Last week’s votes in the House of Lords in which the government were defeated 3 times in their plans to make Britain a crueller place were an outstanding success for this country’s disability rights activists. The Uncut community helped make this happen by tweeting and emailing peers telling them that dismantling state assistance for people unable to work was not acceptable.
We need your help again.
Tomorrow, the Lords will vote on amendments to preserve Disability Living Allowance (DLA). The most glaring fact that you need to know is this: They plan to cut the Disability Living Allowance budget by 20% despite the fact that only 0.5% of claims are fraudulent. This means that one in every five genuine DLA claimants will be losing out on money we depend on to get by.
Despite what you’ve probably read in the papers; DLA is not an out-of-work benefit. If you need to use a wheelchair to get around or you need help to get out of bed; those needs don’t go away because you’ve got a job so the money to pay for that help doesn’t go away either.
As a manual wheelchair user who gets the care component for supervision because of my unfortunate habit of doing things like snapping a rib when I bend down to pick something up: I’m set to lose everything. I honestly don’t know how I’ll be able to cope without that small amount of support. The government keep saying that the reforms are about “making work pay,” but as DLA is what enables many disabled people to work, these cuts will force a lot of people out of the workplace.
More -
https://web.archive.org/web/20120212171619/http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/blog/guest-post-last-chance-to-save-disability-living-allowance#.TxR7mnE5V2Q.blogger
No comments:
Post a Comment