The Welfare Reform Bill Committee And Ammendments

 Originally posted here

The Welfare Reform Bill. which includes provision to abolish DLA and to time-limit ESA, is currently at Committee stage of Parliamentary scrutiny, where amendment to the Bill are made most easily. The trouble is that seats on the Committee are assigned according to party strength, so a majority Government can always stop amendments if they want to. Getting amendments through requires outside pressure to convince the Government that the Bill will not pass through Parliament if it is not amended, or that a Government member on the Committee is persuaded to vote with the opposition due to that outside pressure.

Hywel Williams, the MP for Arfon in North Wales, has decided to apply that pressure in the form of two Early Day Motions: 1755 on Time-limiting ESA and 1756 on Abolition of DLA. These EDMs succinctly present the arguments against abolishing DLA and time-limiting ESA. There are a number of excellent MPs on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee, but too few to defeat the Government. The hope is that these EDMs will apply the necessary pressure to get the relevant amendments passed.

Write to your MP by e-mail asking them to support these EDMs:

Dear Member of Parliament,

Two Early Day Motions have been tabled that pertain to provisions made in the Welfare Reform Bill regarding benefits that are related to illness and disability. The EDMs are intended to demonstrate that the House feels strongly on these matters and is pressing the Government for relevant amendments to the Bill before you vote on it.

The EDMs are by no means a comprehensive discussion of all points relating to disability in the Bill, but are intended to bring the most serious flaws to your attention. The EDMs read:

ABOLITION OF DISABILITY LIVING ALLOWANCE

* Session: 2010-11
* Date tabled: 27.04.2011
* Primary sponsor: Williams, Hywel
* Sponsors:

That this House is deeply concerned by the abolition of disability living allowance (DLA) and its replacement with the personal independence payment (PIP) as provided for in the Welfare Reform Bill; believes that the Government is yet to make a convincing case for reform, as noted by academics, campaigners and the Social Security Advisory Committee; notes that, whilst there may be a case for objective evidence-gathering, the Government's plans for a face-to-face assessment will disadvantage some claimants and will mean that specialist evidence is not given due priority; further believes that the Government is misguided in its claim that PIP will be better targeted than DLA as the reforms involve a simplification of the benefit rates of payment which reduces the ability to personalise payment according to need; further notes that the Government's target of a 20 per cent. reduction in DLA expenditure, as announced in the 2010 Budget, will lead to up to 620,000 disabled people being denied support with no justification of this policy forthcoming; and urges the Government to remove from the bill all provisions relating to DLA reform.

and

TIME-LIMITING EMPLOYMENT AND SUPPORT ALLOWANCE

* Session: 2010-11
* Date tabled: 27.04.2011
* Primary sponsor: Williams, Hywel
* Sponsors:

That this House notes with extreme concern the provisions for time-limiting contribution-related employment and support allowance (ESA) to 12 months included in the Welfare Reform Bill; recognises that ESA claimants will be means-tested for income-related ESA when this period has elapsed, and that an ESA claimant with a spouse or partner working over 24 hours a week will not then be eligible for the benefit; believes that time-limiting ESA isa serious disincentive to work for the partners and carers of ESA claimants, leading to a situation where unemployment is more financially sustainable than work; further believes that time-limiting ESA punishes working families where one member claims ESA; and urges the Government to remove time-limiting ofESA from the bill prior to its Third Reading.

I hope that you will feel able to support these statements.

Yours sincerely,


Journalists, please contact rhydian@thebrokenofbritain.org

"Nothing ever happens. Nothing happens at all. The needle returns to the start of the song and we all sing along like before"



"Nothing ever happens. Nothing happens at all. The needle returns to the start of the song and we all sing along like before"


Sue Marsh - Who Is The Most Deserving?

Rhydian Fon James - Benefit Reform Will Leave Sick And Disabled People Trapped On The Dole 

Labour - Wotsit All About?

The local elections are approaching and today I received information from the local Labour party about Laboury stuff and the candidate standing for councillor. The best I can muster on looking at the information is a 'meh', I can't summon up much interest either in Labour or the local elections. And don't start me on AV. Despite having a law degree I can't fathom it further than the "I want wotsits. Oh but if they haven't got any wotsits when you go to the shop can I have some quavers. And if they haven't got any quavers or wotsits can I have some mini cheddars please?" argument.  All cheesy snacks, all tasting different and all a bit, well, 'meh' again. Years of particular lifestyle choices mean I'm pretty much an expert at alternative shopping snack options but I prefer my politics to be a bit more cut and dried. Mind you, as I can't bring myself to vote for any of the candidates, choosing synthetic cheesy snacks is probably the most sensible plan to stick with. And frankly, I can't see cheesy snacks making a worse mess than any of the politicians. At least the crumbs would be easier to clear up afterwards.

Chatting to a friend earlier I explained my voting dilemma. I live in a constituency that is traditionally about as true Tory blue as it gets. When Labour won their landslide victory in 1997, even Wirral West ended up with a Labour MP, much to most of our surprises. Whilst we're not quite in the 'elect a slug if it wears a blue ribbon set' of constituencies we're not that far from it (1997-2010 being noteworthy exceptions) and there's certainly no point chucking a vote at the Greens or Lib Dems. I can't see AV making any difference to that situation - it's a straight Conservative/Labour fight here and will remain so even if we all get to stand in voting booths going "I don't want that one, I want that one, no that one"

I have voted Labour all my life. I had a huge dilemma when last years general election came around because I didn't want to vote Labour after their introduction of Employment Support Allowance led to the persecution of sick and disabled people, with even supposed left wingers such as Diane Abbott having praised the very un left wingers such as James Purnell for his desire to reintroduce the politics of the workhouse to welfare. Had we had a different Conservative candidate standing in the general election I possibly would have voted Conservative. Our sitting Labour MP had decided to step down, having been an excellent local MP. The candidate put up by the Conservatives is far from an excellent MP, local or otherwise, and whilst I considered voting Conservative there's no way I'd ever vote for that particular candidate. In the end I made my decision based on the fact that although I didn't particularly rate the Labour candidate his wife had spotted medical errors which could have cost me my life in the past and frankly that was good enough for me.

The local elections are a different matter. The local authority has also recently changed from a Labour led to a Conservative led council and has already cut 5 respite care homes which provided specialist elderly mental illness care, ie dementia care to the likes of you and me, and care for people with severe learning disabilities or mental health problems. After a murky history of overcharging severely disabled people and persecuting the whistle blower to try and prevent the details becoming public I'm less than keen on Labour being back in control.

Further complicating the matter is that whatever people think of our current Conservative councillor's politics, it's generally agreed that he cares passionately about the local area and doing the right thing for it. Which is a very underrated passion in today's politics.

I could abstain from voting, but that always strikes me as wrong. So when my friend asked if that meant I'd vote Conservative my gut response was to say that I can't. I just can't.

But I just can't vote Labour either. I can't vote for a party who's welfare policies are causing such fear and misery for disabled people. I can't vote for a party who won't even acknowledge this, who won't 'man up' and admit however well intentioned it may have been that they were wrong on ESA. I can't vote for a party who repeatedly side with the Coalition on welfare reform, who's leader* says nothing on welfare other than that he supports gateway changes to DLA and ignores the increasingly vociferous and terrified pleas sent to his team on a daily basis from disabled people. I can't. I just can't.

But what I can do, is point out to Labour that I'm far from alone in feeling that I just can't vote for them as things currently stand. Blue Labour, Green Labour, Red Labour, Purple Labour - it's all a load of crap as far as I'm concerned. Despite being a bit of a politics geek, I suspect a discussion about the merits of wotsits vs quavers vs mini cheddars would be more productive and interesting to the electorate than what colour Labour want to become and there would at least be faux cheesy snacks to eat at the end of it all.

Which is far more than most sick or disabled people and their carers are going to have if Labour don't get their act together and formulate some decent policies to oppose the current direction of welfare reform.


*even if I'm more likely to make it to Prime Minister than he ever is. 

Extreme Vegetable Chopping - Bendy Style

Entitlement to the lower rate care component of Disability Living Allowance is assessed on the claimants ability to prepare a meal using fresh ingredients and an oven or hob, ie not a microwave ready meal. This video was made on a particularly good day, as on bad days I cause chilligeddon incidents just trying to get a meal prepared for me out of the microwave.



What neither Truffle or I realised is that it took me the best part of 5 minutes to chop up half a cucumber. That seemed entirely normal to both of us, but I assume most people can chop up an entire salad in less than that time...

Cuts To Disability Benefits - 'The Easiest Bit Of Welfare Reform To Sell'

"The coalition’s assault on what the Conservatives refer to as “broken Britain” is underway. The government has announced for the first time how many of the UK’s 2.6m recipients of disability benefits it estimates will be reclassified as fit-to-work in this parliament. The answer: a cool 500,000 or 23 per cent of the total.
Although this will generate political heat among those affected, it is the easiest bit of welfare reform to sell. Britain’s out-of-work disability benefits have been abused. The last government belatedly recognised this and started to introduce a more rigorous system. But many of the 2.2m people who still claim the old benefit elected to do so because it is more generous than the dole."


This article in yesterday's Financial Times* makes very clear the ethos behind the Coalition government's slash and burn attacks on sickness related benefits, that cuts to disability benefits are perceived as the "easiest bit of welfare reform to sell" . The FT don't distinguish between the different types of sickness related benefits so I assume the figure of 2.2million people claiming what they describe as 'the old benefit' refers to Incapacity Benefit, the predecessor to Employment and Support Allowance brought in by New Labour. It seems equally safe to assume that the 2.6million they refer it is actually the 2.9 million Disability Living Allowance recipients, some 1.25 million of which are adults who claim both DLA and IB. 
The official Department of Work and Pensions fraud rate for Disability Living Allowance makes it very clear that only 0.5% of the total number of claims are fraudulent. That's approximately 14,500 fraudulent claims out of an overall 2.9million.  So, less than 15,000 Disability Living Allowance awards are fraudulent and the coalition are determined to reduce the numbers claiming DLA by half a million. Playing fast and loose with the DWP's own statistics and assuming they're wildly underestimating the problem of fraudulent claims, which seems particularly unlikely, if an overall fraud rate of, say 5%, 10 times that of the official rate were assumed, that would still only be one hundred and forty five thousand fraudulent claims out of a total 2.9 million. Still some three hundred and fity five thousand short of the half a million proposed reduction.

The agenda is clear. To vastly restrict eligibility to DLA, already the most rigorously assessed and difficult to claim benefit of all. 

So much for David Cameron's claim that "Those that can should, and those who can't we will always help. I want to make sure that my government always looks after the elderly, the frail, the poorest in our country." David Cameron, 11th May 2010


Originally posted 17/09/2010

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