Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Natalie McGarry Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Natalie McGarry (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Ours is a disabling society. Some are born impaired, some acquire impairments. Some of those are visible, some invisible. All of us will, in time, feel the invisible agency of a society that is organised for the convenience of able bodies, a society which for too long has approached the mental wellbeing of its people with silence, embarrassment and denial. It is society that disables. It inscribes its exclusionary assumptions everywhere—on pavements, on buildings, in interview panels, in bleak ATOS assessment rooms.

The Government propose to abolish the employment and support allowance work-related activity component, which was originally envisaged as a way of supporting people with limited capability for work as a result of sickness or disability. It sought to recognise the barriers that people with disabilities face in seeking work, the disabling attitudes, the disabling environments, and the additional costs that disabled people bear, day to day, leading their lives. Employment and support allowance extended a small measure of recognition of the inequality that our society generates, and now even that small gesture is to be torn away. Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind, is reported as saying:

“People being supported by ESA receive a higher rate than those on JSA because they face additional barriers as a result of their illness or disability, and typically take longer to move into work. Almost 60 per cent of people on JSA move off the benefit within 6 months, while almost 60 per cent of people in the WRAG need this support for at least two years.”

[Anne McLaughlin]

Someone close to me who has bipolar disorder used to use her employment and support allowance to pay for things when she found it impossible to face the world. She would employ somebody to take her child to school and someone to provide talking therapies and things that improved her mental health. Does my hon. Friend agree that sometimes mental disabilities can be just as financially costly as physical ones?

[Natalie McGarry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very well-made point.

According to the House of Commons Library, in November last year 492,000 claimants fell within the employment and support allowance work-related activity group—people assessed as being capable of undertaking some work—almost 250,000 of whom are classified by the Government as suffering from mental and behavioural disorders. Under the Bill, these people will see their payments slashed, at a saving to the Exchequer of £640 million a year by 2020. Affected claimants will receive up to £1,500 a year less than under current rules. A recent study by Scope found that disabled people spend an average of £550 more in disability-related expenses than non-disabled members of the population. These are not extravagances, they are not luxuries, and they are certainly not lifestyle choices.

[Angela Crawley]

Child tax credits will be paid only to families with up to two children, even if the third is disabled. Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is a disabled child in a family, they should be exempt from this cap?

[Natalie McGarry]

I absolutely and fundamentally agree.

While £30 a week may seem like small change to the Secretary of State, for whom it is a breakfast, for too many disabled people it is the difference between hunger and malnutrition—between turning on their fire or sitting shivering in the dark, or between booking a cab to take them for their one day out a week or sitting at home alone, excluded from society. We will not tolerate that. Disabled people are not passive victims. This Government see the poverty they inflict on disabled people, on their loved ones and on their children as someone else’s problem. They talk a good game on getting disabled people into work, but dismantle the best tools we have for doing so. They have used traditional tools: cynical innuendo about disabled people, with baseless assertions that they are workshy, idle, and disincentivised by employment and support allowance from seeking work. Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, they assume that everyone organises their lives according to their cynical standards. This is a Government determined to ignore the social barriers they are even now erecting.

Tonight the conscience of this Chamber will be tested. Hubert Humphrey, in his last speech, said:

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and”

those with disabilities. The Minister’s hand signed the paper, but this Government, who would rather parrot empty slogans than address the real needs of our people, have no tears to flow. Yet the tears flow of my constituents, and yours and yours. If you vote for this Bill or abstain, go home to your constituencies and prepare your explanations.