The UN Inquiry and UN visit to UK to examine the
grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) was initiated by DPAC.
This inquiry is the first of its kind-it has great
historic importance. It means the UN will examine the vicious and
punitive attacks on disabled people’s independent living as well as the
cuts which have seen so many placed in inhuman circumstances and has led
to unnecessary deaths.
In May 2013, after 3 years of onslaught against
disabled people by the Condem government, DPAC made a formal submission
under the CRPD Optional Protocol which establishes an individual
complaints mechanism for the Convention.
There was less information and statistics than now on
the impact of the Welfare Reform and loss of a right to independent
living on disabled people. However the evidence DPAC presented to the
CRPD Committee was extremely strong
DPAC’s evidence presented the regression of disabled
people’s convention rights and the grave and systematic violations of
disabled people’s rights under the UNCRPD. It was accepted by the UNCRPD
Committee.
After an initial response from the government
responding point by point to the DPAC submission, DPAC made a second
submission, supported by further evidence of the disproportionate impact
of all cuts on disabled people.
This submission, as the first one, included,
the failings of the Work Capability Assessment,
the bedroom tax,
the closure of the Independent Living Fund
the unwillingness of the government to make an assessment of the cumulative impact of the Welfare Reform on disabled people
its reluctance to monitor what was happening to
disabled people who were found fit for work after an assessment and who
lost their only means of support (see complete list)i,.
This submission was partly based on firmly sourced
statistical and other factual evidence, and also on the hundreds of
personal testimonies that DPAC has received from individuals who have
been affected adversely by the governments’ welfare reforms.
The UK government sent a second response to the UN
about DPAC’s submission but by then the CRPD Committee had decided that
there was enough evidence to open an inquiry into the violations of
disabled people’s rights by the UK government.
The Committee also told DPAC that the inquiry was
totally confidential and could be jeopardised and called off if any news
of an UN inquiry was leaked.
It was the indiscretion of an ex-member of the CRPD
Committee which brought the inquiry into the open, but DPAC kept its
side of the non-disclosure agreement. The further leak in newspapers on
Sunday 30th August convinced us that disabled people needed to know the
full extent of the process
This inquiry is an unprecedented move and unchartered territory for the UNCRPD Committee.
It is also another route of hope for disabled people
who have been abused by the UK government, ignored by most of the
opposition and betrayed by the big Disability Charities.
‘The UN is to visit the UK to investigate whether Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms have caused “grave or systematic violations” of disabled peoples’ human rights, it has been reported.
A leading disability charity says that they have been contacted by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as part of an investigation into human rights abuses against disabled people in the UK.
Inclusion Scotland, a consortium of disability organisations in Scotland, says the UN committee has advised them that they will be sending a Special Rapporteur to the UK in the “near future” as part of their probe.’
More than 80 people a month are now dying after being declared ‘fit for
work’. The safety net that used to be there for the most vulnerable is
being torn to shreds.
Go to your local benefits office and desperation can be boiled down to a six-point plan, mounted on pink laminated card.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has assembled written
guidance on suicide for its “frontline staff” – a euphemism for workers
hired to call people and break it to them that they’ve been rejected for
benefits. One section of the guidance – that is to be reported to
managers to alert them of “a suicidal intention” – instructs jobcentre
staff to find out what the person plans, when it is planned for, and
whether “the customer has the means to hand”.
I don’t know at what point social security and a risk of suicide
became inevitable partners. Or when government “supporting people” – as
the DWP described the guidance this week – began to mean, not helping people build their lives, but checking that they do not want to die.
Death has become a part of Britain’s benefits system.
That is not hyperbole but the reality that the stress caused by
austerity has led us to. Shredding the safety net – a mix of sanctions,
defective “fit for work” tests, and outright cuts to multiple services –
has meant that benefit claimants are dying; through suicide, starvation, and even being crushed by a refuse lorry when a 17-week benefit sanction forced a man to scavenge in a bin for food.
How can a government have such disregard for death? It is worth looking at how it expects some of us to live...
This morning, the government released mortality statistics
– or rather, was forced to after several freedom of information
requests – that show more than 80 people a month are dying after being
declared “fit for work”. These are complex figures but early analysis
points to two notable facts. First that 2,380 people
died between December 2011 and February 2014 shortly after being judged
“fit for work” and rejected for the sickness and disability benefit,
Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). We also now know that 7,200
claimants died after being awarded ESA and being placed in the
work-related activity group – by definition, people whom the government
had judged were able to “prepare” to get back to work.
Notably how or why each of these people died was not recorded –
meaning it’s impossible to say whether a death was linked to an
incorrect assessment. But for the government, distortion is key and it
is not restricted to faked benefit sanction leaflets. If we needed a sign of the DWP’s intentions, as it prepared to release today’s mortality statistics it was seemingly hedging its bets by finalising the details for a tribunal where it had planned to try to repress some of them.
How can a government have such disregard for death? It is worth
looking at how it expects some of us to live. Until a few months ago in
Bootle, Merseyside, a 48-year-old severely disabled man was being washed in a paddling pool in his front room.
Rob Tomlinson, who has cerebral palsy, had used a purpose-built walk-in
shower in the specially converted four-bed council house he shared with
his carers, his brother and sister-in law. The bedroom tax saw the
family evicted and until a new property was found a year later, Rob
lived with only a child’s pool and hose to stay clean.
There is a reason, in the age of austerity, that politicians and much
of the media has stopped using the term social security and replaced it
with “welfare”. It sets expectations much lower. A sense of security
for members of society in need bumped down to mere subsistence.
Today’s mortality statistics do not simply point to the death of
disabled, poor, and ill people but of the system that was meant to
protect them. Before our eyes the principle of a benefit system is being
reduced from opportunity, respect, and solidarity to destitution,
degradation and isolation.
Six-point plans to avoid people on benefits killing themselves do not
exist in a society that has hope for their lives. The welfare state was
built on the idea of “the cradle to the grave”. Now for thousands, all
they receive is help to that grave.
Non-existent benefits claimant featured in second Department for Work and Pensions leaflet describing how his jobseeker’s allowance was cut
A non-existent benefits claimant invented by the government to talk
in glowing terms about its welfare system has been quoted in other
documents published by the Department for Work and Pensions, it has
emerged.
“Zac”, who appeared in the DWP leaflet withdrawn on Tuesday amid a storm of criticism, features in a second document describing how his jobseeker’s allowance was cut.
