I have spent the morning writing the following to my MP. If you’re a British citizen, please consider doing the same on behalf of many of those in our society least able to fight for an ethical and just approach to social benefits.
I am contacting you as one of your constituents and as a member of an Advisory Committee to the ‘Healthier Science through Collaboration’ project (https://www.ukdri.ac.uk/hxc-healthier-science-through-collaboration). I am intimately involved in issues of illness and disability through both family and work; not least as the result of my wife and I having been carers for my daughter for the last thirty-five years.
It is abundantly clear to those involved with the ill and disabled that the government is presenting wholly false figures to the public to justify its claim that benefit cuts are necessary.
https://www.jrf.org.uk/news/factsheet-health-related-benefit-cuts
As the Rowntree Foundation makes clear, the proposed policy amounts to an attack on those least able to survive it, showing that “72% of people receiving LCWRA or PIP are in the lower half of the income distribution, rising to 89% for those only receiving the LCWRA component of UC and that the proposed cuts would damage the financial security of these low- and medium-income families the most”.
No amount of rhetoric about “the dignity of work” or “the economically productive” can disguise the fact that the Labour Party is simply continuing the previous government’s attack on the most vulnerable members of our society. To impose further economic hardship on the ill, the disabled and therefor on their (often unpaid) carers, rather than address the root causes of our current social situation, is profoundly unethical and, in the long term, economically and socially counterproductive.
Instead, what is needed is:
fair and proper taxation of those whose “dignity of work” consists of collecting very substantial economic benefit in the form of unearned income;
proper analysis of the situation that has resulted in a health system unable to properly address long-term illness or to address the consequences of covid and long covid and swift action to address this;
legislation to ensure that there is meaningful and effective support for those many ill and disabled individuals anxious to find appropriate paid work, rather than the current ineffective lip-service in this respect.
It is time that the Labour Party stopped pandering to those with a vested interest in sustained the Tory status quo and listened instead to those at the sharp end of the current crisis affecting the ill, the disabled and their carers.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Iain Biggs