Disabled people’s organisations call on government to ‘show you will be on our side’

Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have vowed to be a “critical friend” to the new Labour government, but they have called for it to “show our community that you will be on our side”.

DPO Forum England, which represents more than 350 DPOs across England, said it wanted to work with the new government to “coproduce the policies that will have a real impact on our lives”.

In a letter to the new prime minister, Keir Starmer, the forum said there were “many areas of our lives that have been neglected by the last government” and it called for recognition from the new government that it was “not possible to achieve a fundamental change in our lives without investment in public services”.

They say in the letter (PDF): “Accessible homes, good education support, investment in accessible transport, a well-functioning NHS and social care support in community are vital preconditions to enabling Disabled people to work, learn and have a good quality of life.”

Among their demands, they call for an end to the segregation and institutionalisation of disabled people, including involuntary detentions in psychiatric hospitals and forced treatment in hospitals and in the community.

And they call for a “real transformative disability strategy” that is co-produced by the government with disabled people, and for ministers to “urgently raise accessibility standards for new built homes”.

On disability poverty and disability benefits, the letter points out that the previous government “spent years in endless reforms of disability benefits and have laid the ground for a more brutal attack” on disabled people, with their policies causing “anxiety, distress and preventable deaths”.

It urges Starmer to take “urgent steps” to reject the Conservative government’s recent series of reforms to disability benefits, including its consultation on reform of personal independence payment (PIP); its plans to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA); its longer-term plans to link extra support in universal credit to the PIP assessment; and its reforms to the fit note system.

The letter also calls on the new government to “cease subjecting Disabled people to an unfair and harmful” regime of benefit conditions and sanctions, and to work with DPOs to “design a supportive benefits system that promotes our rights and respects our dignity”.

In a separate intervention, the Disability Poverty Campaign Group, which is led by DPOs Disability Rights UK and Inclusion London – both members of the forum – has urged the new government to “tackle the deep poverty experienced by millions of Disabled citizens”.

It said this week: “Poverty within the disability community continues to worsen and the new UK government needs to act urgently to support those struggling to afford food, energy, rents, care charges, medication and transport, and to prevent others falling further into poverty.”

It joined DPO Forum England in calling on the new government to co-produce solutions with disabled people.

Meanwhile, Disability Rights UK, along with other campaigning organisations, has written to Labour’s new work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, to ask her to reject Conservative plans to tighten the WCA from 2025.

These plans would mean cuts to support of more than £400 a month for 424,000 disabled people, who would also lose their protection from being forced to carry-out work-related activity as part of their universal credit claim.

They say in their letter: “Disabled people are already more likely to live in poverty, and recent research has shown that two thirds of people currently living in destitution are Disabled or have a long-term health condition.

“We believe these plans would serve to exacerbate this inequity.”

And they point out that the real terms value of the basic rate of benefits has in recent years hit a 40-year low, which could mean that disabled people affected by tightening the WCA are “likely to find themselves unable to afford essentials”.

Picture of Liz Kendall by Lauren Hurley, No 10 Downing Street; picture of Keir Starmer by Simon Dawson, No 10 Downing Street

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