• 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 / Treasury ‘kept ODI in the dark’ over DLA cut

Treasury ‘kept ODI in the dark’ over DLA cut

By guest on 26th November 2010 Category: News Archive

Listen

The government failed to tell its own expert disability department about its plans to cut a key mobility-based disability benefit until just hours before the measure was announced, a disabled peer has revealed.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell told fellow peers that the Office for Disability Issues (ODI) was given just a few hours’ notice of Treasury plans to remove the mobility component of disability living allowance (DLA) from most disabled people in residential care.

The chancellor, George Osborne, announced in last month’s spending review that, from 2012-13, only those disabled people who fund their own residential care would be able to claim the benefit.

Baroness Campbell told a Lords debate on the impact of the spending review that the move would have “the most disproportionately devastating consequences” on the lives of 58,000 disabled young people and working-age adults.

She said it conflicted with government policies to promote personalisation and independent living and encourage disabled people into work, and would breach the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

She said: “Residential care homes are not intended to be prisons. We all enjoy activities outside our homes. It should be no different for those living in residential care homes.”

She told peers about a disabled couple in residential care who, without their DLA mobility component, “will no longer be able to visit the doctor, dentist, bank, church, library or shops, let alone relatives and friends”.

She said the DLA cut would make “Britain’s most severely disabled people the group who lose most” from the spending review, while it “literally removes their mobility” and “makes neither moral nor financial sense”.

And she said she was “deeply concerned” that the Treasury failed to carry out an impact assessment on the spending cut or discuss it in advance with the ODI or other disability experts.

Lord Sassoon, commercial secretary to the Treasury, told Baroness Campbell that he would “note carefully” her concerns, and that her speech, and others, illustrate “just how difficult it is to reshape the welfare system in the radical way that we intend at a time of considerable retrenchment in the public finances”.

Another disabled peer, Lord [Colin] Low, criticised the government’s decision to impose a “completely arbitrary” one-year time limit on disabled people who claim the contributory version of employment and support allowance (ESA).

He said there were “simply not the jobs to enable everyone on ESA to get a job within 12 months”.

Lord Low said the measure – which will affect those in the “work-related activity group” – was “sadistically harsh”, comes at “completely the wrong time”, and was “self-defeating” because it would “completely undermine” the government’s efforts to support disabled people into work.

He said the “damaging and unjust consequences” of time-limiting ESA were “just one of many reasons” why the government should “seriously rethink” its spending review.

The Department for Work and Pensions refused to comment when asked for its reaction to the Treasury’s failure to carry out an impact assessment or discuss the DLA cut in advance with the ODI.

2 November 2010

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