It used to be that when politicians wanted to bury bad news they’d orchestrate its release to time with a distracting event. Seeing Iain Duncan Smith publicly criticized for wasting at least £140 million of public money over Universal Credit at the start of this month, it struck me how we’ve slowly reached another level. “Unmitigated disaster”? “Alarmingly weak”?
These words were used to describe Universal Credit but could easily have been levelled at a number of largely unreported changes to the benefit system. Nowadays, bad news is buried by even worse news. The sheer volume of inefficient and unethical changes to social security this Government has enacted means some of it doesn’t even get noticed. Which, for a set of politicians hacking at vulnerable people’s support systems, is worryingly convenient.
So, here’s five benefit changes the government doesn’t want you to know about.
1. Disabled people denied a key benefit have had their right to appeal reduced
2. Long-term sick people are having their benefits sanctioned ... for being sick
3. 50,000 disabled people are being cut out of work
4. There’s now a one-year limit on hundreds of thousands of people’s sickness benefit
5. Eviction letters are now including veiled threats to remove people’s children
Empty threats concerning people’s children may be a new low. Then again, against the recent actions of this Government – be it imposing sanctions on the disabled or removing the benefits of the sick – ‘a new low’ seems to come weekly.
No comments:
Post a Comment