Losing Motability

By: A.C.

It has more than abundantly clear to our readership, that the disabled under the present UK Government have been targeted for swingeing cuts on benefits and welfare.

Sixteen year old Paralympian and Commonwealth Games athlete Kayleigh Haggo from Ayrshire is losing her mobility vehicle because the Government is replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the rules of which state that she no longer qualifies if she can walk twenty metres unaided. The previous limit under DLA was 50 metres. Ms Haggo has a nominated driver in her mother, as the mobility factor in the DLA was for the disabled person. This decision affects her drastically, but I am sure she is just one among many. A determined and resourceful person who has Cerebral Palsy, she is well known for taking part in the Paralympics and Commonwealth games, and used the car to reach where she trained.

Kayleigh wrote on her Facebook Page :

“Please can everyone take two minutes to sign and share my petition to reform the PIP guidelines in order for me to be eligible for my motability car. My whole future, Paralympic and university dreams depend on this one decision. Thank you so much to everyone who already has and in advance to everyone who takes time to sign and share this petition.

Contrast this situation which has been manufactured by the state in its continued targeting of the disabled, with the announcement today that the MPs at Westminster are to get a 10% pay rise.

Just about everybody else has had their pay frozen. Public workers in the NHS, Police, Fire, Council Workers, in fact anyone in the Public Sector has been frozen at 1% of their pay for years now. We all remember the expenses scandal which showed that MP’s had a habit of treating “expenses” like a Christmas Bonus, and built duck ponds, cleared out moats in their country pile or bought a second house.

So The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority ( IPSA) was set up to make sure that MP’s did not just vote through the best terms for themselves.

The salary of an MP will rise from £ 67,060 to £74,000. A Cabinet Minister will trouser £98,000 on top of that. They also get very generous pensions, severance pay, travel and accommodation expenses. The full explanations are published here.

Be warned though, this is heavy going and not easy reading. A slightly more digestible website has the details in plainer English here.

To be fair the leaders of the various parties and many MP’s have said they will give the rise to charity. I suppose if one is already a millionaire or has a nice fat bank account because of the generous pay on offer, then one can afford to do that. Then look at my experience I have recorded here in our blog about the Inland Revenue and the demise of Incapacity and the shift to ESA.

While the MP’s are debating whether to refuse the money, or give it to charity, they should be reminded of their cynical, heartless and relentless attack on the disabled, through their austerity cuts, which has stripped an enthusiastic and bright young girl of her mobility. This in turn will severely impact on her future education and her goal of winning yet more medals at the Paralympics.
She has no choice in her disability, and depends on that mobility to live a life that Ian Duncan Smith will never understand. He has no need of Motability or Benefits and gets chauffeured around in his Ministerial car.

All this time the disabled, jobless and those facing poverty will be pursued and stressed by a heartless DWP and its agents, by subjecting the disabled to assessment after assessment. All the disabled are doing is trying to make their life a bit more liveable.

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