“It is perhaps ironic that many of us spent the 1970s criticising the welfare state, only to find that these arguments were built upon and taken much further by a government determined to reduce state expenditure. Consequently we spent the 1980s defending what we had previously attacked. In sum, we defended the indefensible and I do not propose to spend the 1990s doing the same”
Mike Oliver Speaking out: disabled people and state welfare 1991
The animating principle of disability rights in the UK UK UK
Yet this is not, nor has it ever been, the animating principle when it comes to disability in the context of the welfare state. In this context disability is an administrative category of need, presumed to place people temporarily or permanently beyond the responsibilities of citizenship by virtue of illness, injury or other forms of incapacity. The objective of public policy is to insure people and to look after them through financial transfers or care, in lieu of their inability to look after themselves. Entitlement to such support is at the discretion of national and local government, based on complex, medically focused and costly systems of eligibility and processes of assessment. The past two decades have witnessed ever tighter eligibility criteria in response to rising demand, depleting resources and shifting social attitudes, coupled with the increased employment of conditionality and sanctions and a major focus on combating fraud. This has intensified in the context of the austerity measures being implemented following the 2010 Spending Review.
As a consequence, the same Department of Work and Pensions which houses the Office for Disability Issues and which has been in the vanguard of promoting independent living, presides over welfare reforms which distinguish ‘genuine disabled people’ from those who are considered able to work. The idea that ‘genuine disabled people’ are those who cannot be expected to look after themselves and are therefore incapable of independent living has a powerful grip on the public psyche and as a consequence undermines disabled people’s claims to self-determination, equality and inclusion. As Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA recently argued “Defenders of generous social entitlements reasonably argue that such entitlements are necessary to provide people with the means to live in dignity and with some control over their lives, but most of us tend to feel that dignity and freedom lie in self-respect and independence, virtues not always associated with the bureaucratic benevolence of the state.”
A recent YouGov survey for Prospect magazine[1] appears to confirm this: 69% agreed with the statement that “Our welfare system has created a culture of dependency. People should take more responsibility for their lives and families.” Some have taken heart at the Survey’s findings in relation to support for disabled people: whereas between 40-45 % of the public supported lowering taxes to cut support for unemployed people on benefits and for unmarried single parents, only 11% supported this measure in relation to supporting disabled people via Disability Living Allowance. But we should be very cautious about celebrating this. Does it reveal widespread public support for independent living, or – given the overall view expressed by the public – suggest that a great many of the 89% of the public who opposed cuts to disability benefits believe disabled people to be incapable of assuming responsibility for their own lives? I err towards the latter conclusion, and suggest it represents attitudes which the human rights campaigner Abina Parshad-Griffin once described beautifully as ‘malevolent benevolence’.
A recent YouGov survey for Prospect magazine[1] appears to confirm this: 69% agreed with the statement that “Our welfare system has created a culture of dependency. People should take more responsibility for their lives and families.” Some have taken heart at the Survey’s findings in relation to support for disabled people: whereas between 40-45 % of the public supported lowering taxes to cut support for unemployed people on benefits and for unmarried single parents, only 11% supported this measure in relation to supporting disabled people via Disability Living Allowance. But we should be very cautious about celebrating this. Does it reveal widespread public support for independent living, or – given the overall view expressed by the public – suggest that a great many of the 89% of the public who opposed cuts to disability benefits believe disabled people to be incapable of assuming responsibility for their own lives? I err towards the latter conclusion, and suggest it represents attitudes which the human rights campaigner Abina Parshad-Griffin once described beautifully as ‘malevolent benevolence’.
The persistence of such social attitudes and the barrier they present to progress on disability rights is precisely why Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities places such emphasis upon changing public attitudes through promoting the ‘capabilities and contributions of persons with disabilities’. Yet the terms of the present political and public discourse regarding disability do nothing to support such public awareness and understanding. So, for example, government and influential parts of the media urge the public to question the authenticity of those claiming disability benefits. This has for a number of years now been employed to soften public opinion to applying greater conditionality to disabled people and to moving greater numbers onto less generous out of work benefits, blurring messages about fraud and eligibility. Since the emergency budget of 2010, this strategy has been extended to cover other areas of support, including Disability Living Allowance and Housing Benefit. The effect created is public suspicion, sometimes manifesting as hostility, not public receptiveness to the rights of disabled people – let alone recognition of the value of the state supporting disabled people’s capabilities and contributions.
At the same time, disability activists have sought to protect benefit entitlements by emphasising disabled people’s incapacities and vulnerability. An earlier example of this resulted in registered blind people being automatically exempted from work-related activities up until the mid-2000s. Today disability campaigners celebrate having secured exemptions for people with terminal illness while Atos, which is contracted to conduct the Work Capability Assessment, is hounded for determining that some people with long-term health conditions are fit to work. Yet from a disability rights perspective we would label as discrimination either group being denied or sacked from a job by an employer on the basis that it considered that their impairment or health condition rendered them de facto unfit to work. Similarly, following the recent announcement regarding the closure of Remploy factories, some disability activists and trade unions suggested that those who faced redundancy were de facto unable to work in mainstream employment, with the GMB Union describing the closures ‘an assault on the most vulnerable in society’. Does this conflicting discourse help to explain why in the 15 years since the first Disability Discrimination Act became law, the employment rate of disabled people has increased only marginally, stubbornly refusing to pass the 50% mark and sitting way below this level for people with learning disabilities and people with mental health problems, despite much of that period witnessing unbroken economic growth and almost full employment?
The welfare state – and public discourse surrounding it - is so dominant in British life that its very design shapes public perceptions of its clients. As presently configured it is frequently the enemy, not the ally of independent living and of disability rights more generally. Its design does not promote the ‘capabilities and contributions of disabled people’ because for the welfare state – as with dominant ideas around dignity and freedom – accessing its support requires people to exhibit precisely the opposite characteristics. The terms of the debate about welfare reform make dependence a precondition of receiving support and define independence precisely as ‘doing everything for oneself’. As a consequence, people who require state support in the form of benefits and services have little choice but to avoid exhibiting individual agency or potential as doing so invites only suspicion, hostility and re-assessment. The welfare state offers compensation where it should promote capabilities. It invokes derision and suspicion where it should build confidence and foster more positive attitudes and expectations. And it is enormously wasteful, both of public money and people’s lives. Many disabled people face more red-tape in seeking the support to live an ordinary life than the average small business. Despite this, history is repeating itself for the reasons Mike Oliver highlighted at the close of the 1980’s. Faced with dependency-creating supports or nothing at all, disabled people have had to continue to ‘defend the indefensible.’
It is tempting, in the light of the Welfare Reform Bill and wider reforms and spending decisions, to ‘batten down the hatches’ and adopt only the politics of opposition. This would be a mistake. History shows us that the greatest successes of the disability movement have come from innovation and vision, not reactive opposition. Away from the white heat of the Welfare Reform Bill wider debates are emerging about ‘21st Century Welfare’, about the relationship between citizen, State and society, about fairness and responsibility and about the sustainability of approaches to care and support in our ageing society. Disabled people have a leading role to play in these debates. As Jenny Morris recently concluded: “it’s no good continuing to fight our battles within the context of the intellectual and political space which the disability movement has very effectively carved out over the last 20-30 years. Instead we have to carry those concepts and ideas into the wider arena of not only social policy but also economic policy”
Disabled people should be advancing new models of welfare and public service reforms, not confining themselves to defending existing models. And these new models will require a far deeper and more far reaching reform, not only of the services and benefits themselves, but of the assumptions and principles underpinning them if we are ever to come close to achieving the goals of the UNCRPD. It will require nothing less than a fundamental shift from a social welfare state to what we might term a ‘social development state’, which invests in and helps develop and maintain individual freedoms and capabilities and through doing so encourages and supports contribution and reciprocity.
In my next blog I will begin to flesh out what the ‘social development state’ might look like in practice and the arguments that might help it win public and political support.
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