I am scared about my future, and the future for many disabled people in the UK and beyond.
When Labour were elected, even under Kier Starmer, I hoped that they would remember they stand for the working classes, not just the “workers”. Instead, we’ve ended up in a strange upside-down world where disabled people are the first under fire.
We have significant concerns with the Welfare Bill being proposed. First things first – PIP is not an out of work benefit. For many disabled people who do work, PIP is the only thing that enables them to work.
Disabled people spend on average £1000 a month more than their non-disabled counterparts. This is for things like mobility aids, costs of care, taxis to and from work – all sorts of things that aren’t factored in to their income without something like PIP.
The Labour Government have been consistently saying this bill is to get disabled people ‘into work’. Yet they plan to cut access to PIP – cutting many people’s access to work – and they also plan to cut Access to Work, a program that provides reimbursement for things like adapted office furniture, accessible programs like Dragon, and even personal assistants (which employs more people). They say it’s because it’s just costing too much – but it’s remained the same percentage of GDP consistently, even with the increase in applications in a post-COVID world.
Disability Benefits have already been cut down to the bone by well over a decade of Tory Austerity. Hundreds of thousands have died, many as a direct result of their benefits being stopped. How many more will die under the new direction taken by Starmer and Kendall?
We urge every MP to vote against this bill. Anyone who votes for it will have the blood of untold disabled people on their hands. But what can you do? Take a stand against the demonisation of disabled people and contact your MP, please.
It is predicted that over 350,000 people will be forced into poverty because of these proposals, including children. We cannot stand by and let this happen.
In Solidarity,
Cade Hatton
(he/they)
Chair GPDG