Thursday 24 February 2011

Open Letter on Welfare Reform

Letter in The Guardian on the 24th of February, 2011, supported by The Broken of Britain.

The government’s implementation of welfare reform is destroying the covenant of care between disabled people and the welfare state (Report, 23 February). The most vulnerable people in our country are being subjected to cruelty. The work capability assessment is not fit for purpose. It is denying employment support allowance to those whom the 2007 Welfare Reform Act deemed it not reasonable to require to work.

The assessment lacks public and medical accountability. Criteria about what constitutes an “illness” and a “disability” have been increasingly narrowed over the years into a set of descriptors that fail to recognise the complex problems and needs of those who are mentally ill, or who have intermittent illnesses or communicative conditions.

We want a system that is flexible and supportive of disabled people and which helps people into good, appropriate jobs with decent wages. One that values and supports those who are unable to work, and that insures us all against the misfortunes of illness and disability.


Jon Cruddas MP Labour, Dagenham & Rainham,

Neil Coyle Director of policy, Disability Alliance,

Anna Healy Labour, House of Lords,

Gavin Hayes General secretary, Compass,

Professor Jonathan Rutherford Middlesex University,

Professor Peter Beresford Brunel University,

Steve Griffiths Researcher and Consultant,

Rhydian Fôn James The Broken of Britain,

Frances Kelly, Rosemary O’Neill Carerwatch,

Alison Wiles, Anna Kennedy, Carole Rutherford co-founders, Act Now – Autism Campaigners Together

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

First they came for the weak and voiceless, they picked them off like wolves, not from desperate hunger, not for love of the herd, but from raw animal instinct, the assertion of dominance - the unnatural order of things.
Too late the herd realised that the wolves have no limits, that their family was next and that lives destroyed cannot be restored.
JUSTICE must come first ... only then can we all together start rebuilding for the future.
With great courage we MUST make a stand and in love protect the weak, the vulnerable, the oppressed, the debt slaves, the voiceless.
Take heart, though the wolves project perceptions of power, we are MANY and they are few ... stand strong together, this will take time ...
This is not only necessary, it is RIGHT and TRUE !

Anonymous said...

I think that is necessary to restore unconditional benefits for sick and disabled people with irreversible infirmities and precisely the old system of the Incapacity Benefits .
Who believes that in these times of severity , a new system could be more generous than the old one ???
A new system we led us only to became experimental mices . The old system worked for the vulnerable people , it does not worked only for the bankers and for the UNUM . Concerning the Professor Paul Gregg , according to my personal opinion , he is responsible for the ill-treatments against sick and disabled people because was in the group that planned the criminal system ESA . He tryies only to find some pretests in order to exempt himself from resposabilities .
Paul