Disabled people have come under attack again in the latest of George Osborne’s budgets where unemployed disabled people are now set to lose a further £30 per week. In this, the latest blow to disabled people, those on Employment Support Allowance are set to have benefits cut, this comes on top a round of cuts dished out earlier this month which could leave those on Personal Independence Payments as much as £150 worse off per week. Despite the governments insistence that they are spending more each year on disability, it might look for many, and understandably so, that disabled people are being unfairly targeted by the government under the guise of austerity.
In the same budget today, Mr Osborne announced tax breaks for higher middle earners by raising the threshold above which people pay the top rate of income tax from £40,000 to £45,000 per year. He also lowered corporation taxing to 17% giving a break to small business and start ups.
It would appear that disabled people are being treated with utter contempt by this government and are being forced to live the lowest quality of life. While middle earners are given help and encouragement in the form of tax breaks, disabled people are continuing to be squeezed and forced further into poverty. The message that this government gives out seems to be that disabled people are undeserving, and not valued. The notion that the government doesn’t want to provide for disabled people, and think they only deserve the lowest standard of living, is deeply troubling.
The government set out to reform welfare in order to make work pay so that anybody in work is better off than those who are not. It seems rather cruel however to those who can’t work to be forced to live on means below that of the average worker. Many thousands of disabled people want to work but can’t through no fault of their own. Why then should they be denied a basic standard of living?
You would be forgiven for thinking that we may be going back to the dark ages. It seems to be the attitude of the government that if disabled people are not fit to work, they are to be kept living in poverty with no, or little, access to services in the local community. Already the government’s policies have been begun to change public opinion of disabled people with many of the major disability charities recording a sharp increase in disability hate crime over the course of the last parliament.
The danger for the government is that they may be taking social attitudes towards disabled people back several decades. If the government keep disabled people living in poverty, without access to services because the funding is not available, they will inevitably undo much of the work the disabled rights movements have taken decades to achieve. The disabled community needs investment and not cuts. With investment, the government could save money in the long term by creating schemes and facilities that enabled disabled people to work and play a full part in community life. Instead the cruel and callous decisions they are taking now will do nothing but perpetuate the stereotypical attitudes that have kept disabled people at the lower end of the social and economic scale for far too long.