New coalition will shine spotlight on ‘devastating’ impact of cost-of-living crisis

A new coalition of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) is aiming to shine a spotlight on the “devastating impact” of the spiralling cost of living that is “threatening disabled people’s survival”.

The Disability Poverty Campaign Group (DPCG) warned this week that DPOs across the country were reporting that disability poverty was “widespread and deepening”.

The coalition has been set up to address increasing levels of poverty among disabled people affected by rising food and fuel prices, and the failure of benefits to keep up with those increases.

DPCG is currently led by a steering group of Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London, and Inclusion Barnet, and is open to DPOs across the UK*.

Julia Modern, Inclusion London’s senior policy and stakeholder engagement manager, said the group was answering the need for a “collective voice to challenge the neglect and discrimination” disabled people were facing.

She told Disability News Service (DNS): “Disability poverty has been exacerbated through years of cuts to government services.

“We face discrimination in employment, and access to legal redress has become much harder due to cuts to legal aid.

“Overall social security payment levels are inadequate, and ‘extra cost benefits’ – benefits designed to mitigate the extra costs of living with disability – do not reach all disabled people or meet the true level of additional costs we face.

“As inflation pushes fuel and food prices higher, many disabled people’s incomes no longer cover even the basics of existence.

“Added to this is a distinct lack of decent support packages provided by government and utility providers to help disabled people cope with spiralling debt.”

She added: “Even before the current price increases, DPOs were speaking to members who were getting up in the middle of the night to use the washing machine on the cheaper night tariff.

“With many disabled people already doing all they can to reduce costs, more advice on budgeting cannot fix the problem.”

Among the evidence DPCG points to is research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), which found in its UK Poverty 2019-20 report that, if extra-costs disability benefits are disregarded, nearly half of those in poverty live in a household that includes a disabled person.

In its latest UK Poverty report, JRF says that – again, if extra-costs benefits such as personal independence payment (PIP) are disregarded – 32 per cent of disabled people are living in poverty.

For working-age adults, that climbs to 38 per cent, compared with 17 per cent of non-disabled working-age adults.

The Trussell Trust reported in June 2021 that more than six in ten (62 per cent) working-age referrals to food banks in early 2020 were disabled people.

These figures were all compiled before the onset of the current cost-of-living crisis.

DPCG is also highlighting concerns about social care charges, which it says frequently reduce disabled people’s incomes to an insufficient “minimum income guarantee” level.

This can be as low as £73.95 a week, “leaving some disabled people with barely anything to live on”.

Modern said: “Over a decade of cuts to the resources available to local government has led to increasing pressure on social care budgets, resulting in draconian council policies on care charging.

“As a result, many disabled people have to pay the meagre benefits they receive to the council to cover their essential care needs.

“Systematically reducing disabled people’s income to the level of the minimum income guarantee (which has been frozen for six out of the seven previous years) is profoundly unfair.”

This week, DNS is reporting how an ombudsman ruled that a disabled woman took her own life after being wrongly sent a series of invoices demanding payment of care charges she should not have had to pay (see separate story).

Meanwhile, freedom of information requests submitted by campaigners have been showing how tens of thousands of disabled people across the country are having debt collection action taken against them every year by their local authorities over unpaid care charges.

Rising energy prices are also having a significant impact on disability poverty.

The disability charity Scope warned in 2019 – even before the current cost-of-living crisis – that the average disabled person faced extra costs of £583 a month.

Energy charges make up a “significant proportion” of these extra costs, said DPCG.

Many disabled people need to use heating more often, need electricity to recharge their mobility equipment or run medical devices, and need to use equipment such as washing machines more often.

In March, even before the latest fuel price increases, one DPO advice worker told Inclusion London: “Pretty much all clients who contact us are needing help with fuel costs. Numbers have increased dramatically.”

DPCG’s first target is energy costs, and it plans to seek meetings with the government, mayors, councils, the energy regulator Ofgem, and energy companies, to push for “targeted support” for disabled people faced with sharply rising fuel bills.

Modern said the government had provided no targeted support for disabled people in the measures it announced this year to help households with energy bills.

She also pointed to the government’s decision to remove the right to the Warm Home Discount from 290,000 claimants of disability living allowance and PIP.

She said: “Rather than helping us survive the spike in energy prices, the government is removing the only support that is currently delivered to disabled people for our higher energy costs.

“Coming on top of the existing appalling level of poverty among disabled people, the current increases in prices are threatening disabled people’s survival.”

DPOs that have already signed up to DPCG include Action on Disability Kensington and Chelsea, Cheshire Disabled People’s Panel, Choices and Rights Disability Coalition, Chronic Illness Inclusion, Disability Positive, The Disability Union, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Harrow Association of Disabled People, #MEaction, Merton CIL, and WinVisible.

They are now calling for other DPOs to join the campaign group*.

All the group’s members are DPOs, and all decisions will be made by disabled-led organisations, but DPCG is also attracting support from non-member allies such as The Food Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and The Trussell Trust.

*Any DPOs interested in joining can email Julia Modern, from Inclusion London, or Dan White, from Disability Rights UK

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