Author: Neil Armstrong

Disabled activists have protested outside the Conservative conference in Manchester in a bid to shame party members into accepting that a decade of austerity cuts from Tory-led governments have caused poverty, despair and countless deaths.

Protesters spoke of how the cuts and reforms had led to the deaths of tens of thousands of disabled people, backed up by research by mainstream institutions like Oxford, Liverpool and Cambridge Universities.

Others pointed to three high-profile and evidenced UN reports that have shown the devastating impact on disabled people of a decade of austerity.

The Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) protest took place on Monday afternoon, just a few yards from the main entrance to the conference, in central Manchester.

Two activists even dressed up as “Torie Plague” and “Doris Death” to highlight the “debt, despair and death” that “heartless, soulless” Conservative-led governments have caused since 2010.

Some protesters, from Manchester, were also there to tell Tory party members that they were not welcome in their city.

And some said it was vital that those disabled people who were able to protest in person ensured that Tory party members were aware of the damage caused by their government’s policies.

Piers Wilkinson, disabled students officer for the National Union of Students, said: “It is important that those of us who can protest and are in a position of being able to protest and have our voices heard do it, particularly on behalf of people who cannot.”

Jo Taylor said of the government’s cuts and reforms to disabled people’s support: “We have to keep on protesting until they listen and understand. It is a horrendous situation.”

Rick Burgess, from Manchester DPAC and Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, said the Tories had to understand that they were not welcome in the city, after 10 years of denying disabled people’s rights, and policies that had led to the loss of countless lives.

He told Disability News Service (DNS) that he was at the protest because the Tories “keep coming back and they have not got the message that Manchester is not a city built on Conservative values. It is not somewhere they are popular.”

He said there had been 10 years of the denial of disabled people’s rights “with the consequent loss of many lives”.

He said the continued return to Manchester by the Conservative party amounted to “hostile trolling” of the city.

He added: “On a human level, they need to know that they are not welcome. They should be ashamed of what they do.”

He pointed to three UN reports that had condemned the impact of government policies on disabled people, in 2016, 2017 and 2019.

He said: “This isn’t just our opinion.

“They are a disaster. There is something wrong with people who think this is OK.”

Another leading disabled campaigner, Doug Paulley, said that he had wanted to be at the protest because of the government’s “mass punishment of disabled people”.

He said: “We are an inconvenient expense at best, a complete side issue, and yet people are suffering and dying. It’s utterly disgusting. It cannot be allowed to go on.

“I am lucky that I am relatively protected from it but so many people are not.”

Eleanor Lisney, one of the founders of Greenwich DPAC, said she was at the protest because she had no idea what was going to happen to the country now, “let alone to disabled people”.

She highlighted the “intersectionality” of the impact of austerity, which had affected not just groups like disabled people and women individually, but had hit disabled women, disabled people from BAME communities and disabled immigrants even harder.

She said: “The protest here is so we keep the focus on the disastrous impact on disabled people through all those years of austerity.”

Dominic Hutchins, from Manchester DPAC, who is also a parish councillor, said he was at the protest because of the treatment of disabled people by the Tory government, including through the introduction of universal credit and its reforms and management of the disability benefit assessment processes.

He said the mainstream media failed to report how many people had died after being unfairly assessed.

Hutchins is a qualified youth worker but is currently unemployed because the youth service is “on its knees” following years of austerity.

He said: “I am on jobseeker’s allowance and disability benefits and I have got a good degree.

“The Tories don’t see the benefit of youth work but when young people are on the streets, they complain.”

Wilkinson said the protest was particularly important when Greater Manchester Police had admitted sharing information about disabled protesters with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

He pointed to “hidden cuts” such as the introduction of personal independence payment (PIP), the cuts to disabled students’ allowance, the rollout of universal credit and the social care funding crisis.

And he highlighted the conclusions of the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, which found there had been “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights by the Tory-led DWP, and research which showed austerity had been to blame for more than 130,000 deaths since 2012.

Taylor said she was at the protest because she had been forced to wash at the local swimming pool after her housing association refused to provide the disabled facilities grant she needed to adapt her bathroom, while she had also been forced to buy her own stairlift.

She said she was “disgusted” with the government’s benefit reforms and cuts to support for disabled people, and she added: “There are people dying from sanctioning and having no money.”

Another disabled campaigner and DPAC member at the protest, Nigel Peirce, a former mental health nurse, said he wanted to raise concerns about the transition from disability living allowance to PIP, and the introduction of universal credit, which had caused people to suffer “economically, physically and emotionally”, while some had died.

He said: “I haven’t got a message for the Tories because I don’t think they will listen.

“The point of being here is for other people to see us. We are in Manchester and they come by and see us. Not one Tory going in there is going to listen.”

One disabled activist told fellow protesters: “I have watched the social security system in my country turn into something I am thoroughly ashamed of.”

She said the work capability assessment “has got nothing to do with your ability to work” but was there “to frighten you and humiliate you and we are sick of it”, while she said DWP staff label her “a scrounger and a skiver”.

Another said: “We are here today to demand our basic human rights, the ability to live our lives as independently as possible, with dignity, humanity and a society that cares.

“How dare you come to the north of England. Go back to where you belong!

“You’re not wanted here, you’re not needed here, you’re not welcome here. Go home, go away, be gone.”

Gary Caine, a disabled activist from Manchester, told DNS: “There is that much tragedy going on with disabled people’s lives. People need to take a stand.

“My life has got a damn sight worse under the Conservatives, compared with Labour.

“I cannot believe my life has gone down the chute and got worse for no damn reason.”

Another disabled activist, Mero, said she had come to the protest from Birmingham, because of the “unfairness” of the government’s policies.

She said she had been told she would have to be reassessed for PIP when she had previously been told she would not need to be assessed again.

She said: “I just can’t stand these cuts any more.

“Why have we got to keep fighting for our rights?”

3 October 2019. News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 

Labour’s shadow chancellor has told disabled party activists they need to “eyeball” senior figures in the party who have not done enough to take on board the policies outlined in their new neurodiversity manifesto.

John McDonnell was speaking to members of Neurodivergent Labour (NDL) at a fringe meeting held to launch the manifesto at the party’s annual conference in Brighton.

McDonnell, who has played a key role in enabling the launch of NDL and supporting the development of its manifesto, said there had not yet been much interest shown by Labour MPs and other frontbench shadow ministers.

He said: “Janine [Booth, convenor of NDL’s manifesto group] and others have been offering briefings to individual shadow frontbench teams, and there wasn’t an awful lot of take-up.”

He said this was because shadow ministers were under pressure and focused on their own briefs.

But he said: “What we have got to do now is make sure, in the run-up to the general election, whenever it comes, that we get reinserted into [Labour’s] national manifesto a recognition of neurodiversity and the challenges and opportunities of that.”

He said: “I think we should use the coming period as an opportunity to lock down commitments within the Labour party for change and then broaden the debate and campaign around it.”

He said he did not blame colleagues in the party for their lack of involvement, because of the pressures they faced.

But he said there was a need now for NDL to “face up and eyeball people” in the party and for the party to “get a move on”.

He added later: “I don’t think we have gone far enough or fast enough, so we have to really renew that and get on with it.”

Booth told the launch meeting: “We think if these policies are enacted as a whole by a Labour government it will radically improve the lives of autistic, dyspraxic, dyslexic and other neurodivergent people in this country.”

She said it was a “living document and the more we build Neurodivergent Labour and the more we bring in allies as well as neurodivergent people, the more we can build this manifesto as different policies develop in new areas as well”.

She introduced the manifesto’s five key principles: that it is based on the social model of disability; that it has a “neurodiversity” approach that accepts that there are “many different brain wirings, many different brain structures” and that “humanity as a species is naturally neurologically diverse”; and that it opposes austerity, including cuts to services such as support for neurodivergent students in mainstream education.

The fourth principle is that it is a “Labour” manifesto, based on Labour values of socialism, solidarity and democracy; and the fifth is that it is based on “nothing about us without us”, so “neurodivergent people ourselves can speak about what our experiences and needs are”.

Abi Moorcock, a member of the manifesto group, described seven key areas where neurodivergent people are facing hostility: securing a diagnosis; independent living, services and social security; education; barriers to work; prejudice and discrimination, including bullying and hate crime; problems with the justice system, including prisoners who should receive support rather than being in custody; and the failure of research into understanding and supporting neurodivergent people.

Emma Dalmayne, a member of the manifesto group and an activist who campaigns to raise concerns about “quack cures” for autism, said in response to a question from a Labour councillor that the proportion of the population diagnosed as neurodivergent has only been increasing because of “more awareness and better diagnostic tools and tool kits”.

She said: “We have always been here, but we were seen as the weird, the kooky, the eccentric, the loner, the oddball.”

Booth added: “There has always been a variety of brain wirings, but the things that have changed socially make those more of an issue.”

Among key polices in the manifesto are to scrap the work capability assessment; to ensure that local authorities carry out the requirements of the Autism Act through decision-making forums that include representatives of autistic people; and to provide the support necessary to enable independent living, including “the need to get more autistic people out of ATUs [assessment and treatment units]”.

The manifesto calls for neurodiversity training for all staff in public services; smaller class sizes, and education about neurodiversity in the school curriculum; and reversing the cuts to special educational needs funding.

It also calls for a new legal requirement on employers to make their workplaces “more equal and accessible and less hostile”; for legal changes to ensure anti-discrimination laws apply to volunteers as well employees; and for measures to ensure the built environment is less distressing.

Other manifesto measures include introducing new laws to ban quack cures, such as MMS (a type of bleach) which harm autistic and other neurodivergent people; to make neurodivergence a new protected characteristic under the Equality Act, with the same protections as disability; and to ensure that “non-harmful unusual behaviours” are not criminalised by the justice system.

McDonnell told the meeting that there was “a hell of a challenge in many fields”, but he added: “I actually think the scale of the challenge is a reflection of the scale of the need.”

He said the issues included in the neurodiversity manifesto should be raised with the party because it was “the right thing to do”.

But he also pointed out that “in pure electoral terms, the number of individuals and families who are dealing with issues of neurodiversity is enormous”, and so a commitment to those policies in Labour’s next general election manifesto would “shift a large number of votes”.

He said: “We need to reinvigorate our representations within the party [and] make sure we get a full recognition within the manifesto itself.

“The resource demands are pretty enormous as well. We have to accept that [but] we might as well confront that early rather than later.

“An amount of investment now does actually in the end, in crude terms, save money at a later date.

“There have been too many cases we have dealt with where issues not tackled have resulted in family breakdown, and people being placed in institutions inappropriately, often very expensively as well.”

Neurodivergent Labour is now set to hold its first agm in London in late November.

Booth said after the meeting that McDonnell was trying to secure an invitation for NDL to discuss its manifesto with the party’s National Policy Forum, as the next stage of persuading Labour to adopt it as party policy.

26 September 2019.  News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 

The Liberal Democrats have admitted that they probably “overlooked” the need for a detailed policy on the care and support needs of working-age disabled people.

The admission to Disability News Service (DNS) by the party’s health spokesperson in the Lords, Baroness Jolly, came after party members criticised its new NHS and social care policy paper for ignoring those needs.

The policy paper refers to the “devastating” impact on health and social care posed by Brexit, and particularly a no-deal Brexit, including the effect on the country’s ability to recruit health and social care staff, and to source medication.

It says the party in government would raise an extra £6 billion to boost spending on social care, public health and mental health.

There are policies on carers and people with learning difficulties, including a pledge to give every person with learning difficulties the right to a named advocate to help them “navigate public services and access health, care and advice services”.

There is also a promise to set a new national target to reduce the gap in life expectancy between people with and without learning difficulties by one year every year.

And there is the promise of a more “ambitious” target for reducing the number of people with learning difficulties forced into assessment and treatment centres.

But despite the spending pledge and a mention of the “postcode lottery” in care, there is no discussion of how the party in government would address the support needs of working-age disabled people.

The failure comes at a time when backing for a new National Independent Living Support Service (NILSS) – proposed by the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA) of disabled people’s grassroots groups – is gaining momentum.

A NILSS would see a legal right to independent living, with support provided free at the point of need, funded by general taxation, managed by central government, and delivered locally in co-production with disabled people.

Baroness Jolly, who chairs the learning difficulties charity HfT, told the party’s annual conference in Bournemouth this week that the only way to secure the future of social care was through setting up a cross-party commission on health and social care.

This, according to the policy paper, would aim to set a “realistic” long-term funding settlement for the NHS and social care, and introduce a dedicated health and social care tax to fund it.

But there was frustration among members who spoke in the debate at the lack of a proper social care policy, with detail about how a Liberal Democrat government would reform adult social care.

Cllr June Greenwell, a Liberal Democrat member of Lancaster City Council, told the conference that she could not endorse the “deeply disappointing” policy paper because social care services were discussed “almost entirely, indeed entirely, through the prism of their effect on the NHS”.

She said: “Social care services matter because the people who need those services matter and they matter whatever the impact on the NHS, and we should be saying so.”

Greenwell said the party had failed to offer “a vision, an ambition to radically improve access to social care services”.

The party’s candidate to fight the North Warwickshire seat at the next general election, Richard Whelan, who himself has a council-funded support package, said the motion “does not go far enough”.

He told members debating the new policy paper: “For someone like me, we need more than just the basic care needs, we need personal assistance.

“We need help to live an independent life. Allowing me to get here today to speak to you… involves not just the care in the home, it involves help outside the home, but it also involves help with getting educational qualifications and getting into work.

“All these things go beyond the remit of this motion and this paper.”

He called for the party to set up a working group to discuss the issue, and to bring it back to conference next year “so that disabled people can live an independent life”.

The policy paper was approved by members and has now become party policy.

But Whelan told DNS after the debate: “It’s frustrating to me that all they have talked about is linking health and social care and care workers.”

He said the party did not seem to have a policy on the support needs of working-age disabled people.

Whelan appeared to support the NILSS idea, and a legal right to independent living, as proposed by ROFA.

He said he was pushing the party to set up a working group to report back with a motion on independent living at next year’s conference, and he added: “We have to do it properly.”

Baroness Jolly told DNS that the issue of the support needs of working-age disabled people was probably “overlooked rather than ignored” by the policy paper and the motion.

She blamed the party’s lack of resources to fund detailed policy work, caused she said by its performance at the last general election, which led to a lower level of funding for its parliamentary work.

She said: “We are a very under-resourced party.”

She said her message to working-age disabled people was: “Lib Dems look forward to the next general election where we would hope to increase the number of Lib Dem MPs which would then give us the capacity to expand our policy base.”

But she said she would also speak to senior people in the party and “ask them to plug the gap in today’s paper and today’s motion”.

Although the health and social care policy paper offered little to address the issue, another paper, on social security, poverty and access to services and skills, said the party wanted to reintroduce “a form of” the Independent Living Fund, which was closed by the Tory government in June 2015.

The social security paper, which has also now become party policy after being approved by members at the conference (see separate story), said a Liberal Democrat government would “reinstate a form of the Independent Living Fund to help people who need it to live independently in their community”.

But it also said it would “increase the role of local authorities in administering the support to ensure that it is properly responsive to local needs”, which could clash with calls for a NILSS.

The idea of a return of a form of ILF was not mentioned in either motion debated by the conference this week.

19 September 2019.  News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

The needs of many disabled pupils in England are not being met, while councils are under growing financial pressure because more children are attending special schools, parliament’s spending watchdog has warned.

The report from the National Audit Office (NAO) says the number of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who attend special schools or alternative provision rose by more than a fifth between 2014 and 2018.

It comes after nine years of policies from Conservative-led governments that have been aimed at educating more of the 1.3 million pupils in England with SEND in segregated special schools.

Those policies have followed the party’s 2010 general election manifesto (PDF), which pledged to “end the bias towards the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools”.

The report from NAO yesterday (Wednesday) warns that, although the Department for Education (DfE) has increased school funding, particularly for pupils with high needs, this has not kept pace with the rise in the number of pupils, while local authorities are “increasingly overspending their budgets for supporting pupils with high needs”.

It adds: “The main reason why local authorities have overspent their high-needs budgets is that more pupils are attending special schools.”

The report says there was a 2.6 per cent real terms reduction in funding for each pupil with high needs in the four years between 2013-14 and 2017-18.

At the same time, local authorities have “sharply” increased the amount they spend on independent special schools, with a real terms increase of nearly a third (32.4 per cent) between 2013-14 and 2017-18.

NAO says there are concerns that demand for special school places is growing because “the system incentivises mainstream primary and secondary schools to be less inclusive”, with mainstream schools expected to cover the first £6,000 of support for a child with SEND from their existing budgets.

Schools with high numbers of children with SEND may also appear to be performing less well academically in government performance tables.

About one-fifth of pupils with SEND have education, health and care (EHC) plans, which give them legally enforceable entitlements to support, with the other four-fifths identified as needing a lower level of SEN support at school.

The report says NAO is concerned that many pupils with SEND “are not being supported effectively, and that pupils with SEND who do not have EHC plans are particularly exposed”.

The report also points out that pupils with SEND – particularly those without EHC plans – are more likely to be permanently excluded from school than pupils without SEND.

In 2017-18, children with SEND made up 45 per cent of permanent exclusions, while survey evidence in 2019 suggested that pupils with SEND are more likely to experience off-rolling – in which mainstream schools force pupils off their books to boost their academic results – than other children.

Among its recommendations, the NAO report says the government should make changes to “encourage and support mainstream schools to be more inclusive in terms of admitting, retaining and meeting the needs of pupils with SEND”.

And it says DfE should share good practice on how mainstream schools can meet the needs of pupils with SEND who do not have EHC plans.

It also calls on DfE to assess how much it would cost to ensure proper funding of the system for supporting pupils with SEND created by the 2014 reforms that introduced EHCPs.

Last week, education secretary Gavin Williamson announced a review of support for children with SEND.

But NAO made it clear to Disability News Service yesterday that DfE had seen an early draft of its report in late July. This suggests Williamson’s decision to launch a review was heavily influenced by NAO’s concerns.

Simone Aspis, policy and campaigns coordinator for The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE), said: “ALLFIE welcomes the NAO’s conclusion that the current SEND funding system is financially unsustainable as a result of increased spending on segregated education provision that often leaves disabled pupils with poor outcomes, and recommends that government invest in mainstream education and removes the funding bias away from segregated education.”

She said this supported the recommendations of the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD) that the UK government should invest in a fully inclusive education system, as required under its obligations in article 24 of the UN disability convention.

She said: “The DfE have announced another SEND review. We see all these reviews as a distraction from the government’s total disregard for the continuing systematic attack on disabled pupils’ and students’ human rights to inclusive education.

“We do not need any more reviews. We need action now.”

What was needed, she said, was for the government to implement CRPD’s recommendations around removing the current “parallel education system and have one sustainable inclusive education service that includes everyone regardless of ability”.

A DfE spokesperson said yesterday that the department was not able to respond within the deadline set by DNS to questions about the report, including whether successive Tory-led governments were to blame for the rise in the number of pupils in special schools because of the “end the bias” pledge by the Conservatives in 2010.

But she said in a statement: “Helping all children and young people reach their potential is one of the core aims of this government, including those with special educational needs.

“That is why the prime minister has committed to providing an extra £700 million next year to make sure these children get an education that helps them develop and thrive as adults.

“We have improved special educational needs support to put families at the heart of the system and give them better choice in their children’s education, whether in mainstream or special school.

“Last week we launched a review of these reforms, to make sure every child, everywhere, gets an education that prepares them for success.”

12 September 2019. News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com