Sad news from DPAC

It is with great sadness that we have to tell you one of our co-founders, Debbie Jolly has died following a short hospital stay. As disabled people everywhere we’ve lost a friend and advocate and a fighter for our movement.

Debbie has played a hugely influential part in the development of DPAC since 2010 and she and I have worked together virtually every day since dealing with the day-to-day things that needed to be done to make DPAC the successful campaign group we have become.

Read in full here

CarerWatch would like to extend our deepest sympathies to those that knew Debbie, both personally and through her campaigning work. RIP

 

Reverse the Employment Support Allowance disability benefit cut

PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION, THEN SHARE AS WIDE AS POSSIBLE

The House of Lords has been unable to stop a planned £30-a-week cut to disability benefits forced through by Government MPs. This will cripple those in receipt of these benefits, leaving many in literal poverty.

The government must reverse this decision. Lives are at risk.

Sign this petition HERE

 

 

Precedent-setting Benefit Cap legal challenge!

copied with permission from Winvisible
Vigil 9.30am Wed 21 October

Royal Courts of Justice, Strand (off Kingsway) London WC2A 2LL (Temple tube)

10.30am

Go into court to hear the case and show support

 

This case against the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) focuses on the discriminatory impact of the Benefit Cap on disabled people and their carers, who lose Carers Allowance, punishing them & their loved ones.

Supported by Disabled People Against Cuts, Single Mothers’ Self-Defence, Global Women’s Strike, Taxpayers Against Poverty, WinVisible (women with disabilities), and many more.

 

Contact SMSD / WinVisible 020 7482 2496

 

Will Iain Duncan Smith turn up for Welfare Debate

 

Twitter users  –   #WelfareDebate15

Tuesday May 5th Daily Politics debate

BBC2    2pm

BBC Parliament  9.00pm

BBC News  9.30pm

Presenters  Andrew Neil and Alison Holt

Participants –

Iain Duncan Smith  Conservative

Rachel Reeves            Labour

Steve Webb                  LibDems

Suzanne Evans           UKIP

Jonathan Bartley       Green Party

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Non-attendance (see below) recently by the purveyors of welfare reform suggests that they deem themselves to be unaccountable for their actions.

Will Mr Smith attend this debate or will the quiet man become the invisible man AGAIN

Iain Duncan Smith fails to show up for General Election hustings in his own constituency

Britain asks: where is David Cameron?

Wirral West MP Esther McVey pulls out of live radio interview in Liverpool city centre

‘Ashamed’ Tories quit Newsnight welfare debate at the last moment

Many disabled people and carers will be watching this show. They have borne the brunt of these cuts and are living in dread of the prospect of the further £12billion cuts to welfare promised by the Conservatives.

Opposition Day Debate and disabled people

.

There was an Opposition Debate yesterday in the House of Commons – called by Labour on a motion to condemn the recent statement by Lord Freud about disabled people possibly working for less than the minimum wage. Lord Freud has since apologised and the motion was lost.

However for those of us who have been watching the debates on Welfare Reform since 2007 – it was chance to see how far in some ways we have come and how far in others  we haven’t moved forward at all.

For the first few years of welfare reform no one had a clue what it would be like in reality. All we had was Freud and James Purnell talking pure theory.

That has certainly changed. All MP’s now have a deluge of disabled constituents coming in to their surgeries, and they have found out what it is about. So the debate is finally informed amongst MPs. Yet still they do nothing.

Fundamentally the big problem with Employment Support Allowance remains. Both Tory and Labour parties have not

Employment and Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessments – Work and Pensions Committee Report

.

This is what multi party Select Committees were invented for. As a safety measure for situations exactly like this – when the main political parties cause a disaster and then gang up and turn their faces to the wall and refuse to see the enormous harm their misguided policies are causing.

 

This report has been written by MPs who actually understand what is happening to sick and disabled people on the ground.

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Work and Pensions Committee
Select Committee Press Notice

AN06 2014-15
22 July 2014

Under embargo until 00.01am on Wednesday 23 July 2014

Report: Employment and Support Allowance and Work Capability Assessments – read report here

List of conclusions and recommendations here  

Employment and Support Allowance is not achieving its aims and needs fundamental
redesign, say MPs

The flaws in the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) system are so grave that simply “rebranding” the assessment used to determine eligibility for ESA (the Work Capability Assessment (WCA)) by appointing a new contractor will not solve the problems, says the Work and Pensions Committee in a report published today.

The Committee calls on the Government to undertake a fundamental redesign of the ESA end-to-end process to ensure that the main purpose of the benefit – helping claimants with health conditions and disabilities to move into employment where this is possible for them – is achieved. This will take some time, but the redesign should be completed before the new multi-provider contract is tendered, which is expected to be in 2018.

In the meantime, the Committee recommends a number of changes which should be made now, to help ensure that claimants receive an improved service, and that the outcomes for claimants are more appropriate.

Dame Anne Begg MP, Committee Chair, said:

Carer issues judicial review proceedings against Iain Duncan Smith

A disabled grandmother and her granddaughter who provides full time care for her have this week issued judicial review proceedings in the High Court against the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, challenging the inclusion of Carer’s Allowance in the ‘benefit cap.’  The benefit cap policy has been in force across the country since September 2013.

The government has already conceded that the cap had unintended consequences for victims of domestic violence living in women’s refuges, and after the families case was heard in the Court of Appeal, Ian Duncan Smith with no fanfare amended the regulations to remove women’s refuges from the cap.

The proceedings issued this week highlight another consequence of the cap, which may surprise those who consider that the cap achieves fairness. Included in the group of families who are capped are those who receive Carer’s Allowance. To qualify for Carer’s Allowance the benefit claimant has to be providing upwards of 35 hours a week care to a severely disabled person. This means that anyone receiving Carer’s Allowance is by definition not available to work, because they must be providing care.

read in full here

3.      The judicial review challenges Part 8A of the Housing Benefit Regulations 2006, which was inserted by the Benefit Cap (Housing Benefit) Regulations 2012, SI 2012/2994, pursuant to section 96 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012.  The claimants argue that the Regulations are discriminatory and unreasonable.  They also argue that the Secretary of State did not take proper account of the impact of the policy on carers and those they care for, and is irrational.

 

 

July 4th DPAC Independent Living Day -party and picnic, London and around the country

Received from DPAC

DPAC is delighted to extend an open invitation to celebrate Independent Living Day with us on the 4th of July at the ‘Independent Living Tea Party ‘.

The party will begin at 2pm at the DWP, Caxton House in Tothill Street SW1. There will be fun & games, and entertainment; and of course, some civil disobedience.

We have come a long way since the demand for Independent Living was first made nearly 50 years ago. Then, as now, IL was our solution for how society supports disabled people to take our place as equals. For how society addresses inaccessible institutions, structures and process it created, which do more to disable people than their impairments ever could.

There are many strands of Independent Living, and all are under threat. Cuts to:

• Support funding – such Social Care, the ILF & Disabled Students Allowance;
• Education – in areas like the wholesale destruction of SEN Statements and the continued segregation of disabled children into ‘special’ schools;
• Transport – the withdrawal of Taxi-cards, freedom passes and the halting of planned works to make infrastructure more accessible, amongst a host of other cuts combine to make disabled people second-class citizens in society.

But we have fought this fight before – and won. Our Disabled Peoples Organisations, legal gains and the policy victories we have won previously are testament to the