Disabled people have spent years being attacked as spongers. Labour's benefit cuts are no different

As disabled people, we are used to regularly being the red-meat politicians thrown to the more excitable fringes of the right-wing and, sadly, now increasingly frequently the centrist media.

Many of us will, therefore, have a sense of déjà vu with the ministerial posturing and excitable reporting around the green paper on social security reform targeting support for disabled people and people with chronic health conditions.

Many in our community will be more than frustrated that yet another government is repeating the mistakes of the past, stretching back to the birth of the ‘welfare state’ with the Beveridge Report, implemented by the post-war Attlee government.

Read more of Big Issue’s analysis of Labour’s benefit reforms:

• I’m a disabled person claiming benefits – and I’ve lost all hope in the Labour government
• Benefit cuts are a ‘violation of human rights’ which will harm ill and disabled people, Labour warned
• Cuts, universal credit and PIP: Everything you need to know about Labour’s benefits overhaul

As Julia Modern, senior policy and campaigns manager at Inclusion London, told me ahead of Labour’s reforms: “We are devastated that the government’s pre-announcements about the upcoming green paper demonstrate that they have chosen to attack disabled people’s living conditions, once again, instead of investing positively in the changes we need to be able to participate in society on an equal basis to everyone else.”

For some, that misery will be compounded by the insults and physical violence dished out by neighbours and passers-by who have, over the years, absorbed the underlying political and media portrayal of disabled people as shirkers and spongers.

As organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and plenty of academic studies have pointed out, politicians need to fix the NHS and focus on tackling the underlying causes of sickness and disability – not cutting the meagre benefits that people are forced to live on.

JRF has pointed out that worsening population health, exacerbated by long NHS and social care waiting lists, are driving much of what the government is pleased to call “the unsustainable rise” in people claiming working-age health and disability benefits.

The government may just have abolished NHS England in a move that may end up cutting waiting lists but, given more than seven million people are waiting for treatment in England alone, it is up for debate just how quickly waiting times can be reduced to a reasonable level. It is a little rich for the state to fail those needing health care on such a scale and then blame many of the victims of that failure if they are unable to work.

We know that people in the richest areas of the UK typically live around 11 years longer than those in the poorest areas. That’s woeful and scandalous enough. However, people in the most deprived areas typically start to experience poor health more than 20 years before those in the richest areas.

In 70% of local authority areas, people typically start living with poor health before they reach retirement age. Inevitably, that means some will leave the workforce early.

The JRF and others also point to a labour market that is not producing sufficient jobs for disabled people or those with chronic, debilitating health conditions to feel comfortable – and safe – taking on. Tied to that is the ongoing workplace discrimination disabled people continue to experience when seeking jobs or when applying for promotion as they seek to diligently build a career.

Ironically, the government is also seeking to pull away from many working disabled people the very support that ensures they can work.

PIP is an essential contribution to the additional daily living costs that disabled people face due to our disability or chronic health condition. The government has rowed back on its brutal decision to freeze PIP, which is used to pay for support for everyday tasks like eating, keeping clean, getting dressed, reading, or taking medicine, but it still wants to restrict who qualifies for it.

This was punctuated by a media round where health secretary Wes Streeting dipped into conspiracy theories about “overdiagnosis” of impairments such as ADHD and autism. That interjection came despite the BBC finding that many areas of the UK have such long backlogs for adult ADHD assessments that it would take at least eight years to clear them, with hundreds of thousands of people waiting to get state support which is only available with a diagnosis.

Yet again, we are experiencing a government whose focus on this is completely wrong. Ignoring their basic economic illiteracy (Z2K research suggests that the benefits system provides a potential £42bn in annual economic benefits), the government is bafflingly focused on the symptoms of our sick and broken society. Instead of tackling those issues in the name of growth, they think they can just cut us off from vital support, and economic prosperity will follow.

The government and its MPs are now responsible for changing this disastrous status quo. This will require them to fight back against cuts and present a case for testing new approaches that benefit disabled people, taxpayers, and the wider economy and society. We’ve already seen some break ranks, such as Nottingham MP Nadia Whittome, who courageously made the case for change on BBC Radio 4, as well as in the Big Issue.

Now it is over to her colleagues and the front bench – it would be ironic if they gave the impression that they are scared of such hard work, wouldn’t it?

Mikey Erhardt is a campaigns and policy officer at Disability Rights UK.

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