Last week GMCDP submitted evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee in the House of Commons on how Jobcentres treat disabled people. Our evidence is based on what our members and our communities have told us through the Disabled People’s Panel and the Big Disability Survey.
Committees in Parliament are really important to how laws get made. Governments write draft laws or ideas for laws, but committees of MPs from all parties get to suggest changes to them – and these changes are more likely to go through if everyone in a committee agrees on them. At the moment, the Work and Pensions Committee is looking at how Jobcentres should be changed.
Our members want change. We told MPs that disabled people have had enough of being treated with suspicion at the Jobcentre, tired of being told they can’t get benefits they are entitled to, and sick of being threatened with their benefits being cut off.
We told the Committee that politicians calling disabled people cheats and scroungers damages our trust in any government’s work policies. To make anything better, politicians need to focus on ensuring employers make work accessible than punishing disabled people for not finding accessible jobs.
We told them about disabled people’s horrifying experiences at the Jobcentre. Our members and supporters told us about ‘degrading’ and ‘distressing’ interviews, where they were made to feel more like criminals than citizens. Many people had been given completely the wrong information by Jobcentre workers, making them lose out on money they needed to pay for the extra costs of being impaired in a disablist society. Others were forced to travel long distances for interviews in inaccessible environments, with no regard for the access barriers this caused.
We also told them about our community’s experience with professional and capable Jobcentre workers, who are prevented from doing their jobs well by years of austerity and government failure. These include staff who try to make access adaptations for interviews, but struggle to find a quiet and private space to speak to their clients, and job coaches who try to go the extra mile to give appropriate support, but are struggling with unmanageably large caseloads. These workers have been failed by successive governments. They deserve better just like we do.
We told the Committee that disabled people’s trust in the benefits system is fundamentally broken and will take time to fix. The only way to help unemployed disabled people cope with decades of bad policy, and manage the workload of overwhelmed Jobcentre staff, is a massive investment in the advice sector. Disabled people don’t believe what government departments say, but they do believe independent Disabled People’s Organisations and community Law Centres. If they don’t want things to get worse, politicians must push for these organisations to get more funding to support their communities
The government needs to take more decisive action if it wants to increase the number of disabled people in full time work. Employers must be compelled to make reasonable adjustments and adaptations. Disabled people must be given the right support and information to begin a journey into work. The first step is this government realising that we aren’t the problem. Unless they realise what the real issues are, any ‘welfare-to-work’ plan they have is a waste of their time that ruins our lives.
