Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Today at the
House of Commons Backbench Business Committee John McDonnell MP, Ian Mearns MP
and Ian Lavery MP secured a backbench business committee debate of the
WOWpetition.
Huzzah
The issue is that the debate may either be held in Westminster Hall or the Main Hall of Parliament and the key factor in this decision is the amount of cross party support that the WOWpetition receives.
Therefore, WOW needs you.
Please contact your MP by e-mail, letter or phone before next Tuesday and ask him to support a main chamber debate on the important issues contained in the WOWpetition (e-petition 43154).
You are not asking your MP to support the WOWpetition but instead asking him to recognise that the important issues it addresses are deserving of a full debate in the main chamber.
We have secured a Backbench Business Committee debate of the WOWpetition. Lets make sure it is a full debate in the Main Hall.
If you wish to contact your MP and discuss the WOWpetition in his surgery we have prepared a briefing document you can base your discussion around. Please do not copy and paste this in it's entirerity into an e-mail to your MP as it is likely to be intercepted by the spam filters and disappear into the Ethernet. It is best to either print it off and use it as the basis for a face to face discussion with him or use it to harvest ideas for your own individual message to your MP.
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WOWpetition Briefing on the Need for a Backbench Business Committee Debate of e-petition 43154.
On Saturday 30th November 2013 Government e-petition 43154,
also known as the WOWpetition, was signed for the 100,000 time and qualifies to
be considered for a debate by the Back Bench Business Committee. John McDonnell
MP has agreed to make representations to the Backbench Business Committee in
support of a debate of the WOWpetition.
The WOWpetition calls for
1. A Cumulative Impact Assessment (CIA) of all cuts and changes affecting sick & disabled people, their families and carers, and a free vote on repeal of the Welfare Reform Act.
The response received from the DWP upon the WOWpetition
reaching 10,000 signatures, stated that the Government had not done a Cumulative
Impact Assessment of the effects of the Welfare Reform Bill 2012 because “it is
very difficult to do accurately and external organisations have not produced
this either.” However, since posting this response, 2 external agencies, “DEMOS”
and the “Centre for Welfare Reform” have separately produced relevant
CIA’s.
DEMOS’s analysis showed a cumulative loss of income for
disabled people of £28.3 billion over the 5 years to 2018. Referring to this
analysis, Richard Hawkes, Chief Executive of disability charity Scope said: “At
the moment there’s no place for disabled people in the Chancellor’s aspiration
nation. In 2013 disabled people are already struggling to pay the bills. Living
costs are spiralling. Income is flat-lining. We know many are getting in debt,
just to pay for essentials. What’s the Government’s response? The same group of
disabled people face not just one or two cuts to their support, but in some
cases three, four, five or even six cuts. It paints a frightening picture of the
financial struggles affecting disabled people in 2013. On top of this the
Government is suggesting capping the welfare bill in the June spending review –
having already slashed billions.”
Dr Simon Duffy of the Centre for Welfare Reform, on behalf
of the Campaign for a Fair Society, produced analysis that suggested the cuts to
benefits and services fell disproportionately on minority groups. The extreme
unfairness of this policy is demonstrated if we compare the burden of cuts born
annually by most citizens (£467 per person) to the burden on people in poverty
(£2,195: 5 x rest of population), the burden on disabled people (£4,410: 9 x
rest of population) and the Burden on people with severest disabilities (£8,832:
19 x rest of population).
We believe that the Government either needs to demonstrate
that the CIA’s produced are not accurate and produce its own CIA or explain why
the austerity measures have been targeted at people, who WOWpetition believe,
the Government thought would not fight back.
2. An immediate end to the Work Capability Assessment, as voted for by the British Medical Association. Consultation between the Depts of Health & Education to improve support into work for sick & disabled people, and an end to forced work under threat of sanctions for people on disability benefits.
The Work Capability Assessment judges the Capability for
work or work related activity of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
claimants. We believe the current test is totally discredited, with the Prime
Minister saying in October 2013 that its provider, Atos, had "to improve the
quality of decision-making" in the face of sustained criticism of both the
efficacy and effectiveness of what, WOWpetition believe, is not a tool meant to
enable disabled people and help them to achieve what they feel capable of but
instead a blunt instrument to reduce the social security bill. We do not believe
it is right that in the 21st Century an experimental process has been imposed on
sick and disabled people with in some cases fatal consequences. Over 10,000
people have died within 6 weeks of being compelled to submit to what has been
described as a “dehumanizing, brutal and aggressive quasi-medical
assessment”.
WOWpetition believes that any method for assessing the
financial support given, and the life opportunities presented to sick and
disabled people needs to be based upon 3 questions: “What do you want to do?”
“What stops you from doing that?” “What adjustments can be made to enable you?”
Any process that seeks to enable disabled people and give them equality of
opportunity, needs to address not just the “supply side” issues of “what can you
do” but also needs to address “demand side” prejudices and ensure society
provides the opportunities to people facing significant barriers to mainstream
employment opportunities, in a fair way that gives people with impairments
equality of opportunity. Additionally, any individual trying to enhance their
experience should not be penalised/ restricted, as they already face difficulty
with employment.
More than anything, WOWpetition wants a system based upon
trust. The evidence clearly shows that at approximately 0.7%, Benefit fraud is
non-systemic and the overwhelming feeling of grassroots Disabled Peoples
Organisation’s, expressed at a summit organised by WOWpetition in London on the
25th October 2013, was that sick and disabled people are sick of being treated
as guilty until proven innocent and that the system needs to embody trust, not
persecution.
Irrespective of their ability to work, sick & disabled
people should be able to rely upon financial support from society that would
allow them to experience a good standard of living.
3. An Independent, Committee-Based Inquiry into Welfare Reform, covering but not limited to: (1) Care home admission rises, Daycare Centre’s, access to education for people with learning difficulties, universal mental health treatments, Remploy closures; (2) DWP media links, the ATOS contract, IT implementation of Universal Credit; (3) Human rights abuses against disabled people, excess claimant deaths & the disregard of medical evidence in decision making by ATOS, DWP & the Tribunal Service.
WOWpetition cannot understand how in the Worlds 6th richest
country (by GDP – IMF 2012) the situation can have been allowed to occur where,
despite the UK ratifying the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities in 2009, what is arguably “retrogressive legislation” has been
introduced, without being effectively challenged pre-implementation.
At its AGM on April 14 2013, Amnesty International UK
passed a resolution on the Human Rights of sick and disabled people in the UK.
The resolution (A5) read:
“This AGM calls for urgent action to halt the abrogation of
the human rights of sick and disabled people by the ruling Coalition government
and its associated corporate contractors.”
It is WOWpetition’s belief that The WRA 2012 was “rushed”
through Parliament with the House of Commons using the procedural tool of
“financial privilege” to curtail debate and over-turn the amendments tabled by
the House of Lords. We believe The House of Lords had taken very relevant advice
from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with the effect that the Human
Rights and Equality issues pertinent to the WRA 2012 have been largely ignored.
Some overlooked amendments have since been the subject of successful legal
challenges, and the Minister for Disabled People has been criticized in open
court for failing to consider the effect her policies have on equality of
opportunity.
WOWpetition call for the UK to comply with the spirit of
its Treaty Obligations and, in line with “Article 4 – General Obligations” of
the UNCRPD, strive to achieve full realization of the rights so included in that
document without prejudice. As an example of what we would argue is the
non-compliance of the UK with this Treaty, we are dismayed that an apparent
working definition of “Equality of Opportunity” appears to be, that employers
may choose to favour a disabled candidate over a non-disabled candidate. This,
we believe, is not what was intended by “Article 3 – General Principles” of the
UNCRPD.
In order for lessons to be learnt and safeguards put in
place to ensure persons with disabilities are never again to face what we
believe is a coordinated onslaught on our human rights and right to life, we
call for an independent Committee based enquiry into Welfare Reform.
Most worrying are the comments attributed to the Mayor of
London, Boris Johnson on Nov 28th 2013, in which he says “It is surely relevant
to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ
below 85, while about 2% have an IQ above 130.”
Is a person’s worth or right of equality to be linked to
his measured IQ? Is economic potential the accepted measure of somebody’s value
and equality? This comment is not acceptable.
Conclusion
WOWpetition suggests that sick and disabled people are the
target of a sustained attack on their human rights and standard of living as it
is believed they will not fight back. We agree with Richard Hawkes of Scope who
said “At the moment there’s no place for disabled people in the Chancellor’s
aspiration nation.” WOWpetition seeks a society where disabled people (through
birth, trauma or illness) are given true equality of opportunity and valued
appropriately, based upon their intrinsic humanity.
On the 10th July 2013 an Opposition Day Debate on “Disabled
people” called for a Cumulative Impact Assessment of the changes made by
Government that affect disabled people. We argue that the debate called for by
the WOWpetition is significantly different to this debate, based on:
· Following
this debate, two independent organisations have done what is “very difficult to
do accurately” and produced Cumulative Impact Assessments. These demonstrate
how this government’s austerity measures have unfairly targeted sick and
disabled people. The House needs to debate why disabled people are seen as easy
targets by this government or the DWP needs to challenge the findings.
· It
is widely reported that both the new Universal Credit Payment (UC) and the
Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are in trouble. WOWpetition believe the UK
government should take the time to carefully consider the effect the transition
to these potentially flawed procedures would have on sick and disabled people
and if it is prepared to inflict more excess deaths on these communities.
· Paul
Maynard MP, who referred to WOWpetition as “extremists” using the protection of
Parliamentary Privilege, made reference in this Opposition Day Debate to the DWP
publication “Fulfilling Potential – The Next Steps” and implied it was a remedy
for the exclusion and barriers to society facing disabled people. WOWPetition
believes this document is flawed and based upon Esther McVey’s inability to
distinguish between the Social Model of Disability and the Bio-psychosocial
Model of Disability which, we believe, she seems to think are the same thing.
This document should be debated in conjunction with relevant meaningful
published statistics to identify whether it really is a tool in leading to
meaningful Equality of Opportunity for sick and disabled people and how long it
is to be before sick and disabled are given this meaningful Equality of
Opportunity, defined appropriately. This is a requirement under “Article 3 – The
General Principles” of the “UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities“.
As outlined earlier, WOWpetition calls for much more than a
Cumulative Impact Assessment and to refuse a debate dismisses and trivializes
the other very real concerns of the Sick and Disabled Community.
WOWpetition therefore ask you to support a Main Hall
Backbench Business Committee debate of the important issues contained in their
e-petition 43154 and engage with our plea for a New Deal for Sick and Disabled
People based upon their needs, abilities and ambitions.
