There's one cut that I've heard almost nothing about. I mean literally only 2 tweets and one blog comment. There's been nothing about it in either the mainstream press or on leftie/disability blogs.
At the moment there's an Income Support top-up called the Severe Disability Premium (SDP). It's often confused with Severe Disablement Allowance because of the similar sounding names despite being very different things.
The amount of money the law says you need to live on each week depends on your circumstances. If you're considered "severely disabled" for the purposes of benefits it's regarded that you need £151.65 a week to live on.
As someone that gets the middle or high rate care component of DLA and as someone who lives alone I'm considered "severely disabled" for such purposes. My Incapacity Benefit, including age-related premiums, is only £108.05 a week. This leaves me with a £43.60 shortfall between the amount of money the law says I need to live on and the amount of money I get. This is where the SDP comes in: I get an Income Support payment of £43.60 to bridge that gap.
The Welfare Reform Bill is scrapping the SDP. Entirely. Not replacing it with something different and stricter like the DLA to PIP changeover: It's just going.
The cost of living is going up, not down. So why do I suddenly need £43 a week less to live on?
I know that to a Tory £43 a week is a drop in the ocean. To a Tory it's maybe the cost of dinner if they eat somewhere cheap. But to me it's almost a third of my week's income. To me it's the difference between being able to visit my father or not. To me it's a grocery shop.
Crossbencher Baroness Meacher put forward amendment 21A on the second day of the report stage in the Lords which would have preserved an SDP-esque payment after the WRB had gone through. It didn't even go to a vote: Freud pointed out to her that letting severely disabled people retain their current income level would cost more than the amount the bill budgets for, so she withdrew it (it's not "cost-neutral").
It's not only people in similar circumstances to my own that will be affected, during the discussion Baroness Grey-Thompson brought up the fact that this will have a huge impact on young carers. People love to don a Red Nose to raise money to send young people assisting a parent 10 Pin Bowling once a fortnight, but where's the outcry over the fact that the government is stripping away financial support from parents which will make the young person's life harder?
All in this together? How about we knock 33% off the MPs' wages instead of severely disabled peoples' incomes. It'd be a much more sizeable saving than the mere £43 a week that makes such a huge difference to someone like me.
Update 15/11/13: DavidG has just pointed me to this article from October last year. It states the number of people that will be affected by the cuts to Disability Premiums: 230,000. I've also become aware today of this 32 page report by the CAB (also from October 2012) into the withdrawl of the Severe Disability Premium.
Campaigning against the government's distressing war on disabled benefit claimants. All posts represent the opinions of their respective authors and not WtB as a whole.
Showing posts with label House of Lords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House of Lords. Show all posts
Friday, 27 January 2012
Monday, 16 January 2012
Guest post: Lords vote tomorrow, Jan 17th
This is a guest post from Hossylass
On Tuesday the Lords vote on abolishing DLA and replacing it with PIP.
The Spartacus Report (Responsible Reform Report) was written because the Government did not consult correctly on PIP, and lied about the results.
We have to stop PIP, it has no foundation and many people will be financially penalised for not being the "right sort of disabled".
The criteria given so far are minimal, and many people simply will not fit into the 15 tick box questions.
No-one will be exempt, everyone will be assessed, in a similar way to ESA.
The only way we can stop this is to persuade the Lords to ask for a pause in the process so that PIP can be discussed further.
All the things you need to write an email are available in OuchToo. There are lists of the Lords emails, there are template letters, guidelines of what to include and a thread about PIP and what people think they will lose.
One last push is what is needed - remember disabled people chained themselves to the Gates of Downing Street, and there should be "Nothing about us without us".
Please find time to send the emails, you can do it in bulk and it will only take a few minutes.
Save our DLA - only we can do it !
And finally, many thanks for all your efforts, for all your tweeting, report sending, facebooking, emailing. Never before have so many disabled people done so much together, and last week we frightened the Government and changed the minds of the Lords.
Lets do it again this week.
Many thanks again.
On Tuesday the Lords vote on abolishing DLA and replacing it with PIP.
The Spartacus Report (Responsible Reform Report) was written because the Government did not consult correctly on PIP, and lied about the results.
We have to stop PIP, it has no foundation and many people will be financially penalised for not being the "right sort of disabled".
The criteria given so far are minimal, and many people simply will not fit into the 15 tick box questions.
No-one will be exempt, everyone will be assessed, in a similar way to ESA.
The only way we can stop this is to persuade the Lords to ask for a pause in the process so that PIP can be discussed further.
All the things you need to write an email are available in OuchToo. There are lists of the Lords emails, there are template letters, guidelines of what to include and a thread about PIP and what people think they will lose.
One last push is what is needed - remember disabled people chained themselves to the Gates of Downing Street, and there should be "Nothing about us without us".
Please find time to send the emails, you can do it in bulk and it will only take a few minutes.
Save our DLA - only we can do it !
And finally, many thanks for all your efforts, for all your tweeting, report sending, facebooking, emailing. Never before have so many disabled people done so much together, and last week we frightened the Government and changed the minds of the Lords.
Lets do it again this week.
Many thanks again.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
ESA amendments success in Lords
Yesterday the Welfare Reform Bill (WRB) was debated in the House of Lords. Specifically three amendments that relate to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
These amendments were to keep the automatic entitlement to ESA for young disabled people. In order to qualify for the contribution based ESA a person must have made a certain level of NI contributions in the two years before the claim. Previously people such as myself who had never been able to work were given an exemption from this requirement if their disability started before age 20. A kind of levelling of the playing field for those of us who've never had the chance to earn and make NI contributions. If I hadn't had that automatic entitlement to Incapacity Benefit (one of the benefits ESA is replacing) I wouldn't have been able to leave home and go to university. My parents would still be my carers and my mum wouldn't be running her own business.
The government had intended to remove this aspect under the WRB. The amendment called for it to be kept.It was believed that this would be a "too close to call" vote but the Government were defeated with 260 votes for the amendment and 216 against.
The second and third amendments related to the plans to limit entitlement to contribution based ESA to just one year. Some claimants would then be able to go on to claim income based ESA if this time limit did come in in the WRB. But those who had a partner who was working would lose out entirely even if their income is as little as £16K a year. This is likely to lead to increased poverty and knock on affects such as worsening health. Campaigner Sue Marsh has shared how if she lost her ESA the only way they could cope would be if her husband gave up his job to become her carer.
So the second amendment called for the time limit to be increased to two years. This was passed with 234 voting for the amendment and 186 against.
The third amendment called for cancer patients to be exempted from ESA time. In this vote 222 lords voted for the amendment and 166 voting against. This meant an unprecedented third defeat in a row for the government and a much needed boost for campaigners after the work that had gone into promoting The Spartacus Report etc. We haven't won and we can't rest yet but we have achieved something.
Unfortunately however later that evening after most of the Lords had left Lord Freud proposed another amendment to take out the entitlement to ESA for young people. This was passed 132 for, 49 against. At the point this happened the WRB debate had ended. It was restarted for this. As Steven Sumpter explains this is against usual parliamentary procedure and I for one would like to know about the legality of what happened.
The Guardian and The BBC have good coverage of the debates although neither of them cover the sneaky fourth amendment of Lord Freud. The results of the votes are also available.
These amendments were to keep the automatic entitlement to ESA for young disabled people. In order to qualify for the contribution based ESA a person must have made a certain level of NI contributions in the two years before the claim. Previously people such as myself who had never been able to work were given an exemption from this requirement if their disability started before age 20. A kind of levelling of the playing field for those of us who've never had the chance to earn and make NI contributions. If I hadn't had that automatic entitlement to Incapacity Benefit (one of the benefits ESA is replacing) I wouldn't have been able to leave home and go to university. My parents would still be my carers and my mum wouldn't be running her own business.
The government had intended to remove this aspect under the WRB. The amendment called for it to be kept.It was believed that this would be a "too close to call" vote but the Government were defeated with 260 votes for the amendment and 216 against.
The second and third amendments related to the plans to limit entitlement to contribution based ESA to just one year. Some claimants would then be able to go on to claim income based ESA if this time limit did come in in the WRB. But those who had a partner who was working would lose out entirely even if their income is as little as £16K a year. This is likely to lead to increased poverty and knock on affects such as worsening health. Campaigner Sue Marsh has shared how if she lost her ESA the only way they could cope would be if her husband gave up his job to become her carer.
So the second amendment called for the time limit to be increased to two years. This was passed with 234 voting for the amendment and 186 against.
The third amendment called for cancer patients to be exempted from ESA time. In this vote 222 lords voted for the amendment and 166 voting against. This meant an unprecedented third defeat in a row for the government and a much needed boost for campaigners after the work that had gone into promoting The Spartacus Report etc. We haven't won and we can't rest yet but we have achieved something.
Unfortunately however later that evening after most of the Lords had left Lord Freud proposed another amendment to take out the entitlement to ESA for young people. This was passed 132 for, 49 against. At the point this happened the WRB debate had ended. It was restarted for this. As Steven Sumpter explains this is against usual parliamentary procedure and I for one would like to know about the legality of what happened.
The Guardian and The BBC have good coverage of the debates although neither of them cover the sneaky fourth amendment of Lord Freud. The results of the votes are also available.
Monday, 19 December 2011
Things to do this Christmas: Please act on and share this post!
There are so many things that need doing this festive season in the fight against the welfare reform bill and the closure of the ILF I thought I'd collate all the actions in one place. If there's anything I've missed out, please, please post it in the comments.
The most important thing to do is to sign Pat's Petition to get the Welfare Reform Bill paused for reflection. Activists manage to get the NHS bill paused to buy themselves more time to present evidence of the harm it would do: We need to do the same for the WRB. The petition needs 100,000 signatures and so far it's only had 7,935. We're a long way off but it can be done if people sign and share; in the summer petitions around punishing rioters reached the 100,000 mark in a day or 2. But it requires people putting in the effort and giving a crap. Please, please, sign and share this.
Other government e-petitions that need signing while you're on the e-petitions page:
The Welfare Reform Bill is currently at the report stage in the Lords. Votes on amendments like DLA and contributory ESA will be held in January. So far the votes have been really close with the amendment on the frequency of Universal Credit payments being defeated by only 3 votes and the amendment to not halve disabled children's benefits losing by only 2 votes. The government has suffered one defeat so far in the under-occupancy amendment. In that vote there was even one Tory peer who voted against.
This all shows that we can make a difference at this stage if we put pressure on the peers. We mainly need to target the Lib Dem and crossbench peers, but Lord Newton of Braintree has proved that even Tories can be persuaded to vote against these barbaric cuts which will have devastating outcomes for disabled people.
Some of the info in this template letter is now outdated as it was drafted back in September. But the list of contacts for Lords is useful for getting in touch and sharing your concerns. Tell them that you're worried about the effect arbitrarily slashing 20% from the DLA budget will have, tell them that limiting contributory ESA to one year is ludicrous as many - possibly even most - serious ongoing illnesses don't clear up within 365 days.
There's also a list of the peers that use Twitter. Tweet at them with your concerns, send them links to articles and blog posts that you feel express your worries best. As with writing EMails or letters; it's best to target your energies at Lib Dem and crossbench peers, but it can't hurt to send your concerns to all peers; Lord Newton of Braintree having proved Tories can be persuaded to vote against these brutal cuts.
Some members of the House are either depressingly ill-informed or simply liars. Lord Wolfson claimed on Question Time 2 weeks ago that disability benefits have the highest fraud rates. This is desperately untrue. One of our readers, Joss, has written to Wolfson pointing out his statement lacking in factual basis. I would urge you to do the same; not just to Wolfson, but to any Peer you happen to catch spouting inaccuracies. It's possible they are simply ill-informed rather than malicious so it's important we make sure they are informed before they go to vote.
Other petitions apart from ones on the government's own page:
There are many campaign groups out there that have had tremendous success this year but have done little (if anything) to engage with these welfare issues. We need to get their support.
38 Degrees have had so many successes this year like getting the forestry sell-off cancelled and getting the NHS bill paused. We really need their help but they're reluctant. They say they only carry out campaigns their members ask for so tell them loudly and clearly that you want them to campaign against welfare reform! Blogger Chrissy sent them this excellent Email and I'd suggest you do the same. It also occurs to me as someone with a bit of a background in the voluntary sector that if an organisation receives a restricted donation earmarked for a specific cause they have to either spend it as the donor requests, or return the money. With bodies like 38 Degrees funding their campaigns through asking for member donations, I don't see why one can't send them a restricted donation earmarked to only be spent on fighting the welfare reform bill. Not as underhand and manipulative as it might sound; charities get restricted funding every day, and returning unspent restricted donations is not uncommon either. They need to know people are willing to pay for an anti-WRB campaign, so give them the message loud and clear!
If you are, or you know people who are, in the UK Uncut inner circle then please beg them to do something. Occupations ditto. OccupyLSX were asked by WtB to support Hardest Hit rally in London in October. They didn't. Please, please try to change this.
And finally, get this to-do list out there. Tweet it, post it on Facebook and Google+, link to it from your blog, and Email it to all your friends. Ask left-leaning slebs or those who've shown interest in disability issues to retweet it. And not just celebs, of course: Ask anyone who can get the list of actions shared on to a greater audience. But most importantly: Do the actions too! So many people these days will retweet or share a link to a petition without actually signing.
We've only got until January to stop this list from exploding exponentially in 2 years when the proposed WRB would come into effect. Don't let this happen. Please do something to stop it.
The most important thing to do is to sign Pat's Petition to get the Welfare Reform Bill paused for reflection. Activists manage to get the NHS bill paused to buy themselves more time to present evidence of the harm it would do: We need to do the same for the WRB. The petition needs 100,000 signatures and so far it's only had 7,935. We're a long way off but it can be done if people sign and share; in the summer petitions around punishing rioters reached the 100,000 mark in a day or 2. But it requires people putting in the effort and giving a crap. Please, please, sign and share this.
Other government e-petitions that need signing while you're on the e-petitions page:
- Someone has started a petition to make it a criminal offence to maliciously report someone for benefit fraud. With 96% of calls to the benefit fraud hotline being malicious in nature, falsely accusing someone of benefit fraud is a major form of hate.
- The other relevant e-petition is to save the Independent Living Fund. In a guest post for us last year, Martyn Sibley explained the importance of ILF funding. On a related note; DPAC are collecting signatures opposed to the ILF closure on a campaigning letter to be circulated next year.
The Welfare Reform Bill is currently at the report stage in the Lords. Votes on amendments like DLA and contributory ESA will be held in January. So far the votes have been really close with the amendment on the frequency of Universal Credit payments being defeated by only 3 votes and the amendment to not halve disabled children's benefits losing by only 2 votes. The government has suffered one defeat so far in the under-occupancy amendment. In that vote there was even one Tory peer who voted against.
This all shows that we can make a difference at this stage if we put pressure on the peers. We mainly need to target the Lib Dem and crossbench peers, but Lord Newton of Braintree has proved that even Tories can be persuaded to vote against these barbaric cuts which will have devastating outcomes for disabled people.
Some of the info in this template letter is now outdated as it was drafted back in September. But the list of contacts for Lords is useful for getting in touch and sharing your concerns. Tell them that you're worried about the effect arbitrarily slashing 20% from the DLA budget will have, tell them that limiting contributory ESA to one year is ludicrous as many - possibly even most - serious ongoing illnesses don't clear up within 365 days.
There's also a list of the peers that use Twitter. Tweet at them with your concerns, send them links to articles and blog posts that you feel express your worries best. As with writing EMails or letters; it's best to target your energies at Lib Dem and crossbench peers, but it can't hurt to send your concerns to all peers; Lord Newton of Braintree having proved Tories can be persuaded to vote against these brutal cuts.
Some members of the House are either depressingly ill-informed or simply liars. Lord Wolfson claimed on Question Time 2 weeks ago that disability benefits have the highest fraud rates. This is desperately untrue. One of our readers, Joss, has written to Wolfson pointing out his statement lacking in factual basis. I would urge you to do the same; not just to Wolfson, but to any Peer you happen to catch spouting inaccuracies. It's possible they are simply ill-informed rather than malicious so it's important we make sure they are informed before they go to vote.
Other petitions apart from ones on the government's own page:
- The Lords have already voted to allow disabled children's benefits to be cut as part of the bill, despite the fact that 4 in ten disabled children already live in poverty before that cut comes in. Every Disabled Child Matters have set up this e-action to Email David Cameron (who once had a disabled child himself, of course...)
- Scope have set up this action to try and save legal aid for benefits appeals. 14,000 people every year are vindicated when their DLA rejection is overturned; Legal Aid is a lifeline.
There are many campaign groups out there that have had tremendous success this year but have done little (if anything) to engage with these welfare issues. We need to get their support.
38 Degrees have had so many successes this year like getting the forestry sell-off cancelled and getting the NHS bill paused. We really need their help but they're reluctant. They say they only carry out campaigns their members ask for so tell them loudly and clearly that you want them to campaign against welfare reform! Blogger Chrissy sent them this excellent Email and I'd suggest you do the same. It also occurs to me as someone with a bit of a background in the voluntary sector that if an organisation receives a restricted donation earmarked for a specific cause they have to either spend it as the donor requests, or return the money. With bodies like 38 Degrees funding their campaigns through asking for member donations, I don't see why one can't send them a restricted donation earmarked to only be spent on fighting the welfare reform bill. Not as underhand and manipulative as it might sound; charities get restricted funding every day, and returning unspent restricted donations is not uncommon either. They need to know people are willing to pay for an anti-WRB campaign, so give them the message loud and clear!
If you are, or you know people who are, in the UK Uncut inner circle then please beg them to do something. Occupations ditto. OccupyLSX were asked by WtB to support Hardest Hit rally in London in October. They didn't. Please, please try to change this.
And finally, get this to-do list out there. Tweet it, post it on Facebook and Google+, link to it from your blog, and Email it to all your friends. Ask left-leaning slebs or those who've shown interest in disability issues to retweet it. And not just celebs, of course: Ask anyone who can get the list of actions shared on to a greater audience. But most importantly: Do the actions too! So many people these days will retweet or share a link to a petition without actually signing.
We've only got until January to stop this list from exploding exponentially in 2 years when the proposed WRB would come into effect. Don't let this happen. Please do something to stop it.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
#WRB Twitter Summary of Welfare Reform Bill in the Lords
As you may know from previous posts, the Welfare Reform Bill has been going through the House of Lords in the past two days. Yesterday's debate felt a lot more thorough, and our side was represented more strongly, than in the House of Commons, but today the discussion disappeared 'upstairs' and was not televised.
This was a widely criticised decision, as we can not see how the discussion is going, and the room is said to be inaccessible.
For people who want to catch up on some of the details of what we saw in the Lords yesterday, and the discussion around moving rooms today, a lot was posted in twitter on detail, via various accounts including Where's the Benefit?, Latent Existence, incurable hippie, disabled medic, The Broken of Britain, Creative Crip, and many more. I have created a document which summarises the discussions and main points made, which you can access here. You may notice that I wrongly named the document the 'Welfare Rights Bill'. If only! But it is reform, not rights, so apologies for that error.
The tweet summary document is available to be viewed here. You can use the tools at the bottom of the page to zoom in and out as necessary.
[The image is a photograph of the interior of the House of Lords. It was taken by UK Parliament and is used under a Creative Commons Licence]
URGENT APPEAL FOR ACTION NOW!
After an incredibly constructive debate yesterday in the House Of Lords the government appear to be concerned about how many Lords had significant concerns about the Welfare Reform Bill, even those Lords who in principle supported the bill had major questions they wanted answers to.
For a bill of this size and importance, convention dictates that the next stage of the bill should be kept in the main chamber of the House of Lords for debate. It's particularly important the bill be continued to be debated in the main chamber as disability access to the smaller committee rooms is very limited and people will not be able to access the committee rooms to exercise their democratic right to observe the passge of the bill from the public chamber.
At 3.30pm today the govermnent are tabling a motion to move the grand committee stage of the bill into one of the smaller committee rooms. Presumably the government are hoping that by moving a bill into the committee rooms it will be harder to scrutinise - there won't be enough space in any of the committee rooms to allow for all the Lords to participate, let alone for us to scrutinise online or attend in person.
This is an outrage - the government are clearly concerned by the level of queries and opposition to the Welfare Reform Bill highlighted by yesterday's debate and wish to quietly sideline it to a committee room where they hope it will pass with less opposition. Tabling the motion for the afternoon following PMQ's is also an underhand trick as it means it will be harder for us to object through the main stream media.
This is our call to arms. This bill affects us, our families and every aspect of our lives, as well as the lives of those currently paying into the system in anticipation of protection should they require it. If we can make enough noise in the next few hours the government will be forced to keep the passage of the bill in the main chamber of the house of lords where it can be effectively and appropriately scrutinised by all.
What you can do to help is this;
Please post copies of this blog onto your facebook, your twitter, stumbleupon, wikio etc. Please email it to everyone you know, please talk about this on your own blogs. Email or phone your MP to register your objections, email or phone the house of lords to explain your concerns, email or phone the media, local or national and explain that whether or not people are in favour of this bill, that it is a fundamental democratic right to have it debated in the main chamber of the house of lords where there is space for all who wish to attend and observe. Highlight the injustice and hypocrisy of the governments behaviour in trying to sideline this important bill into a room too small for all the Lords to attend and certainly too small to allow those in wheelchairs, or with guide dogs, the very people most affected by this bill to be able to observe from the public gallery.
If we make enough noise before 3.30pm today the government will have to drop this underhand tactic and the Bill will continue to be debated in the main chamber of the House of Lords where everyone who wishes to can attend and observe.
UPDATE 13.30
The email addresses to contact are;
For a bill of this size and importance, convention dictates that the next stage of the bill should be kept in the main chamber of the House of Lords for debate. It's particularly important the bill be continued to be debated in the main chamber as disability access to the smaller committee rooms is very limited and people will not be able to access the committee rooms to exercise their democratic right to observe the passge of the bill from the public chamber.
At 3.30pm today the govermnent are tabling a motion to move the grand committee stage of the bill into one of the smaller committee rooms. Presumably the government are hoping that by moving a bill into the committee rooms it will be harder to scrutinise - there won't be enough space in any of the committee rooms to allow for all the Lords to participate, let alone for us to scrutinise online or attend in person.
This is an outrage - the government are clearly concerned by the level of queries and opposition to the Welfare Reform Bill highlighted by yesterday's debate and wish to quietly sideline it to a committee room where they hope it will pass with less opposition. Tabling the motion for the afternoon following PMQ's is also an underhand trick as it means it will be harder for us to object through the main stream media.
This is our call to arms. This bill affects us, our families and every aspect of our lives, as well as the lives of those currently paying into the system in anticipation of protection should they require it. If we can make enough noise in the next few hours the government will be forced to keep the passage of the bill in the main chamber of the house of lords where it can be effectively and appropriately scrutinised by all.
What you can do to help is this;
Please post copies of this blog onto your facebook, your twitter, stumbleupon, wikio etc. Please email it to everyone you know, please talk about this on your own blogs. Email or phone your MP to register your objections, email or phone the house of lords to explain your concerns, email or phone the media, local or national and explain that whether or not people are in favour of this bill, that it is a fundamental democratic right to have it debated in the main chamber of the house of lords where there is space for all who wish to attend and observe. Highlight the injustice and hypocrisy of the governments behaviour in trying to sideline this important bill into a room too small for all the Lords to attend and certainly too small to allow those in wheelchairs, or with guide dogs, the very people most affected by this bill to be able to observe from the public gallery.
If we make enough noise before 3.30pm today the government will have to drop this underhand tactic and the Bill will continue to be debated in the main chamber of the House of Lords where everyone who wishes to can attend and observe.
UPDATE 13.30
The email addresses to contact are;
anelayj@parliament.uk – this is the chief whip to whom you should send the email and cc it to the others .
bassams@parliament.uk – opposition chief whip
Friday, 15 July 2011
BREAKING NEWS!!! Government Delays Welfare Reform Bill...
This just in from the Disability Alliance. I'm sure they won't mind me posting it in full:
This is wonderful, surprising, startling news!!! I need a little lie down before I say any more, but remember this - if it gives the government more time to lobby, it gives us more time too :)
Government delays Welfare Reform Bill
The Government has been forced to delay the 2nd Reading of the flagship Bill in the Lords due to peers' concerns over the people affected.
DWP is suggesting other business has blocked progress but the surprise postponement till September from Tues will also give the Government time to lobby peers and answer the queries raised in DA's legal challenge
This is wonderful, surprising, startling news!!! I need a little lie down before I say any more, but remember this - if it gives the government more time to lobby, it gives us more time too :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
