MPs hear from disabled people about life-threatening risks posed by ‘very, very dangerous’ cuts to benefits

Four disabled people told MPs of the life-threatening risks that would be caused by proposed cuts to disability benefits, just a day before the government confirmed the “very, very dangerous” reforms.

About 10 MPs from Labour, the SNP, the SDLP and the Liberal Democrats attended the meeting in parliament of the Coalition Against Benefit Cuts on Monday.

They heard testimony from Alison Burton, the disabled daughter-in-law of Errol Graham, who starved to death in 2018 after his out-of-work disability benefits were removed; and from three disabled people who had each attempted to take their own lives as a result of the flawed and hostile social security system.

Burton said the government was now planning to make the system worse rather than focusing on how to stop other disabled people like Errol dying.

She said Labour had decided to strip money from the system and leave “people like Errol as collateral damage”.

And she said that, because of the failing mental health system, it was only DWP and its out-of-work disability benefits that had been keeping Errol alive.

Burton then told the meeting how her autistic daughter had developed severe anxiety after the death of her grandfather, and it was only through the support funded by personal independence payment (PIP) that she was able to leave the house and attend university.

She said: “You take that away, you take the existence of my child away. That’s the reality of it. And that’s what they did to Errol.”

Her son, who is also autistic and has ADHD, has been accepted on a business course because of the support his school was able to offer him.

She said this was “what support does”, but the government wants instead “to talk about  disabled people like we are a burden on society, or we are just sucking the system dry”.

David Rollins, who tried to take his own life in his local jobcentre two years ago because of the imminent reassessment of both of his disability benefits, told the meeting that he would attempt to take his own life again if the government’s proposals looked as though they would leave him in debt.

He has multiple impairments and advocates for many other disabled people on benefits, and has had multiple phone calls and messages about Labour’s planned cuts, and “had to try to reassure people, when I personally don’t feel reassured, which is difficult”.

Two of those people told him they would take their own lives if the cuts were implemented, he said.

He added: “If this goes the way that it looks like it’s going to go, and they don’t U-turn, then potentially I could be forced into that situation.”

Osmond James described how he had tried to end his own life because of financial problems after being repeatedly turned down for PIP, which left him having to decide between paying his bills or buying some food.

He was only able to receive PIP for the first time because it was “facilitated” by the consultants in intensive care after his suicide attempt.

He said the government’s planned cuts were “draconian” and seemed like “Tory-lite” policies, so it was now necessary to “play on the consciences of the powers that be” and show that “a big contribution can made by people on benefits”.

Andy Mitchell told the meeting how he attempted to take his own life after his benefits were unfairly sanctioned and he ran out of money over Christmas and had a breakdown, and how he subsequently developed long-term health conditions he still lives with today.

He said the government’s proposals (see separate stories) would put more disabled benefit claimants at the mercy of the DWP sanctions and conditionality regime.

He said the government’s proposals “show no respect to disabled people and are completely undignified, especially from a party that claims to care about equality and fairness”, and they had left disabled people “so frightened they’re talking about suicide”.

A message was also read out from Gill Thompson, whose brother David Clapson, who had type one diabetes, died in July 2013 from diabetic ketoacidosis after being left destitute when his benefits were sanctioned, despite repeatedly trying to find work.

She said in her statement: “His money had been stopped just two weeks before he died for failing to attend an appointment.

“He was not aware of this until going to the bank to draw money out, and by the 8th of July he had just £3.44 in his bank.

“There was no food in the flat, his electric key had run out, and he could not chill his insulin.

“The temperature at that time was in the 30s.”

She added: “David missed one or two appointments, and for that he was sanctioned and died.

“If he’d been a criminal, he would have had a trial, a judge and a jury and a proper defence. He had none.”

Ellen Clifford, coordinator of the coalition of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) monitoring the implementation of the UN disability convention in the UK, told the meeting that work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall was wrong when she kept saying that disabled people who have been found “unfit for work” are then prevented from working.

She was in that group herself and tried to work whenever she could around the severe and enduring mental distress and suicidal ideation she lives with.

She said: “What I find holds me back are constant reassessments and systems that the DWP have, which are not set up to be consistent with someone trying to work.”

When her monthly income reaches a certain level her council tax support stops, which means she is “constantly reapplying every few months, which is sometimes just too much for me to be able to do as well as trying to work, so I end up out of money”.

She said: “I just wonder why they can’t sort out those systems to begin with, before taking these very, very dangerous steps.

“And I do believe that we can fight against this, because I know what we can achieve when we come together.”

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) will be holding a national day of action to protest against the cuts on Wednesday (26 March), the day of the spring statement, with a London event starting outside Downing Street, followed by a lobby of MPs and a joint protest with other organisations outside parliament.

In addition to several DPAC representatives at Monday’s meeting, there were representatives from other DPOs, including Inclusion London, Disability Rights UK, WinVisible and The Alliance for Inclusive Education.

There were also members of the user-led Commission on Social Security, which will be releasing its proposals for replacing PIP at the end of April, and a representative of the London Unemployed Strategies (LUS) project, which was set up by trade unions and unemployed people.

Among the MPs who attended, some briefly to show support and some for most or all of the meeting, were Labour MPs Steve Witherden, Rachael Maskell, Andy McDonald, Mary Kelly Foy and Imran Hussain, and Labour peer Baroness Lister, the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman, former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, the SDLP’s Claire Hanna, and suspended Labour MP John McDonnell, who hosted the meeting.

Others who sent staff to attend the meeting included disabled parliamentarians Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson, and Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson.

Two Northern Ireland MPs, the Alliance’s Sorcha Eastwood and Ulster Unionist Robin Swann, are arranging meetings with DPAC Northern Ireland, while Labour’s Richard Burgon, who has been supportive of the disabled people’s anti-cuts movement, sent his apologies for not being able to attend.

Blackman said the government’s proposals were “horrific” and there were “a significant number of us that will stand with you and do everything that we can to try and ensure that this doesn’t happen”.

She told the meeting that she had previously said she “would rather that there were people that did not deserve to get social security and got it then there was one person who deserves it that didn’t get it”.

Witherden said he had found the personal testimonies “very moving and very upsetting”.

Foy, whose late daughter was disabled, and who also has a disabled son who receives universal credit that allows him to be “in and out of work”, said she had written to chancellor Rachel Reeves to express her concerns about the government’s proposals.

She said: “It doesn’t have to be an economical contribution to society to mean that you have a place in this society.”

McDonnell said they needed to give people “hope” and to show that “we can win on this, that we can turn it around, that no matter how challenging it is tomorrow, we’re going to mobilize, and it doesn’t matter what government there is, we’re going to turn it round, and they won’t be able to sustain their position if we mobilize effectively enough”.

Paula Peters, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, who chaired the meeting, said: “What they’re planning is indefensible and it’s unfair, but this is a message to Keir Starmer: disabled people have the balls to take you on.

“And we will… so let us mobilise, let us resist, and let’s take this government on and fight them back. Come on, we can do it!”

There was also a significant presence of senior union figures, showing solidarity with disabled people as part of the broad Coalition Against Benefit Cuts, including the National Union of Journalists’ president, Natasha Hirst, herself a disabled activist; Ian Hodson, president of the bakers’ union BFAWU; Ian Pope, DWP group vice-president of the PCS union; and a representative of Unite.

Hirst said disabled people “should be able to access the social security system that they’re entitled to when they need that support without being overwhelmed with bureaucracy, hostility, and in fear of punishment every time they come into contact with the state and with DWP”.

She said she had experienced herself the “difficulties, the humiliation and the fear of having to apply for benefits, to go through assessments… and having no warning that they were being pulled, and then having to scrabble and go through all of that stress that so many other disabled people have also gone through.”

Hodson said the proposed cuts were not “an issue for disabled people to fight alone” and it was the “duty of the trade union and labour movement” to support them and to “fight back against a Labour Party, a Labour Party, that’s using the language, the toxic language, of our enemies”.

He said the government’s proposals would be “stealing another five to six billion from the working class to balance the budget on the back of the poorest in our society”.

Pope said the government was “trying to pit worker against benefit claimant”.

He said PCS had been “at the forefront for as far as long as I can remember of fighting back against attacks on benefits and benefit claimants” and would “work with anybody to get where we want, for benefit claimants to be rightfully treated with dignity, respect, and fairness, and not as skivers and shirkers and demonised”.

Pictured (left to right): David Rollins, Osmond James, Alison Burton and Andy Mitchell

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, including those of Errol Graham and David Clapson, is published by Pluto Press

**The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article:  Mind, Papyrus, Rethink, Samaritans, and SOS Silence of Suicide

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