• 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 / DWP snubs Hardest Hit’s Christmas greeting

DWP snubs Hardest Hit’s Christmas greeting

By guest on 3rd December 2011 Category: News Archive

Listen

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has turned away disabled activists who wanted to deliver a campaigning Christmas card on behalf of 23, 000 people who signed a petition calling for urgent changes to the welfare reform bill.

Representatives from The Hardest Hit campaign had told the DWP they would be delivering the card – designed by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe – but when they arrived, civil servants told security staff not to accept it.

The card features David Cameron as Scrooge – from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – kicking away Tiny Tim’s crutch, with the caption: “Kicking away the support.”

Julie Newman, acting chair of the UK Disabled People’s Council, which jointly runs the Hardest Hit campaign with the Disability Benefits Consortium, said they had asked staff at the front desk of the DWP’s offices in Whitehall if the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, or someone in his office, was available to accept the card.

Instead, civil servants in Duncan Smith’s office told DWP security staff not to accept delivery of the card and to turn the campaigners away.

Newman said: “I was completely taken aback. What the government’s representatives have done is they have snubbed 23,000 people who wished to express their concern to the government about their day-to-day lives.”

Campaigners later successfully delivered the petition to Downing Street.

A DWP spokesman said: “It is correct that the security staff phoned the secretary of state’s office about the petition. It was purely down to a misunderstanding, confusion between the two people who spoke.

“It shouldn’t have happened, but I am not going to get into exact details of who said what.

“Once it became apparent what had happened we got back in touch with the Disability Benefits Consortium and said sorry.

“It was a misunderstanding. We are going to invite them back in [to deliver the card]. We are putting it right.”

The delivery of the card and petition were designed to coincide with the report stage of the welfare reform bill in the House of Lords, which began the previous day (12 December).

15 December 2011

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

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

Access

Latest Stories

New figures on COVID deaths of younger disabled people ‘show need for vaccine action’

Atos pays out for negligent PIP assessment after visit from debt enforcement officers

Budget’s double blow to disabled people

Treasury rejects delivery of last-ditch appeals for £20 uplift

Anger over disability survey’s ‘degrading’ and ‘insulting’ relationship question

DWP brands DNS ‘vexatious’ for seeking truth about impact of universal credit

Government questioned over ‘unforgivable’ failures on vaccine priority

Regulator fails to record key details from scheme sending COVID patients into care homes

‘Why did it take disabled man’s death to lead to rail safety action?’ campaigners ask

Ministers silent after sitting on report on discrimination in politics for more than a year

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

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

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web