Category: #ToryDisabilityRights

#ToryDisabilityRights

Anger as NHS hospitals scrap free parking for the sick and disabled

From Welfare Weekly: Union bosses and the Labour Party has responded angrily to news that hospitals are abolishing free parking for sick patients and people with disabilities.

The Mirror reports that Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust introduced the controversial policy just days before Christmas, with dialysis patients and carers among those will be affected by the cruel decision.

And Nottinghamshire University Hospitals Trust, which the Mirror claims made £3.6million from parking charges last year, are scrapping free parking for Blue Badge holders from January next year (2019).

[Read full article on Welfare Weekly…]

Labour blasts Tory response to tax-dodging private firms locking up people with learning disabilities

From the Morning Star: People with learning disabilities are having to put up with Bedlam-like conditions in institutions that should have been shut down years ago, shadow health minister Barbara Keeley said today.

The current situation was “nothing short of a national scandal” with patients being treated in a way that has “no place in the 21st century,” while private operators of the institutions profit and squirrel millions of pounds in offshore tax havens, she added.

She made the demand after reports emerged last month that an autistic teenager called Bethany was locked for almost two years in solitary confinement and fed through a hatch, which reignited calls for immediate closure of such institutions.

The news led Sir Stephen Bubb to claim the government had “ignored” his independent report into the 2011 abuse scandal at Winterbourne View, which recommended a dramatic reduction in the use of institutions for people with learning disabilities.

Asking an urgent question on the issue in the Commons seven years after the original scandal, Ms Keeley called for immediate action to “rid the country” of these institutions.

She said: “Can the minister tell us why the NHS is still sanctioning the use of settings which expose thousands of vulnerable people to abuse at a cost of half a billion pounds despite the government pledging to close them?

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Tories’ access to work cap unlawfully discriminates against deaf people, High Court hears

From the Morning Star: A Tory Government cap on the amount paid to help cover the extra costs of working with a disability unlawfully discriminates against deaf people, the High Court heard today.

Action on Disability chief executive David Buxton uses British sign language as his first language and requires full-time interpretation, historically provided under the access to work (ATW) scheme, to do his job.

When he joined Action on Disability, a “hearing-led organisation,” from a position at the British Deaf Association, Mr Buxton required increased support.

But the Department for Work and Pensions’s £42,100 cap on ATW payments means Mr Buxton could only be supported by an interpreter three days a week.

Earlier this year, the government announced it would raise the annual cap to £57,200 from April — but Mr Buxton requires £67,500 a year.

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Minister: Rest of world should be learning from Tory disability policies

disability news service mordauntFrom Disability News Service: The Tory minister “for” disabled people has dismissed a damning UN report on her government’s disability rights record, arguing that the rest of the world should instead be learning from the UK’s policies.

Penny Mordaunt was speaking weeks after the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities said the government’s social protection policies had caused a “human catastrophe” for disabled people.

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The Tories are being investigated by the UN for ‘ongoing human rights violations’

From Evolve Politics: United Nations officials are hearing evidence from UK-wide disability organisations which shows the Tory government’s “ongoing human rights violations” have put it in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People.

After being warned last October that welfare cuts have led to “grave and systematic violations” of rights, the UK government is now under investigation by the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Campaigners have called the government’s lack of action “complacency at best and high-handed evasion at worst”. Read more