 360,000 disabled people no longer able to access essential DLA and the combined effect will mean some disabled people are cut adrift from the entire welfare state.”

However, fundamental concerns remain about the test itself being used to decide whether people are indeed “fit to work”.

Known as the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the test has been widely criticised for its limited scope, inflexible nature, and irrelevant questions.

The test will be used nationally from April 2011 as part of a process of moving all existing claimants of Incapacity Benefit onto Employment and Support Allowance or Job Seeker’s Allowance.

However, since October, pilots of the reassessment programme have been running in Aberdeen and Burnley.

So far, feedback from disabled people and groups representing them in those areas has been less than encouraging.

Rhona Kemp, chairwoman of Aberdeenshire Disability Action said that in the feedback from people who had already undergone the assessments was a feeling that the questions were biased towards the answers the assessors wanted.

“I have not been personally involved so what I am getting is second-hand but when there is a consistency of response some credibility must be given to what is being said.

“The other thing a lot of people have said is that there is no flexibility - you have to pick a box even if you don’t think any of them are relevant to the answer you want to give. Several have also said the ones asking the questions didn’t seem to have any medical knowledge.”

She added that the majority of people were, perhaps understandably, reluctant to speak out publicly.

Susan McPhee, Chief Executive of Citizens Advice Scotland said: “We are still seeing case after case across Scotland where people are being found fit for work even though their illness or disability restricts them from any type of work.”

The picture coming from Burnley sounded equally pessimistic. A spokesman from the Burnley CAB said that he didn’t believe the WCA was fit for purpose.

“It doesn’t assess people in the reality of work,” he said.

“One of our clients received zero points and was told to go back to work, but within weeks they were diagnosed with terminal cancer with only weeks to live.Â

After pressure from charities and disability organisations, the Government has commissioned a review of the Work Capability Assessment, led by Professor Malcolm Harrington, which is due to report before the end of the year.

However, Anne Begg, MP for Aberdeen and herself a wheelchair-user, has expressed reservations about whether the review will come soon enough.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the report by Professor Harrington. However, there is concern that by the time he reports, whether at the end of this month or the beginning of next month, the trial in Aberdeen and Burnley will be coming to an end, and there will not be a lot of time to change things.

“There might be time to change the procedure, but not to put in place any major changes in how the work capability assessments are carried out before the full roll-out begins next year. The volumes will be quite large and it will be interesting to find out, in Aberdeen in particular, whether Atos Healthcare can manage the volumes that will be coming through. It is a big process, but there are still some fundamental flaws in how the Work Capability Assessment is in operation.”

Another area of change in the Comprehensive Spending Review that has caused considerable anger among disabled people has been the decision to remove the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance from people who live permanently in residential care.

The Government claims that this decision is based on two factors. Firstly, that it will bring people into residential care in line with people in hospital for long periods, who currently stop receiving DLA after four weeks. Secondly, the Government have stated that DLA paid to people in residential care is often duplicated in money paid in care packages.

However, the move has caused outrage among disabled people, campaigners and politicians, who believe that the logic in removing the DLA mobility component is not only cruel, but fundamentally flawed.

Opponents point out that those who are in hospital for more than four weeks are likely to be unwell, and therefore less likely to need a mobility component, which is patently not the case for many people living in care homes.

It has been highlighted that many care home residents use their mobility payments to fund things beyond the reach of their care packages, such as scooters, taxis, or even their own vehicles, providing greater independence and in turn less reliance on the state.

One of the biggest critics has been Baroness [Jane] Campbell, who called the move “fundamentally flawed”.

In a passionate speech to the House of Lords, she urged the Government to think again.

She said: “First, it will have negative and costly effects on disabled people’s health and well-being, their ability to develop social and community networks and their capacity to move on from residential care to be, as the Government want, independent, participating citizens, not dependants.

“Secondly, it conflicts with the Government’s policies for personalisation, independent living and encouraging disabled people to gain or retain employment.

“Thirdly, it is based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of modern residential care and the potential of disabled people living there.

“Fourthly, it is incompatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

Baroness Campbell added that if the Government believed that people living in care homes are full citizens, then it should expect and want them to exercise their human and civil rights and to contribute to civil society like everyone else.

“Residential care homes are no longer, or should not be, places to hide people away in or to deny them opportunities the rest of us take for granted: independence, choice, access to public life and maybe, for those who can, eventually the possibility of work and independence,” she said.

“Residential care homes are not intended to be prisons. We all enjoy activities outside our homes. It should be no different for those living in residential care.”

Jaspal Dhani, Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council, said he was “alarmed” at the impact that the cut may have on those living in residential care.

He said: “Our concerns are that through the result of losing independent mobility, that disabled people will lose the spontaneity to travel and organise their lives and will become dependent on group based travel organised by residential care homes. This echoes the institutional practices of the 1980s.”

The DLA mobility element cut also raises questions of what will happen to people who are in the middle of Motability agreements, in which the mobility element of DLA is used to pay for a vehicle.

At the time Disability Now went to press, there was no further information on what would happen to those people and their vehicles, with Motability only confirming that the organisation would “consider in the coming weeks how the Scheme will manage the relatively small number of its customers affected by the new arrangements.”

Helen Dolphin, Director of Policy and Campaigns at Mobilise, and a Disability Now columnist said that the DLA cut was likely to “impose further isolation on vulnerable people.”

It will be many months, if not years, before the true impact upon disabled people of these cuts will be fully felt. The final word on the potential impact falls to Baroness Campbell.

“The big fair society can be achieved only if support structures are there to enable disabled people to play their part,” she says.

“Otherwise, we will go back to a time when most disabled people were caught in a culture of dependency, with no alternative but to beg for charity or to be jolly grateful for what they got. This fills me with dread.”