Sick and Disabled people in the UK will loose a BIG part of their income

contribution by Sue Marsh:

I know there are lots of cuts happening all at once and group after group must be lobbying for column inches or news slots.

Students, middle income child benefit recipients, housing benefit claimants frightened they are about to become homeless, nurses, fire fighters, police, local councils – we all want you to take our cause to heart, to tell people what is really happening on our behalf.

But there is a group who might as well not exist. We have no-one but ourselves, yet our voices are probably the weakest in society.

Most of us can’t physically march, some can’t even speak at all and others don’t know what is being done to them. We have no networks of influential contacts, most can’t attend rallies or flash-mobs.

Sick and Disabled people are now facing cuts of up to a third in their incomes. Since George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review last October, there has been a steady drip-drip of almost daily announcements that have stripped away decades of hard-fought dignity in just a few short months.

Employment Support Allowance (ESA) will now be time limited to 1 year (Cost : £4752.80 pa)

2.27 Million of the 2.5 million claiming ESA will now be considered fit for work (91%)

Up to 750,000 of the most profoundly disabled who claim DLA will also be found fit and have their benefits stopped (25%)

Benefit rates have been frozen (Potential loss of up to 15% of income over 5 yr parliament)

Housing benefit caps will make many disabled people homeless

Work support schemes are being scrapped at a time when unemployment is already creeping towards 3 million. The “Access to Work” programme will be scrapped, which helped small and medium sized businesses adapt premises, job centres face cuts and a private, American firm (ATOS) have been given an almost total monopoly in forcing us into work, paid commission for each “success”

Local councils face cuts so vast (27% over 5 yr parliament) that they have already started to cut vital support services – pulling funding for hospices, axing specialist school provision, closing hospital wards, cutting care packages – the list goes on and on. This article might help to put things into perspective http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2011/01/nowhere-to-turn-for-vulnerable.

Disability Living Allowance is to be scrapped and replaced, whilst adults needing full time residential care and children in hospital will have the basic right of mobility taken away from them, with the scrapping of mobility payments for these groups.

In exactly one month, DLA is due to be slashed by parliament.

By the 14th February, if sickness or disability come for you or your loved ones, (and sadly, the statistics are that one day, in some form, they will) you may find that all those NI payments and tax contributions have been for nothing.

You may find yourself totally dependent on a partner financially, unable to get treatment, care or equipment to make your already unrecognisable life liveable.

If you have no partner, you may find yourself in abject poverty, or even homeless as you try to face the un-faceable. Read more>>