Living with muscular dystrophy is expensive. Our research found that two-thirds of individuals experience significant financial difficulty and two-fifths struggle or fail to pay bills as a direct result of the financial impact of their condition. That’s why the proposed cuts to personal independence payments (Tory rebellion grows over disability cuts,18 March) are so concerning: they would leave many people most likely to be among the poorest in the UK more than £3000 a year worse off. We fear as many as 40000 individuals with muscular dystrophy or a related muscle condition could be caught up in these changes. The government has been unable to provide any satisfactory justification for this reform to PIP. It should listen to the clamour for a change of course – including opposition from its own MPs – and reverse its decision.
Robert Meadowcroft
Chief executive, Muscular Dystrophy UK
• Owen Jones (We can cease this attack on disabled people, and 18 March) is upright to point to the disabled people’s movement in resisting changes to disability benefits that are having fatal consequences. Where he is less clear is why disabled people might be expected to be supported by Labour. He notes a list of detrimental changes to disability benefits that fill occurred over the past decade or so but he neglects to mention that Labour’s record on disability benefits is not covered in glory. And its motivations for changing disability benefits are easily recognisable. A leaked report highlighted in the Guardian in 1997 detailed a desire to shift resources from forms of politically maligned spending (social security) to forms of spending thought to be more politically acceptable (education and health),while the now discredited work capability assessment was introduced in 2008 as a means of bolstering capitalist imperatives related to the supply of labour. With such political economic concerns, why would we now expect Labour to prioritise disability benefits?
Dr Chris Grover
Bolton le Sands, and LancashireContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com