People with Disabilities: Cost of Living
Debate between Christine Jardine and Marion Fellows(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the cost of living for people with disabilities.
It is a real pleasure to serve under you, Dr Huq. In the years in which I have had the privilege of being the Member of Parliament for Motherwell and Wishaw, I have received loads of briefings from many organisations to support my work in these types of debate. For this debate, I have received a record number of briefings, and they have come from these organisations, which I shall name check: Scope, the Food Foundation, Guide Dogs, the British Association of Social Workers, the MS Society, Which?, Mencap, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. That tells its own story.
Those organisations are so worried. They are telling me that the Government have continuously failed disabled people, their carers and their families; that the Government are tinkering around the edges of a cost of living crisis that is affecting millions of people across the United Kingdom; and that the impact of the crisis affects those with disabilities, their carers and their families even more seriously than it affects the rest of the population.
I woke this morning to the news that the Prime Minister is having a farm-to-fork summit on the cost of food—the figure of 19.1% is being bandied about as a headline for food price inflation—and when I opened my iPad, I read about a father who had admitted to stealing baby formula to feed his child because his wife had been watering down the formula. That is the UK in 2023, and the situation is even worse for disabled households.
Scope’s recent disability price tag report shows that the cost of being disabled in 2023 has risen to £975 per month for a disabled household, inclusive of disability benefits. People do not get disability benefits on top; that is inclusive. The personal independence payment was designed to offset the additional costs associated with being disabled, but it is now totally inadequate. That figure represents a £300 per month increase from 2016-17, when Scope last did this. Scope also says that it would be £1,122 per month if the figure were updated to accommodate the inflationary costs for the 2022-23 period. The bottom line is that Government support for those with disabilities has been wholly inadequate throughout the cost of living crisis. Disability Rights UK has said that the cost of living payments “don’t touch the sides”.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The hon. Lady is making a powerful argument. The Resolution Foundation said recently that those with disabilities have 44% less available to spend in the current economic crisis than those of us who are fortunate enough to be fully abled. At a time when energy costs have made life more difficult for everyone, does she think that we have perhaps missed a vital opportunity to support the disabled by helping them more with those costs?
Marion Fellows
The hon. Lady will know that I do not often agree with her, but in this case I totally agree. There are many other organisations—she mentioned the Resolution Foundation, and the MND Association has outlined that those with motor neurone disease face additional costs of £14,500 per year. Naturally, those with the condition have much higher energy needs in order to power their essential, life-saving equipment.
Cost of Living
Debate between Christine Jardine and Marion Fellows(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Marion Fellows
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government do not take into account real lived experiences and people with multiple differences, such as being a woman, being disabled and being a single parent. It just is not good enough.
Disabled people often face higher costs for their gas and electricity. Many disabled people say that they need more heating to stay warm—most of us here can recognise that—and others say that they have to use extra electricity to charge up items of assistive technology. My parliamentary assistant went to a drop-in session and came back to my office almost in tears, having spoken to a parent who requires three separate machines to keep their child alive overnight, but who could not afford to pay the associated electricity costs. Even with the cap that the Government have tried to put on electricity prices, the extra £150 does not help.
Disabled people have been suffering for years, and if we give someone a percentage of a very small amount, it is still a very small increase. According to the professional association for social work and social workers, 7 million people—almost half of those living in poverty in the UK—are either disabled or live with someone with a disability. The Trussell Trust says that half of those using food banks are disabled.
I know that the Government do make some effort—I congratulate the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, whom I spoke to this morning—but they do not get the bigger picture. When something like this cost of living crisis rears its ugly head, it drives the most vulnerable in our society into further debt and further difficulty. Something that I have not yet mentioned is that anyone with a food allergy or anyone who requires special food is in an even worse state during this cost of living crisis.
The SNP has consistently called on the Government to uplift universal credit—to increase it by £25 per week—and extend it to all means-tested legacy benefits. I refer to those people who went through the covid-19 pandemic and got no additional costs. That is just not right and we need to look at it. The Government need to do their job properly and actually help people.
The Scottish Government are trying to make things better. Our adult disability payment and the child payment, which has recently been doubled and will hopefully be increased even more, help families and disabled people much more than what is happening in the rest of the UK. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) has said, there is a cost to this, which is that folk like me pay more tax. I have yet to meet a constituent who tells me that they object to paying more tax to help folk less well off than themselves. It may just be that Motherwell and Wishaw is a beacon of light, but I do not think so. The Motherwell and Wishaw constituency is built on old mining communities—coal and steel communities—and the people there tend to know what it is like to be in poverty, but they also know that helping each other is the sign of a civilised society.
The health and disability White Paper raises the spectre of more disabled people facing sanctions. Can we really believe that, in the 21st century, we are going to sanction disabled people? They will have to move on to universal credit, and then not only will they not get what they are entitled to, but any increases will be barred under that punitive regime. This Government are also very bad at signposting. Let me cite as an example pension credit, the uptake of which has been disgraceful.
I am watching my time carefully, but I will briefly reflect on what the Prime Minister was doing today with the Farm to Fork summit at No. 10. That seems to me a lamentable effort to mitigate the disaster that has been Brexit for the economy and for the food supply chain. The Government were warned often during the Brexit debates, many of which I was able to attend.
It is not good enough. Scotland needs and wants to go back into the European Union. Many people in Scotland still believe that is the best way forward for this country and we want to follow the example of countries such as France that put blocks on prices to keep things cheaper for people during a cost of living crisis. This country is in a terrible state. Scotland is in a terrible state in terms of people suffering with the cost of living.
It is almost inconceivable that the Lib Dems and the Labour party are backing a hard Tory Brexit. They do not want to say how awful it has been for people right across the UK and what it has done for food prices—
Marion Fellows
I will leave it to the hon. Lady to correct me later, when she finds time.
Lastly, it is really important that this Government reflect on the fact that a society is judged on how it treats its most vulnerable people. On that measure, this Government are failing.