The Tyranny of Tickboxes – How the U.K. government is escalating its war on disability rights in 2023 | Black Triangle Campaign
Here’s an article that’s well worth reading – but This Site won’t re-publish much of it here because the information has already been covered by Vox Political elsewhere.
For now, let’s limit ourselves to this:
After years of the war on the poor,worsening mental health, increasing mass hunger and suicides, the UK government has announced a further round of attacks. Two measures stand out.
There will be more benefit sanctions, where benefits are stopped if people are deemed to have failed to look for work. This will add to the over 2 million food parcels a year currently needed. It will also push more vulnerable people into taking their own lives.
And the main test for Employment and Support Allowance will be abolished. If this had been done out of a belated recognition of the harm these tests have caused in the lives of millions of people, it would be a good step. It is not. Instead, the feared Work Capability Test will be replaced by something even worse: the kind of test currently used for another benefit – Personal Independence Payment or PIP.
It is notoriously difficult to pass the PIP test, and be awarded benefits, especially if your main disability is a mental health issue.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that 1 million people will be deprived of benefits because of the extension of the PIP test into assessments for ESA.
The scene is being set for all the harm already done by ‘Welfare Reform’ to be added to massively.
We have beaten such changes before and it is entirely possible to do so again.
Expect a new wave of information detailing how that can happen – starting soon.
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Yet a cross-party celebration of Tory Welfare reforms has just taken place in the Lords, with Jonathan Ashworth, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions agreeing with Iain Duncan Smith and congratulating him on the progress being made at forcing the sick and disabled into work:
“Iain Duncan Smith and Jonathan Ashworth both spoke of the importance of enabling people with health conditions to engage with work, pointing to the current cross-party consensus around reforming the Work Capability Assessment to remove disincentives to try work.”
(from Policy in Practice