• A senior government adviser has failed to declare freelance work carried out for the insurance giant set to make huge financial gains through the coalition’s incapacity benefit reforms.
• The government has admitted failing to carry out any statistical analysis of the results of its controversial disability living allowance consultation.
• The world’s biggest disability and deaf arts festival has won a prestigious annual award, a £10,000 prize, and a huge vote of confidence from regional business leaders.
• The government has welcomed new figures which show a slight rise in the number of disabled people granted funds to make their workplaces more accessible.
• A disability charity has begun legal action against a budget airline over its failure to make its website accessible to blind and partially-sighted customers.
• New figures show the number of disabled people found eligible for unconditional support under the much-criticised “fitness for work” regime has doubled since its introduction by the Labour government in 2008.
• A leading user-led arts organisation has raised new concerns over the search for volunteers to take part in the opening and closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Paralympics.
• Disabled activists are warning that local authorities could try to copy a council that has withdrawn funding from a direct payments support service.
• The broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has come under attack again after ruling that an offensive, disablist routine by comedian Ricky Gervais did not breach its code.
• Nearly two-thirds of local authorities in England have reduced their spending on support in the community for disabled and older people, according to a survey commissioned by a committee of MPs.
• It is “entirely obvious” that the government’s welfare cuts are “falling entirely” on disabled people and families with children, according to a leading academic.

• Leading figures in the disability movement say they could stop cooperating with the Department for Work and Pensions if the government’s welfare reform bill becomes law.
• The London 2012 organising committee’s appeal for volunteers to take part in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Paralympics has been criticised by leading disabled artists and performers.
• The disabled activists behind a ground-breaking report that accused the government of misleading parliament over its welfare reforms say major concessions agreed by a coalition minister are a victory for disabled people.
• Disabled peers have secured a string of key concessions from the government on its controversial disability living allowance reforms.
• A senior disabled MP is to examine the government’s failure to respond to allegations that it misled parliament over its disability living allowance reforms.
• Government cuts to vital disability benefits will be even harsher than the coalition previously admitted, official figures have revealed, with nearly half a million people set to lose their right to disability living allowance.
• A disabled American actor has caused an internet sensation after using his acceptance speech at a televised US awards ceremony to offer support to the British victim of a disability hate crime attack.
• The Crown Prosecution Service is reviewing a barrister’s decision not to call for stricter sentences for three people who took part in a “degrading” hate crime attack on a disabled man.
• A health minister has refused to accept the existence of a huge gap between the care and support that disabled people need, and the funding made available to pay for it.

• Opposition and independent peers have secured three key victories over the government in the battle to reverse its planned cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.
• A new report has revealed “serious inaccuracies” in the assessments of disabled people’s “fitness for work” carried out by the private company Atos Healthcare on behalf of the government.
• The government has failed to explain why its new youth sport strategy contains almost no references to disabled young people.
• Disabled campaigners fighting to ward off the threat of legalised assisted suicide have been forced to launch a fundraising appeal to try to counteract the huge financial resources of their opponents.
• Organisations providing services to disabled people – including disability charities and a hospice – have evaded questions about their links with a commission that has called for assisted suicide to be legalised.
• Disabled activists who spent months preparing a hard-hitting report that reveals how the government misled parliament over its disability living allowance reforms say they are mystified and frustrated by the media’s failure to cover the story.
• London’s Conservative mayor has heavily criticised the government’s planned cuts and reforms to disability living allowance.
• The government misled parliament and the public about the scale of opposition to its reform of disability living allowance, according to a ground-breaking new report researched, written and funded by disabled people.
• The former head of the Disability Rights Commission has warned that the independent voices of disability organisations could be under threat because of gagging clauses attached to government contracts.

The primary care trust has admitted that Dr X* is working within its boundaries in NHS facilities – possibly as a locum – but it says data protection laws prevent it from identifying the surgery or surgeries where he is working as he is not a partner, salaried GP or a trust employee.

The trust believes the doctor’s current patients have no right to know about the allegations Dr X faced in connection with his time as GP for the notorious Longcare residential homes in south Buckinghamshire in the early 1990s.

The homes were run by a former social worker, Gordon Rowe, who instigated an horrific regime of violence and abuse, which saw adults with learning difficulties raped, sexually assaulted, punished with brutal beatings, neglected, drugged and deprived of food and toiletries for more than 10 years.

The regime was finally exposed in the autumn of 1994, after a council report detailing the abuse was leaked to newspapers.

Dr X was the GP for the two residential homes from 1990 until after Rowe and his wife were forced to leave the company. Dr X is now practising in a different NHS area.

The alleged neglect is detailed in a new book, Longcare Survivors: The Biography of a Care Scandal, by John Pring, editor of Disability News Service.

The book describes how Dr X repeatedly over-prescribed powerful sedatives for residents, failed to spot signs of neglect and ill-treatment such as severe weight loss and bruises, failed to act over signs of sexual abuse, such as vaginal discharge and anal bleeding, and kept almost no records of treatment, even though he visited the homes every week.

There were also serious concerns about his repeated prescriptions of contraceptive injections for a number of women who were at the time being raped by Gordon Rowe.

One former member of Longcare staff remembers watching Dr X line up Rowe’s favoured female residents and delivering the injections one after the other, without even talking to the women and while continuing to chat to Rowe, who was in the reception area.

June Raybaud, the aunt of one of the former residents of the homes, Janet Ward, who was repeatedly raped by Gordon Rowe and has now died, said she believed the doctor’s failure to act was “the biggest scandal of all”.

Raybaud said: “This doctor apparently saw them all every week. He could have noticed how they were losing weight… a lot of the women had discharges and the men had bleeding from the anus.

“A lot of people had similar things wrong with them. They were obviously suffering from malnutrition, boils and things wrong with their feet and teeth.

“He could see how poorly they were dressed, how their hygiene was bad and he never did anything about it. He really didn’t care.”

Slough’s Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart has raised concerns about the General Medical Council’s (GMC) failure to conduct a proper investigation into the care provided by Dr X at Longcare.

In January 2011, she wrote to the GMC, stating that the documents shown to her by Pring “raise very serious issues about [Dr X’s] fitness to practice”, and asking it to investigate.

The GMC had already refused three times to carry out a full and proper investigation into the allegations against Dr X. It told Mactaggart that it would “not… be appropriate” to open another investigation.

Mactaggart has now asked the government what its policy is on the rights of patients and members of the public to know where a locum GP is working within the NHS.

But the Conservative health minister Simon Burns stated only that “the place of work of locums can and does change frequently depending on who has contracted for their services”.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said this week: “PCTs are not required to reveal where any of their staff, whether directly employed or engaged through commissioning arrangements, work.

“The PCT’s remit is to ensure that they are commissioning and delivering the most effective services for their patients. We cannot comment on individual cases.”

The primary care trust declined to comment.

Rowe committed suicide in 1996 before he could be charged, but three former members of Longcare staff – including Rowe’s widow Angela – were convicted of neglect and ill-treatment. Angela and another former Longcare manager were jailed in 1997.

*His name is currently being withheld by Disability News Service 

Sue Marsh has had seven life-saving operations to her bowel, endures chemotherapy injections every fortnight, experiences daily exhaustion, pain and nausea, has osteoporosis and malnutrition, and has had major seizures and a stroke.

She is no longer able to clean her home properly, often cannot look after her children or herself, and her husband is being forced to take time off work to care for her.

Marsh, who blogs at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger and is political strategist for The Broken of Britain, says in her blog: “I must spend more on good quality food, or I just get more ill. I don’t want the world, I just want to survive.”

But the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has concluded that she is ineligible for any DLA at all.

Marsh, who has Crohn’s disease, only had to reapply for DLA because she notified DWP herself in 2007 that her condition had improved and so she no longer needed the benefit.

But when her condition worsened again last year, she submitted a new claim. Her initial claim was rejected, so she asked for a “reconsideration”, which has also now been rejected.

Marsh says in her blog: “Despite claiming successfully in the past, despite only getting weaker and more frail and less able to live independently, my reconsideration was rejected.

“I will have to fill in a horribly complicated appeal form over the Xmas period, wait up to one year to go to tribunal, and probably go bankrupt in the mean time. The state will pay thousands to hear my appeal.

“The only conclusion I can come to is that if I don’t qualify for DLA, no-one with bowel disease can.”

Marsh is among disabled campaigners leading efforts to persuade peers to overturn key parts of the government’s welfare reform bill, including cuts to DLA and its replacement with a new personal independence payment (PIP).

A post on her blog describing how her application was rejected has already been viewed more than 10,000 times, and she has been flooded with messages from other disabled people with similar accounts of rejected DLA claims, who have also been forced to appeal.

But Marsh does not believe the decision to reject her claim was connected with her campaigning work.

She told Disability News Service: “There are people like me that are getting turned down every single day. I don’t think there is any conspiracy.

“They must have just been turning people down routinely and expecting them to appeal. A lot of people have said it just seems that everybody is getting turned down.”

There are fears that this government “strategy” could be due to a hole in the DWP’s administrative budget, with it forecast to spend an extra £1 billion a year on employment and support allowance (ESA) – the replacement for incapacity benefit – by 2014-15.

A DWP spokesman said: “We don’t comment on individual cases. If someone disagrees with a decision they have a right to ask for a reconsideration or to appeal.”

But he added: “DLA is awarded on the basis of evidence offered by the claimant and any supporting evidence, for example from a hospital consultant, a GP or a carer.”

When asked whether the decision to turn down Marsh’s application meant that no-one with bowel disease was now eligible for DLA, he said: “DLA isn’t awarded because of a condition or diagnosis, but on how it affects your ability to get around or care for yourself.”

He also said there was “no correlation between spend on ESA and DLA”, and denied that DWP had issued orders to DLA decision-makers to turn down applications from eligible claimants.

21 December 2011

A prototype of the new “bus for London” – championed by the mayor, Boris Johnson – was seen in the capital for the first time last weekend, and was viewed by about 10,000 Londoners.

Seven more of the buses will enter service for the first time in February to be trialled on the busy 38 route between Victoria station and Hackney in east London.

But in February, campaigners for accessible transport criticised aspects of the design of the new bus, which they said failed to include enough space for wheelchair-users.

Transport for London (TfL) admitted failing to consult with disabled people’s organisations on the bus’s design.

The accessible transport charity Transport for All (TfA) said in February that the new bus’s wheelchair space was too small, and was “considerably smaller” than spaces on London’s existing buses.

But following consultations with disability groups, TfL has now overseen changes to the bus, with some seats and hand poles repositioned to “provide more space for manoeuvring into and out of the wheelchair space”.

Mike Weston, operations director for London Buses, said: “A number of wheelchair-users tested the space at the weekend when the bus was open to the public… and found it very easy to use.

“The wheelchair space on the new bus is larger than is required by legislation and indeed larger than many of those on buses currently in service.”

The old Routemasters were scrapped by the previous mayor, Ken Livingstone, largely because they were not accessible.

21 December 2011