A Topsy-Turvy World

Just a few days after it was revealed that Boris Johnson disagrees with the DLA reforms, Ed Miliband has today reinforced the fact that he is to the right of some of the people that sit in the benches opposite him.

In his speech today at the Oxo Tower - the speech which was supposed to be offering a "new direction" for Labour - he, once again, starting banging on about us "irresponsible" types at "the bottom of society".

Government also has a particular responsibility when times are tough to ensure that rewards go to those who work hard and do the right thing.

That is why we have to take on irresponsibility wherever we find it.

At the top and at the bottom of society.

[...]

We are determined to reform our welfare system too, so that it rewards those who do the right thing.

That’s why I’ve said that those on the waiting list for council accommodation should move up that list if they are contributing to their communities, being good neighbours, and seeking work.

Now, I'm sure his defenders will claim "but he wasn't talking about disabled welfare claimants, just the other ones." Really? The non-disabled ones who already face JobSeekers Allowance sanctions if they turn down, or don't look for, work?

"Those who do the right thing." There's a "right" way to be ill in order to claim ESA? How does that work? Am I supposed to look and act like I've just rolled out of a Children in Need appeal in order to claim DLA/PIP? We all know I'm far too loud and sarcastic to pull that one off. Or is that how they plan to assess for the benefit: Screw taking our limitations into account, just judge us out of 10 on a cute-o-meter?

And as for seeking work to get a council property: What about those of us that can't work and are more likely to need council housing for related reasons? "Well, you're cute enough for ESA but you'll just have to be cute on the streets. It's OK, you're adorable enough for people to throw their loose change in your cup of tea."

We've known for a while the Ed is just a Tory in a red tie (so hardly a "new direction". It would've been more New Directiony if he'd burst into songs from Glee). But for him to reiterate that in the same week that BoJo became a welfare hero just makes your head spin.

Two Legs Better

Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegory about the corruptive influences of power under Stalinism, but sitting here tonight I find myself applying that same allegory to Labour.

Yesterday, at the Labour Party Conference, Ed Miliband held a Q&A session and was challenged by disability activist Kaliya Franklin (aka @BendyGirl, author of Benefit Scrounging Scum ) over his attitudes to disability. Charged by Kaliya that he was "reinforcing the destructive rhetoric" of the ConDems towards disabled benefit recipients, particularly through the disabled man he lambasted earlier this year as just as irresponsible as any banker because he hadn't been able to find work, attitudes repeated in his keynote speech on Tuesday, Miliband responded: "The problem is I met his next-door neighbours … and they didn't actually refer to him, but they said: 'Our problem is we are working incredibly hard and we are worried we are paying for people who can't work.'" And as far as Ed is concerned, that justifies condemning that man, and all disabled benefit recipients by extension. No thought that much of the impact of disability is invisible, no thought that the neighbours might just possibly be disablist, just he's disabled, they're angry, and they have more votes.

As Orwell had it as things went wrong for the lesser animals, 'Four Legs Good, But Two Legs Better'.
 
Now the interesting part of this from my personal perspective is that earlier this year I was interviewed by BBC South East about my experience of disability hate crime. One of the points that I made, and one that was backed on air by the disability charity Scope and other experts, was that the rise in hate crime results at least in part from government propaganda intended to confirm non-disabled people in their impression that disabled benefit recipients are all frauds and slackers. The Conservatives trotted out Mark Reckless, MP for Rochester and Chatham, to defend themselves. How did he do that? By saying that if people thought those around them were receiving disability benefits without deserving them, then they were fully entitled to be angry. No thought that much disability is invisible, no thought that the neighbours might just possibly be disablist, just he's disabled, they're angry, and they have more votes.

Two politicians, one a hardline Conservative, one the leader of the Labour Party, both making exactly the same argument to justify their attitude that criticism of disabled benefit recipients by those who know nothing about them is perfectly justified.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Ed Doesn’t Get It

We had already had a hint of where Ed Miliband stands on welfare support for disabled people in his ‘I met a man’ speech, where he compared us to the bankers. There was the leader of the Labour Party telling the nation, when rates of disability hate crime are already rising, when tabloids vilify us daily, that disabled people who are unfit to work are just as irresponsible as the bankers who brought on the crash in pursuit of their huge bonuses. Nice. Well today he made his speech to the Labour Party Conference, and it’s more of the same.

We won’t be able to reverse many of the cuts this Government is making.

Cuts like the axing of the Independent Living Fund, the plans to time-limit ESA and leave 400,000 disabled people who aren’t fit for work without income from next April, and the scheme to cut one in five recipients of DLA under the guise of ‘simplifying’ it. Labour is letting the ConDems do their dirty work, and Ed is setting the stage to say he can’t reverse the cuts, when what he means is he won’t reverse them. I vilify the ConDems for cowardice when they blame Labour for all their economic woes, it’s only fair I do the same to Ed when he tries to pass off his policies as forced on him by the ConDems.

The something for nothing of celebrity culture.

The take what you can of the gangs.

And in parts of some of our communities, a life on benefits.

You know what your values are.

But they are not the values being rewarded in our benefits system.

We must never excuse people who cheat the welfare system.

The reason I talk about this is not because I don’t believe in a welfare state but because I do.

We can never protect and renew it if people believe it’s just not fair.

 If it’s too easy not to work.

And there are people taking something for nothing.

I don’t know what he thought he was saying here, other than that it might go down well with the Little Englanders who read the Daily Mail, but look at what this section is saying about people dependent on welfare; it compares us to Z-list celebs, gangsters and rioters, and it says that people on benefits aren’t like right-thinking people, that we have different values, that we are ultimately all cheats. No doubt he’ll protest that wasn’t at all what he meant, but it is precisely what will be understood by huge swathes of our society, and the acceptance of disabled people who depend on the benefit system because they are too disabled to work will spiral ever lower.

And if at the same time people who have paid into the system all their lives find the safety net full of holes.

At last, something that sounds like he might have a clue, but the damage is already done, and there’s more to come.

We need a new bargain.

 Based on Britain’s values.

Which sounds fine, but there are immense problems with Britain’s values, we see that in the newspapers that brand us cheats and fraudsters on a daily basis, because they know that goes down well with their readership, we know that from the hate crime statistics, from the people who abuse us on the street for daring to be disabled. Britain’s values around disability stink, they stink at every level of society, from the Ministers who see us as a soft target, to the MPs who think we should be pleased to work for a pittance, to the police who too often dismiss the idea that disability hate crime exists, to the judges who inevitably reward our abusers with the lightest of sentences, to the media which demonises us because it sells papers and we aren’t strong enough to fight back, and the people on the high street who elect those MPs and Ministers and buy those papers and tut-tut about how they’re all at it, you know. We need a party with the courage to ignore Britain’s values when those values are morally and ethically wrong, and to drag us kicking and screaming into the 21^st Century, with the moral courage to condemn bigotry in all of its forms, not pander to it because there might be a vote or two to be had. 

That is why I say all major government contracts will go to firms who commit to training the next generation with decent apprenticeships.

And none will go to those who don’t.

Sounds good, but what about the 70%+ of employers who openly state they wouldn’t employ a disabled person, in clear contempt of the law? Do they just get the wink to continue?

And we must challenge irresponsible, predatory practices wherever we find them.

Unfortunately I don’t think he meant ATOS assessment centres.

The wealth of our nation is built by the hands not just of the elite few but every man and woman who goes out and does a day’s work.

So what does that make those of us too sick or disabled to work? Parasites?

But the truth is that the problem in some of our schools is not just investment.

 It’s also about values.

Of bright children held back when aspirations are low.

Or when closed circles at the top of society shut them out.

He might almost be talking about the way disabled people are excluded, but he isn’t.

VAT went up.

 He called it a tough decision.

 Tax credits were cut.

 He said they couldn’t be afforded.

 Help paying for childcare was hit.

He said it was the only thing he could do.

Even when he’s talking about Cameron hitting those who can’t afford it, ILF and ESA and DLA are beneath his notice.

Only David Cameron could believe that you make ordinary families work harder by making them poorer and you make the rich work harder by making them richer.

It’s wrong. 

It’s the wrong priority.

It’s based on the wrong values.

How dare they say we’re all in it together.

So we need a new bargain at the top of society, and in our benefits system too.

So it rewards the right people with the right values.

Again he links people in receipt of benefits with those taking immoral advantage of the opportunities provided by their wealth. Repetition makes it clear it is an intentional strategy to demonize us by association, and the only reason can be that it will go down well with the knee-jerk contempt of the Daily Mail readers.

We have to face the truth.

Even after reforms of recent years, we still have a system where reward for work is not high enough.

Where benefits are too easy to come by for those who don’t deserve them and too low for those who do.

Again the underlying message is that if you can successfully claim benefits then you must be playing the system, and that work is the gold standard by which all else must be judged. But there are many hundreds of thousands of disabled people who can’t work through no fault of their own, and a message that only through work can you be valued is unfit for any Labour leader, or for that matter for anyone who claims to believe in even the vaguest concepts of equality.

So if what you want is a welfare system that works for working people then I’m prepared to take the tough decisions to make that a reality.

Except when it would come to saying that ATOS should be sacked and admitting that ESA is a failed, if not farcical, attempt to embrace the ultra-right-wing, American, definition of disability as a form of social deviance that should be punished, not supported and which has caused untold damage to millions of disabled people through the stress and fear it engenders.

Take social housing.

When we have a housing shortage, choices have to be made.

Do we treat the person who contributes to their community the same as the person who doesn’t?

My answer is no.

Our first duty should be to help the person who shows responsibility.

There it is again, the idea that if you don’t get out there and find work, contribute actively to society then you’re irresponsible. Precisely the same line he used to condemn disabled people as no different to bankers in the ‘I met a man’ speech. But what about those of us who can’t contribute to our communities, who are so disabled we can barely access them? When I spend most of my life flat on my back, because I can’t bear to sit or stand, then what exactly does Ed think I can do for my community? How does someone with severe mental illness contribute? Or severe ME, or any of hundreds of other disabilities? How do we compete in his little scheme as equals? And if we can’t compete, then is that scheme not just not fit for purpose, but is it something that scars and diminishes the Labour Party just by being something they would even consider?

David Cameron likes to talk tough on welfare, but do you know who the big losers are from his changes?

Time and again it’s those who work hard, who try to get on.

It’s the cancer patients who have worked all their lives but now lose their support

Ed’s keen on cancer patients, guaranteed vote-winner, almost as good as a little girl in a wheelchair with a puppy, but he’s less keen on the rest of us who are too disabled to work, we aren’t such good headline fodder, we aren't so photogenic, many of us have disabilities that the Daily Mail readers don’t believe in. And he’s not so keen on giving you the full picture either. Cameron wants time-limiting of ESA at 12 months, Ed wants it at 24. We don’t have Ed’s luxury of being able to ignore our personal realities, we know that a disability is for life, not just for Christmas, but Ed doesn’t want to acknowledge that, because then people might start wondering if cutting 700,000 disabled people who aren’t fit for work adrift without any welfare support after 2 years is really a policy Labour should be advocating.

It’s the couple who have put money aside and saved, but now lose their tax credits

And it is the single mum working as a dinner lady who loses help with her childcare.

But apparently it’s not the disabled person who will be forced to sacrifice their savings and their pension just to survive when ESA is time-limited, nor the disabled person who will be forced out of work because DLA will no longer admit that needing a wheelchair is a serious mobility impairment.

And while those who do the right thing are hit hard, the demands on those who don’t work aren’t tough enough.

He’ll swear this isn’t aimed at disabled people, but is that the message the Daily Mail readers will take away?

I believe in a benefits system with values.

And I believe in the value of work.

All through the speech the emphasis is that not working is somehow socially deviant, there is no simply no room in Ed’s mindset to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of disabled people are unable to work, that it will take massive societal change to get any significant percentage of them into work, and that many of them will never be able to work, but that they must still be valued equally for society to have any claim to be equal and fair. It seems that James Purnell and the pernicious disability-denial message of Unum Provident and their Cardiff ‘think tank’ are still defining Labour’s welfare policy, and that is something that should scare us all.

The full speech can be read online here. 

 

It's never that simple

As readers of this blog are no doubt aware, yesterday Labour leader Ed Miliband made a speech attacking those disabled people who he believes can and should be doing some sort of (unspecified) work.

So far as anyone can ascertain, Mr Miliband doesn't have any basis for this belief - no background in Occupational Therapy, no medical qualifications - it goes right back to the old refrain of "if you can press a button, you can work," that we heard many times while Labour were in power and introducing ESA and their harsh Work Capability Assessment.

As I responded to Bendygirl's blogpost yesterday: it's never that simple.

If there is a button-pushing factory in my town (despite offshoring), or in a town I could move to (despite lack of accessible housing and the housing benefit caps), and if they're hiring (despite record UK unemployment), and if I can get up and washed and dressed in the morning (despite cutbacks to Social Services), and if I can actually get to work (despite inaccessibility of public transport), and if the button-pushing workstation and the route to it is or can be made accessible (despite Access to Work cuts)...

...and if the bosses and co-workers are happy to accommodate my need for frequent breaks at unpredictable moments (despite the hundreds of other applicants for the button-pushing job who are equally qualified for button-pushing and don't need breaks or adjustments), and if I will earn a living wage (despite the messing about with Tax Credits)...

...and if we can account for the fact that I only have the energy to function for about 10 non-contiguous hours out of every 24 and I must keep three or four hours of that aside for necessary things like eating, medicating, grocery shopping, banking, cleaning and managing my household, and the bureaucratic maze of disability...

...then I, along with many others, will be right there.

Miliband: The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

‎"We should not demonise people anywhere in society."

So says Ed Miliband, while busy demonising a disabled benefit claimant he claims he met on the campaign trail.

So what exactly did Ed think he was doing with his example of the man on Incapacity Benefit? Since when has labelling an individual person as 'irresponsible' in a speech as head of the Labour Party, and through him disabled benefit claimants en masse, if not disabled people as a whole, not counted as demonising them?

I am currently in the ESA Work Related Activities Group, presumably where Ed thinks that man should be. I had 22 years in a good job as a software engineer, I've been unemployed since the end of 2008, but for me to get a job now I first need an improvement in my medical situation, which has worsened since my redundancy: can't sit, can't stand, can't reliably use my left arm is a bad combination for just about any job you can think of. I have been chasing that medical improvement for the past 2 years, but progress is slow, we are barely holding things back from getting worse, never mind making them better. Yet even if I can get an improvement in my situation to about where I was when I was made redundant (i.e. to merely can't sit, can't stand), I face a situation where multiple employment consultants have told me I have no hope of a job in the private sector and not much more hope of a job in the public sector.

The problem isn't my willingness to work, been there, done that. The problem isn't my willingness to try and find jobs in a different sector, been there and done that too. My problem is finding an employer who is within my very limited commute radius of about 10-15 minutes driving (all my back will stand), and, biggest ask of all, who is willing to offer me a job no matter my disability and who has the flexibility to accomodate someone who will probably need considerable reasonable adjustments (such as needing to work in a prone position). And what goes for me also goes for the disabled person using a wheelchair, a guide-dog, personal assistants or whatever. The only irresponsible thing about our employment situation is not acknowledging the difficulties we face, both practical in terms of accomodations to disability, and discriminatory in the attitudes of recruiters and employers towards potential employees with disabilities.

Demonising us won't help, nor will driving disabled benefit claimants through harsher and harsher assessment regimes and 'Work Programmes'. 'The floggings will continue until morale improves' has never been the most productive of management techniques. We need someone to shine the harsh light of public opinion on the willingness of British employers to employ disabled people. They even collected the figures for us, trying to proclaim that less than 30% of them being willing to consider employing a disabled person was some kind of triumph of equality. Where is the political party willing to take up this opportunity, challenge the disablist attitudes and bring about a real change in the attitudes of employers, creating the opportunity for disabled people to take part in the labour market as equals? It certainly seems the contemporary Labour Party isn't up to the job.

I will be generous and assume Ed is completely clueless about the kind of day to day discrimination disabled people are facing as a result of being branded workshy by the DWP's continuing campaign of demonisation (a campaign that sadly began under Labour), but today the leader of the Labour Party deliberately used a disabled man as a negative example and by doing that he has worsened the acceptance of every disabled person in the country. And isn't that a shameful thing.

Labour takes *another* pop at disabled people

There have been 2 Labour stories today about "responsibility" and welfare.

The first story was Ed Miliband's speech. You can tell it's not going to go well for disabled people from the outset. He starts off by telling this story:

While out campaigning during the local elections, not for the first time, I met someone who had been on incapacity benefit for a decade.

He hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing his job.

It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his children.

But I was convinced that there were other jobs he could do.

And that it’s just not right for the country to be supporting him not to work, when other families on his street are working all hours just to get by.

Which sums up the Labour party's attitude to ill and disabled people: No qualifications in assessing people's health but meet someone for a minute and deem them "fit for work" without any additional info besides that minute meeting. It's the Work Capability Assessment in a nutshell.

No wonder strangers in the street feel it acceptable to deem someone a "scrounger" when our political leaders are doing the same.

You can read the full transcript of Ed's speech on politics.co.uk. [Warning: May induce vomiting or violent behaviour.]

Liam Byrne's been at it too today. His plans include:

rewarding those on the council house queue who are in jobs or doing voluntary work.

Need social housing because you're too ill to work? Tough.

Yet in that same article it says:

The potentially tough ideas come as Labour prepares to vote against the third reading of the government's welfare bill this week because they feel it punishes the ill, including victims of cancer, and cuts childcare provision.

Erm, what about people who can't get social housing because they can't work. Is that not punishing the ill?

Miliband says similar:

Just take their current welfare reform bill.

We support their attempts to build on our plans to make those who can work do so.

But their bill will make it harder for people to be responsible.

It undermines childcare support for those seeking work.

It punishes people in work who save, denying them the help they currently get through tax credits.

It cuts help for the most vulnerable, those living in care homes, who receive support to get out and about.

And, it takes away money from those who are dying even though they have contributed to the system all their lives.

None of this will help people show more responsibility.
In fact, it does the opposite.

Nor are they ensuring there is the work available for people who are responsible.

In the same speech in which he says the man who's been assessed by someone with medical qualifications as unfit to work should be getting a job. One of those ones that don't exist.

Both Byrne and Miliband comment on how Labour has lost sight of it's direction as "the people's party." Byrne said:

"The worst statistic for me was that nearly 60% of voters said Labour was not just a bit, but seriously, out of touch with the lives of ordinary working people. For the peoples' party, that was a hell of an achievement."

It seems to me that they've lost more than that. It appears they've lost the ability for making their minds up. Either they want to force that man incapable of working onto JSA OR they want to help the "vulnerable". Either they want to vote against a bill that punishes the sick OR they want to prevent ill people from getting social housing. I would remark that they need to pick a direction, except I know which one they'd take so I think I'll settle for them acting like dogs chasing their tails.

Disabled People, Still Labour's Whipping Boy....

I've just read the text of Ed Miliband's latest speech, and it's full of carefully turned phrases on how Labour can be a real prospect at the next election, of how it will make Britain a land fit for those who work hard and deserve the rewards of that labour, and that's all to the good.

But then you come to this statement:

"People felt particularly angry about those they felt could work, but didn't, as making ends meet became more and more of a struggle.

We were too relaxed about that too."

Let's be absolutely clear about this, the head of the Labour Party, the Leader of the Opposition, the supposed voice of social justice, just said that one of the reasons they lost the election is that they didn't put the boot into disabled people hard enough.

He then has the nerve to claim:

"In power after 1997 we did something that few countries managed to do - stem the rising tide of inequality.

We did this by redistributing through the tax and benefit system."

So clearly as disabled people we were wrong to complain about the calculated campaign of demonizing vitriol pouring out of DWP and their sockpuppet hatemongers in the tabloids, the WCA tests carefully designed to exclude many hundreds of thousands of disabled people, the appalling manner in which ATOS were allowed, if not actively encouraged, to enforce those tests; it was all done in the name of equality. Or maybe not.

Maybe the truth is that Labour saw us as convenient whipping boys who could be abused in the name of scoring a few points with the Little-Englanders who love to hate anyone who fails to fit their fairytale of England, maybe the truth is that they still do. No matter what I say, there aren't words to adequately express my contempt for this speech and what it reveals about the disablist thinking at the heart of Labour's leadership that sees us as a convenient pawn to sacrifice in their lust for power.

Labour: Still in Denial

I’ve been struck by several related issues over the past week.

First David Cameron launches a hate-filled attack on disabled benefit claimants – the Prime Minister of the country openly advocating bigotry on national news – and the best Labour can manage is Stephen Timms, Shadow Minister for Employment, wetly agreeing with him that maybe people whose disabilities leave them subject to addictions or obesity don’t deserve benefits. I’m sorry, did I hear that right, a Labour politician endorsing deliberate and calculated advocacy of discrimination against disabled people by the Con-Dem Prime Minister, discrimination that will inevitably spill over to affect all disabled people, obese or not, benefit claimant or not, in direct contravention of the Equality Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People? So you would assume there would be a double outcry from Labour, Ed Milliband staking Cameron through the heart for his bigotry at Prime Minister’s Questions while Timms is rapidly stripped of the Whip and expelled from the Party. But no, nothing.

Now Neil Coyle, Labour councillor and Policy Director of the Disability Alliance, has published a piece at Left Foot Forward, which, while pointing out deliberate distortions in DWP press releases, goes out of its way to endorse ESA, and therefore the WCA, as responsible Labour policies working for the betterment of disabled people. I’m sorry, I must have missed the moment I slipped into an alternate reality….

It’s truly sad to see Labour still claiming that ESA was a positive move for disabled people, whereas the truth is that they, not the Con-Dems, designed the ESA system to deliberately distort the assessment process and force genuinely disabled people out of the disability benefits system and onto the harsher, uncaring, disability-hostile JSA — been there, done that, had to complain to ministerial level just to get JCP to acknowledge my disability. Talk to individual disabled people and they will tell you of their genuine fear of ESA and describe the horrific abuse of the WCA system by ATOS and their tame quacks.

This isn’t a new Con-Dem plot, it is the system working as Labour designed it. Deliberate demonisation of disabled benefit claimants by DWP press-releases coordinating hate-ridden tabloid vitriol didn’t start under the Con-Dems, these press releases have been happening for several years now and disabled people were expressing their concern while Labour were still in power. The farcical plans for WCA and DLA assessments based on an access-all-areas imaginary wheelchair (yes, really!) aren’t something the Con-Dems dreamed up since coming into office, this is another Labour policy idea they are implementing to the detriment of disabled people. And while individual disabled people are banding together in groups like DPAC, Broken of Britain and WTB to fight for their right to be treated as equals and for the system to recognise and cater for the reality of their disabilities, Ed Milliband sits on his hands and does nothing for us beyond occasionally quietly admitting that he agrees with Con-Dem policy on the matter — the betrayal of disabled people by Labour is absolute.

If the Policy Director of the Disability Alliance truly believes that ESA is a positive step for disabled people then it is time for him to resign, because he has forsaken any claim to understanding how disabled people are being affected, to believing in ‘Nothing For Us, Without Us’ and has betrayed the confidence of disabled people in his ability to place their needs above party-political allegiance, and the same can be said for Labour as a whole.

Where is the party that is supposed to stand for everyman, to fight for real equality, to ensure a system that is fair for all regardless of class, creed, colour or disability? Is it sleeping, licking its wounds, is it sacrificing us for the electoral expediency of a good headline about people suffering under the Con-Dems, or is the unpalatable truth that Labour is just as actively disablist as the Con-Dems?

No Alternative

So Ed Milliband has announced he wants us to tell him what we want. He says he’ll be speaking at the March for the Alternative on Saturday, yet would have made cuts if he had been in power.

It’s quite simple, Mr. Milliband, we want an alternative strategy. If cuts must be made, we don’t want them to be targeted at those least able to bear them. And that is where the Labour Party is failing us. It was a Labour government that introduced ESA and ATOS screening, it was the Labour government that stood hand in hand with the Heil, the Scum and the Vexpress in demonising those of us on IB and ESA as fraudulent scroungers and under your leadership it is the Labour Party in opposition that is still supporting those policies.

There’s no point in you speaking tomorrow, Mr. Milliband, the march is about an alternative strategy, and as far as disabled people are concerned, you and your predecessors have reduced the Labour Party to just another pale clone of the Liberals and the Tories. And isn’t that just a damned shame!

Ed Miliband on The Andrew Marr Show 16/1/11

Marr gave Miliband rather a grilling this morning about his, and the Labour party's, opinion on the cuts. Marr accused Miliband of being anti-cuts (as if that's a bad thing!) to which Miliband responded that, actually, he's pro-cuts; he just wouldn't have cut as deeply as the ConDems.

On benefits specifically Miliband said:

In relation to welfare let me give you a specific example: On the reforms to the Disability Living Allowance, the gateway for that. On the reforms to Employment Support Allowance Douglas Alexander has said very clearly we'll work with the government on the changes. And he's even said in relation to benefit uprating, that while we don't accept a permanent lowering of that, we would be willing to look at a change for 3 years, in order to save, in fact, rather large sums of money. So I don't accept this mythology that's being put around, Andrew. I said very clearly when I became leader "we're not going to oppose every cut."

Which essentially means that the Labour party support making less people eligible for DLA to cut the bill by 20%, even though only 0.5% of claims are fraudulent. It also means the Labour party support removing your contributory ESA after 1 year.