Petition aims to unite opposition to disability benefits green paper and force MPs to debate all cuts

A new petition backed by disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) aims to unite opposition to the government’s “devastating” disability benefit cuts and reforms by calling for every one of the measures to be abandoned.

While a string of petitions have focused on individual parts of the Pathways to Work green paper since its launch in March, the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) petition targets the whole government strategy.

As the GMCDP petition has been lodged on the UK parliament website, it should lead to a parliamentary debate if at least 100,000 people sign it.

The petition, launched this week and supported by key parts of the disabled people’s movement, also calls on the government to work with disabled people to draw up a national disability strategy in line with the UK’s international disability rights treaty obligations.

It calls on the government to drop the green paper proposals “and instead begin a process of co-production with disabled people’s representative organisations to create a whole government disability strategy”.

Such a strategy, it says, would ensure the labour market, employment rights and social security reforms necessary for an adequate standard of living for disabled people, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

It also calls on the government to “protect the income of disabled people from further shocks”.

The petition has been endorsed by DPO Forum England, whose 40-plus members include GMCDP, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London and National Survivor User Network.

Linda Burnip, co-founder of DPAC, said it was “the first petition we feel able to support, as it rejects all of the horrific proposals in the green paper”, rather than those that have targeted specific measures in the green paper, an approach which risks dividing disabled people’s opposition to the cuts and reforms.

Last month, the forum wrote to work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall to express “serious concerns” about the human rights implications of her “incredibly dangerous” plans to cut spending on disability benefits, and described her consultation on the Pathways to Work green paper as a “sham”.

Its members argued then that the green paper contained 22 policy proposals but DWP was only consulting on 11 of them, with the most harmful proposals being introduced instead in a new government bill, without any consultation.

Rick Burgess, who posted the petition on behalf of GMCDP, said he believed petitions were only valuable as part of wider campaigns that use tactics such as protests, lobbying and legal action.

Disability News Service reported last month that at least three legal firms were examining ways in which they could support disabled people and their organisations to challenge parts of the green paper in the courts.

In late March, more than 1,000 disabled people and allies protested outside Downing Street over the green paper cuts and reforms (pictured).

And the Coalition Against Benefit Cuts, DPAC, Disability Rights UK and Well Adapt are planning a mass lobby of parliament later this month – on 21 May – which will give disabled people and allies the opportunity to try to persuade their MPs to oppose the planned cuts.

Burgess said he believed the most important thing disabled people and allies can do is to secure a face-to-face meeting with their MP to demand they oppose the government’s plans, while also joining virtual and in-person protests, signing and sharing the petition, writing to their MP, and engaging in campaigning on social media and in the local media.

He said: “We need a full spectrum of opposition to this attack on disabled people.”

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