• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / Labour conference: Disabled activist shames ‘flustered’ Miliband

Labour conference: Disabled activist shames ‘flustered’ Miliband

By guest on 2nd September 2011 Category: News Archive

Listen

A prominent disabled activist has launched a highly critical attack on Labour leader Ed Miliband during a televised question and answer session over his failure to speak out on the government’s hated “fitness for work” tests.

The session took place at the Labour conference but the audience included members of the public who were not party members.

One was Kaliya Franklin, the disabled blogger and activist who co-founded The Broken of Britain, who accused Miliband – to loud applause from the audience – of failing to speak out for disabled people because of hostile media attacks that have labelled benefits claimants as “scroungers”.

She told him that the issue of disabled people being the “hardest hit” by the cuts had been “airbrushed almost entirely from the conference”.

Miliband claimed he was not afraid to use the word “disability” and was “determined to say that disabled people need support and help and compassion”, but that “you have got to separate out ill-health and disability from worklessness and the decision not to work”.

He claimed he was not “trying to sweep this under the carpet”.

But Franklin accused him – again, to loud applause – of “reinforcing the destructive rhetoric that is coming from the coalition government at a time when sick and disabled people desperately need a champion to stand up for us”.

Miliband accepted he should have said in his main conference speech that “you have to defend people with disability and ill-health and say that they shouldn’t be under attack”, but said he “genuinely” didn’t think that “saying you are tough on abuse of the benefit system is a non-Labour thing to do”.

Franklin, who blogs at Benefit Scrounging Scum, said: “We got the reaction we expected. He didn’t know what to say. He was completely flustered and lost the plot.

“He didn’t really have an answer. I had a go at him and said he was part of the problem because he had used part of this rhetoric himself.”

In a speech in June, Miliband horrified disabled activists by accusing some incapacity benefit (IB) claimants of failing to “take responsibility” and of “shirking their duties”.

Franklin said: “It was clearly one of the questions he didn’t want to deal with.”

She added: “I told him we have had enough of this, that he was not talking about us or supporting us, and he is complicit in this when he knows fraud levels [for IB] are negligible.

“When I hammered him about the fraud rates he didn’t roll his eyes and say, ‘oh, for God’s sake, will you go away,’ but for a moment the mask slipped and that was his expression.

“I just don’t think he cares. It’s not something that is one of his particular passions and he wants it to go away.”

But she added: “We had a forthright discussion and he did actually have to come out and say for the first time that he should have said in his speech that sick and disabled people needed protection.”

And she welcomed the Labour leader’s pledge to meet with her to discuss her concerns in more depth.

After her exchange on Wednesday evening, Franklin was swamped by members of the media intent on interviewing her about her concerns, but almost nothing has yet been written or broadcast about her exchange with Miliband.

29 September 2011

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on RedditShare on LinkedIn
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

On the left of the image are multiple heads of different colours - white, aqua, red, light brown, and dark green - all grouped together, then the words ‘Campaign for Disability Justice. Sign up to support. #OpportunitySecurityRespect’
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled MP who quit government over benefit cuts tells DNS: ‘The consequences will be devastating’

Disabled peers plan to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend’ after assisted dying bill reaches Lords

Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims

This bill opens the door to scandal, abuse and injustice, disabled activists say after assisted dying bill vote

Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die

Absence of disabled people’s voices from assisted dying bill has been ‘astonishing’, says disabled MP

Timms misleads MPs on DWP transparency and cover-ups, as he gives evidence on PIP review

Ministers are considering further extension to disability hate crime laws, after pledge on ‘aggravated’ offences

Making all self-driving pilot schemes accessible would be ‘counter-productive’ and slow us down, says minister

Involve disabled people ‘meaningfully’ from the start when developing digital assistive tech, says report

Advice and Information

Readspeaker
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Threads
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web