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An angry disability campaign group has alerted leading politicians that a consultation meeting before planned benefit cuts has now been cancelled, even though it was the ONLY one in Wales.
In an open letter key figures, including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the First Minister of Wales (FMW) Eluned Morgan, as well as a host of other influential individuals including the Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens have been informed of the shocking decision.
In the letter by Swansea Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) it was written: “The DWP have cancelled the only in-person consultation event for the whole of Wales, and do not plan to run another“.
“They did this after announcing an inaccessible venue at the last minute, in what we believe to be a clear example of disability discrimination.
“The consultation was always going to be unfair, given half the proposals – the most important half – were off the table for discussion on day one”.
This evident fury is set against a backdrop of a growing storm about the proposed cuts, and UK Ministers have been taken aback by huge protests.
in an earlier media statement (when the ‘consultation’ in Wales was due to take place) DPAC declared: “ We have almost zero faith in a consultation process that starts, on day one, by outlining all the areas it will not be consulting on. The most controversial proposals are not even up for discussion. There is one, and only one, in-person consultation event for the whole of Wales. Our MPs are ignoring our letters”.
It’s thought that UK Ministers are ready now to make adjustments to the contentious legislation.
Ministers are examining a potential change that could allow up to 200,000 people to keep their disability benefits by tweaking assessment rules.
They are also looking at potential changes to mollify Labour backbenchers and others, whose anger has been obvious.
The Financial Times (FT) reported that one of the alterations may be in the proposed assessment rules for Personal Independence Payments (PIP), so that individuals who receive a high overall score continue to be eligible, even if they do not receive at least four points in any category.
Another potential tweak could mean more time is given to claimants who lose access to one disability benefit to apply for other support they may be eligible for, and benefit claimants could be given longer “transitional periods” to ease the impact of losing support.
Sir Keir has been under huge pressure about taking an axe to the welfare system, since it was blamed for Labour’s poor local election results in England, so ministers are looking at potential changes as a way of staving off a major backbench rebellion.
Like the proposed disability cuts, other benefits too are in the spotlight, with Wales at the heart of the drama.
Ms Morgan has urged the UK Government to scrap the two-child benefit cap, saying it was “damaging for lots of families in Wales”.
Meanwhile the Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ local Labour party was to call for her to abandon the proposals altogether.
The Leeds West and Pudsey Constituency Labour Party (CLP), which campaigned to return Ms Reeves to the UK Parliament last year as its MP, had agreed to write to her “as soon as possible” to make clear it does not support the cuts.
Opposition on Ms Reeves’s home patch, echo those in South Wales, and come as the UK Government grows increasingly anxious over appeasing its backbenchers concerning the scheme.
About 100 Labour MPs, more than a quarter of the party’s parliamentary numbers, are reported to have signed a letter urging ministers to scale back the benefit cuts.
Some MPs have expressed resentment at how the leadership is said to be handling opposition to the changes.
One newly elected MP said: “There hasn’t been any real attempt at engagement. It’s been left to backbenchers to hustle for a meeting. They almost see it as a virility test. It’s not helpful politics”.
Relations have been further strained after a highly critical letter published in The Guardian – in which 42 MPs told the Prime Minister that planned disability cuts would be “impossible to support” – did not get a response from Sir Keir Starmer’s office.
The MP added: “You’d think the leadership would say: ‘I’m a bit pissed you went to the papers but let’s talk about what you said.’ No one has made any overtures”.
There is understood to be unrest among newly elected MPs who feel they are being expected to defend policies they were not elected for while not being allowed any input.
One MP said: “Unless the government comes up with the idea, it doesn’t count. It’s a case of the new intake thinking: ‘I haven’t realised I’m irrelevant’”.
Another senior backbencher said: “I strongly think Number 10 see the PLP as a problem to be dealt with. The advisers around Keir think the PLP is an inconvenience…”.
It seems there is another ‘inconvenience’ for him to deal with now – an open letter from a disability organisation about cancelling the solitary consultation meeting in Wales about plans to cut benefit payments…
Details of our Editor (who is himself disabled) Phil Parry’s astonishing decades-long journalistic career (when protests against Government policies were often covered), as he was gripped by the rare and incurable neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – why landlords in Wales have condemned official policy and warned they are pulling out of the rental market because of red tape, after a big rise in complaints about sub-standard accommodation.
