Email #8

Dear Harriet

I thought today I would tell you about my parents.  Through all the other issues I've told you about I have had the support of my wonderful parents.  They continue to support me and my sisters even though we are all grown up women with children of our own and they actively support each one of their 5 grandchildren too.  But they arent without their own problems.

My Mum is disabled, and my Dad has PTSD from his two tours of Northern Ireland during "The Troubles" and they both are on the ASD spectrum too.  Two years ago they were forced to downsize from our old home, a home that every one of their family lived in at various points with the exception of their youngest grandchild, and that my youngest child was born in.  I say forced, because they were downsizing due to the "bedroom tax".   Adaptions had already been made to the property and my Dad was at the time self employed as a landscaper; a business he had grown over 30 years.  My parents did not want to move.

Unfortunately however they had no choice.  But with scarce properties available that are adapted for the disabled, they were moved into a ground floor flat that was unsuitable for my mum.  It took 18 months for the local authority start the process of adapting their home so that my mum was able to use the bathroom and the kitchen.  When the adaptions were finished they faced the next challenge: Mum was to face ATOS.  The fear my mum experienced during the time she waited for ATOS to assess her ESA claim was inhumane.  No one should have to live with that kind of fear.  Certainly not when they have already been before a tribunal to prove their disability.  That tribunal took place more than 10 years ago and since then my Mums conditions have got worse.  My Mum will never be fit for work, which pains her, because just before her conditions disabled her she had been at college and was looking into going to University herself to study Midwifery.

Work Capability Assessments are inhumane.  People who are disabled do not WANT to be disabled. Many people who are disabled want to be able to work.  Some can but some cannot.  The welfare system was set up to protect those people.  The incumbent government says that the reason these assessments have been brought in is due to fraudulent claims however lets look at the facts for a moment:

£164 billion is the total amount spent on benefits (and lets not beat about the bush here, the vast majority of that bill is pensions, then the next biggest chunk goes on in work benefits ie tax credits).

Of that £164 billion, £3.4 billion was overpaid (but please remember also £1.5 billion was UNDER paid) and that equates to 2.1% in overpayments (remembering 0.9% was underpaid)

From that £2.2 billion (so 1.3%) was overpaid because of error.  No figure exists (in the public domain) of how much was DWP error rather than claimant error because that figure accounts for both DWP and claimant errors.  When errors are made that money is paid back.

That leaves £1.2 billion which is paid due to fraud so 0.7 %

Or to put it another way, 99.3% of claims are legitimate and £155.7 billion is legitimately claimed and £1.5 billion is underpaid in the first place.

So effectively 99.3% of claimants are having their lives made hell and are being treated inhumanely, with many people losing benefits to which they are entitled and people who are never going to be fit for work are being found fit for work for the sake of £1.2 billion.

£1.2 billion.  That is the cost then, of the lives of people who have died as a result of this inhumane treatment and the people who are unjustly sanctioned to meet targets, and the cost of the lives of those who's lives are made a living nightmare.

And their crime? To be the most vulnerable section of our community.  This is wrong.

Labour needs to stop joining their voices to those on the right and in government and stop victimizing the very people it set out to support.  Labour needs to support these people and call for an end to welfare cuts, an end to sanctions and an end to work capability assessments.

Labour needs to stand up for the 99.3%.

Constituent, Labour Party member, Union member, concerned citizen, self employed mother, mother of a teenager with ASD, Socialist, Environmentalist, Disabled Rights Supporter