In October 2011, Scope published new research, which found the the DLA replacement Personal Independence Payment (PIP) won't be directed to those who need the greatest support because the assessment to test for eligibility is flawed.

In November 2011, the Government announced it was reversing its decision to scrap the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for those living in residential care.

DLA was introduced in 1992 because day-to-day activities cost more if you are disabled. This can include anything from increased electricity bills, running medical equipment and doing laundry more often, to increased transport costs, specialist clothing and having to buy more expensive ready-made food, which is easier to cook. There are two components, one for care and one for mobility.

Overall DLA caseload and expenditure: Overall, 3.2 million disabled people receive DLA. Forecast expenditure on the benefit for 2011-2012 is £12.6 billion.   Access Keys

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• The Future of PIP: A Social Model Based Approach
• Disability Living Allowance (DLA) reform

   

In an interview yesterday with BBC Radio Five, the disability minister Maria Miller urged campaigner Sue Marsh to use her "extensive right of appeal through tribunals" if she was unhappy about the DWP's decision to reduce her award for the disability living allowance (DLA).

Miller wasn't wrong about this: disabled people who believe the decision about their DLA award is inaccurate can and do challenge the DWP at tribunals. And in 38 per cent of appeals relating to the Disability Living Allowance, the tribunals find in favour of the claimant (pdf).

But what Miller doesn't seem to realise is that Ken Clarke's proposals in the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders (LASPO) Bill, which is being debated in the Lords today, will severely limit access to justice through tribunals for thousands of DLA recipients, closing this option to them.

David Cameron's Welfare Reform Bill: Hiding the truth is not the way to achieve it | Mail Online

I believe that there comes a point in the life of any Prime Minister when the electorate is entitled to ask - and loudly - does this person actually know what they are doing?

So it is that I have just posed this question of our current PM and the answer to come back has greatly alarmed me.

David Cameron is lost in his role as PM. That much is apparent. Like a toddler at big school he has no true understanding of the issues before him and blunders in apparently unaware of danger or the need to tread carefully.

More than 30 benefits claimants have died while appealing against a judgment that they were fit to work, official figures show, leading to accusations the system is in chaos. inShare0 Custom byline text:  Kate Devlin UK Political Correspondent

Tribunal centres across the UK, including in Scotland, are also being forced to hold Saturday sittings to deal with disputed cases, politicians have been told.

Last night Labour called on the Tory-LibDem Coalition at Westminster to get a grip on the situation before it spirals "completely out of control".

Almost four in 10 cases are currently overturned on appeal, a proportion campaigners say is unacceptable.

A series of written parliamentary answers has revealed the strain on the system. They show that centres around the country, including in Dundee, Hamilton, Cardiff, Plymouth and Wrexham, have been forced to hold Saturday sittings in recent months. Other centres, including Newcastle, South Shields, Leeds and Sheffield, are due to sit at weekends from this month.

So I ask... How Many 'Trained' Disability Employment Advisers are there at Job Centre Plus offices ?

From late 2009, I was Unemployed due to several chronic effects from my Epilepsy. And therefore had to claim Unemployment Allowance, otherwise known as JSA. The first few sign-on meetings, the "job centre" advisors didn't recognise that I had a Disability, and they didn't check either.. they simply ignored it, and kept on asking why I wasn't working, and Why I had barriers against working.

A few weeks went by, and finally someone said that my next sign-on meetings should be with the offices (DEA) Disability Employment Adviser. All the DEA did, was to take down notes of my disability, and put it in to the JCP online system. The DEA didn't offer me any support, or help. They treated me like I had no disability.

This, made my feel angry. So I asked about what they knew about Epilepsy, and how the condition effects people with it. The DEA didn't have a clue, and said "this isn't a thing we are trained about..".
Aha! - I thought.
So after my sign-on meeting with the DEA, I traveled from the JCP office by bus to a near by Internet Cafe, where I emailed my local MP, to ask 2 questions at the next Prime Ministers Question Time, in the House of Commons in London.

A detailed year-long study into the coalition government's controversial work capability assessments (WCAs) has revealed new evidence of widespread inaccuracies in the medical reports that help to determine whether individuals are eligible for sickness benefits.

The research, conducted by the charity Citizens Advice, identified a group of people about to embark on the process of claiming employment and support allowance (ESA), which replaces incapacity benefit, and followed them throughout the process from the summer of 2010, looking at how their claims were handled and the accuracy of the medical assessments.

The report's conclusions are stark: of the 37 individual reports examined, 16 (43%) revealed "serious levels of inaccuracy", and a further 10 contained a "medium level of inaccuracy", a level still significant enough to have an impact on the claimants' eligibility for benefits. Only 11 were entirely accurate or had a low level of inaccuracy.

BBC News - Government suffer Lords defeat over welfare cuts

The government has lost a vote in the House of Lords over its plans to cut the welfare bill.

Peers voted by 260 to 216 to protect up to 15,000 young disabled people from cuts to employment support allowance.

Opponents of the coalition's plans said they would mean disabled children who could never work would never be entitled to the benefit.

Ministers also suffered a defeat last month over elements of their plans to overhaul housing benefit.

As part of their drive to cut spending on welfare, the government wants to remove the so-called "youth provision" that allows some young people to receive contributory employment and support allowance (ESA) even though - due to disability or illness - they have not been able to work and build up National Insurance.

The Lords have now had Two more votes Both of which have gone against the Government.

(1) Social Welfare Advocacy

To sum up: the government has astonshingly lost three straight votes in the Lords. They are for the following amendments:

* To retain automatic eligibility for ESA for young disabled people who are unable to work
* To impose a two year time limit for ESA claimants, overriding the government's proposal that claimants be reassesed after 12 months
* To exempt cancer patients from the proposed ESA li...mit.

This is an extraordinary start to the welfare reform bill voting season. More votes will take place on similarly controversial issues in the next fortnight, including next week on disability living allowance.

Meanwhile here's a tweet from the Guardian's Polly Toynbee:

Remarkable triple defeat for government in Lords. Shame again on most LibDems, voting to cut benefits to dying and life-long disabled young.

Her's a tweet from disability campaigner and blogger Kaliya Franklin, who tweets as @bendygirl:

I can't believe it!!! Time for a little cry. We did it guys, we did it!!

"Looks as if the government's been found out lying and misleading the people on the subject of disability allowances." Not our words, but the ones from Stephen Fry who tweeted in response to a new report launched by online blogger Sue Marsh and thousands of disabled people.

The `Responsible Reform', which is also being dubbed as the `Spartacus Report' is another attempt for the Disability Living Allowance amended. Last year despite peaceful protests and campaigns the government refused to listen to those asking for a reform to the DLA.

In October 2011 MP's compiled the Impact Assessment for changes to the DLA...However very little has been changed, the reports are almost identical!

As MPs return from their Christmas holidays the Spartacus Report has brought to light a few important points which the government have tried to hide.

I wonder if David Cameron is starting to get the message yet? If not, let me spell it out.

His much-vaunted Welfare Reforms are proving to be something of a turkey. In the first instance, his disability proposals were rejected by almost 100 per cent of people involved in a public consultation - although his Government chose not to include that information when presenting the proposals to the Lords.

In other words our Coalition paid, handsomely no doubt, to solicit opinion on the intended changes and when they didn't like the answers that came back, they discarded them. Oh well, we've got plenty of money to spare, haven't we?

The government was warned on Thursday that it is running the risk of abusing parliament in its attempts to reverse a triple defeat in the House of Lords over plans to cut benefits for disabled people.

Labour, which accused the government of crossing the line of decency with its reforms, pledged to fight any coalition effort to use special parliamentary procedures to reverse the votes.

The row erupted after Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, surprised peers late on Wednesday night by tabling a new amendment. Freud acted after peers rejected plans to means-test employment and support allowance (ESA) payments for disabled people - plus cancer patients and stroke survivors - after only a year. Peers also rejected plans to time-limit ESA for cancer patients and to restrict access to ESA for disabled or ill young people.

But the minister's amendment partially reversed the vote on young people.

Telegraph today applauds IDS for taking benefits off cancer patients on p30 and demands child benefit is reinstated for high earners on p31

The DWP has released a ministerial statement from Chris Grayling. Here's the important bit:

The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling): The Department for Work and Pensions has obtained approval for an advance, prior to Royal Assent, from the Contingency Fund of £1,000,000. The funding will allow for the development of the IT changes required to introduce new benefit fraud and claimant error sanctions.

A tougher fraud and error regime was set out in the "Tackling fraud and error in the benefit and tax credit systems" strategy published in October 2010 and changes to sanctions and penalties are included in the Welfare Reform Bill. They provide for the introduction of a Civil Penalty for claimant error and strengthen sanctions for benefit fraudsters. To enable their introduction changes to the Departments' IT systems will be required. The contingency advance will enable the IT provider to begin work in January 2012 giving them sufficient lead in time to commence changes in 2012.

Did you see what I saw? The DWP are getting their IT provider to start re-writing their computer systems so that they can fine people who make mistakes on their benefit claim forms. In order to do that, Chris Grayling has asked for and received one million pounds to pay for it.

Social Care and DisabilityThe Government believes that people needing care deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. We understand the urgency of reforming the system of social care to provide much more control to individuals and their carers, and to ease the cost burden that they and their families face.

• We will establish a commission on long-term care, to report within a year. The commission will consider a range of ideas, including both a voluntary insurance scheme to protect the assets of those who go into residential care, and a partnership scheme as proposed by Derek Wanless.
• We will break down barriers between health and social care funding to incentivise preventative action.
• We will extend the greater roll-out of personal budgets to give people and their carers more control and purchasing power.
• We will reform Access to Work, so disabled people can apply for jobs with funding already secured for any adaptations and equipment they will need."

Quite apart from the appalling betrayal of carers highlighted in this afterthought of a manifesto entry, does anyone notice anything? Anything huge they forgot to mention? 
Oh yes, silly them. Not a peep about scrapping DLA and replacing it with PIP. Well, except this of course :
"Conservatives have pledged to preserve Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance as cash benefits."
Makes it sound like there's nothing to worry about doesn't it? 

A new Comment is Free piece by former Tory MP Paul Goodman appeared online this evening, in which he tried to justify taking money from disabled people and giving it to a company like Atos instead.

He starts out pretending that he might actually live up to his surname and feigning concern for his old constituents. In paragraph number 5 he even uses some actual facts:

The problem with DLA isn't that it traps disabled people on benefits - its purpose is to support the care and mobility needs of disabled people, whether they work or not. Nor is the key issue fraud - which is proportionately tiny: a mere 0.5%.

You can tell he's no longer in office, can't you? If a current MP told the truth about benefits so brazenly Cameron would probably have him bent over his lap, bullwhip in hand, faster than one can say "calm down dear".