The Spartacus Report on Responsible Disability Reform

I should have written a lot more about the subject of disability reform before now, and this post is going to be a quickie, but I hope I shall write something at greter length soon.

The main points:
1. Currently, people who are significantly disabled and/or chronically ill can claim a benefit called Disability Living Allowance. There are different rates available based on how severe your condition(s) are assessed as being.
2. DLA has the lowest fraud rate of any benefit (0.5%) , according to the government’s own figures.
3. DLA is a benefit designed to help with the cost of living with a disability. For example, it might pay for wheelchairs, stairlifts, adapted bathrooms, communication devices, taxis for those who are unable to use public transport, the extra costs of heating for those who need to keep their homes warmer due to illness, incontinence pads and many other things.
4. DLA can be claimed both by people who are too sick to work and live entirely on benefits, and by people who do work (or live on student loans or whatever) who need help with disability costs. A lot of employed DLA claimants say that, ironically, without DLA they would be unable to get the assisstive technology they require to work and would end up costing the state more money.
5. Despite its low fraud rate, the government wants to change it to a different disability benefit called Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and estimates that 20% fewer people would be eligible for it.
6. I claimed DLA (at the lowest rate) in the past. It helped pay for taxis to medical appointments when I was much more ill than I am now and could not use public transport. Partly down to DLA I am now better than I was and off benefits. Once PIP comes in, someone in the situation I was in then would be in big trouble. I was lucky to get DLA without trouble – some people who are very sick, with life-threatening conditions, are still denied it and have to appeal (like Sue Marsh, who has a rare , particularly severe form of Chron’s disease. She wrote about it here.)
7. There are a LOT of things wrong with the PIP proposals (too many to list right now, but they are in the report linked below). The government has also broken its own rules about consultations before planning these changes.8. A document called “The Spartacus report” has been researched and put together by hundreds of disability campaigners accross the country. You can read it here.
9. We all know the economy is a mess. However, even if, for the sake of argument, there is genuinely nothing less important we can cut instead, and it would genuinely be impossible to raise any more tax without making the situation worse (both premises I’m unsure about) the government could at least tell the truth and say “DLA claimants aren’t frauds living in luxury, they’re people claiming money they need. We just can’t afford to give them what they need, which sucks. Sorry.” Also, implementing the changes from DLA to PIP will have significant administrative costs.
10. In my imagined as-close-to-ideal-as-possible-considering-humanity’s-fallen-state world, there would be no need for DLA. Not because disabled people would disappear, or because we’d live in some kind of Randian dystopia where nobody helps anyone but themselves, but because people would SHARE, of their own volition, without the government needing to collect money for a welfare system*. People would just support each other when they needed it, without the need for the complex machinery of the state. However, what’s happening here isn’t a replacement of state support with private charity but the government falsely saying that many people on DLA don’t need any help.

*In this imaginary, not-possible-in-the-forseeable-future world, there would still BE government, but there’d be a lot less of it. Not because OH NOES GUVMINT IS EEEEBIL HOW DARE U SUGGEST THAT I HAV A DUTY TO HELP OTHER PPL!!!!ONEONEONE!!!!ELEVEN!!!!!11111111 but because people would just help each other without needing to be told to. And yes, I do need to think a bit more about how it would work, in practical terms, although I do have ideas which I don’t currently have time to explain. And yes, I do need to help other people more and get better at practising what I preach, but just because I do not live out a principle perfectly doesn’t mean that the principle is wrong.