Four things from the Conservative Party Conference #cpc14

1) Housing Benefit for 18-21 year olds

In general students are ineligible for housing benefit, but many disabled students are. Which considering that most non-disabled students are able to take a part-time job, but most disabled students aren't it's rather sensible. Because of my impaired mobility I certainly could never have done the bar work or waitressing that my classmates all did. This is a way of levelling the playing field and allowing disabled people to study like their non-disabled peers.

Cuts to Disabled Students' Allowance were announced earlier in the year, though they've recently been postponed.

But now the Tories are planning an extra cut which will hit young people if they win the next election: they're going to prevent 18-21 year olds from claiming housing benefit. Many young people are going to end up homeless; both disabled and non-disabled; and it's going to be horrific. But it's going to have an extra impact on disabled people in that it's going to be yet another barrier in accessing an education that won't hit non-disabled people in quite the same way.

2) Freeze on working age benefits for 2 years

In his speech; Osborne announced that if the Tories win next year, he'll freeze working age benefits for 2 years. He lied outright when he told the assembled crowd and adoring media that this wouldn't apply to disability benefits. Dr Campbell explained on her blog how it definitely will be hitting ESA claimants. Please spread her post far and wide for people who haven't read the fine print of Osborne's announcement and took him at his word when he said it wouldn't apply to "disability benefits".

3) Benefits cards instead of cash

Because IDS doesn't realise that Shameless was a piece of fiction, he's going to be trialling paying benefits by pre-paid cards instead of cash so that people can only spend them on items he deems acceptable; and at stores that have negotiated deals with the government.

So if you live in the village where I grew up, can't use the train station or the buses because they're not accessible, and you don't have a car: You're fucked. Because the chances that the one family-run tiny village shop have got in on the government scheme are slim.

There's a host of other problems too. Addiction isn't the only criteria you'd get put onto the cards for. Debt is another one. Scope estimate that being disabled costs you on average an extra £550 a month. When you've got those extra costs mounting it's very easy to rack up debt.

What happens when you then need to buy a piece of equipment like a walking stick or a chopping board adapted for one-handed use from a company that's not signed up to the government benefit card scheme and you don't have any cash?

What about the 58 year old woman who's paid her National Insurance premiums for 40 years? She's now developed cancer and had to claim ESA while undergoing treatment. Because being ill is expensive she ran up some debt during treatment and as such was shifted from cash payments to a pre-paid card. She's just been given that all clear by her doctor; but it'll be at least a month before the effects of the treatment have worn off enough for her to be well enough to go back to work. Should she really not be allowed to buy a bottle of champagne the day she gets her all clear? After 40 years of paying her NI contributions?

It's very easy for people with mental health problems to get into financial difficulty when they're especially unwell. I know a lot of people end up with some quite large debts. For me, personally, the most effective antidepressant is TV. It's easy to immerse yourself in a fictional world to forget - just temporarily - how terrible real life is. I spent much of Monday upset about how isolated and alone I am. Wanna know how I distracted myself from the thoughts that my life really isn't worth living? I watched TV.

So you're ill, you're in debt, you've been given a card and are only allowed to spend money on pre-approved items from pre-approved stores. Your TV breaks and you need to repair or replace it for the sake of your sanity; to give your brain some respite from how miserable your life is. You're not allowed to buy a TV because TVs aren't on the list of things you're allowed to have. Are you supposed to just wallow in your depression until you finally do end up causing yourself serious harm?

Or you're so physically impaired that you're unable to cook. Your council won't give you a care package because their budget's been cut by central government. The only way you can get some food is to order a takeaway. You've got yourself into debt because buying takeaway every day is expensive, but you've got no choice. You get transferred from cash payments to the cards because of your debt and takeaways are a prohibited item. What are you supposed to eat then?

Or a card-holder in the situation that I'm in now where they need to buy a new mattress but the only things they're allowed to buy with their card are food, toiletries and clothes? Or if they are allowed to buy a mattress, but only from a supplier that's got a deal with the DWP. And that supplier won't remove old mattresses for disposal and they can't get rid of a mattress themselves because they're too physically impaired?

Then there are people with addictions. People who aren't going to stop buying drugs or alcohol because of a switch from cash to pre-paid cards because they are addicted. Instead they'll sell their £30 card for £15 of cash. Or resort to crime to meet their physical need for the substance they're addicted to.

4) Acceleration of Universal Credit rollout

On Monday IDS announced that Universal Credit will be rolled out to all JobCentres from early next year. They say this is because of the "success of the policy so far". Such a "success" that they keep lowering the target... And still missing it. For now it'll only be for single people claiming JSA. But with an accelerated timetable it won't be long before people reporting a change of circumstances can kiss their Severe Disability Premium goodbye, and the rest of us will watch it gradually fade away.

And a bonus piece of news that's not from the conference but got published this weekend

The DWP don't collect information on people who've died as a result of having their income stopped. Read the article from the Disability News Service who submitted the FoI request.

Overheard in the Waiting Room

This morning, I took a pair of gruesomely infected toes to the doctor's. During the long wait, I politely eavesdropped on a conversation between three friends who had bumped into each other (that is, they had met by accident; they weren't seeking medical help having violently collided). I would guess that they were around retirement age, or maybe a little younger, two women and a man; ordinary folks. They competed as to whose winter coat had lasted longest, discussed Strictly Come Dancing and expressed some nostalgia for The News of the World before it went trashy.

Then they had a conversation, which went something like this:

A: Of course, all these cuts have just come in, haven't they? A lot of people are going to be struggling.
B: Oh yes. It's not fair that the poorest people should have to pay when it's the bankers who got us into this mess.
C: I know. It's only going to cause the country trouble in the long run, making people so badly off.
A: But there are some people swinging the lead.
B: That's for sure. You hear a lot about disability fraud.
C: Yeah and everybody knows somebody, don't they? Someone who's working the system.
A: But there's a lot of propaganda about that, I think.
B: Of course, the government want you to think they're all the same.
C: You can't believe anything you hear, that's for sure - especially not from this lot!

It went round like this, several times, sometimes with specific anecdotes or particular stories they had seen on the television and in newspapers. At one point, there was a very nuanced discussion of workfare (although they didn't use that term), which talked about the difficulties someone might have if they had depression, would benefit from work and might sign up for one of these schemes, only to get in trouble when they struggled to get out of bed in the morning and were late for their placement. Because people with depression can have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, however hard working and enthusiastic they are.

But time and again the same sentiments were repeated:

1. Some people are on the scrounge for sure. 
2. Some people are really suffering.
3. You can't believe anything your hear.

This disbelief was extended across the board. At one point the conversation shifted from a discussion of just how difficult it was going to be for some people - just how little money people would be left to live on - to the "scare-mongering" about how difficult it was all going to be.

And this is the trouble we have; the position that ordinarily apolitical people who are not directly affected by the cuts have been placed in. They don't trust what they hear - least of all from politicians. They care about the fact that people are being left with little to live on, and the removal of crisis safety-nets like the Social Fund and Legal Aid for civil cases. But, weighing the balance of everything they've been told, they feel that there's a fair amount of cheating going on and that needs to be stopped.

Most people I speak to, outside of disabled, poor or otherwise politically active types, feel the same. They support Welfare Reform in principle (and why not? Few people feel there's no room for improvement), they are anxious about how this effects vulnerable people in practice (People like you). But they don't know what the answers are and they feel that everyone who has a voice in the public sphere is probably lying to them.

I don't know what the answers are, but I wonder if this conversation is about to change. Although there's more to come, a lot of the cuts which came into place on Monday have been a long time coming, and the real life consequences have been - while reasonably speculated about - as yet uncertain. Now it's happening. The poorest people are poorer than they've been for many years. There are many more of them.

And maybe there's some optimism to be taken from the fact that people are confused. A few years ago, when the scrounger rhetoric had just got underway, I think the friends' conversation would be less balanced. The deserving poor would have been spoken about as rare exceptions, as opposed to "many".

See Also: John Harris: We have to talk about why some people agree with benefit cuts.

Local Housing Allowance Cuts & The Idealised Family

This is a Daily Mail link, thus the succinct and witty title:

Cameron to axe housing benefits for feckless under 25s in war on wellfare culture

Or as I would have put it: Under-25s to be denied Local Housing Allowance. Maybe.

The Conservative Government have an idealised view of normal families being wealthy, upper middle class, living in large houses with plenty of space, where everyone gets on well, everyone works and spends time outside the house and parents are committed to providing for their offspring for as long as it takes for them to get on their feet. Getting on their feet, in the mind of David Cameron, seems to mean saving up to buy a house (a neat trick at the best of times, let alone when you're poor enough to be on benefits).

I know a lot of nice families. I don't know any families like that.

My parents are great, but they didn't see parenthood as a lifelong financial burden and expected my sister and I to be independent. I started paying rent (though admittedly not much) at sixteen and moved out at eighteen. They helped my sister through university to the best of their ability but have provided no further financial assistance to either of us since. They are generous with their time and energy, I get Christmas presents I couldn't afford to treat myself to, but as far as they are concerned, they've done their bit.

By the time I was eighteen, I couldn't stand living with them any more. They were not abusive. They weren't terrible about my illness, but they weren't coping with it at all well, at a time when I wasn't coping with it at all. They struggled to see me suffer and half the time they treated me like an infant, while half the time they kept their distance and made it difficult to ask for help. They were, at that time, fantastically homophobic*. Both of them were also under a fair amount of personal stress; Mum's father had died the previous year, Dad was unemployed and I was frequently caught up in the middle of their arguments. And this was making me ill. It wasn't the only thing making me ill, but it was a big contributing factor to the suicidal depression that took hold.

As it was, I met a thirty-four year old man who took advantage of my considerable vulnerability - including my housing situation - and whisked me off to the other end of the country. This seemed like a really good thing at the time; I had a rock bottom self-esteem and was used to being treated like a child, so I wasn't able to identify verbal abuse, controlling behaviour or even the violence for what it was. What's more, being sent home to my parents in humiliation was used as a constant threat and since I couldn't live by myself, I felt this was my only other option. It was only much later, when I realised that I had friends and several family members who would be prepared to provide refuge should I need it, that I was finally able to leave.

I needed to move out when I was in my late teens. A change in legislation wouldn't have stopped my story happening, but it would remove a vital option from other young disabled women (and women who are poor for other reasons). Young and vulnerable women without any option of independent housing are going to be even more vulnerable to older abusers who don't have to work too hard to seem a more attractive option than staying with Mum & Dad.

The difficulties of living with parents are exaggerated for disabled people - folks who find it easy to live with their parents are usually extremely independent, able to go out whenever they like and only pop home to sleep off the hangover. When you're at home most of the time, need meals cooking, let alone help with bathing and so forth, there's far more pressure on that relationship. Some parents of disabled people are so used to being anxious about and protective of their kids that they take a long time to realise that their children have grown up. If indeed, they ever do.

That was my situation, but there are myriad other reasons that young people cannot live with their parents, apart from obvious things like having no parents or having terrible parents (who are by no means restricted to parents who beat you up - one exceptional circumstance the article acknowledged). These include

• Parents live in a house too small to accommodate you, e.g. they've got a smaller house now, Gran's moved into your old bedroom or you'd have to share a room with two five-year-olds and a budgie named Elvis.
• Parents' house is physically inaccessible. 
• Parents' house is an unhealthy environment for you - I had one young friend with ME who wound up in a hostel because the noise and chaos of her multiple younger siblings made it impossible for her to get sufficient rest.
• Parents make it difficult to be yourself in some way (e.g. they disapprove of your sexuality, religion or lack thereof).
• Parents live in a completely different part of the country to where the young person lives and works. Not only it is perfectly reasonable that young adults move to other parts of the country, for studying, work or because somewhere is more suited to them, but it is even more reasonable that young people shouldn't have to move back - or indeed follow their parents around the country - if something goes wrong. You might have begun to establish a career in London, only to be unemployed at the age of twenty-four, and rather than staying in London while you find a new job, you have to return to Orkney where it is impossible to apply for London jobs.

When I was twenty-nine, I was forced to move back in with my parents. This situation changed soon after and I now live less than half my time with my own folks and the rest of the time with my boyfriend's parents - who are, in fairness, somewhat closer to Cameron's ideal, only without having any money to spare. 

However, my parents struggled with this. They wanted to help, because I'd found myself in very insecure accommodation where I didn't have access to freezer space or a functional washing machine, let alone the help I needed. But they didn't understand why I couldn't get social housing with a snap of my fingers and move out again right away. They couldn't understand that Local Housing Allowance wouldn't pay full rent on any suitable place I might want to live - in fact, it wouldn't pay for any place I could reasonably live, such that I could afford to eat as well, in this not at all posh part of rural Suffolk.

My parents house is inaccessible, and while folk in other areas of the country can't get the basics, I've had to turn down all kinds of adaptations from social services because this is not my house and my folks don't want the place looking like a nursing home. They would never consider getting a vehicle that could transport my power chair, so I can't get out much while I'm with them and have to ask my boyfriend's Dad to help me on most significant journeys. And apart from all that, it's been a struggle. Not an insurmountable one, but a struggle, nevertheless.

This is a normal family. Some people reading this might judge my parents badly, but others will know how lucky I am that I've got a comfy room and a roof here and get on with them well enough that this is okay for now - especially as I don't have to be here all the time. But there is nothing remarkable about my situation or the attitudes of my folks. They love me and they have done their best for me. Even if they were to be judged badly for that, it's not something I - let alone my desperate eighteen year old self - have ever had any control over.  

* They weren't as bad as all that, really, but I love my parents, and when I think about things they said then, when I was having come to terms with my sexuality in secret, I find it very shocking and hurtful. However, I know they could have been worse, and if they'd found out about my sexuality then, they probably would have dismissed it as an abhorrent phase  as opposed to throwing me out or anything nearly so dramatic.

The Government’s disability strategy out of touch with the reality of cuts

Earlier this month the Government ended its consultation period asking disabled people to help develop its disability strategy. Maria Miller, minister for disabled people, has said that: “The Government is committed to enabling disabled people to fulfil their potential and have the opportunity to play a full role in their community”. But in reality it is clear that the Government lacks any cohesive policy that will enable this to happen.

In the last three years 31 people have died while awaiting appeals against Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) medicals that had found them fit to work. At their most vulnerable, the sick and disabled were left worrying to the day they died about how they and their family would cope financially while their illness was slowly killing them. Society should be in uproar that people in dire need turned to the state for help and were failed by it, but instead media and Government debate focuses on disabled ‘scroungers’, further isolating the disabled from their communities.

Yet while it could be argued in the case of ESA that Government incompetence is forcing disabled people into hardship, the same cannot be said for Personal Independence Payments (PIP), the new benefit that is replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Under PIP eligibility rules, even if you cannot walk more than 50 metres and need a wheelchair to get about for any longer distances, a disabled person still won’t be eligible for higher rate mobility – which in short means they will most likely lose access to a car through the motability scheme and the freedom such a vehicle gives them that their body cannot.

By cold-hearted design, these ‘independence payments’ will in fact take independence away from severely disabled people and force them to remain in their homes. No wonder Lady Grey-Thompson, speaking to the Guardian last month, said: “I worry that it is going to become the way it was when I was young where you just didn’t see disabled people on the street because they were locked away.”

These aren’t the only cuts aimed at disabled people. The Department of Work and Pensions’ own analysis into the housing benefit reforms states that 450,000 disabled people will face cuts to their allowance under new rules. 78,000 disabled people who use legal aid to appeal against decisions to deny them benefit will lose this support under Ken Clarke’s reforms. The Independent Living Fund (ILF) has been entirely closed to new claimants and by 2015 payments to the 21,000 severely disabled people it helps will cease. Tax credits to help with the extra costs of raising a disabled child will be cut from a maximum of £54 a week to £27 a week under Ian Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit changes – cuts that the Children’s Society says will see some families with disabled offspring £1,400 worse off a year. According to a Government Select Committee on Health, nearly two thirds of local authorities in England have reduced their disabled and adult social care budgets. As such councils have drastically altered their criteria for providing care to disabled adults, leaving many people unable to wash and dress themselves properly isolated in their own filth as they are not disabled enough to qualify for care.

These cuts will severely curtail disabled people’s ability to “fulfil their potential”. PIP will actually remove independence from disabled people, the scrapping of ILF will see disabled people condemned to care homes, decisions to limit ESA to one year, leaving 7000 cancer patients without any financial support while they are still too unwell to work, will only help in moving disabled people into poverty, not into the workplace. Cuts to legal aid will take away their voice, housing benefit remove them from often supportive communities and homes that are specially adapted for their needs. Harsh reductions in social care budgets will see people stuck in hospital for longer periods of time as they cannot be discharged into communities because they lack provision for their basic care. Disabled people were already twice as likely to be living in poverty than others before these cuts were imposed: no wonder disabled people up and down the country are scared stiff of these ‘reforms’.

The Government’s consultation document, entitled ‘Fulfilling potential’, makes specific mention of “tackling discrimination” towards disabled people and “promoting positive attitudes”. Yet charities have directly linked a rise in disabled abuse with the increasing rhetoric from Government ministers that disabled people are scrounging off society.

So bad has the Government’s attitude become that disability groups are now questioning whether they can continue to work with it on shaping further welfare reforms.

By the end of this parliament, if all these cuts are implemented, far from disabled people fulfilling their potential, the Coalition would instead have successfully reversed twenty years of advances made in helping the disabled play a valued and active part in society. Shame on all MPs if that is their intention. And if it isn’t, then the Government must wake up to the impact of these cuts, ban negative ministerial rhetoric linking the disabled with ‘scroungers’ and honour its supposed desire to develop policies that give back respect and support to some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Previously published on the blog nhsbuff (apologies for the slow cross posting - illness took my eye off the ball)

Picklesgate: How Many DWP Ministers Have Lied to the House?

The revelation of Eric Pickles' January letter to the PM expecting 40,000 homeless families as a result of benefit caps and housing benefit changes looks like touching off a row in the Commons as to whether Tory ministers have been systematically lying to Parliament.

An article in the Guardian identifies a DWP report in February and statements in the House by Chris Grayling (Welfare Minister), Grant Shapps (Housing Minister), Maria Miller (Minister for Patronising Disabled People) as all stating that it is either impossible to quantify the number of affected households or that the problem will not get worse. Yet Eric Pickles' Community Department delivered precisely that quantification of the problem into the Prime Minister's hands in January.

Labour are expected to try and force an urgent question on the issue in Parliament today.

According to the DWP it does not accept the figures in the letter and "There might be some people who have to move to a less expensive area. But that doesn't mean they won't have anywhere to live. We are very optimistic about the behavioural change that this will bring about" Behavioural change? That would be us mere plebs not expecting to be able to continue living near right-thinking, posh Tory voters then?

The DWP spokesperson also said "We cannot carry on with a situation where people on benefits can receive more in welfare payments than hard-working families" But what if those people on benefits need that amount of money simply to survive while supporting family members with complex needs?

Benefits Cap to Make 40,000 Families Homeless

...And Cost More than it Saves

According to a story in the Observer and picked up by the BBC, Eric Pickles' department warned No.10 in a letter from Eric Pickles' Private Secretary to David Cameron's Private Secretary (the standard method for a minister to draw something to the PM's attention) that the £500/week benefits cap would result in 40,000 families being made homeless and cost more than it saves.

Of the families made homeless, 20,000 will result directly from the cap, while 20,000 will result from related changes to the rates of housing benefit.

The letter claimed the supposed savings of £270m would be more than wiped out by the increased cost of caring for newly homeless families and generate a net loss, while 23,000 of the 56,000 affordable homes the government wants built by 2015 will not be built at all because it will be impossible for the builders to recoup their costs, and that this will primarily affect family homes.

The letter was apparently sent in January, casting doubt on Chris Grayling's claim before parliament last month, in respect to families being made homeless by the benefits cap, that "It is not yet clear to what extent they would be affected by the overall benefit cap."

In confirmation of the effects of the changes, Westminster Council announced on Friday that 81% of the families on housing benefit in the Borough, more than 5,000 households, were at risk of being made homeless, because rental rates in the borough require housing benefit payments in excess of the revised housing benefit cap, with most seeing a cut of £84 to £130/week, and nearly 1 in 8 seeing a cut of more than £300/week . The Tories are naively hoping that landlords will accept lower rents -- yeah, right.

80% of landlords surveyed by Westminster Council said they would rather end the tenancy than lower rents. The council's own figures show that 4,000 children would have to leave the borough and change schools (so school closures to come, I suspect), half the children on the council's At Risk register would be forced out of the borough. 300+ pensioners, 95 of them with serious health concerns, and 61 disabled people will be similarly affected.

The council warns it could be forced to find £18m in order to temporarily house 1,500+ families from next January, but in 2013 the benefits cap is extended to temporary housing and the only alternative would be to move the families affected entirely out of the borough. The report cheerily predicts that within 3 years, homelessness won't be a problem in Westminster, because it will all have been packed off to become the problem of the outer London boroughs.

Boris Johnson was widely reported to have warned that this policy would amount to the 'Kosovo-style ethnic cleansing' of London social housing, but, reassuringly for those of us whose worlds would be shaken by a Boris with a social conscience and a line in incisive social commentary, he was misquoted, is in agreement with government policy and insists that it will not result in social-cleansing and that 'no such exodus will take place on my watch'. Westminster Council would appear to be putting one of his assertions to the sword and the other to the test.

Westminster will be one of the worst affected boroughs, but other inner-city boroughs are likely to see similar effects, and all boroughs will be affected to some degree. Now take Westminster's 5,000+ and extrapolate those effects across the entire country....

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.

Round-Up Post

There are plenty of must-read articles and blog posts which I haven't had the time or the spoons to cover. All of the following are well worth a look.

• Scope are running a survey about the real costs of being disabled, which you can fill in here.
  
• "On the Shoulders of the Vulnerable", an article from Morning Star with information about ATOS and how ESA medicals are failing disabled people, especially those of us with mental health problems.
  
• A Guardian article, Housing Benefit Cuts: What's the Real Truth?
  
• Laurie Penny in the New Statesman writes Strictly Come Scrounging, Anyone?, about The X Factor vision of society [which] blames the poor for their predicament.
  
• Hopi Sen and Left Futures point out the contradiction in David Cameron criticising those claiming over £20,000 in housing benefits, compared to his own expenses claims for his second home.
  
• Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people, have created a comprehensive, myth-busting press release full of information on how the government are 'peddling myths' to sell the Housing Benefit cuts.
  
• Lenin's Tomb deconstructs a Daily Mail article decrying 75% of Incapacity Benefit claimants as 'fit to work'.
  
• The same article is looked at on This Is My Blog, who looks in depth at 'abandoned claims' and why they might really happen.
  
• Susannah posts a plea for help, describing how the removal of the Mobility Component of DLA from people in residential care will directly affect her brother.
  

Twitter round up

As I mentioned before it can be hard to find the spoons to write here, but what's really easy and uses little energy is tweeting. So sometimes I post links to articles on Twitter that don't get covered here on the main site. And that's not good for our non-tweeting readers who end up missing stuff.

So I thought I should start doing a regular (or as regular as I can manage) round up of relevant news stories that we've tweeted.

There's been quite a lot about the housing benefit cuts. The Guardian reported that councils are planning for an exodus of families from London. Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, told the BBC that he will not accept "Kosovo-style social cleansing" of the capital due to a government cap on housing benefits. (And as many Tweeters pointed out, when BoJo is standing up for the poor you know there's something really wrong.) Unsurprisingly many MPs distanced themselves from Johnson's comments and Vince Cable accused the mayor of using "inflammatory language". The Independent report that the government is determined to push ahead with the plans regardless and that Cameron thinks the cap is "fair".

The next big issue is the planned removal of the mobility component of DLA from people resident in care homes. BenefitScroungingScum appeared on BBC Radio Leeds to talk about the issue. @beccaviola tweeted that having her Motability vehicle while she was stuck in a care home was the thing that stopped her killing herself. RADAR released a statement that they're strongly opposed to the plan.

The big twitter story of the week has been the Vodafone tax bill story that we reported last month. Protesters managed to shut down both a Leeds branch of the store and Vodafone's flagship store on Oxford Street. There are more protests planned for tomorrow (scroll down to the comments for a slightly more accessible plan if travelling all over London isn't that ideal for you). Johann Hari wrote a column about just how effective protesting can be. @kimkali wondered if all those made homeless by the cuts are going to move in to their local Vodafone store.

Other tweets of note:

• @girlonetrack: So the coalition government cuts our public services, yet finds £2bn to read our emails? http://bit.ly/stopthesnooping
  
• @johannhari101: You pay your taxes. Sign the petition to make multi-millionaire George Osborne pay his: http://bit.ly/a3EOmJ
  
• @nusuk: Spending Review Cuts Briefing: Disabled Students. Read more at http://bit.ly/915awh
  
• @batsgirl: New Blog Post: Abandoned Claims http://batsgirl.blogspot.com/2010/10/abandoned-claims.html
  
• @andyholland01: George Osborne is a very stupid man hiding behind the deficit http://bit.ly/boaOUc
  
• @libcon: The disability benefit reforms fail the liberal test http://bit.ly/9fXXxw
  
• @libcon: Osborne gifts £40bn to super-rich in Swiss deal http://bit.ly/aWfbIf
  
• @TheSliverParty: RT @hangbitch The three pro-spending cuts retailers we're boycotting in November http://bit.ly/aroO4Q and why http://bit.ly/cyQ5Ma
  

And finally: The CAB are conducting some research into the ESA medicals process. If you're claiming/about to claim have a look at their Fair Welfare campaign page.

CAB Report on the Coalition Budget 2010

The Citizens Advice Bureau has written a report on Key welfare changes and their impact on low income households.

It makes for very depressing reading, and while it does not look specifically at disability benefits, it reports on the reductions and changes in Housing Benefit, JSA and tax credits, all of which are claimed by many disabled people. For instance,

From 2013/14 any claimant on JSA for more than 12 months will have their HB entitlement cut by 10 per cent. This will continue until they have “left the benefit system and been in work for a while”.
This seems a crude measure as it appears that it will apply even where the tenant is fully complying with their JSA requirements to actively seek work. The cut will fall hardest on those who face disadvantage in the labour market, such as people in poor health or with a disability who have failed the harsher medical tests for incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance, and have therefore been moved onto JSA.

It also explains why changing benefit levels from rising in line with the Retail Prices Index, to the Consumer Prices Index, will result in a reduction in the value of benefits and tax credits.

At the end of the study the report highlights scenarios illustrating the impact of the cuts on specific households, and several of the case studies include the issues of people who are ill or disabled. For instance,

A 50 year old man with mild learning disabilities and literacy issues has done manual work all his life until arthritis in his knees, hips and shoulder forced him to stop work. He has worked and paid contributions all his life until that point. He pays rent of £110/week and council tax of £18/week.
He claimed ESA but was found fit for work, so is now claiming JSA. The number of jobs he will be able to do is severely limited. He also has no access to his own transport and finds public transport very difficult because of the arthritis. His Jobcentre Plus personal adviser finds it difficult to suggest jobs for him. He has been out of work since his arthritis made it impossible to continue in his job two years ago and he has been claiming JSA for a year.
After housing costs he has a disposable income of £65.45 a week (his JSA). After a year as a result of changes in up-rating of JSA and also the LHA rates, his disposable income is likely to drop in real terms to about £64. However he may well also lose a further £8 off his HB as the 30th percentile rate is used to calculate the LHA rate. If he is unable to find a job after a year he will lose a further £10 a week of his HB. If he can not find somewhere cheaper to live he will have a disposable income after housing costs of about £46, a 30% reduction. Even if he can find somewhere cheaper to live, his disposable income will drop to £54, a 17.5% reduction.
If he had been allocated to the work-related activity group for ESA, his income would be £91.30 a week.

(cross-posted at incurable hippie blog)

Clutching at Straws

This extract of this morning's Today Programme on Radio 4 makes very interesting listening. It becomes clear by the end that the government has not done an Equality Impact Assessment on the Budget and its cuts, as required by equality law. And in a misrepresentation that's easy to miss if you're not already aware of how DLA works, Mark Hogan appears to claim that the Tory government is reforming Disability Living Allowance so that it's no longer means tested. Um. It never has been.

Oh, and apparently it will help people to have their housing benefit cut because now they'll be able to look for cheaper housing and have more income as a result. Whichever civil servant thought up that argument must have been very drunk at the time.

The Tories: clutching at the most ridiculous straws to prove what can't be proven. The Budget, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found, affects the poorest most. It's an unfair Budget, and you can't talk your way out of that.

Thanks to @oxfordbloo for tweeting the link and alerting us to the DLA misrepresentation.