…Probably not.
This week on Wednesday, disabled people take the government to court AGAIN over the government’s decision to close the Independent Living Fund. The ILF is the fund that profoundly disabled people use to pay for the extra care hours they need to live independent lives.
Quite a few disabled people use ILF money to pay for the personal assistants who support them in work. The government’s plan to shut the ILF fully illustrates the bollocks Lord Freud talks when he comes out with this sort of thing: “I am proud to have played a full part in a government that is fully committed to helping disabled people overcome the many barriers they face in finding employment….” Rubbish. Total shit. Lord Freud and this government are committed to nothing of the kind.
A government committed to disabled people would leave the ILF alone (let’s not forget that last year, the court of appeal threw out an earlier government attempt to close the ILF). Without the ILF, thousands of disabled people with high support needs will be permanently excluded from education and employment and the right to participate in life generally. It is only a few days since Lord Freud said that disabled people were not worth the minimum wage – a statement which totally fits with this government’s general approach to disabled people. Think about this attempt to close the ILF. Think about the destruction of disabled people’s lives by the Atos fit-for-work regime. Think about the abject failure that has been the introduction of the so-called personal independence payment and the untold misery that has caused. These tossers are committed to one thing and one thing only. They want disabled people out of the picture.
On Wednesday, ILF recipients and supporters including Disabled People Against Cuts, Inclusion London, the National Anti Bedroom Tax and Benefit Justice campaign, Winvisible and Taxpayers Against Poverty will gather outside the Royal Courts of Justice at 12.30pm to show solidarity with the disabled claimants taking the case. Tomorrow, DPAC will hold a Freud Must Go protest outside Caxton house from 12.30pm.
Here’s a short film I recently made with Ros Wynne Jones and Moore Lavan films about this government’s assault on the Independent Living Fund. We’ve got a longer film coming out this week which has more ILF recipients talking about the ILF closure and the reasons why they’ll fight the government until they win.
We’re all in it together – aren’t we? from Moore Lavan Films on Vimeo.
Nadia Clarke, who is aged 22 and has cerebral palsy and a hearing impairment says: “in the future, I want to travel the world, study at university, become a working advisor for disability rights and have a relationship and children. Without the ILF, my parents will end up looking after me and may even have to give up their paid work.”
Mark Williams, 49, is a school governor and former social worker. He says: “The ILF means I can be an active school governor. With all the other cuts in benefits, if the ILF closes, I’m worried that I’d only have my basic needs met. David Cameron has no idea. He hasn’t a clue because he doesn’t have to worry about money.
Angela Smith, who also has cerebral palsy, said: “Am I really living in one of the richest countries in the world? Why is my life so undervalued?”
Very good question. I don’t like to think about the answer to it.
Thanks for this, Kate.
I have blogged about Lord Freud’s most recent comments re disabled people and the minimum wage, Paradoxes of welfare reform. As I state there, Lord Freud is not the only one culpable for fiscal attacks on disabled people. I would add here though that another culpable figure historically is/was David Blunkett. As I argued in a Community Care magazine article in 1998 [as I recall] argued that DB was an excellent role model for the potential of disabled people in the work place. I retorted with a letter the magazine published, stating that his role could be likened to that of the ‘Judas steer’ on 19th Century American cattle drives. The Judas steer led the rest of the cattle into the slaughter house, time after time.
Yet when Lord Freud was Labour’s welfare reform guru, he told the Telegraph that it was “economically rational” for government to award private contractors up to £62,000 for each Incapacity Benefit claimant they could get into waged work that would take them off benefits. .
Perhaps he knows as little about ILF now as he did then about the fact that he could have found out with a Google search (as then CEO of the Child Poverty Action Group Kate Green pointed out in a footnote to a press release at the time) that [even before Atos] Incapacity Benefit tests were NOT done by the claimant’s own GP but by a private company? Kate Green — who is now a Labour MP — pointed out that the investment banker’s ‘basic errors in research could lead to several millions of pounds of government money being wasted.
But of course, as the saying goes, “The banks got bailed out; we got sold out.”
“I care passionately about disabled people”
Lord Freud
When imposing draconian and vindictive policies the ruler always attempts to stand truth on its head.