Open Comment to Liam Byrne

I just posted this in response to Liam Byrne's article in the Guardian.


"And what do you propose Liam? When you disappear off into your think tanks and focus groups?

For over a year, you have avoided meeting with me. You promised, but you haven't discussed your plans with sick and disabled people.

You talk of "unearned support" Liam, but this is the Guardian! Here, on these comment threads, we all know the details of ESA, DLA, contributory time limiting and independent living funds very well - almost certainly much, much better than you do Liam. We know about the hundreds of thousands terrified about what happens to those who CANNOT earn support. Until recently, we believed you gave it freely.

You have the audacity to attack an erosion of ESA?(time limiting) When it was your government who introduced this terrible failure? Your government who wrote the descriptors making it simply impossible for many conditions to qualify? "like employment and support allowance that working people have actually paid in for."

Then, you dare to criticise the appeals system for the failure of ESA? When you have ignored me and Kaliya Franklin and all others who have been trying to warn you for years? When we warned you repeatedly? when we tried everything, some risking their lives to engage with you? "current chaos in the assessment of those on disability benefits, with spiralling appeal times and poor back-to-work support, deeply troubling."

You let Ed loose in the Daily Mail then think you can throw us a bone with a few tag on lines about ESA and disability? We already know this is a pattern! Give the scroungers a good kicking then say something nice and fluffy about sick and disabled people in the Guardian.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

I strongly recommend you stop dreaming up ways in which the welfare state can be auctioned off to the highest private bidder - even planning the very systems in partnership with those very same businesses and insurers.

I suggest you :

Listen to the suggestions and alternatives of disabled people.
Look at our ideas and policy suggestions
Stop designing policy based on a complete disregard for the evidence
IMMEDIATELY stop reinforcing the scrounger narrative - it makes a Labour Party look utterly ridiculous and confirms dangerous stereotypes.

We will win the public Liam. I promise you. By 2015, we will have made this the "NHS 1997" issue.

So stop casting around for spurious, tough-talk soundbites, that conveniently stuff a few billion more in private pockets and get a real strategy on disability.

I suggest you do it very quickly indeed. Those prepared to apologise for these failures may retain some credibility.

The arrogant will simply be exposed as those who oversaw the biggest abuse of sickness and disability rights and protections since the welfare state was introduced."

Are Politicians Deaf to the Sick and Disabled?

This post was written by Sue Marsh, but she's having computer issues at the moment so was unable to cross-post it herself (why it's showing up with me listed as the author rather than her). It originally appeared here.

So, it's welfare reform on the agenda today. Iain Duncan-Smith will address the Select Committee this morning on Universal Credit and Liam Byrne, Labour's new Shadow Dept of Work and Pensions minister will outline Labour's position.

How Labour came to this position is a mystery. Certainly to any of us campaigning for an overhaul of Employment Support Allowance (ESA), radical changes to the assessment processes,and a new consultation on the proposals to abolish Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and replace it with Personal Independence Payment (PIP) whilst cutting numbers by at least 20%.

• Mr Byrne has been in the job for exactly 20 days. I've been seriously ill for 27 years.
• Mr Byrne will state that no other pace of reform but the very fastest will do. I'd rather see the very BEST Mr Byrne
• Mr Byrne thinks cuts should be made to "Shirkers not workers". But who are the "Shirkers" Mr Byrne?
• Mr Byrne will speak out for the "Squeezed Middle" but not the "Desperate Sick"
• Mr Byrne will ask "What kind of government takes £1bn more off children than bankers? I suggest one that will take away a full one third of the incomes of the sick and disabled? Billions more than high rate tax payers he's so keen to defend will lose in Child Benefit.
• Mr Byrne will, most sickeningly, most heartbreakingly, support the disgusting policy of time limiting ESA, but to 2 years rather than Osborne's proposed 1 year. Few chronic, degenerative conditions go away in one year though Mr Byrne, or even two. Nonetheless, most sufferers of them are being found "Fit for Work"

The first thing I want to say is this is not Labour's position. This is the position of a few ill-informed, out-of-touch politicians, based on dubious research and ignorant assumptions. This isn't just my horrified conclusion, but is clearly illustrated and evidenced in this Compass Report Mr Byrne's position is not my position, nor any of my Labour friends, nor any of the the 1000 or so people who follow my blog in one form or another. Other than James Purnell, Douglas Alexander and now Liam Byrne in fact, I've never heard an ordinary Labour Party member say they support these changes.

The second thing is who do Labour engage with? Not with me, or grassroots members like me, that's for sure. I've written, sent emails, tweeted, Facebooked and written again. In just over three months, my blog has shot from total obscurity to become the 23rd highest ranked political commentary on the internet. Not because I'm anything special, but simply because this issue is totally ignored by all of the three political parties and most of the media. The sick and disabled are crying out for a voice, for someone to hear them. The Broken of Britain run a fantastic campaign with thousands of supporters, but no-one has asked them either. I've lost count of the people who've told me they've written to Ed Miliband or their MP or some DWP minister but never had so much as a reply.

I discussed ESA with Jonathan Shaw - the then Labour Minister for Disabilities for half an hour at conference once. I followed up with emails. He never even replied.

Today, I will write to Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne again. I will ask them to engage with us. I will ask them to spend just one hour reading the intelligent, articulate contributions to One Month Before Heartbreak, a campaign that aimed to present testimonials from the sick and disabled outlining how devastating these changes are to our lives. I will ask them to undergo a total review of sickness and disability benefit reform in co-operation with those of us who actually understand and appreciate what it will really mean. I will propose some ideas of my own that could transform life for those of us who's lives have been ravaged by disease without causing misery, fear and hopelessness. I will explain, yet again, that we are not against reform in itself, simply reform based on total misconceptions.

Whatever their reply, if indeed there is any, I will keep writing this blog and people, I hope, will keep reading it and linking it and sharing it with friends . If we can write for the Times or The Independent or the Mirror, we will. If we can make our voices heard on Television or Radio, than I, and other sick and disabled activists will. We will keep campaigning and explaining until this issue becomes the single most embarrassing issue for any politician.

Please join me. Today, welfare reform is on the agenda. Please click the Twitter or Facebook share buttons by and below this article. If you use Twitter, then please retweet and please, please post links on Facebook and tell your friends. Please help me be the anti-voice to the stream of misconceptions and lies we will undoubtedly be bombarded with in the mainstream media today. Help me stop this.

The simple truth is these reforms are wrong. Wrong in format, wrong in design and wrong in practice. Worst of all they are morally wrong and ignoring us won't change that at all.