Osborne's 'sleight of hand' is imposing benefit cuts on those who are not able to work. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA
A tabloid recently proclaimed on its front page that 75% of people in receipt of incapacity benefits have failed a medical designed to weed out scroungers. They omitted to mention, no doubt due to a shortage of space, that this is because the new and supremely insensitive medical test is almost impossible to pass fully. Without my welfare rights adviser's good offices on my behalf I wouldn't be among the 5% of claimants who are in the protected "support group" of employment support allowance. Those who are instead placed in the "work-related activity group" will now, if they are on the "contributory element" of the benefit, be moved to jobseeker's allowance (with no specialised assistance and less money, not to mention no available jobs) after one year.
Without my adviser's time and expertise, I wouldn't be getting the rehabilitation I so desperately need. I hear that the already ruthless medicals are set to get even harder early next year. I have been summoned by my GP to help him fill in a form about my ability to work, or not. This alarms me. Why are the Department for Work and Pensions writing to him when my adviser has told them that I cannot walk, talk properly, have poor motor skills (typing this takes hours for example) as a result of a serious acquired brain injury? All his good offices on my behalf are suddenly in jeopardy thanks to George Osborne's convincing impersonation of Freddy Krueger.
Osborne recently revealed his plans to cut the welfare budget, currently at £192bn. In announcing this, to backbench cheers, he also revealed that if he hadn't been the chancellor, he could have had a career as a magician, inasmuch as he gets us to focus on one hand while the other is doing the work. In Osborne's case he allows the public to think that the lion's share of the welfare budget is taken up with benefits and the like whereas in fact the lion's share, more than 50%, goes on state pensions and benefits to pensioners, the rest being divided up between housing benefit, child benefit and working tax credit and very little – in comparison to the overall welfare budget – is actually being spent on disability and "out of work" benefits.
All this, if its impact on me weren't so serious would put me in mind of the quote after General Custer's defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn: "He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory". Because when Osborne says the country faces tough choices, I feel sure that I can't be the only one to notice the sophistry that underpins his words. Tough, certainly for those less well-off, the single parents, pensioners and the disabled. In short, anyone who was under the erroneous impression that the cradle to grave welfare system was a safety net will soon discover it is a noose.
But still, when the cabinet of millionaires says: "We're all in this together", for some reason, I think of the line from Animal Farm: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."
• Edward Lawrence, who writes under a pseudonym, is a disabled service user
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Welfare reform: what choice is there for those forced off disability benefits? | Society | guardian.co.uk
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