Tory Brexit trade bill will rob disabled people of the few rights left to them
Looking guilty: But Liam Fox won’t lift a finger to make his trade bill acceptable to disability rights organisations.
If you think the Conservative Party – and in particular a minister who is a doctor by training – would not do everything in its power to harm people with disabilities, you simply have not been paying attention.
Tories are keen on “chequebook euthanasia” – pushing the unemployed and disabled into early graves with the excuse that supporting them is just too expensive.
That is why the concern raised in the Independent article quoted below is so convincing.
Robbing disabled people of transport by claiming it is necessary for the purposes of trade will isolate some of the UK’s most vulnerable citizens and deny them access to employment or meaningful lifestyles.
The examples of the last few years show what happens next: Malnutrition, depression, and eventual suicide.
And the Tories wash their hands of any responsibility, saying there are “many reasons” for a person to take their own life.
Perhaps the most foul aspect of this is that it would be collateral damage – a tangential consequence of Brexit on which none of the Tories in Parliament would waste a moment’s thought.
Of course the Department for International Trade insists that the continuity powers in the trade bill could not be used without Parliamentary scrutiny and says that it has held discussions with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission about the bill.
If so, why would signatories including Liberty, the Business Disability Forum, Disability Rights UK, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Mencap, The National Aids Trust, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, Amnesty International UK, Ambitious About Autism and the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations feel the need to write?
Once again, disabled people are to bear the brunt of Tory cruelty.
The irony is that even the Confederation of British Industry has made it clear that the Trade Bill will not help the UK deal with other countries at all; the only purpose will be to increase the suffering of our own population.
And – if you voted ‘Leave’ – you thought Brexit would make our lives better!
An inevitable consequence of a Brexit run by the Conservative Party is that the interests of society’s most vulnerable people are being trampled upon in an unprecedented manner
The latest example of that happening comes courtesy of the Trade Bill that will be debated on the floor of the House of Commons.
According to a letter sent to the International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, the bill “lets ministers change a wide range of laws – including the Equality Act – without parliamentary scrutiny, in order to implement international trade agreements”.
It continues: “There are no safeguards to prevent ministers from using these new powers to remove rights granted by Parliament.”
It could [for example] be used to change those parts of the Equality Act that require public vehicles to be made accessible to disabled people. This is important because people with disabilities rely far more on public transport than non disabled people… for access to [work], leisure facilities, local services, shops and the like.
Source: Liam Fox’s Brexit trade bill set to crush disabled people | The Independent
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The new Victorians.. the peasants place is to be ruled by the privileged and entitled.
Brexit is an ill conceived, hate fuelled fantasy made reality by jingoistic closet racists, flag waving extremists and gullible useful idiots who’ve now sealed the UK’s slide towards being a second rate nation sinking into third world status.
The only direct benefit of the lunacy will be to a handful of already very wealthy people benefitting from the UK offshore tax haven and money laundering environment.
The entire disaster has been bankrolled by a dodgy spiv with links to Russia who is desperate to avoid the fourth EU money laundering directive.
Who’s that then? Why be coy?
All part of the Nasty Party’s evil plan to turn the clock back to the 19th century.
You have that wrong. The Tories don’t want to turn the clock back to the 19th century, they want to turn it all the way back to the Dark Ages. Their wet dream is to turn the UK into a Dark Age plutocracy, where the rich enjoy unbridled power, and the rest of us are their slaves, or, if you’re non-white, dead.
We have been robbed of transport already the EU is not a panacea for the disabled the unemployed the sick or the working man, quite the opposite, Han m a choice of 1972 workers rights over today’s and I will snap your hand off.
Aktion t4 at its best culling the stock through benefits denial but don’t hold your breath for justice they all in it together just we outside so the great cull will continue Jeff3
they are killing people off that fast they have nowhere to put the bodies.morgues are getting too full. and undertakers snowed under they are even finding bodies that arent bodies cos they are still alive. let alone commemoration stones/plaques etc. yes you can scatter ashes but wont be long before they bring in rules to stop you doing that. as well.unless you pay THEM to do it.
Voted Brexit ? Not exactly getting your country back more like selling the vulnerable down the swanny for a quick u.s dollar. Despite the remonstrations – it’ll be the health system next…..
No “Subscribe” in the left hand side.
Thats why i voted to stay in europe