Disabled Scots have demanded that the UK Work and Pensions Secretary visits Scotland to explain “heartless and senseless” benefit reforms they claim have left people “on the scrapheap”.
A wheelchair-bound former vet and a double-incontinent ex-teacher with multiple sclerosis (MS) told MSPs they had been ruled “fit for work” following assessments by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its private sector contractor Atos Healthcare.
Work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith was accused of creating a “sick” system where “disgraceful and offensive” health workers feel justified in describing their patients as LTBs (Lying, Thieving B******s).
Holyrood’s Welfare Reform Committee repeated its invitation to Mr Duncan Smith to appear before them to explain his benefit reforms on Tuesday.
Three disabled people posed questions to Mr Duncan Smith in his absence at the committee.
Marlene Hepburn, a former teacher from Stirling, said: “I would just ask him ‘where is your heart, where is your sense?’.”
Ms Hepburn told how MS has left her unable to lift her legs, unable to climb more than two steps, made her prone to falls and left her double-incontinent.
“Who’s going to employ a woman that falls over, and then has to go home and get showered?” she said. “They have no idea of the reality of living with a disability.”
The committee was told how Atos Healthcare allegedly “cut ‘n’ paste” elements of their assessments to emphasise mobility and downplay difficulties.
Ms Hepburn said her smart appearance and tasks she undertakes to cope with her MS, such as swimming and volunteering at an MS support group, were used to demonstrate her fitness to work.
Ms Hepburn added: “I have a problem with my bowels. I said I wore pads, and the report said ‘she only wears pads’.
“I change them three or four times a day but that didn’t make it into the report.
“It was the dismissal of the fact that I had these problems: ‘They weren’t important. They didn’t impact on my life’.
“I felt really threatened because it was conducted with a need to get me in and out, and the fact that I sat for 45 minutes with ‘no apparent discomfort’ went against me.”
Former vet Ian Megahy, from Hamilton in South Lanarkshire, told the committee how the stress of losing his benefits has left him intermittently reliant on a wheelchair.
He said: “They say the moral test of governments and civilisations is how they care for their old, their young and their sick.
“I would like to thank everyone here, and my government for caring about these matters. You certainly do not get that impression from Westminster.”
Last week, the BBC reported allegations from workers at DWP subcontractor Triage who claimed clients were described as LTBs. Triage told the BBC the term LTB referred to an isolated incident.
Mr Megahy added: “I am certain that UK Government ministers didn’t phone Triage up and say to them to refer to their clients as LTBs.
“But I would ask why he felt it right to create an atmosphere where this didn’t seem to be such a bad thing.
“It would be stupid to ask him if he had any compassion or regret in creating the conditions where people that are supposed to be helping can be so disgraceful and offensive.”
Lesley McMurchie told how her husband, a former head of offender management at Fife Council, suffered a mental breakdown after more than 30 years of work and family problems.
“The state has contributed to making him worse,” she said.
“I thought when we set up the welfare state it was to be there for people like my husband, who worked really hard, who did his best, so that in times of need there would be something there. But it’s not there.
“He’s now not in receipt of any kind of benefits whatsoever. He’s basically on the scrapheap now, but he still has another five years to go to get his pension.”
She added: “I think a very sick system has been put in place, and it certainly doesn’t have the people at its heart.”
STV
