What does the landslide victory for Boris Johnson's government mean for disabled people?

There are several steps that governments take to normalise extremism towards minorities in society and this has been an increasing feature of recent Conservative governments in the UK.
Playing to people’s greatest fears and insecurities are key, then creating and marginalising a scapegoat for them.

These steps can be taken covertly or overtly, depending upon the state’s assessment of the public’s response.

The greatest fear available at this time is the financial insecurity left following the devastating recession. Scapegoating is vital in order to protect the interests of the institutions which caused the financial crisis and to shift the focus to the most marginalised in society.

It is concerning that recent public scapegoating has been significantly overt – such as Theresa May’s creation of a Hostile Environment Policy towards illegal immigrants, which contributed to the normalisation of race-based prejudice and hate crime and also to the wrongful detention, denial of legal rights and deportation of British subjects as a result of the Windrush scandal. This boldness demonstrates a belief by the ruling classes that public opinion has shifted towards their aim or marginalising targeted groups.

The scapegoating of disabled people has been achieved in the seeding of attitudes that it is their lack of morality or work ethic that is causing both their poverty and the strain on the public purse, not their genuine inability to work or to work full time, or for their legitimate need for support to live independently in order to achieve some level of equality with non-disabled people.

The introduction by New Labour in 2008 of the Work Capability Assessment, conducted by for-profit companies with cost-savings targets set by government, both fails to adequately differentiate between sick and disabled people – a form of erasure of disabled identity – and all but remove medical opinion from assessing whether a person is ‘fit for work’.

This predated, but set the tone for, the Conservative administrations’ systematic marginalisation of disabled people over the past eight years. It is this track record that must be the basis of our outlook for the next five years.

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 required all benefit claimants to provide greater evidence of inability to work, as well as undertake a greater number and greater range of actions to find work. In that year, a survey by Exaro found that 6% of NHS GPs report having patients attempt or commit suicide as a result of undergoing or fear of undergoing the Government's fitness to work test. 14% reported patients who had self-harmed as a result of the test. By 2015 government figures revealed that around 90 people a month had died after being declared as being 'fit for work'. By 2017 the UK was receiving criticism from the United Nations for failing to uphold the rights of disabled people -creating a 'human catastrophe' for disabled people in the UK. In that year government statistics showed that 47% of people who were formerly receiving Disability Living Allowance (DLA) either had their support reduced or ended when reassessed for Personal Independent Payment (PIP).
In the past two years Policy In Practice Group analysis of the impact of Universal Credit evidenced disabled people being hardest hit under the government's reformed benefits system. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures in 2019 showed that the average waiting time for new disability benefits claimants is 14 weeks - and a rise of 4 weeks since March 2018. Further DWP figures in 2019 found more than 650,000 people on disability benefits had their payments cut or stopped totally under government reforms and showed that 17,070 disability claimants had died while waiting for decisions on their personal independence payment (PIP) claims since 2013. The Institute for Public Policy Research, estimated there were 130,000 deaths of vulnerable people in England between 2012 and 2017 that could have been prevented. The Equality and Human Rights Commission reported to the United Nations that one in five British people were suffering an erosion of their human rights because they are disabled. In his final report on the impact of austerity in the UK, the UN Rapporteur accused the Government of being in a state of denial about the impact of its austerity and welfare reform policies.

These welfare reforms have been promoted as ‘incentivising’ and ‘motivating people to work. What they actually result in is the public demonization of people who cannot work and the arbitrary cutting or stopping of welfare benefits. In 2018, a Commons Select Committee looked into the application of benefit sanctions and indeed found a number of 'systemic failings'. Much of these systemic failings involve the setting of targets to private firms to apply benefits sanctions.

The Office for Budget Responsibility have stated that welfare reform has currently cost more money than it has saved. If these attacks are not aimed at saving money, what is their political motivation? I would argue that it is the creation of a Hostile Environment Policy toward disabled people, that in the longer term will make the benefits system so intolerable that even the desperate will be adverse to engaging with it.

Such devastating attacks on disabled people have been achieved whilst in coalition and as a minority government. The outlook then for the empowered Conservative government that achieved such a landslide victory is frightening for disabled people, and all who care about equality.

The Prime Minister’s voting record on equality and human rights matters since becoming an MP in 2015 is consistently poor. He has always voted for a reduction of spending on welfare benefits, including voting against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability.

We must also consider the impact of the main political issue of the day, Brexit, which this large majority government is emboldened to force through. The Conservative obsession with employment and trade deregulation, anti-trade union legislation and general erosion of workers' rights, coupled with the economic uncertainty faced by EU withdrawal, leaves one wondering how British industry’s addiction to cheap and disposable workers will be satisfied once the free movement of labour is ended?

Of course Sally Ann Hart, who was also elected MP Hastings and Hove, has already proposed the answer which is to allow firms to employ disabled people for less than minimum wage. This remark was ripe for derision at the time it was made during the election campaign, but with the vast majority achieved and the leadership of demonstrably prejudiced politicians like Dominic Raab, Liz Truss, Priti Patel and Kwasi Kwarteng, such attitudes must be taken very seriously and the lack of protection for disabled people’s rights afforded to us by EU membership (Framework Directive for Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation, European Disability Strategy, Equal Access to Air Travel, etc.) becomes a genuine threat.

More than ever, we need to be hyper vigilant to the potential for disabled people’s rights to be completely eroded under a Conservative government with little meaningful challenge.