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Mar 09
2012
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The government has been heavily defeated in the House of Lords over plans to remove legal aid for benefits appeals.
An amendment to the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill means legal aid will now be retained for the initial appeals of people with complex benefits problems, although the change is likely to be overturned when the bill returns to the Commons.
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Mar 09
2012
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Disabled people’s organisations have backed government plans to withdraw funding from the remaining sheltered, segregated factories run by Remploy, but have called for as many of them as possible to emerge as new user-led social enterprises.
Maria Miller, the Conservative minister for disabled people, announced this week that 36 of the remaining 54 Remploy factories across the UK would close by the end of 2012, with the loss of more than 1,500 disabled people’s jobs.
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Feb 19
2012
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New figures show the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is making good progress in prosecuting disability hate crimes successfully, say disabled activists.
Last year (2010-11), the number of successful convictions for disability hate crime-related offences rose from 483 to 579 across England and Wales.
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Feb 14
2012
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Lawyers and Deaf and disabled people’s organisations (DDPOs) have come together to find new ways of using the legal system to defend disabled people’s rights, inclusion and quality of life against public sector cuts.
The Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations Legal Network aims to identify and launch important test cases against public bodies, and raise awareness among DDPOs of how they can use the legal system to fight for their rights.
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Feb 14
2012
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One in five disabled people’s organisations in London faces closure in the next year because of cuts to their funding, according to a new report.
Inclusion London, which carried out the survey for its A Matter of Survival report, said the threatened closures “severely undermined” government policies on disability equality, including those on independent living and direct payments.
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Feb 03
2012
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A leading MP has criticised the General Medical Council (GMC) after a GP whose negligence allowed disabled people to be raped and neglected at two residential homes removed himself from the doctors’ register.
Scores of disabled people were raped, drugged, assaulted and neglected at the notorious Longcare homes in south Buckinghamshire while Dr X* was their GP in the early 1990s.
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Jan 27
2012
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It is “entirely obvious” that the government’s welfare cuts are “falling entirely” on disabled people and families with children, according to a leading academic.
Professor Paul Gregg, an economic and social policy expert at the University of Bath, told a TUC seminar on the government’s cuts and reforms that disabled people were “very much getting the sharp end of the stick”.
Professor Gregg also dismissed government claims that welfare spending had spiralled out of control, and said that – prior to the recession – it had been growing at its slowest rate since the Second World War.
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Jan 27
2012
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Disabled activists are warning that local authorities could try to copy a council that has withdrawn funding from a direct payments support service.
Even though government guidance encourages councils to provide an independent advice and information service for users of direct payments, Hampshire County Council has stopped funding the service that had been provided by Southampton Centre for Independent Living (SCIL).
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Jan 27
2012
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A leading user-led arts organisation has raised new concerns over the search for volunteers to take part in the opening and closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Paralympics.
Last week, disabled artists and performers warned that many disabled people would be put off by a call from London 2012 for 5,000 volunteers with “huge amounts of energy”.
The 2012 organising committee LOCOG has defended the call and says volunteers will need “an expectation of what is required of them so they do not drop out when they realise it is going to be quite demanding
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Jan 23
2012
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Leading figures in the disability movement say they could stop cooperating with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) if the government’s welfare reform bill becomes law.
Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) are becoming increasingly angry at the government’s failure to listen to their views, despite its frequent references to how it is “co-producing” its reforms with disabled people.
This week’s events in the House of Lords, with peers again approving plans to scrap disability living allowance (DLA) and replace it with a new personal independence payment (PIP) – despite some government concessions – have increased frustration among DPOs.
