Article: Voices: Where are disabled people supposed to find an extra £12k a year?

[Sly Saint]

Tom Pursglove has done something amazing. Something I didn’t think would be possible: he’s made a succession of ministers for disabled people, who’ve run the gamut from invisible to ineffective, look good.

There he is, wearing a bullet proof vest with a Department for Work and Pensions logo on it, doing his best tough guy impression on his ministry’s social media feed. “We will track you down, we will find you and we will bring you to justice,” he tells benefit cheats.

Ask yourself which should be the bigger issue for a minister for disabled people: putting on a flak jacket and playing copper when the rate of fraud for the personal independence payment is 0.3 per cent? Or addressing the staggering extra costs the people he’s supposed serve now face? Costs which the available benefits don’t even begin to cover?

Scope, the charity, has just released its latest estimate of them. The average disability price tag is now a staggering £975 per month.

Among the costs that number takes into account is the ruinous price of specialist equipment: wheelchairs, hoists, and home adaptations, for example. I have personal experience of the former, having been quoted five grand for one that will meet my needs, which I still haven’t been able to bring myself to think about because, well, it’s five grand and I’m not a hedge fund manager.

There is also the higher usage of everyday essentials like energy, because when your body doesn’t move easily you obviously need more heat in the winter.
All that and paying over the odds for taxis because public transport is inaccessible, unfriendly and downright frightening to use (when it is available). Plus premium prices for insurance, and any specialist food products you might need.

There is also the cost of medical support that is either inadequate, unavailable, or requires one to wait months (or even years) in considerable pain before an appointment is forthcoming.

The DWP’s official policy is to get more disabled people into work. We are told that ministers want to focus on what disabled people can do, and not what they can’t. I’ve shelled out a small fortune for physiotherapy because there’s lots I can do if I can just sit comfortably while I work.

Disability activist and Scope Ambassador Shani Dhanda has put her personal disability price tag at £13k. She has my respect for making the effort. I can’t bring myself to calculate my own, because the thought of doing so makes me shudder.

To achieve the same standard of living as the average household, one with a disabled person in it will have to find £12k from somewhere.

How are we supposed to do that, exactly? Win the lottery? Rob a bank?

Looking at the £975 figure was particularly wounding for me, because I sat on the independent Extra Costs Commission that Scope sponsored some years ago. We worked hard to find ways to reduce those costs, and produced an exhaustively researched report containing a bunch of good ideas that could be used to reduce what was then a much less daunting number than the one we see today.

Scope argues for the creation of a social energy tariff for disabled households, and action from business and regulators to make sure that disabled people don’t pay over the odds – something which happens all too frequently.

It also wants a commitment from the government to prioritise tackling the extra cost of disability. All good proposals which I unequivocally endorse.

The trouble is, to get even part of the way there disability would have to be made a political priority. Not to mention the fact that disabled people would need a minister we could rely on. At the moment, Tom Pursglove is not that minister.

Voices: Where are disabled people supposed to find an extra £12k a year? (msn.com)