The Threat from the Disabled

This week the Independent Living Fund was closed by the Government. This fund has, since 1988, supported profoundly disabled people to live at home in the way they want to. It has been a totally brilliant scheme -giving its participants the power to employ the carers they want, get the equipment that suits them, and have a life they want as much as any of us have.

18,000 people were, till Tuesday, members of the scheme. It cost £300m a year. Now these 18,000 will rely on their local authorities for their funds. The government has handed over some cash-£262m, spot the huge cut- to local authorities but without requiring ring fencing. The whole operation has, since 2010 when this Government announced it would be closing the Fund, been accompanied by the kind  of disgusting lies and weaselly language we have come to expect from a Government which wants to hack down public spending and reduce the civic state. There has been talk of ‘integrated care’ ‘simplification’, ‘giving back control to local people’ ‘consulting as to the best provision of the needs of the disabled’.

The campaign and struggle by disabled individuals and groups since 2010 has been nothing short of heroic and masterly. They have fought against the abolition of the ILF every inch of the way, culminating in two Court of Appeal judgments- one in their favour and the last one against. So there is nothing of the victim here and everything of tactical and strategic brilliance, redoubtable perseverance and democratic struggle.

It has all failed. Which brings us to last week and a particularly disgraceful yet illuminating episode involving 10 profoundly disabled people in wheelchairs, numberless police(40 in the House of Commons lobby alone and a couple of hundred outside and along the Embankment) and the pathetic failure of our Parliamentary system to relate intelligently or sympathetically, to the real lives of people directly affected by Parliamentary decisions.

A last ditch attempt to stop the destruction of the ILF was devised by a robustly inventive group of very disabled people. They went to the House of Commons and decided it would be a good idea to get into the Chamber at the weekly Wednesday question time with the Prime Minister. I think that was a good idea. Why not? Why shouldn’t MPs and Ministers talk to the people whose lives they change by their decisions?

Shock horror. Police sprang into action. Officials ran scared. The doors to Parliament were closed. They were actually closed to deal with the abominable threat from a group of wheelchair using, profoundly disabled ( and also fired up, determined and brazen!) people. No one apart from 2 Labour MPs , John O’Donnell and Dennis Skinner, bothered to talk to them.

So a nasty, pompous, unimaginative and indicative end to the disgraceful Government abolition of a secure and independent living for 18,000 people. MPs should be ashamed of themselves.