A new report provides yet more proof – if we needed it – that the toxic Tories couldn’t give a toss about disabled people. Once again, we have hard numerical evidence that they are punching down on disabled benefit claimants through its punitive welfare reforms. In particular, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is doing so through its nightmare Universal Credit roll-out.
Universal Credit roll-out hitting disabled people hardest
On Monday 15 April, the Resolution Foundation published a damning report on the impacts of the Tories’ phase-out of ‘legacy’ benefits. This entails the so-called “managed migration” of people on old-style benefits like Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Tax Credits over to Universal Credit.
As the Canary’s Steve Topple reported in March, the DWP has already denied tens of thousands of people access to Universal Credit in the process.
Now, the shift to Universal Credit is entering its final stages. So, the DWP is dusting off the finishing touches to predictably disastrous effect – as the Resolution Foundation has shown. In a new report titled “In credit?”, the independent think-tank exposed its appalling impact, particularly on disabled claimants.
As the Guardian reported:
A single person with a long-term disability that prevents them from working is £2,800 a year worse off when they transfer to universal credit (UC), the Resolution Foundation said, adding that all single people with long-term disabilities will suffer this loss of income when the rollout of UC is completed by 2030.
Tory’s “ableist f*ckery”
Folks on X were rightly incensed at the callous Tory government for throwing disabled people under the bus.
The Guardian’s Frances Ryan said:
Thousands of disabled people will get £2,800 a year less after the Universal Credit rollout, it’s emerged.
The ways in which the Tory party have found to push disabled people into poverty truly is endless. https://t.co/boFIcP4lqH
— Frances Ryan (@DrFrancesRyan) April 15, 2024
One poster on X called it out for what it is:
What is this ableist fuckery?https://t.co/ZUmHIEiimZ
— Sam🐟❤🌈😷🌍🇵🇸 (@CounsellingSam) April 15, 2024
And as ever, for a thrilling lesson in shameless double standards, look no further than the Tories:
Tory MPs awarded themselves a Massive pay rise, have subsidised restaurants, huge expenses…
But Disabled people, unable to work – through no fault of our own – will be £2800 a year worse off! #GeneralElectionNow #ToriesOut #DWP #IainDuncanSmithhttps://t.co/zcmdxujr7y— Wren 💙🇪🇺 (@Wrenjh) April 14, 2024
Tory government hates disabled people – whatever gives you that idea?
Diane Abbott raised what was presumably intended as a poignant rhetorical question:
Why does this government hate disabled people so much?
Thousands of disabled people ‘will get £2,800 a year less under universal credit’https://t.co/9YzNBuHFHt
— Diane Abbott (@HackneyAbbott) April 15, 2024
Punching down on disabled people is of course a favourite Tory past-time, as repeated discriminatory DWP reforms illustrate. Crucially then, as one X poster pointed out, the cruelty is precisely the point:
Of course. This is the point of #UniversalCredit: systematic cruelty and deliberate impoverishment of vulnerable people. #IainDuncanSmith has done so much damage, it's hard to make sense of it all.https://t.co/JIAWPjri3D
— Mark Nixon (@fatbadger442) April 15, 2024
That disabled people have borne the brunt of cuts and changes to social security is the consequence of political choices to strip the benefits system to the bone and keep support levels low.https://t.co/k0LUfU9LiC
— NEF (@NEF) April 15, 2024
Naturally, some were quick to allude to why:
Cruelty coarses through multi-millionaire Sunak's Tory Government as it relishes using its flawed benefits system to punish the disabled ♿ & sick whilst simultaneously lining the pockets of Tory peers like Michelle Mone & its cronies taxpayer's money!🧐⬇️https://t.co/EUtoOUAvVY
— mike roberts-millar 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 NHS🌈❤️HopeNotHate (@wisheart12) April 15, 2024
In short, disabled people unable to work aren’t propping up its capitalist low-wage economy, siphoning off profits from exploitative labour to its rich mates. Of course, that’s also exactly who’s benefitting from the sh*tshow that is the Tory’s Universal Credit rollout:
So the @resfoundation has very kindly created a winners and losers chart of people on Universal Credit, relative to previous benefits. Chief losers are the disabled, main winners are those in private housing. The problem here is that the main winner is actually a private landlord pic.twitter.com/SNNs1D8hdr
— Matthew Pennell (@Matt_building) April 15, 2024
In other words, while the DWP is poking gaping holes in the social safety net for disabled claimants, it’s lining the pockets of wealthy landlords. But naturally, buttering up the landlord class is the type of ‘hand-out’ the Tories can readily get behind.
It’s not as if landlord donors grease the wheels of government or anything. Nor are many Tory MPs, in fact, greedy landlords themselves, of course. Nothing to see here.
Rich “bored to death” while DWP Universal Credit kills disabled people
Moreover, some were quick to excoriate the hypocrisy of the Tory’s particular predilection for protecting the interests of the ultra wealthy:
https://twitter.com/swansonian/status/1779933092385358236
Not that X posters were naming any names of course. The Canary however is not above a petty dunk on some audacious Tory nepotism. Yes, we’re talking about you Akshata Murty.
So spare a thought for the UK super-rich “petrified” of the prospect of parting with a penny of their grifted billions for the UK coffers. They’ve been fleecing the UK out of billions in tax and plan to high-tail it now that Labour appears to be mooting the scrapping of non-dom status.
For all their threats to leave however, don’t toast to it just yet, because as the Guardian reported, they’re unlikely to follow through:
because they fear they would be “bored to death” in the often “culturally barren” locations.
Yet, while the mega rich whine about being “bored to death” in offshore tax havens, DWP reforms like this will quite literally kill disabled people. Horrifically, they already are. Notably, the DWP has presided over tens of thousands claimant deaths and of those waiting for decisions on their claims.
One person poured scorn on the Guardian for missing out this not-so-minor detail. Yes, the tiny matter of the Tories’ toxic legacy of killing disabled benefit claimants – that old chestnut:
Why then does this article only discuss the £2800 loss per yr for disabled people in one paragraph.
It then appears to say how lucky they are to get universal creditWhy not discuss how it means that more deaths of starvation, hypothermia, & suicide will most definitely occur
— Sarah Spoor (@SarahSpoorUK) April 15, 2024
Moreover, as one poster highlighted, we’re also old enough to remember when the DWP was hauled in front of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in March:
https://twitter.com/compassion_heal/status/1779996751161655479
Given up the “pretense” of giving a f*ck for disabled people
In politics, timing is everything, or you’d think it should be. However, as someone on X noted, prominent Tories appear to give zero f*cks now the party is in its final gasping breaths of governance:
Heartless, greedy Tories abandon any pretence of caring as they enter the dying weeks of government.
Thousands of disabled people ‘will get £2,800 a year less under universal credit’— @Liberteguernica. (@liberteguernica) April 15, 2024
Or perhaps not. As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey pointed out, the government spin-machine was ready and raring to churn out its favourite morally repugnant disabled-people-as-fraudsters trope:
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the DWP secretary is telling the press disabled people are defrauding the system and making that the big clickbait story on the day it’s revealed disabled people will lose thousands a year in the forced switch to universal credit. pic.twitter.com/rBWTKQZcTH
— Rachel Charlton-Dailey 💖💜💙 (@RachelCDailey) April 15, 2024
Hats off to the DWP for playing into not one, but two trash right-wing constructs at the same time.
At the end of the day, that the Universal Credit reforms have hit disabled people hardest was hardly surprising. It’s entirely in step with a brutal Tory campaign to strip them of their benefits and push sick and disabled folks into the workforce.
Moreover, if they can’t go back to work, too bad, in toxic Tory Britain, benefits won’t break even – but what’s a few tens of thousands more deaths? As ever, the Tories would rather watch disabled people starve than eat into the fortunes of the super rich.
Feature image via the Canary
