1,000 signatures reached
To: Penny Mordaunt Minister for Disabled People,Health and Work.
Support Disabled object to benefit changes for support group claimants.
Stop the implementation of Charlotte Pickles proposal to introduce conditionality into support group benefits and to reduce them to JSA rates and require all disabled people to actively seek work regardless of their capacity to do so.
Why is this important?
These plans stem from REFORM and the Green Paper https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/work-health-and-disability-improving-lives/work-health-and-disability-green-paper-improving-lives You can further object to these plans here https://consultations.dh.gov.uk/workandhealth/consult/ The consultation ends February 2017.It is not clear what the Government's timetable for rolling out these changes are.I have heard reports that some disabled people are already being assigned to work coaches.The government has announced plans to employ a further 500 advisors( to work as work coaches).Trials are intended to go ahead next year when a certain number of claimants of the support group will be asked to attend work coach sessions. We have information that charities are being invited to work for the DWP.The mental health charity MIND have expressed an interest. http://mentalhealthresistance.org/
The government proposes to reduce the benefits of the severely disabled and to subject them to a punitive regime whereby they are forced to aim towards finding work whether they are able to or not. They will be forced to be subject to conditionality whereby they get paid benefits on condition that they attend work coach sessions ,if they do attend their benefits will be cut to JSA levels and governments propose that they can then be subject to sanctions like many unemployed people who are not ill suffer under already.
This will affect seriously ill and disabled people,some of whom already are being found wrongly fit for work and have committed suicide.
This is inhumane and violent treatment and abuse of incapacitated people. We cannot allow this nor allow the government to dress these proposals up as support for the disabled or any form of empowerment.
It is designed to reduce the welfare budget by 12 billion and is part of government strategy to dismantle the welfare state. It is extreme far right policy not Conservatism. Please object to this and get all your friends to object to it.
I am one of those affected by these changes, I am physically and mentally disabled having many chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypothyroidism and a mental illness and a spinal misalignment, I am also currently being investigated for possible uterine cancer. I cannot survive on JSA or work and any employer would consider me unemployable.
Here is a link to a short video where Charlotte Pickles unveils the plans to attack disabled people and cut their financial support.
How it will be delivered
I will deliver the petition online emailing the signatures to Penny Mordaunt MP and Minister for Disabled people, Health and Work. .
UPDATE:Lord Freud has resigned since this petition was started.I will hand it in to whoever his replacement will be.The intention now is to hand it in online to Penny Mordaunt MP Minister for Disabled people,Health and Work.
