Women speak out against the welfare reforms
FiLiA has spoken to women across the UK with disabilities or caring responsibilities about the Government’s welfare reform proposals.
It is clear from what they have told us that the reforms could lead to significant harm – as we set out in our response to the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) consultation, Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper. We have also produced a briefing for Parliamentarians.
This consultation was introduced alongside the Government's announcement that they planned to cut £5bn from disabled people’s benefits. As we noted at the time, governments have choices on how to balance the books, but with these policy changes, they are choosing to make life worse for some of the most vulnerable and poorest in society.
We are proud to be part of the huge number of organisations, people and Parliamentarians who challenged and protested against these plans. While we are glad that the Government has since rowed back and announced ‘concessions’, these do not go far enough and risk creating further problems in the welfare system.
The public debate has laid bare the wider context in which these reforms are introduced, including the lack of trust in the Government, the problems with supporting services and infrastructure and other barriers, which will impede the progress of the reforms and support for disabled people. In our consultation response, we start with an overarching critique of the consultation, which includes this context as well as the lack of systemic analysis and refusal to address the root causes of the barriers to work that disabled women face, the narrow scope of the consultation, with it focusing on some but not all of the Government’s proposed changes, and the deficiencies in the Government’s approach.
The Green Paper is a long and complex document but the contents are significant and will have a tangible impact on the lives of many disabled women. It is critical to hear the voices of those that a policy will impact in the process of making said policy, particularly voices less often heard or marginalised. So, FiLiA supported and enabled women across the UK to understand the proposals, engage in the consultation and respond with their views and experiences.
We are grateful to the women who attended our online and in-person focus groups, who spoke so openly and honestly about their experiences of disability and provided case studies and examples to support FiLiA’s response. We thank them for their trust, openness and generosity in sharing their fears, concerns, hopes and ideas.
With them, we call on the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to:
Stop the cuts
Address the systemic barriers for disabled women to work, most importantly to build trust and confidence that the Government is acting in their best interests
Actively listen to disabled women, and the people who care for them, on all welfare reform proposals
We are sharing our response to the consultation, not just with DWP, but also other policy-makers, Parliamentarians and partners, who we are keen to work with to ensure the Government heeds what women have told us.
We also call on all Government departments to learn from this and ensure that meaningful consultation with women and other potentially impacted groups is properly carried out as part of the process and not as an afterthought.