Reverse the ESA disability benefit cut
Petition Reverse the ESA disability benefit cut
23 Mar 2016
Petition Reverse the ESA disability benefit cut
Gill Thompson was outside the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) yesterday, with a banner of names of people she says have died due to benefit sanctions - including her brother David Clapson.
George Osborne is reportedly poised to use a reduction of £55 a week in benefit payments to disabled people in order to fund a middle-class tax giveaway at next week's Budget.
Disabled people could lose more than any other social group if the UK votes to leave the European Union (EU), a Labour MEP has warned today (Friday).
No wonder people in this country believe disabled people are inherently scroungers, receiving money for nothing, when we are greeted by headlines in national newspapers and on the TV, like the ones I have seen today, saying that our welfare benefits are to be cut by £150 per week in next week's Budget. Benefits that we receive for being sick and disabled. Benefits that are supposed to help put us on a level playing field with our non-disabled fellow citizens. Benefits that we ourselves, or our families, have contributed to by way of taxes and NI contributions. No wonder we are being vilified and thought of as living a pampered life of luxury when we're not. No wonder we get shouted at and abused in shops and on the streets by people who are also struggling in the gloom of austerity. No wonder when misinformation such as that I have seen and read today are being quoted on Social Media and by the media as being fact.
An important new Upper Tribunal judgment has clarified the legal framework for deciding whether a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) award should be an indefinite award or for a fixed term. The judgment can be used by those disabled people who feel that they should be made an indefinite award of PIP as their daily living and/or mobility problems are unlikely to diminish. It can also be used by those disabled people who feel that they should have been made a longer fixed term PIP award again because their daily living and/or mobility problems are likely be more long standing. In UK/5459/2014, Upper Tribunal Judge Mitchell holds that the Welfare Reform Act 2012 provides a qualified requirement that PIP awards are to be for a fixed term. The statutory qualification to the requirement for fixed term awards is that a fixed term award would be "inappropriate". In deciding whether a fixed term would be inappropriate, a key consideration is the likely persistence of an individual's limiting conditions. A factor in f