Colin Brummage: ‘You are uniquely positioned as our MP to drop in and hear first-hand from your disabled constituents’

Open letter to Sir Keir Starmer

• WE are writing to you as the local user-led disabled people’s organisation in Camden, one that is based in your very own constituency.

We are disappointed to hear you are still planning to forge ahead with cuts to disability support despite the growing rebellion in Labour’s ranks and the wealth of evidence showing that the policy is morally deplorable and will fail on its own terms.

As an organisation that spends every day fighting for disabled people to be fully included in society, we can assure you that the vast majority of us want to have access to paid work. However, you do not create the conditions for that to happen by cutting our financial support while failing to address the barriers which are deeply entrenched within an inflexible labour market.

Nor can it be achieved when we do not have full access to key services across wider society, such as health, education, housing, and transport.

You will be aware that disabled people face many additional challenges in life, most of which are created by society.

Think, for example, about the additional difficulties wheelchair users face when trying to travel to Kentish Town due to Transport for London’s refusal to install a lift in the tube, an issue we wrote to you about before.

Or consider for a moment the difficulties that many autistic people face in trying to get or hold down a job because of the failures of employers to make the required adaptations.
Peeling away people’s universal credit payments will not address these structural problems; neither will the cuts to PIP, personal independence payment, which is not related to being unemployed but meant to support disabled people to go about their daily lives.

How will axing the support of a person who can’t wash below the waist or go to the toilet independently motivate them to return to work?

You are uniquely positioned as our MP to drop in and hear first-hand from your disabled constituents, those who (at best) have been pushed to the margins of society and are almost never listened to.

You had an opportunity to do this on May 12 at a large public meeting held to discuss your reforms.
You were invited but did not attend. Had you done so you’d have heard disabled people talk of the financial hardship, mental stress, and desperation these plans were causing them.

We also heard about their bewilderment that all this was being done by a Labour government, and one that had neglected to mention any of these plans in its election manifesto.

Many had voted for you and felt they had been deceived.

It’s not too late.

You can still reverse this policy now and limit the damage done.

COLIN BRUMMAGE CEO
& Trustees of Camden Disability Action