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Category: Disability

  • A bold new project is reclaiming disabled people’s history that’s previously been erased

    A new disabled-led project, the Disability Action Research Kollective, is working on “reclaiming disabled history” to help centre ableism across the breadth of today’s “liberatory political movements”.

    Through a series of novel zines, it uplifts the hidden disabled identities “struck from the record” of prominent civil rights activists. It offers a powerful new testimony to disabled people’s central role in social justice successes of the past century.

    Most importantly, by putting disabled people back into the narrative, it shows how the fight against threats marginalised communities face today are intrinsically tied to disability justice and liberation.

    In a little less than a year, the project has already put out ten publications, online and in print across four countries.

    The ‘Disability Action Research Kollective (DARK)’

    The Disability Action Research Kollective (DARK) is a new research community. In particular, the group is dedicated to distributing material that equips people with vital knowledge on disabled people’s suppressed history. It describes itself as:

    a disabled-led group working to make disability perspectives, history, and research more accessible to a general audience.

    Ostensibly then, DARK is distilling a broad catalogue of disability stories that are vital for understanding the appalling situation for disabled rights today. Primarily, the group’s work centres round producing free zines to help disseminate this information to a wider audience.

    The Canary spoke to founder Richard about the project. He explained that DARK is about:

    gathering together disabled and non-disabled activists, writers, researchers, and academics to publish things for free on various topics. We organise online, are flexible in when and where people write their contributions and we work with people from all over the world.

    While anyone can get involved, importantly, the project is “disabled-led”. It’s a volunteer-run initiative, and makes its zines free to be an accessible resource for as many people as possible.

    To maximise their reach, Richard expressed that a crucial component to the project is that DARK produces these in print. Specifically, the project hopes to circumvent the way in which social media is stifling the voices of disabled communities. He said that:

    Social media algorithms actively suppress and limit content mentioning disability so our output had to include something physical and offline. We also have distributors in the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia, but anyone can access, print, or distribute our zines.

    Centring disabled histories via the Disability Action Research Kollective

    Over the course of 2024, Disability Action Research Kollective has put out ten zines on a diverse range of topics. In each, there’s a powerful centring of disabled people’s lives and broader disability histories.

    What’s clear from many, is how the sidelining of disabled people’s identities, and past forms of social marginalisation have contributed to ongoing forms of oppression today.

    In ‘Why the gap?’ for instance, DARK explores the history of rail systems. It looks at how past decision-making contexts still have ramifications for disabled rail access now. Specifically, it delves into the lack of level boarding across the railway network for wheelchair-users and other disabled passengers.

    It starts by introducing readers to the socio-political deprioritisation and discrimination against disabled people when the rail systems were initially built. From there, it shows how this ableist origin has set up for the non-standardised, disjointed services that still persists in the modern rail network.

    In doing so, it also draws attention to the disgraceful failure of successive governments to address this glaring transport access inequality. It’s a perturbing reminder that equity and inclusivity for disabled people in many aspects of social life has little changed in decades, if not in some cases, hundreds of years.

    And this is a big part of what DARK wants to demonstrate through its zines too.

    Ableism ‘overlooked’ in ‘radical and inclusive spaces’

    There’s a concerted focus in DARK’s work on how liberatory movements intersect, now and in the past. Richard told the Canary that:

    The goal of DARK is to help people understand disability as a fluid political category, not a concrete medical one. While sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia are generally discussed within liberatory political movements, ableism is often widely overlooked even in supposedly radical and inclusive spaces. But there are valuable perspectives here, and understanding how it is intertwined and underlies many of the others is fundamental to addressing any of them, you can’t understand oppression in isolation.

    In short, the story of disabled people’s oppression is inextricably linked to the stories of other marginalised groups’ oppressions. He listed a few pertinent examples of this:

    Ableism was used against women trying to get the vote, by imputations of mental inferiority, similarly, it was used as an excuse to perpetuate slavery, homosexuality was officially categorised as a mental illness till recently and that imputation is currently being fought by trans people.

    ‘Systems that incentivise’ eugenics still here

    One particularly poignant example Richard raised revolved around continued racism and xenophobia against migrants. Richard said that:

    The very foundation of immigration controls was initially justified on the grounds of eugenics, to prevent potentially mentally or physically inferior immigrants, which at the time included broader categories like Jews and Eastern Europeans. This can all be read about in more detail in the essay ‘Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History’ by Douglas Baynton.

    Notably, Richard drove home the connection between the history of disabled people’s oppression and anti-immigrant bigotry through one dangerous social ideology:

    Eugenics was not something that ended with the fall of the Nazis. All of the systems that incentivise it are still with us today. The state of disability rights is much further behind than most people realise. In the USA and EU and many other countries, it is still legal to sterilise disabled people without their consent.

    During the lockdowns, the UK government knowingly sent infected people into care homes, didn’t provide them with PPE and then added do-not-resuscitate orders to disabled people’s medical files without their knowledge or consent.

    People with learning disabilities died at incredibly high rates despite not having any form of underlying medical condition that would have made them physically vulnerable to the virus. The British Medical Journal, an organisation not particularly known for its radical views, called it “social murder”. But even before the pandemic, the UN found that the UK was involved in “grave and systemic” abuses of disabled people’s human rights.

    This is not a left or right-wing issue as even the incoming Labour government has dropped its pledge of integrating UN human rights protections for disabled people into UK law. More detail on these can be found in the books Crippled and The Department, which I highly recommend.

    The Canary has also consistently highlighted how all these contemporary events have their roots in eugenicist thinking. Essentially, modern governments have continue to operate on the basis that disabled people’s lives are inherently of less value. Effectively, it’s the ongoing tale of how the capitalist bent for perpetual productivity and profit has rendered disabled people expendable.

    Now, the Disability Action Research Kollective project is shedding much-needed light on the background history to all this.

    ‘Reclaiming disabled history’

    Richard was inspired to start the project because his experience as both an academic and activist had:

    starkly highlighted how little disability was understood as a political category in either world.

    Therefore, he had felt compelled to address this. He told the Canary that:

    This project started when I decided to try to reach more people by simplifying my own academic work to make it easier to read and understand. I started collaborating with others and as more people joined, the project soon took on a life of its own. Our early work was about reclaiming disabled history. There are also a lot of famous historical figures who have had disabilities struck from the record to avoid tarnishing their reputations. This strips away the full humanity of these figures and reinforces disability as a stigmatising characteristic.

    Disability was a lot more widespread in the past but was likely significantly less stigmatising than it is under modern capitalism, where productive capacity is directly linked to individual personhood, belonging, inclusion, respect and value. People have a general idea that because of technology disabled people have never had it so good, but there have been many societies that were significantly more accepting of disabled people and fully integrated them into society, like in ancient Egypt, a civilisation which lasted for 5000 years.

    So far, Richard and fellow volunteers have put out zines on disabled anarchists and communists, feminists, and other left-wing radicals. They’re a whistlestop tour through the disabled lives of the likes of Che Guevera, Frida Kahlo, Fannie Lou Hammer, Audre Lorde, and many more.

    Helping disabled people find ‘pride, joy, community, and hope’

    Richard explained that he feels that:

    There has never been a more important time for a disability-focused political education

    In particular, he referenced the increasing rates of long Covid as a crucial reason for this. As the Canary previously reported, official long Covid rates passed two million. However, we underscored how this is likely a significant underestimate anyway.

    For one, as Richard highlighted, as Covid continues to reinfect people uncurbed:

    a lot of people are likely to become disabled.

    So, the Disability Action Research Kollective is also about bringing disabled history to newly disabled individuals too. Richard told the Canary that:

    While we write for everyone, even non-disabled people. I hope some of it reaches people who have recently become disabled, to help shape their sense of self and find pride, joy, community and hope.

    And part of achieving this, is welcoming people into DARK to have fun uncovering and celebrating disabled history. For that reason, Richard told the Canary that he was particularly proud of one project that brought DARK members and others together for the group’s first cultural critique. This was the zine ‘Star Trek and Disability‘ which he said:

    spawned an online watch and discussion group which has been great fun.

    He expressed to the Canary that:

    Most science fiction futures erase disabled people entirely, but in the Trek universe the eugenicists lost the war and so there is a degree of representation. Interestingly the frequency and the quality of the representations broadly got worse over time, while representation for all other groups has improved.

    More to come from the Disability Action Research Kollective

    Naturally, there’s also plenty more to come as well. Richard teased the group’s upcoming work:

    Currently, the cultural critique group is working on part two and expanding to how the disability representations of Batman villains have changed over time. I think a lot of people not specifically interested in disability might be more open to enjoying things they already like from a new perspective.

    Needless to say, the Disability Action Research Kollective will undoubtedly prove an invaluable community and educational resource for disabled people, and fellow oppressed communities alike taking action against the latest tide of dehumanisation and discrimination.

    And of course, the project is always looking for new volunteers to bring their important skills and insights into the fold.

    You can find a catalogue of DARK’s online zines and links to its social media accounts here. If you’d like to contact DARK to get involved, you can reach out to the group via email to: disabilityarkmedia@gmail.com

    Featured image supplied

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Covid Day of Reflection is a disgrace and an ill-advised insult to millions of people

    The Canary has given me the chance to write an article on Lisa Nandy’s ill-advised decision to hold a UK wide Covid Day of Reflection to mark the end of the Covid pandemic. The reason I’m writing this is  because the Covid pandemic is very much ongoing.

    So, we’re going to give a platform to some voices in this piece – like Long Covid Support, which says:

    Dear Lisa Nandy, Covid is not over.

    Covid Day of Reflection: WTAF?

    On Sunday 9 March 2025 there will be a UK-wide day of reflection to remember the Covid pandemic, said the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.

    What’s wrong with that? I hear you ask.

    For one thing, the World Health Organization is very clear that the Covid pandemic is ongoing. In contrast to the World Health Organization, the ableist Labour Party government is determined to sell the lie that the Covid pandemic is over. This is largely because it is doing very little to stop people dying of Covid. Vaccine eligibility is only open to the over 65s and some clinically vulnerable people. People with long Covid like me aren’t eligible.

    I feel completely deflated and abandoned.

    I have had the stuffing knocked out of me by the ableist Labour government yet again. This time it’s the culture secretary Lisa Nandy’s turn. Many of you will know Lisa Nandy as a staunch Zionist and member of Labour Friends of Israel. Now she’s branching out to gaslight the Covid dead and long-Covid disabled.

    Nearly one person an hour dead from Covid

    What about marking the day of reflection by reading the names of all of the people who have died of Covid since Labour took power?

    At the date of writing, that’s 3,519 people.

    That’s an average of nearly 150 people a week.

    It’s really upsetting me how the Labour government has gone out of their way to bury (pun intended) the Covid deaths. Nearly one person has died of Covid every hour since Keir Starmer was elected PM.

    Labour is offering no public health information about the dangers of catching Covid and long Covid. I have longed for a day of reflection like this – but not one based on a lie. If we have to have such a day, let’s spend it telling the truth. The day of reflection will be a massive super-spreader event leading to more Covid deaths and long Covid disablements. It will be more of a day of reinfection than a day of reflection .

    Long Covid was named by Dr Elisa Perego, an Italian scientist. Elisabeth Perego has long Covid herself. It’s incredibly important that long Covid is a patient-led disability.

    Long Covid patients are the greatest experts, by necessity, on long Covid. It shouldn’t have to be this way. We shouldn’t have to advocate for ourselves. The Labour government should be advocating for us instead of gaslighting us. That’s why I am sharing the voices of long Covid patients who responded on X to Lisa Nandy’s bad decision and the government’s post about it.

    Ignoring long Covid, ignoring the risk

    Long Covid Support says:

    People are still getting COVID many times. People are still dying from Covid. Long term damage is accumulating, and people are still getting a life altering Long Covid. As much as we would love for it to be in the past, this is happening now.

    The group also said:

    many people are continuing to report attending their hospital appointments and there being no one else masked, including health care staff.

    Here’s a reminder that anyone who gets Covid can get Long Covid.

    Someone else says:

    It’s important to remember who died without framing the pandemic as historical. It’s still impacting communities now. It’s important to remember those who have died from Covid so far, and it’s good to have an event to get people talking about Covid again, But we need to ensure that it doesn’t frame Covid in the past tense. Perhaps we should be supporting the day of reflection, but pushing for some tangible action that would really make a difference as part of this special day.

    Ceri Turner says:

    How about making the 9th March a COVID19 day of prevention? We cannot talk about COVID in the past tense. It’s still with us. It still causes acute disease and long COVID, and it still kills.

    Amy Boylan says:

    We can dance naked at midnight, banging saucepans and singing happy birthday while washing our hands, but it won’t make the pandemic history.

    People continue to be infected, killing and disabling 1,000,000. We need adults to solve killing and disabling 1,000,000. We need adults to solve this, not magical thinking. Covid is not over.

    Covid is not over

    Shell says:

    Labour is still trying to convince everyone it’s over, for fuck’s sake. My daughter says the school she works in has the highest number of students absent she’s ever known, either puking or they’ve got COVID, some both, unless this remembrance day is to remind people to take precautions you can get to fuck.

    Pen Scribbler says:

    Can we reflect on the fact that Covid is still here? That people are still dying of it in the UK every week? That loved ones are left to mourn? That those with damaged health face life with no treatment? The tribute the government can make is to prevent more deaths and illness. Why not take this opportunity to remind the public that COVID 19 is still circulating, putting people in hospital and causing death and Long Covid? The Covid Day Of Reflection should be every day, reflecting on how to prevent more Covid deaths before 9th March. The Labour government could reflect on how to make events COVID safe. The Department for Culture Media and Sport could find ways of making sporting and cultural events Covid safe. The Department for Health and Social Care could think about how to keep health care workers and patients safe.

    Tagg says:

    Is this a serious post? What an insult to the hundreds of families like mine that have lost people this year to Covid and over 2,000,000 disabled by it. You’re offering no prevention measures nationally, nor making public aware of the Long Covid risk. I reflect daily on your incompetence around Covid.

    Jules says:

    So you don’t need air filtration anymore with Covid gone in Parliament. Mystery illness that so many people got recently. Sickness through the roof. Children’s health disposable so the parents can work taking sick kids to school.

    Janice Plant quotes doctor Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization:

    One of the things for me that’s so striking is that the world wants to forget this pathogen is still with us, and I think people want to put Covid in the past as if it’s over.

    Dan O’Hara says:

    This looks perfectly timed to coincide with the likely peak of the next wave.

    In principle, It certainly looks as if the Covid Day of Reflection is going to be the UK’s biggest super spreader event.

    Covid Day of Reflection: a super-spreader event

    Anne Marie says:

    We are going to remember the Covid pandemic that’s still happening. Well, that will be a nice change, I guess. This is utter madness. Can you reflect on the fact that there is currently an ongoing Covid pandemic?

    Phil Randall says:

    The pandemic is still ongoing. What we need to remember is to filter air in all public buildings and to vaccinate everyone 6 months old and over.

    Melinda Bailey Harris says:

    As if it’s some faraway event to memorialize when 100 are still dying every week. Millions are suffering from long COVID, including over a 100000 children. Hospitals are currently overwhelmed with COVID, flu, etcetera. How about reminding people it’s still ongoing?

    Jo Dainow of Long Covid Support says:

    The current high prevalence of SARS Cov2 and long Covid is sadly not in the past.

    Alan says:

    Is Lisa Nandy trolling us now? It’s an ongoing pandemic. People are still dying of covid much more than with flu, RSV or norovirus. People are still hospitalised.

    Kieran Kibble says:

    A day of reflection to remember a pandemic that’s still happening and still screwing up all of our health whilst we have no measures in place to mitigate the spread. Brain dead country.

    Covid Day of Reflection: government propaganda?

    Paul Keeble says:

    Another bit of government propaganda to make COVID a historical event. I think having a memorial and formalizing it for the dead so far would be nice, but parts tensing the pandemic is wrong.

    Helen Lunt-Davis of Long Covid SOS says:

    The COVID pandemic is not over. This should not be framed in the past tense. We should be thinking of it daily and how it is still affecting people.

    Long COVID SOS themselves says:

    This is a very nice idea, but we hardly need to be prompted to remember the COVID pandemic. We’re living in it right now.

    Kat says:

    Remember, do you think that means the Labour government will stop pretending the COVID pandemic is over? Charles says, I hope the government will reflect on the fact that COVID is still killing and disabling people every week, and more public mitigations will help.

    Chi says:

    You speak as if COVID is in the past. People are still dying. The immunosuppressed have been hung out to dry by Wes Streeting and Andrew Gwynn, and the NHS is on its knees because of the non mask narrative.

    You really couldn’t make it up.

    21 million people dead from Covid

    Tedros of the World Health Organization had this to say:

    The end of this month, 31st December, will make the 5th anniversary of the first reports to the World Health Organization of pneumonia caused by a then unknown pathogen. In the past 5 years, more than 7,000,000 deaths from COVID 19 have been reported to WHO, but we estimate the true death toll to be at least 3 times higher. We cannot talk about COVID in the past tense.

    It’s still with us. It still causes acute disease and long COVID, and it still kills. On average, this year, about 1,000 deaths from COVID 19 have been reported to the World Health Organization each week, and that’s just from the few countries that are still reporting. The world might want to forget about COVID 19, but we cannot afford to. The World Health Organization continues to support countries to prevent and manage COVID 19 alongside other health threats.

    Katie’s Voice says:

    I feel the government picked the day no one wanted to cause more division among the bereaved . When someone hurts us, they don’t get to dictate our healing process.

    Katie’s Voice belongs to Charles Persinger. Charles works tirelessly to tell the story of his wife, Katie, a care home manager lost to Covid during the acute phase of the pandemic. Charles also lost his mother Susan to Covid.

    The Labour government is using the Covid Day Of Reflection to sell the massive lie that the Covid Pandemic is over. Labour is committing an even bigger crime, a hijack, a heist.

    The Covid Day Of Reflection is meant to mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the Covid pandemic. The Labour government has tried to make the Covid Bereaved Families change their yellow heart symbol. And that’s just the beginning.

    It’s still very much with us

    When I started speaking to Siouxsie from Covid Justice UK (the Covid Bereaved Families group), she was angry and had had a sleepless night. She told me that some people in their group felt under attack from the Long Covid community.

    I assured her that we’re angry at the Labour government, not them. So, I asked Siouxsie to give her idea of what her group needs the Covid Day Of Reflection to be. I also asked Siouxsie what others could do to help. She told me that it should be:

    A day to remember our loved ones who died during the acute stage of the pandemic and those still dying year upon year as covid is still sadly very much with us.

    We come together in our shared grief, many who couldn’t have funerals at all others had funerals with no dignity or respect at the time of their loss. It brings us a huge sense of peace and a way to pay our respects to those who are no longer with us.

    Covid19 Families UK have previously, over last four years, held memorial events in Wales, London, Liverpool, Manchester and Milton Keynes. This year a Buddhist temple has kindly given us permission to hold it in the beautiful tranquil gardens of their Temple of Peace.

    We have worked, for nearly two years, alongside other bereavement groups on the UK Commission on Covid Commemoration with both the Conservative and Labour governments to get recognition and funding for the Day of Reflection.

    Covid 19 Families UK is solely run by bereaved volunteers and relies on donations to fund these events. IF YOU CAN HELP US ACHIEVE CHARITY STATUS or donate no matter how small we will be very grateful.

    If you need support join our Facebook group. You can follow us on Twitter, Threads , Bluesky LinkedIn.

    Not the kind of reflection that’s needed

    In conclusion, I think the UK should have a Covid Day Of Reflection.

    However, it must be turned over to the Bereaved Families Group, the Long Covid Charities, and other affected, patient-led groups.

    We deserve to tell our stories in our own way.

    Everyone must know that the ongoing Covid pandemic is a massive national tragedy and a mass disabling event. Every TV channel must devote an entire day of programming to the biggest UK tragedy since World War II.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Williams

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Just one disabled MP sitting on the Assisted Dying Bill committee shows what a sham it is

    Membership of the committee set to scrutinise Kim Leadbeater’s bill to legalise assisted dying shows already that the process will likely be little more than a fig leaf for forcing the legislation through parliament. On Wednesday 11 December, Leadbeater made the announcement on the 23-member committee. Yet notably, she has stacked it with MPs who voted in favour of the bill at its second reading.

    What’s more, there’s just one disabled MP sitting on the committee – who also voted for the bill. Far from the thorough scrutiny stage Leadbeater and proponents of the bill promised, it’s evident this will be another stitch-up. That is, Leadbeater looks to be gearing up to ram it through without genuine engagement with the legislation’s litany of issues.

    Assisted dying bill committee: stacked with supporters

    Including herself, Leadbeater has appointed 14 supporters of the bill to the committee responsible for scrutinising her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life Bill).

    These include health minister Stephen Kinnock and justice minister Sarah Sackman. Six other Labour MPs who supported the bill will join them. There’ll also be two Conservative MPs, two Liberal Democrats, and one Plaid Cymru MP that backed it as well.

    The remaining nine – six Labour, two Conservative, and one Liberal Democrat – opposed the bill at second reading.

    Immediately, it’s clear the weighting of the committee is heavily pro-assisted dying from the get-go. Hansard Society researcher Matthew England astutely highlighted what this would mean in practice:

    In short, to pass amendments – presuming that all those who voted against the bill support them – at least three members who voted for the bill will need to support them.

    And here’s the thing. The Canary has found that the majority of those who voted for the bill have expressed the view that the bill is sufficiently safe as it currently stands. It calls into question whether a committee packed with MPs predisposed to support the present bill will genuinely engage in an amendment process for it.

    What have committee members said?

    Alarmingly, the committee includes four co-sponsors of the bill, alongside Leadbeater. These are Labour’s Jake Richards and Rachel Hopkins, Tory MP Kit Malthouse, and Liberal Democrat Sarah Green.

    Besides them, here’s a quick rundown of what the other supporters of the bill have said about its so-called safeguards.

    The following MPs have expressed support for the bills safeguards as they are:

    • Justice minister Sarah Sackman told constituents that Leadbeater’s bill has the “most robust safeguards in any assisted dying legislation for the terminally ill anywhere in the world”.
    • Health minister Stephen Kinnock described the bill as “the most thorough proposal Parliament has ever considered on assisted dying”.
    • Dr Simon Opher was among a group of cross-party MPs with medical background who penned a letter that said they “support the criteria” of Leadbeater’s bill. He also spoke in the debate suggesting that doctors can spot coercion.
    • Lewis Atkinson – writing for the Sunderland Echo, he said that the bill has “strong protections”
    • Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst – also among the group of cross-party medical MPs who penned the pro-assisted dying bill letter. For Politics.co.uk, he expressed his view that the bill “introduces a series of practical, robust measures to ensure the protection of the vulnerable”.
    • Tom Gordon called Leadbeater’s bill “the most tightly-regulated assisted dying frameworks in the world”. He said he believed it included “proper safeguarding measures”.

    MPs who have indicated they could change their mind on the bill:

    • Marie Tidball has suggested she may change her mind depending on the outcome at the committee stage. She is urging for stronger safeguards.
    • Liz Saville-Roberts has said that: “if bill committee scrutiny cannot make this bill robust” that she would “reconsider” her “support at future votes”.

    The Canary was unable to find statements from Labour MP Bambos Charalambous. Charalambous was a teller for the ayes during the second reading. Largely though, it demonstrates that those seeking to strengthen the bill at committee will likely face an uphill battle.

    Watering down the bare minimum ‘safeguards’ that exist

    On top of this, some MPs on the committee have already suggested they would in fact support watering down some of the safeguards. For instance, writing for LabourList co-sponsor Jake Richards mulled the idea that courts needn’t automatically be involved.

    Similarly, Dr Simon Opher has made his thoughts known on the possibility of dropping judicial safeguards. During the second reading debate he said that the “judiciary review did not add much to the process” in Australia. In other words, he’s likely to support weakening the judicial safeguards, or dropping them altogether.

    There are other glaring biases in the make-up of the committee as well. Not least among these is the fact that as the Independent underscored:

    the three medically qualified MPs on the committee are all supportive of assisted dying.

    Labour’s Dr Simon Opher has even suggested that assisted suicide should be one of the “tools in palliative care”.

    This is despite the fact that palliative care professionals are overwhelmingly against assisted dying as part of mainstream healthcare.

    In 2023, Labour MP and former shadow minister Bambos Charalambous was suspended from the Labour Party for sexual assault allegations. After the investigation concluded, Labour unsuspended him in April, and he stood for the party in July’s election. He’s now a member on the committee – and voted in favour of the bill.

    Disabled MPs excluded

    If all this weren’t controversial enough, the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey pointed out the most problematic part of Leadbeater’s appointments. This is the fact that there’s just one disabled MP on the committee:

    This is Marie Tidball, elected in July amidst the new crop of Labour MPs. She was one of two MPs that identify as disabled who voted in favour of the bill at second reading. By contrast, six MPs who identify as disabled voted against the bill.

    In other words, Leadbeater has appointed no disabled MPs who opposed the bill to the committee – despite being the majority position of disabled parliamentarians. So, it means the committee has no disabled representation for disabled people who’ve overwhelmingly come out against the bill. Specifically, of 350 Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs), not a single one backed Leadbeater’s bill.

    The Canary shouldn’t have to explain why excluding disabled MPs against assisted dying is enormously problematic. Since Leadbeater seems to have missed the memo, we’ll spell it out.

    Crucially, it’s chronically ill and disabled people that the bill poses the biggest risks to. Most significantly then, Leadbeater’s selection means that disabled voices in parliament won’t have a seat at the table on decisions that could genuinely threaten the very lives of the disabled community.

    A dangerous bill that can’t be ‘fixed’ anyway

    Of course, the committee stage was never going to be able to fix the glaring problems with the bill anyway. This was a forgone conclusion because nothing the bill can offer will address the appalling inequity of palliative care. Quite the opposite – legalising assisted suicide will likely instigate a race to the bottom for more expensive palliative medicine – as it has done in many places that have introduced it.

    Moreover, the bill doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There’s nothing the committee can amend through the bill that can dismantle systemic ableism rife in every facet of public life. Ironically – or perhaps not – Leadbeater’s exclusion of disabled MPs is testament to this as well.

    Both mean that one of the biggest risks – coercion – the committee simply can’t solve.

    Ultimately, the ‘safeguards’ as they stand are woefully inadequate. Dan Hitchens in the Telegraph accused Leadbeater of misleading parliament on multiple occasions during the debate. He wrote:

    Take her three misstatements on the court process. First, Leadbeater implied she had the approval of the serving judiciary when she didn’t. Second, she claimed the bill’s safeguards included a “High Court judge” when, as she had admitted six days previously, they don’t. Third, she claimed that the court’s decision could be “revoked” if other evidence came to light subsequently. As the former president of the Family Division of the High Court, Sir James Munby, commented: “there is scant if any support in the Bill for this proposition.”

    All this helped Leadbeater give an impression of a serious, ironclad process as trustworthy as the court system itself. That impression was false.

    So, it was foolish for any MP to believe that the committee would be able to bring them up to scratch. At best, committee members can tinker around at the edges of so-called safeguards – but they can’t fix them.

    Assisted dying: where next?

    Of course, disabled people have been saying this all along. Now, Leadbeater’s highly partisan selection should make one thing abundantly clear. That is, this bill was never an equal fight and was never intended to be. From the start, assisted suicide advocates have sought to sideline disabled voices. So, it’s no surprise they’re excluding them now – right when they should be heard most of all.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A severe ME/CFS patient in Pakistan is urgently fundraising for crucial surgery

    In Pakistan, severely chronically ill disability advocate and survivor of domestic violence Nevra Liz Ahmed urgently needs surgery for a debilitating health condition. This is because it’s worsening her severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) by the day. Specifically, among a huge list of the devastating chronic illnesses Nevra lives with, she has undiagnosed probable endometriosis – which is causing her relentless and excruciating pain.

    Now, Nevra has a chance to get the first stage of surgery for this – and soon. Crucially, this could set her on the road to recovery for her endometriosis, and potentially even make it possible for her to travel abroad for further surgeries. However, there’s a significant catch. This is that the surgery, hospital stay, and cost of a medical advocate to be there with her will add up to around £10,000. So Nevra and her friends are appealing for financial support.

    There are multiple ways for people to pitch in – read on to find out how you can help.

    It’s vital Nevra gets this surgery, as the pain is becoming unbearable. And without it, her severe ME, and other debilitating conditions will only continue to get worse.

    Severe ME/CFS and endometriosis – a disastrous combination

    Nevra is a 29-year-old severe ME/CFS patient in Karachi, Pakistan. She is mostly bed-bound, non-verbal, and fully dependent on others for her care. The Canary previously wrote about Nevra’s complicated situation – which you can read about here.

    And right now, Nevra’s likely undiagnosed endometriosis is making her severe ME/CFS, as well as a multitude of other conditions, inordinately worse.

    Most significantly, the persistent pain has exarcerbated her post-exertional malaise (PEM). This is the hallmark feature of ME. It entails a a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities. Nevra told the Canary that:

    I’m on pain meds every two hours and only getting one to four hours of sleep, as the pain meds wear off and I’m awoken by pelvic cramps, vaginal spasms, and vomiting.

    It’s why she has urgently sought out medical treatment for this from a hospital in Karachi.

    However, to get the treatment, she will have to fork out around £10,000. Notably, this is for the diagnostic laparoscopy, a hysteroscopy, as well as to cover the costs of her hospital stay. Nevra has been trying to get this since 2017, but has had to postpone. This has been due to lack of funds for it, as well as living in an unstable, and unsafe abusive environment. In fact, Nevra came close to getting the laparoscopy in March. However, she had to use her raised funds to escape domestic abuse, and the mold-infested household her family moved her into which was further harming her health.

    Surgeries could be a step in the right direction

    But she can’t wait any longer for these surgeries. Her health is rapidly deteriorating, and she’s now experiencing near constant agony she has described as “level nine pain”, alongside persistent bleeding outside her menstrual cycle.

    A doctor has provisionally agreed to carry out the laparoscopy this December, or  in January. However, if she’s unable to pay for it, they will drop Nevra as a patient altogether.

    The other problem is, as the Canary previously highlighted, it’s not possible for Nevra to get all the surgeries she needs in Pakistan. For instance, this includes a hysterectomy for her Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). Therefore, to get these, she will have to travel abroad.

    As things stand now though, Nevra is too sick to make the journey. But, she hopes that the diagnostic laparoscopy could be the first step towards being well enough to do so.

    As well as this, in the event the surgeon identifies anything to be life-threatening, the doctor will have to act. Nevra also therefore feels the laparoscopy is crucial to rule out anything that’s putting her life at risk.

    How to help Nevra afford her surgery

    With the clock ticking on obtaining the necessary funds, Nevra needs people to step up if they can. Here are a number of ways people can help her to afford this vitally necessary diagnostic surgery:

    If financially in the position to do so, donate directly. The best way to do this is via PayPal to Nevra’s fundraising appeal. Nevra does also have an ongoing fundraiser, however the fundraising platform takes substantial chunks out of donations. For that reason, she’s asking that wherever people are comfortable, they send financial support to the above PayPal method instead. However, all support is welcome.

    For those that aren’t in a position to donate at such short notice, she’s also requesting interest-free loans. Since the surgery is imminent, she needs the finances upfront, and fast. So this is one way people can support her if they have the finances now to lend funds, but can’t commit to a donation. The basic principle would be to indicate how much, and how long the loan could be for, with agreed upon dates for Nevra to pay these back to people in full (without interest). If you can do this, please contact me at h.a.sharland@protonmail.com

    So far, multiple people have committed significant loans between £500 – £1,500 for Nevra’s surgery. She has agreed to pay these back at periods between one and three years, according to agreements with each person who has come forward.

    A few of Nevra’s international friends and advocates – who also live with ME/CFS – have created a winter holiday fundraising raffle, with handmade prizes. They’re aiming to raise at least £1,000, but the more the better. This is specifically for UK and EU-based entrants. However, all are welcome to donate and nominate a UK or EU-based friend to receive the prizes. Chronically ill and disabled creators have made these in solidarity with Nevra.

    Aside from these, Nevra also needs people to spread the word on this urgent fundraising request. Thanks to people’s generosity, she has already raised £5,700 in loans and donations. Nevra therefore needs to raise the remaining £4,300, so any help

    Unconscionable cost of care putting a price-tag on Nevra’s life

    Of course, severely chronically ill and disabled people shouldn’t have to fundraise for the vital medical treatment they need. However, the reality is, for many people living with severe ME, the medical support just isn’t there. Likewise, with endometriosis, healthcare systems across the world leave women fighting for treatment that should be a given.

    Nevra’s experience of trying to get the necessary medical care for severe ME/CFS and her endometriosis has been characteristic of the medical misogyny that still pervades diagnosis and treatment for both conditions.

    All the while, the debilitating pain and near constant bleeding for the last four months is putting her health at immense risk.

    However, treatment – at least for her endometriosis – is possible. The issue is that there’s a £10,000 financial barrier in the way of her accessing it. It’s abhorrent that the value of a young woman’s life comes down to the price-tag for this treatment. But this is where we’re at. So, mutual aid from allies could now make all the difference – please support Nevra if you can.

    Feature images supplied

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The government could be in the dock over its failure to protect disabled people from climate crisis

    Friends of the Earth and two co-claimants are appealing against the High Court’s decision in October to reject their legal challenge to the government’s inadequate climate adaptation plans.

    The decision to appeal comes as one of the co-claimants – Kevin Jordan – prepares to mark the first anniversary of his Norfolk home being demolished (on 9 December) as a result of coastal erosion.

    With Storm Darragh battering the UK with high winds this weekend, there are fears that the fragile Hemsby coastline could face further erosion.

    Climate adaptation plan is woefully inadequate

    Friends of the Earth is launching the appeal alongside two people whose lives have already been severely impacted by the climate crisis.

    Kevin Jordan, whose home in Hemsby, Norfolk was demolished in December 2023 after coastal erosion, fuelled by sea level rise and severe storms caused by climate change, left it in danger of falling into the sea.

    Disability activist Doug Paulley, who has a number of health conditions which are being exacerbated by searing summer temperatures. He’s concerned that the government’s current adaptation plans fail to consider the needs of disabled people – particularly in places such as care homes – putting him and others at risk.

    Friends of the Earth and the co-claimants argued that the current climate adaptation “National Adaptation Programme (NAP)”, introduced by the previous government in July 2023, falls far short of what’s legally required, with marginalised groups – such as older and disabled people – and those living in areas most exposed to rising global temperatures, disproportionately affected by the impacts of extreme weather and a deficient national adaptation programme.

    The judge was wrong

    Friends of the Earth is appealing on the grounds that the judge was wrong to conclude that non-specific and unmeasurable adaptation objectives could be lawfully set under the Climate Change Act, and that an assessment of the risk that the policies and plans would fail to deliver their intended impact was not legally required.

    The co-claimants also maintain that their human rights have been breached in the making of the plan, not least due to the lack of efficacy in the programme but also due to the failure to include marginalised groups – such as disabled people – in the decision-making process.

    The court is expected to make a decision on whether to allow the appeal in 2-3 months’ time.

    As the climate crisis escalates, the effects are increasingly being felt by communities across the country, such as those still dealing with the aftermath of Storm Bert that hit in late November, which left some disabled and elderly people in Wales struggling to get bottled water following fears that tap water may have been contaminated.

    Kevin Jordan said:

    As the anniversary of my home being lost to coastal erosion approaches, it is heart-breaking to see more homes on the Hemsby coastline under threat.

    Climate change is fuelling this crisis. When I bought my home 15 years ago, I was advised it would be safe for decades to come.

    The government’s climate adaptation plan is seriously inadequate and unless it is massively improved, communities across the country will be at risk from our rapidly changing weather.

    I hope this appeal succeeds and forces the government to give better protection to the hundreds of thousands of homes in England currently at risk of coastal flooding and erosion.

    Climate adaptation should not be an afterthought

    Doug Paulley said:

    The current National Adaptation Programme is not fit for purpose as it fails to protect disabled people from the impacts of climate change.

    I am delighted that we are appealing against the High Court ruling earlier this year. We need an adaptation plan that better protects us all – especially those most at risk and whose lives are disproportionally affected by our rapidly changing climate.

    Friends of the Earth’s head of legal, Will Rundle, said:

    We maintain that the government’s climate adaptation plan is unlawful and believe there are serious errors in the High Court ruling.

    The UK is woefully iIl-prepared for the escalating impacts of the climate crisis, putting millions of people at risk from increasingly severe and more frequent storms, floods and heatwaves.

    The government admits that the previous administration’s approach to climate adaptation has “left Britain badly exposed”. We urgently need a new and robust adaptation programme to help safeguard our homes and communities for the future.

    Featured image via Friends of the Earth

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Maysoon Zayid: Comedy of Resistance, Disability, Difference & Palestine


    This content originally appeared on Laura Flanders & Friends and was authored by Laura Flanders & Friends.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • DWP strips severely chronically ill mother and disabled son of £8k a year in Universal Credit migration

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Universal Credit mandatory managed migration has stripped a severely chronically ill and largely bedbound mother of her benefits for her disabled son. Now, as temperatures drop, and energy bills rise, she can no longer afford the heating to keep her home a safe temperature for their health.

    Her experience illustrates the real-world impact of the DWP’s shambolic process that has now denied vital benefits to over 380,000 people. Crucially, it displays the DWP’s blatant systemic ableism, misogyny, and classism at work as it has shunted people over to Universal Credit.

    DWP managed migration chaos continues

    The DWP began rolling out managed migration in July 2019, as a pilot scheme. This is where the department forces people who have not yet moved to Universal Credit, either voluntarily or because of a change of circumstance, onto it. This is because the new benefit is replacing old ones like Tax Credits.

    This forced migration involves the DWP issuing notices, with a three month deadline for claimants to make the move to Universal Credit. It officially began this process in July 2022. Since then, the department has progressively stripped claimants of their benefits.

    In November, the Canary revealed the latest figures for all this. For data going up to the end of September 2024, we detailed that:

    • The DWP had sent a total of 1,369,367 individuals, or 943,343 households migration notices between June 2022 and September 2024.
    • 318,834 people had lost their benefits (29%)
    • 185,076 were women (58%)
    • 69% of these were Child Tax Credit or working Tax Credit claimants

    Crucially then, we pointed out how this was disproportionately impacting women. Alongside this, it’s having a significant toll on households with children. We wrote that:

    the data revealed that the DWP has stripped benefits from 151,927 households with children. In other words, it means at least 150k children have seen their parents lose their benefits in the process of the DWP’s mandatory migration.

    A reader who saw the article reached out to the Canary about this. She told us that:

    I am one of those people stripped of benefits.

    Ann wanted to speak out about her appalling experience of the DWP process, and how it has impacted her. Notably, Ann is obviously among the 185,076 women who made up more than half the claimants that the DWP has left without their benefits. Moreover, Ann has a disabled son too – so he’s one of over 150,000 children who’ve had parents lose their benefits in this process.

    Ann and her twelve-year-old son

    Previously, Ann was a chartered civil engineer. However, due to serious chronic ill health, she is now unable to work. As such, Ann has been claiming contributory Employment Support Allowance (ESA).

    She falls into the ‘support group’ for this, because her long-term health condition severely limits what she can do. Alongside this, she gets Personal Independence Payment (PIP) to help with the costs of managing her chronic health condition. Separately, she also receives a small ill health occupational pension.

    Her twelve-year-old son is disabled, so also claims Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Crucially, the government had been issuing Ann Child Tax Credits (CTC) to help with costs for her son, since she’s unable to work, and on a low income.

    CTC comprises of the following (2024 rates):

    1. Up to £545 (just under £10.50 a week) as the basic amount – known as the ‘family element’
    2. Up to £3,455 (around £66 a week) – the ‘child element’
    3. Up to £4,170 (approx. £80 a week) on top of this if the child is disabled. Specifically, this applies to children under 16 claiming DLA, or over 16 claiming PIP.

    There are particular rules around this latter one, such as the requirement for them to be still in full-time education, or approved training (up to the age of 20).

    Ann would have claimed somewhere close to the full amount of these, as her CTC equated to circa £8,000 a year. Since her son claims DLA, she was eligible for the extra CTCs for this too.

    Of course, CTC is one of the benefits that the DWP has been phasing out in its forced migration to Universal Credit. And it was this that the department has now stopped for Ann. But notably, she was unable to make the move over to Universal Credit in time. So now, Ann has completely lost her CTC, and has no Universal Credit in its place.

    Most significantly though, it was the DWP’s own incompetent services and half-baked process that was to blame for Ann losing out.

    DWP managed migration helpline hopelessly uninformed

    The DWP had sent Ann a migration notice letter towards the end of February. Obviously, it signified the impending cut-off of her CTC. As with all people the DWP is forcing over to Universal Credit, it gave her three months to do this.

    In April, she phoned the DWP migration helpline for advice. This was to enquire how migrating her CTC over to Universal Credit would impact, if at all, her contributory ESA.

    In theory, the DWP managed migration process doesn’t apply to people on either new style or contributory ESA. It is only mandating that people on income-related ESA shift over to Universal Credit. As such, shifting from CTC to Universal Credit shouldn’t affect contributory ESA. However, the DWP deducts the contributory ESA from Universal Credit payments.

    In other words, while Ann’s CTC move to Universal Credit wouldn’t have impacted her contributory ESA, her contributory ESA would impact the Universal Credit she would receive. Technically, the DWP would bring her contributory ESA under its Universal Credit system. And to do this, it would convert it to new style ESA. There’s no material difference between these in practice, so moving over to Universal Credit shouldn’t affect Ann’s contributory ESA.

    However, the problem was that no one at the DWP could tell her any of this. She explained to the Canary how an advisor had:

    escalated the matter up her chain of command by many levels, speaking to seven or eight different advisors in the process, and was able to confirm that they had no knowledge of how it would be affected and that it was likely that it hadn’t yet been considered.

    And despite being unable to confirm the possible impacts, they offered Ann no further resolution to this. Notably, they also failed to inform her that she could apply for an extension for her move over to Universal Credit.

    Losing thousands in income and the Warm Home Discount

    It meant that the three months elapsed without Ann getting any information on this from the DWP. So, by the close of May, her CTC came to an end, but she hadn’t been able to apply to Universal Credit for fear it could impact her ESA.

    While Ann could now make a new claim for Universal Credit, she has lost her transitional protection. This was supposed to ensure she’d be no worse off after the forced move. Of course, in practice, this isn’t actually necessarily the case. Many chronically ill and disabled people moving over will in reality face a cut to their benefits through a series of regressive rules around transitional protection.

    Nonetheless, the DWP staff’s ignorance meant that the department effectively denied Ann benefits in its managed migration process altogether.

    Ann has now gone half a year without CTC, with nothing replacing them. So, she has so far lost around £4,000 in benefits for her disabled son. CTC had also meant she could get free dental care, as well as the government’s Warm Home Discount (WHD). Now, she has lost both these on top of the substantial cut in income.

    So right as energy bills have risen by on average £149, Ann will have lost up to virtually the same amount – £150 – off her electricity bill.

    Of course, to be eligible to receive the WHD in the first place with CTC, you have to be living on a low income anyway. For instance, a single parent household with one child would need to have an income below £24,479 for 2024/25 to qualify. The government set this threshold to maximise the number of people in fuel poverty on a low income getting the rebate on their electricity bill. In other words, people claiming Tax Credits below this threshold were significantly likely to be fuel poor.

    Heating or eating: poor households hit hardest by loss of WHD

    Notably also, that threshold equates to less than the 2024/25 national minimum wage (NMW) rates for 40 hours a week (high end of full-time). So it means that it’s people living on an income that’s lower than a NMW full-time role who this applies to. Conversely then, it also means that people living on the equivalent of a NMW full-time role won’t receive the WHD.

    The point is, it’s only Tax Credit claimants on income equivalents below the UK’s legal pay floor that are eligible for it. And given the NMW isn’t even enough to meet the basic costs of living anyway, all Tax Credit claimants who’ve been getting it are likely struggling to afford even the essentials.

    So, many of the poorest households on Tax Credits would also be losing out on the WHD when the DWP stopped their benefits during its forced migration.

    Moreover, this threshold is also well below the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s ‘Minimum Income Standard (MIS)’. Essentially, this is the minimum income a person needs to meet a decent standard of living. In other words, not just the basic needs to survive, but what they need to participate fully in society. In 2024, for a single person, this was £28,000. So, in other words, every single person household with a child on CTC eligible for WHD, is living on substantially less than the MIS as well.

    It’s little wonder then that Ann told the Canary that she is now unable to afford to use the heating most of the time.

    Making Ann’s myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) worse

    This is just one of the devastating impacts of the DWP’s managed migration. However, if all this weren’t bad enough, it’s the impact on Ann’s health that really drives home the injustice the DWP has baked into the mandatory move.

    Significantly, Ann lives with moderate to severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). It is a devastating chronic systemic neuroimmune disease that affects nearly every system in the body. ME causes a range of debilitating symptoms that hugely disrupts patients’ daily lives.

    In Ann’s case, she lives between the moderate to severe end of the scale for ME. Typically housebound, moderate ME patients have significantly reduced mobility and are often highly restricted in all daily living activities. Those with severe ME are mostly, if not entirely permanently bed-bound or hospitalised. They are often unable to digest food, communicate, or process information, and are fully dependent on others for their care.

    In all its severities, post-exertional-malaise (PEM) is the hallmark feature of ME. This entails a disproportionate worsening of many, if not all other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities.

    Unsurprisingly then, Ann’s interactions with the DWP had significant consequences for her ME. She told the Canary that:

    As for the impact, well, my illness is severely exacerbated by stress, as many are. So my health is worse, my pain is significantly worse. I am trying my best to at least manage my illness to keep it stable and mitigate the long term impact of being largely bed-bound with moderate to severe CFS/ME, but every contact with DWP undermines this and prompts another set back.

    That is, the DWP persistent failures in Ann’s managed migration has actively exacerbated her symptoms. And that puts it lightly. The reality of this for Ann will likely be prolonged periods of PEM.

    Layer upon layer of health harms through DWP managed migration

    Of course, there are multiple layers to this in terms of how the DWP has put her health at risk.

    For one, the DWP’s processes themselves would have each caused her ME to flare. Ann had to expend her limited energy to engage with managed migration over to Universal Credit in numerous ways that would have had ramifications for her health.

    Firstly, the very fact Ann had to move over to Universal Credit in the first place, without any form of support from the DWP, is appalling enough in itself. Ann’s experience draws attention to the fact that little attention, if any at all, has been paid to the additional burden the process would have on chronically ill and disabled individuals claiming old-style benefits.

    Nothing in the process takes into account that many chronically ill and disabled claimants wouldn’t be able to do this without support. Nor that many may not have access to support either. Many people with severe ME couldn’t do this – not least due to the cognitive impairment that typically comes with the condition. But also quite simply because they might live in constant, sometimes excruciating pain with serious sensitivities to light and sound that triggers any number of severe symptoms.

    Even when some can physically and mentally manage the process – as with Ann – it doesn’t mean they should have to. The fall-out from doing so can lead to similarly severe health consequences, sometimes long-term. As ever, the DWP hasn’t thought about the most vulnerable people in its design for this mandatory requirement.

    Systemic ableism baked into the DWP

    However, it’s not just the design either that’s a problem. At every stage, and in a multitude of ways, the DWP threatened Ann’s health.

    Ann could have got an extension to transition to Universal Credit, but no one told her about this. Plus, the onus would always have been on her to initiate it. That’s more bureaucracy that Ann would have to deal with – leaving her less energy and wellness for more urgent daily care needs, and potentially causing PEM. She’d also have to do this once every four weeks – and each time would compound this impact.

    Speaking on the phone to the managed migration advisors would also have drained Ann of vital energy and relative moments of wellness. And once again, this could have triggered more possible PEM.

    Additionally, the distress that losing her CTC would have had on Ann’s health is incalculable. Now, the financial strain it has placed her under will make managing her ME even harder as well. She’ll be forced to divert finances she needs for her health, to other basic daily living expenses for her and her son.

    Not to mention that disabled people already have on average over £1,000 in extra disability-related costs to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households. Put another way, the additional costs of disability account for on average 67% of household income after housing costs. So, Ann’s sudden enormous drop in income due to the DWP stripping her of her CTC will invariably intensify this glaring disparity for her too.

    And crucially, ME is a chronic health condition made worse by fluctuating and extreme temperatures. Ann mused to the Canary that:

    At least being stuck in bed means that I can get away with never having the heating on if my son isn’t at home or is with his dad…

    ME patients typically need specifically regulated temperatures to keep their symptoms in check, and prevent or manage PEM. It’s not a matter of if, not being able to afford the heating this winter WILL harm Ann. Again, this has every potential of tipping her into more frequent, or even constant severe ME.

    In short, the DWP’s shambolic process that has denied her benefits is putting both her and her disabled child’s health at risk. Most concerningly, the DWP’s unconscionable catalogue of failures, and built-in inaccessibility and ableism risks pushing her more permanently into severe ME.

    DWP managed migration – but errors all round

    However, these also haven’t been the only issues Ann has had with the DWP in recent months. Alongside its failure to inform her in time for her to make the move over to UC, the DWP had previously levied another debt on Ann too. This was in relation to her contribution-based ESA. She expressed to the Canary that they’re now chasing her CTC debt:

    at the same time as I am still paying off debt from the LAST mistake they made with my payments

    This prior debt is for around £100 – which she owes to the DWP. And as Ann implied, it concerns a DWP error. Specifically, it’s over its failure to reduce her ESA. This relates to a small occupational ill health pension Ann is also claiming since she stopped being able to work.

    Each April, Ann’s pension had risen with inflation. This is because, with contribution-based ESA, pension income above £85 a week affects how much of the award a claimant gets. Specifically, the DWP will reduce the ESA by half the value of any pension income over that amount.

    Ann explained that:

    Some years the adjustment was literally pennies per week due to low inflation, but then the cost of living crisis happened and inflation went through the roof.

    DWP drops the ball, then pushes the onus on claimants

    Every year, the DWP had liaised with her pension provider directly to confirm the amount it had risen by. The department would then adjust her contributory ESA accordingly. However, in April 2023, the DWP didn’t do this. So, Ann said that:

    Come November the threatening letters start arriving demanding back pay and also a penalty fine on top.

    Notably though, the DWP hadn’t at any point informed Ann that it hadn’t contacted her provider as usual, or made the adjustments to her contributory ESA. As such, Ann had no knowledge that the onus would be on her to inform the DWP of her pension’s increase. And as Ann pointed out, it also meant she wouldn’t have known to look out for this either. She expressed how:

    This was the year that my son was sitting his KS2 SATs, finishing primary school, transitioning to secondary school and also undergoing various assessments etc for his own health issues for which he now receives DLA and which made all of these events very trying for him. Needless to say that with all this going on I didn’t notice that they had done their usual adjustments, not least because the timescale when they did them varied anyway.

    Taking more of a toll

    However, despite all this, Ann said that the DWP had “refused to listen” when she called them. She explained that she:

    had expected them to act as they always have. That their behaviour has set a precedent etc, and they just keep shouting that “it’s in the legislation” and that it’s my responsibility.

    Given the department’s obstinance with the penalty, Ann initiated legal action. She told the Canary that:

    When they saw the case I was presenting they conceded before it went before a judge.

    Ann still owes the DWP the overpayment itself. Now however, she explained that her win on the penalty meant she had:

    reduced the debt by about 30%.

    But, the whole process had taken a toll on Ann’s ME as well, causing her symptoms to flare. Once again, the DWP’s cock-ups, and its punitive and ableist system had put her health at risk.

    Another limit the DWP hasn’t updated in years

    It’s also worth noting that the DWP hasn’t updated this £85 threshold since it introduced contribution-based ESA in 2001.

    Ann pointed this out in the context of the Carer’s Allowance upcoming earnings limit increase. While this too is still inadequate, it’s rising to £196 – or 16 hours on NMW from £151. It means more carers will be able to claim the benefit.

    If we’re to take a similar approach with the pension income limit for contributory ESA, then:

    • In 2001, the NMW was £4.10, meaning the limit was equivalent to over 20 hours of employment.
    • Now, NMW is £11.44, so it’s only worth 7.4 hours of employment.

    Effectively, the pension limit’s income value has eroded as the cost of living has increased over the past 23 years. In 2023, the DWP-sponsored non-departmental Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) recommended that the department should scrap this limit entirely. Crucially, it also noted how:

    The rationale for means-testing a contributory benefit against unearned income is not clear.

    So, the DWP has also foisted this debt on her due to a seemingly arbitrary limit. Most gallingly, this is a limit it hasn’t once up-rated in over twenty years.

    Department of wrecking people’s health

    All told, Ann is now around £8,000 worse off a year. The government has lumped her with two benefits-related debts, together worth over £1,000. Alongside this, she has lost free dental care, and her WHD worth up to £150 off her electricity bill.

    Her contributory ESA, PIP, small pension, and son’s DLA won’t be enough to meet even their basic needs. That’s without even factoring in the extra costs for disabled people’s daily living. This is the real-world reality of the DWP’s so-called managed migration process. As it turns out, the DWP isn’t ‘managing’ this well at all.

    Ann told the Canary that:

    I am trying, as best as I am able, to be a parent and rebuild some form of life in between tussles with HMG in one form or another. Obviously every health assessment and/or issue like this writes off at least a year, but I am slowly trying to learn what I can and cannot do without my body going into shock and shutting down, which is what happens when I do too much!

    And among the 380,000 people the DWP has stripped benefits from in this forced move, there are likely to be many more Ann’s. This is the callous human cost behind the DWP’s money-saving migration exercise to Universal Credit.

    Introduced under the Tories, Labour has ploughed ahead with it since. It has done so knowing full-well the staggering scale of people the DWP process is denying vital benefits to. Ann’s story should be the wake-up call the new government needs to halt DWP managed migration to Universal Credit in its tracks. If it fails to do so, Labour is saying that it’s content continuing a process. that’s irrevocably harming poor, chronically ill and disabled people, women, and children. Ann most certainly isn’t alone in going through this, but let her appalling experience be one of the last.

    Then, Labour must fix this too. And make damn sure that Ann and every other person the DWP has cruelly ripped vital benefits away from, have these properly restored, backdated, and fairly funded to meet their needs – not just to survive – but truly thrive.

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The DWP is facing court action next week which Labour shamelessly CHOSE to defend

    On Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 November, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is in court in London. Campaigner Ellen Clifford is mounting a legal challenge over its proposed changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). Of course, this all started under the previous Tory government- meaning, the new Labour Party-run DWP could have settled with Clifford out of court if it wanted to. Instead, the Labour government dug its heels in. So, Clifford’s DWP WCA challenge continues – and disabled people will be at court supporting her.

    DWP WCA reforms: a looming disaster

    As the Canary has documented, the planned DWP WCA reforms relate to which claimants will fall into the limited capability for work (LCW), and the limited capability for work related activity (LCWRA) groups of Universal Credit.

    The DWP ran a consultation on these between September and October 2023. As the Canary previously detailed:

    the DWP is planning to change the WCA. Specifically, it’s planning on taking out or changing the following features:

    • Factoring in people’s mobility
    • Bladder or bowel incontinence.
    • The inability to cope in social situations.
    • People’s ability to leave their homes.
    • Work being a risk to claimants or others – a clause which means that an individual is “treated as having limited capability for work and work related activity“

    In November, the then Tory-run DWP responded to the consultation. Notably, it laid out how it would proceed with a number of these. Specifically, it decided to take forward DWP WCA changes to:

    • Work being a risk to claimants. Specifically, it will tighten the criteria for this. Notably, it stated that: “We will specify the circumstances, and physical and mental health conditions, for which LCWRA Substantial Risk should apply.” In other words, the DWP will decide who this will apply to going forward – and will obviously move the goalposts.
    • People’s mobility – which it’s removing as a descriptor altogether.
    • People’s ability to leave their homes – which it will now reduce the points for in the assessment.

    A risk to disabled people

    Campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) has warned about the DWP WCA changes. It said:

    A forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility showed that only 3% of the 453,000 disabled people predicted to lose out by 2028/9 as a result of the changes will be able to move into employment.

    The changes will only apply to new benefit claimants – although existing claimants will be affected if they come off benefits and then reapply.

    The two groups of claimants who will be impacted are those with mobility impairments and those in the “substantial risk” group, who are those deemed to be at risk of self injury and/or suicide if forced to look for work.

    Around 424,000 claimants will as a result of the changes only be able to access out of work benefits at 47% of the rate existing claimants do.

    Those with mobility impairments will have to undertake mandatory work search activity and be subject to conditionality and sanctions.

    Those in the substantial risk group will not have mandatory work search activity. However, there are increasing expectations in terms of engagement with the Department for Work and Pensions.

    Labour’s position

    However, despite the DWP WCA changes being in the Tories’ Autumn Budget of 2023, it is still unclear if Labour will implement them or not – although many analysts and disabled people are indicating that the new government will.

    New Labour Party chancellor Rachel Reeves announced during the Autumn Budget that she would honour the DWP WCA savings that the previous government planned to make through these reforms.

    She said:

    First, we inherited the last government’s plans to reform the Work Capability Assessment.

    We will deliver those savings as part of fundamental reforms to the health and disability benefits system that the Work and Pensions Secretary (Liz Kendall) will bring forward.

    Most people have interpreted that to mean that the planned DWP WCA reforms will go ahead.

    Ellen Clifford’s legal challenge

    However, Clifford has been challenging the reforms in court – specifically over the consultation. Her lawyers argued that the primary motivation in fact appears to be reducing welfare spending.

    Under these proposed changes to the DWP WCA, thousands of people would lose £416 per month in benefits and many would be at risk of sanctions.

    According to Clifford, this was not made clear during the consultation. Specifically, her lawyers are arguing that:

    • The government gave insufficient time for consultation on changes to the WCA.
    • The DWP did not explain the reforms properly.
    • These reforms do not help more disabled people into work.
    • People could not respond to the consultation properly.

    During an earlier stage of Clifford’s case, it emerged that the DWP WCA changes had not even been subject to:

    • Any employment or disability assessments of the proposals they wished to consult on before the consultation was launched.

    The DWP did, however, undertake reviews to work out what savings may be made from the DWP WCA proposals before consulting. This included estimating how many Deaf and Disabled people may no longer be assessed as having limited capacity for work or work-related activity, if proposals were implemented. Yet no information about potential savings or numbers impacted was provided to consultees as part of the consultation process.

    Join disabled people at the Royal Courts of Justice to challenge the DWP WCA changes

    So, it seems the DWP’s defence over the WCA changes has already got off to a rocky start. On 10 December, disabled people and their allies will be gathering outside the Royal Courts of justice for a vigil.

    Organisers DPAC said in a statement:

    We are disappointed that Labour has chosen to defend the case in order to push ahead with the same changes proposed by the Tories…

    These changes will lead to deeper poverty among disabled people and unquestionably to more benefit deaths.

    The proposed changes also ignore the findings and recommendations from the special inquiry under the Convention on the Rights of Disabled People carried out by the United Nations Disability Committee which found the UK guilty of grave and systematic of violations of Disabled People’s rights due to austerity and welfare reform.

    If you are unable to attend the vigil but want to show solidarity please take to social media using the hashtag #NoMoreDeathsFromBenefitCuts.

    Please also contact your MP to ask for their support in opposing disability benefit cuts and to tell them what you think the consequences of these cuts will be.

    More details on the vigil can be found here.

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Channel 4 denies Fraser Nelson’s Dispatches conflict of interest – as Nelson boasts otherwise

    After the Canary revealed the glaring conflict of interest of presenter Fraser Nelson in Channel 4’s Dispatches, the producer has come out and contested this. This concerned its latest rancidly ableist, and error-riddled episode titled: ‘Britain’s Benefits Scandal’.

    Notably, the Canary highlighted that Nelson sits on the advisory board to the dodgy dark money think tank at the heart of the programme. It was none other than the notorious Iain Duncan-Smith founded Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). Now, the episodes’ executive producer, Eamonn Matthews has claimed Nelson no longer has anything to do with the board or think tank more broadly.

    However, there’s just one problem with this. Nelson said the exact opposite – on the very day the programme aired.

    Dispatches: Channel 4 denies Nelson’s conflict of interest

    On Monday 2 December, Channel 4 televised the Dispatches documentary fronted by Nelson. As the Canary wrote however:

    Nelson is a policy advisor to the very organisation the documentary turned to throughout. This is former DWP “grim reaper” Iain Duncan-Smith’s controversial think tank, the CSJ. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t mention this association. So, the whole programme falls on its ass – since it turns out it’s little more than a CSJ puff piece.

    So, Disability News Service’s (DNS) John Pring put this to the broadcaster. In responses Pring kindly shared with the Canary, the Dispatches executive producer Eamonn Matthews told him that:

    Fraser, along with others, was on the advisory board which is no longer active and he plays no part in the running of the CSJ.

    In short then, Channel 4’s producer is claiming that Nelson is no longer on this board. However, this isn’t what Nelson has said. By contrast, in an article Nelson penned for the Scottish Herald, he wrote that:

    This ‘Easterhouse agenda’ led to the Centre for Social Justice (on whose advisory board I sit) and later, in welfare reforms cut worklessness to the lowest levels ever recorded.

    And crucially, the outlet published the article – get this – on Monday 2 December. Baffling? That’s an understatement. Here, Nelson is talking about sitting on the advisory board, in the present tense. Conversely, the Channel 4 producer told Pring he’s no longer on the board. What, as of the very moment of the reply – after the Canary put his conflict of interest in the spotlight perhaps?

    Someone’s telling porkies…

    Either way, someone isn’t being honest about this. Maybe Channel 4 didn’t know – but there’s no excuse for inviting him to present the programme and not checking this. More likely, it did know, and didn’t expect to be caught out. After all, you don’t ask the former editor of the Spectator with a body of published work bashing benefit claimants to head a Dispatches, unless you have a very particular rightwing editorial ambition for it.

    And even if we’re to take the claim that he “plays no part in running” the CSJ, Nelson still has significant involvement in its work. For instance, Nelson presented the CSJ’s 2024 annual awards ceremony. He was also a speaker at a fringe event the CSJ hosted for the Conservative Party’s 2024 annual conference.

    Nonetheless, despite his galling conflict of interest, Channel 4 isn’t pulling this bullshit documentary. Instead, it’s actually doubling down and hoping this CSJ-Nelson debacle will blow over.

    But here’s the thing, the CSJ’s role in shaping this Dispatches episode is a serious red flag. It’s not some innocuous information source. The CSJ has a history – and it’s one of aiding and abetting dangerous welfare reforms. So, how much it had a say over this Dispatches is very relevant. And it’s evident the CSJ was very heavily involved in its direction – likely thanks to Nelson.

    CSJ front and centre

    Nelson has crafted his own little website for the shoddy piece of poverty porn propaganda masquerading like a real documentary. It’s “written and published” by none other than Nelson himself, naturally.

    Of course, it’s originally-named: benefitstrap/.com (we’re not going to link to it). As with the Dispatches, forget this blather about a benefit “trap”, it’s the biggest claptrap going more like.

    The vital point is however, here too the CSJ is front and centre. And where the documentary said almost benignly “calculations for Dispatches show”, Nelson’s website confirms just who ran those stats for the programme.

    Drum roll please: the CSJ!

    It was obvious anyway, but it’s definitive proof that the whole documentary is genuinely entirely based around a bunch of biased bullshit stats from the opaquely-funded think tank.

    One statistic demolishes Dispatches‘ whole premise in one fell swoop

    An especially dubious figure in particular on the site and in the documentary exposes the CSJ’s involvement indisputably.

    This is the supposed £24,000 a single claimant could get in so-described sickness benefits. That’s less than 40 hours full-time work on national minimum wage (NMW) by the way – so paltry poverty pay if we’re being honest.

    But the biggest piss-take about it is the fact it’s not actually true anyway – at least certainly not in the way Nelson described and wanted viewers to go away with.

    Because the problem is, the figure just doesn’t stack up.

    By the Canary’s calculations, a claimant could get in total: £18,562 a year. This includes both higher rate awards for PIP comprising £737 a month, alongside both the base rate and LCWRA amounts for Universal Credit.

    Crucially however, as we pointed out about this already, getting the enhanced rate of PIP is notoriously difficult to obtain.

    Around 2.3 million working age people get full PIP or DLA. This means that they get the enhanced rate for both daily living and mobility elements. Of those, around 450,000 are on Universal Credit Limited Capability for Work-related activity (LCWRA). For the ESA support group, it’s approximately 580,000.

    That is, of those claiming benefits like Universal Credit and ESA who are unable to work due to ill health or disability, just 30% and 45% respectively have awards for full PIP.

    In other words, the majority of claimants on low incomes who aren’t working due to long-term sickness, aren’t getting both the higher rates of PIP. So, the idea that it’s easy to obtain and the norm as Nelson tried to suggest, is completely preposterous.

    Even supposing claimants were getting this, £18,562 is less than the national minimum wage (NMW) for even the lower end 35 hours of full-time work. In other words, chronically ill and disabled people unable to work are living on less than the NMW regardless.

    Fictitious figures full of holes on Dispatches

    So where is the CSJ getting this £24,000 for Dispatches from exactly?

    A single graph on the website shows how the CSJ has come to this – and spoiler, it’s hugely problematic.

    For one, it naturally assumes the higher rate of PIP. As we explained above, this is hardly a “typical” person claiming so-called sickness benefits. Less than a third of Universal Credit in the LCWRA group are getting this. This means of course that the majority – around 70% – are not claiming full PIP.

    For the sake of analysing the rest of Nelson’s CSJ stats, we’ll set this aside for a moment. But the problem is, as we highlighted, with the Universal Credit base rate and LCWRA component, it still brings us to far less than £24,000 – which in fact, the CSJ’s graph also illustrates. So what’s going on here?

    Turns out, the CSJ has factored in the housing element of Universal Credit for this too. Except, here’s the thing, that amount won’t go into the pockets of benefit claimants. This is to cover rent – ergo, it goes to landlords. In fact, as the Canary’s James Wright previously pointed out, 88% of the governments’ housing budget goes to subsidising landlords through either the housing element of Universal Credit, or legacy housing benefit.

    Bumping approximately £18,500 up to £24,000 also seems to suggest it’s worth on average £5,500. For most claimants, this won’t be true. In fact, this figure seems to use the rate for a claimant getting this for three bedrooms (for example, with a partner, and dependent) for some of the most expensive rental areas, like the City of London. It’s therefore wildly misrepresentative of what the majority of claimants can get for this.

    There’s another more detailed graph too, though this came from social policy analytics company Policy in Practice. It’s as much of a joke as the first one – factoring in old-style benefits the DWP is phasing out RIGHT NOW, like Tax Credits, and ESA. Needless to say, it doesn’t paint close to an accurate picture of the reality for most claimants either.

    A clear back-to-work and benefit cut agenda

    Ultimately, Dispatches pulled entirely erroneous figures out of its arse to buttress its core message. This is that: benefits being so generous means there’s no incentive for people to go to work. It’s evident what this is implying. Cut benefits, and cut people who need them off benefits. This fits quite nicely with Labour’s crusade to ‘cut’ the benefits bill after all.

    Of course, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the CSJ has wormed its way into the so-called “worklessness crisis” discussion with dodgy statistics.

    The Canary has highlighted the think tank doing so before. This was for a figure bandied about by the rightwing corporate press and politicians with reckless abandon. Most recently featured in Labour’s new Get Britain Working White Paper, this is the supposed 600,000 people off work due to long-term sickness that would like to move into employment.

    We debunked this too for the baseless statistic it really is, that uses fallacious data that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Most importantly was the fact that – dodgy stats aside – a person wanting a job, is wholly different from someone being able to actually do one. Just because chronically ill and disabled people want to work, doesn’t mean they can, or should. This shouldn’t need saying, but the CSJ conveniently forgot this – and so has every politician citing its trash stat since.

    Did this bogus statistic also happen to come from CSJ reports that Nelson promoted in the event he spoke at during the Tory Party CSJ fringe event? Yes it did.

    The facade it was ‘factually accurate’

    We’re labouring over the CSJ’s misleading and deliberate misinformation to make an important point. This is that Channel 4’s obtuse obfuscation of Nelson’s intimate and long-standing connection to the CSJ is enormously problematic too.

    It can’t contend that this doc is accurate, since it’s clear the CSJ and Nelson have an aligned agenda. Funnily enough though, that’s precisely what the Channel 4 Dispatches episode’s executive producer claimed it was to the DNS. In no uncertain terms, Matthews told DNS that:

    As outlined in our statement the film is factually accurate.

    That said, he also told the DNS that Nelson isn’t on the CSJ advisory board, all while Nelson continues to boast that he is. Clearly, something doesn’t add up here – and it’s not just the shady CSJ’s shoddy statistics.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The DWP Christmas bonus should now be worth a staggering £327. Yet it’s still £10.

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has said it will be paying claimants their £10 DWP Christmas bonus soon. However, the amount is worth barely anything anymore. Moreover, with the cost of things like a Christmas dinner having skyrocketed, it seems like the DWP is taking the piss paying the Christmas bonus in the first place.

    The DWP Christmas bonus

    As Devon Live reported, the government launched the Christmas bonus in 1972 for social security claimants. Despite successive governments keeping it, the amount given hasn’t changed since 1972. It doesn’t take an economist to work out this is a farce.

    A quick input into the Bank of England’s inflation calculator shows that if governments had increased the Christmas bonus with inflation, it would now be worth at least £115. As This Is Money noted, back in 1972 the £10 Christmas bonus:

    was enough to cover the cost of a turkey dinner for the whole family, with change leftover for presents.

    In fact, it would probably have covered more than that – because, for example, the cost of a Christmas dinner was actually around £3.34 in 1972.

    Now, analysis shows that the £10 the DWP will be bunging to millions of claimants in the next few days won’t even get you a turkey.

    Like turkeys at Christmas

    The Express did a breakdown of how much a basic Christmas dinner would cost at various supermarkets. It said that:

    Analysis of prices from nine leading UK supermarkets shows the average cost of a fresh turkey will cost £28.65 this year, while the second-most expensive item on the plate – pigs in blankets – could set you back around £3.29.

    The average cost of a full plate, which would include turkey, pigs in blankets, potatoes, gravy, stuffing, brussels sprouts, carrots, cranberry sauce, parsnips, Yorkshire puddings bread sauce, Christmas pudding and a six-pack of mince pies would set shoppers back an average of £50.06.

    Your Money says the cost of a Christmas dinner has actually gone up more than inflation this year than compared to last – increasing by 2.8%. Even so, an inflation-tracked bonus of £115 would still have covered that.

    DWP Christmas bonus: an insult to millions of us

    However, the real sting in the tail with the DWP’s miserly Christmas bonus is what it should be worth compared to 1972, taking into account the standard inflation increase.

    Back in 1972, the weekly state pension was just £6.75 – and it was pensioners that originally got the Christmas bonus. On that basis, if governments had kept the DWP Christmas bonus rising in line with the rate of the full state pension (currently £221.20), it would now be £327.70. That £327 could pay for a family’s entire Christmas – albeit modestly.

    It feels like the government and DWP are mocking people with the £10 Christmas bonus. The department has cut some people’s social security by up to £13,000 across recent years. And yearly April increases have failed to make up for real-terms cuts across nearly a decade.

    The department knows a DWP Christmas bonus £10 is taking the piss – and that most people won’t even notice the money. Yet it continues to pay it anyway. The Christmas bonus is a cruel joke – and the only ones laughing are those at the DWP.

    DWP Christmas bonus

    Featured image via Pixabay and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Accessible transport is not accessible AT ALL – with 92% of disabled people now facing barriers

    The National Centre for Accessible Transport (NCAT) has found that 92% of disabled people they spoke with face barriers when using at least one mode of transport, with inaccessible streets and pavements being the biggest obstacles in public spaces.

    Additionally, 77% of respondents said these barriers negatively affect their physical or mental well-being, and 75% reported feeling stressed when travelling.

    The data comes from NCAT’s Transport Barriers Database, an innovative open-source dashboard designed to inform industry professionals and policymakers. This searchable tool provides crucial evidence of the transport challenges disabled people face across the UK.

    Accessible transport: not accessible at all

    The interactive dashboard showcases the transport experiences of 1,195 disabled people from the Community of Accessible Transport (CAT) panel. Users can search by categories such as access needs, impairment, transport modes, region, gender, and age. The database also includes 1,274 searchable comments from participants about their experiences.

    Key findings already include:

    • Disabled people do not think transport is accessible. Most do not think this will change in the next 10 years.
    • Disabled people experience barriers when travelling. 92% face barrier(s) on at least one mode of transport.
    • Inaccessible transport makes disabled people travel less, and it makes journeys take longer.
    • Disabled people face many barriers when they travel. These include badly designed and cluttered streets, unreliable step-free access, and poor staff assistance.

    NCAT’s recent Accessible Transport Summit emphasised that the voices and experiences of disabled people must be central to any meaningful research and improvements in transport accessibility. The database aims to amplify the experiences of disabled people to guide policy, funding decisions, and research priorities.

    NCAT’s evidence will be used

    The Accessible Transport Policy Commission was established to guide policy decisions and to be a bridge between NCAT and policymakers.

    The Commission consists of a cross-party group from both Houses of Parliament. They are committed to eliminating transport barriers for disabled people across the UK.

    Over the past year, the Commission has engaged with national policymakers, including the former secretary of state for transport, Louise Haigh, and united local government leaders, around the Accessible Transport Charter. They have also highlighted good practices in co-production.

    Clive Gilbert from the Accessible Transport Policy Commission says:

    2025 promises to be an important year for transport policy across the UK. The Accessible Transport Policy Commission looks forward to using the evidence gathered by NCAT to ensure disabled people’s voices are heard in city halls, legislatures, and government offices across the country.

    If you are a disabled person or a transport professional, you can sign up here for our CAT Panel to participate in our research and help shape the future work of NCAT.

    Featured image via NCAT

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • UN Day of Disabled People is a FARCE in a country that wants us all dead

    Hello again, on ‘IDPD2024!’

    It’s been a while since I wrote this because among other things, I’ve been deep in writing my book. And after spending so long focusing on writing about how the government and media systematically and deliberately turned the public against disabled people to the point where they didn’t care when they let us all die (multiple times), its nice to be back to reality and less bleaker topics.

    LOL if only.

    It seems Keir and his lot don’t ever want me to end this book as they just keep giving me more and things to write about. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be left out and ensure he has a prime place in next years summer bestseller (hopefully) Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism (out 3 July 2025, available to preorder now).

    As my therapist said to me just last week when I expressed concern about how my house was a shit tip whilst I focused on pushing out thousands of words and supporting sick loved ones:

    It’ll still be there when you’re done.

    Unfortunately, the only thing more disgusting than my washing-up pile is the way the Labour Party government are treating disabled people.

    #IDPD2024: what a crock

    I remembered mid-yesterday afternoon that it was the United Nations International Day of Persons With Disabilities (IDPD2024) when I realised that not a single disabled person I knew had been asked to speak at events, write, or talk about it. In previous years newspapers have ran special series, disabled people have been asked on radio or TV, and you couldn’t move for the amount of events.

    But this year – tumbleweed.

    The only thing more drawn out than the name the United Nations International Day of Persons With Disabilities (IDPD2024) is the media and government’s pretence of seeing us as humans worthy of an agency, I suppose.

    IDPD2024 feels a little bit like a farce when you live in a country that treats disabled people like we do. The purpose of the day, according to the UN, is to:

    promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society.

    However, this feels impossible in a country that just this year had it’s government was hauled in front of the UN Committee on the Rights of Disabled People for its “grave and systemic violations” against them. And to answer to these crimes the DWP sent a civil servant many disabled organisers in the room had never heard of.

    It feels like a particularly cruel slap in the face of disabled people for the DWP to tweet about today whilst crowing about disability inclusion when you look at the events of the last week.

    Assisted Dying Bill: a clear line from the past to the present

    Last Friday of course saw the reading Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill in parliament; one disabled people had campaigned against ferociously because we could all see how easily the government could use this to kill us – after all successive governments have been trying to do so for decades.

    The Bill sadly passed with 330 votes for, weirdly this is exactly the same number that voted against Rob Marris’s Bill on the same subject in 2015. It’s hard not to see some significance there and how emblematic it is of the death march that has been coming for disabled people, led by the government and media.

    When the vote was announced on Friday, I was nearing the end of writing my book’s first draft. I’d rather unfortunately had a particularly disgusting earworm all week which horrifically seemed too fitting.

    Whilst researching for the book, I was reminded by John Pring (of Disability News Service) of Peter Lilley’s 1992 Conservative Party Conference speech in which he takes a song from the Mikado by the high executioner and changes it to be about “benefit offenders”. The unfortunate thing that I’d had stuck in my head all week was the line he repeats to gleeful applause:

    they never would be missed.

    IDPD2024 in context

    After being so immersed in all the disgusting ways the government had used the media to turn society against disabled people throughout the last few decades, it was impossible not to see a very clear line from Lilley singing about how he wanted to murder all benefits claimants to how disabled people were being treated as hysterical doomsayers for having legitimate concerns about how a program which allowed sick people to end their lives to be used against us.

    As I said on X a couple of weeks ago, disability has been so reduced to the worst thing that can happen to a person that disabled people are regularly told “I’d kill myself if that happened to me”. But instead we were told we were being too emotive whilst all the media allowed Esther Rantzen and her family to cry about how the opposed side wanted to leave dying people in excruciating pain.

    And of course, the path to getting here doesn’t start with Lilley and end with assisted suicide.

    A long road to this point

    Lilley was but a stop off on a journey which started decades before – with institutionalisation, only supporting disabled war veterans and workers, breezing past that Tory cunt to Tony Blair’s government responding to disabled people protesting proposed cuts by working with the media to grow public distrust, the austerity years and WCA, DNRs during Covid and the renewed benefits scroungers narrative.

    When governments and the media have been working for so many years to erode the public’s support for disabled people, of course our fears of being forced to die were ignored – because nobody sees us worthy of saving. And that’s exactly what the government want – including this one.

    Many of the Labour faithful on social media have been trying to brush disabled people’s concerns over Keir Starmer’s government being no different to the Tories under the carpet since July.

    We’re constantly told “give them a chance, wait until March”.

    However, it’s quite obvious to those of us who have been here many times before that they’re singing from the exact same hymn sheet as all the others who came before them.

    IDPD2024 is meaningless

    You may’ve noticed a sharp uptick in “cracking down on benefit fakers” style articles lately, and the timing is absolutely no coincidence, trust me. We’ve seen it every time there’s been big disability benefits shake-ups coming. The fact the ‘reforms’ aren’t coming until March as opposed to the Autumn Budget means we’re in for much worse than simply the awful Dispatches documentary.

    While it may seem absolutely dire for disabled people at the minute, my research has taught me one other thing.

    No matter how much the government and media want to destroy disabled people, disabled activists have always fought back and refused to go quietly.

    Whilst the government might be doing their level best to destroy all public trust in disabled people yet again, we will be there to oppose them every step of the way – just like every time before.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Fraser Nelson failed to declare massive conflict of interest with Dispatches’ Britain’s Benefits Scandal

    A Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on DWP disability benefits came right out of the poverty porn playbook of the worst trash TV shows of the last decade. However, it’s little wonder when far-right foghorn and former Spectator editor Fraser Nelson (until just a few weeks ago we might add) was fronting the programme.

    The demonising title said it all: Britain’s Benefits Scandal. Cue, a forty-five minute frothing-at-the-mouth foray into Nelson’s favourite past-time: punching down on chronically ill and disabled people claiming benefits. Needless to say, it was also replete with factual inaccuracies to boot, to fuel its horrendous hatchet job.

    In the lead up to its airing, the Canary – and many others on social media – highlighted that Nelson’s benefit claimant-bashing reputation precedes him. But there was something even more significant we also pointed out, and the documentary completely failed to mention. This was that he LITERALLY works for the organisation at the centre of the programme. That would be former DWP boss Iain Duncan-Smith’s notorious rightwing think tank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).

    In short, in the face of Nelson’s significant conflict of interest, the whole documentary should be consigned to the dustbin of dark money think tank propaganda. Instead, it got a prime-time TV slot on one of the UK’s most watched news channels.

    Channel 4: Britain’s Benefit Scandal was bullshit benefit bashing at its worst

    The Canary went through this shitshow of insipid drivel so you don’t have to. Spoiler alert: the true scandal is that the broadcaster ever gave Nelson a budget for this trumped up ‘documentary’-come-CSJ advertorial.

    Break out your benefit claimant-bashing bingo card – because it had them all.

    It started how all good documentaries do – with presenter Nelson scratching his head and promising to take viewers right up the history of Britain’s so-called benefits scandal. Only of course, he doesn’t actually do this at all. In the first few minutes, he opined:

    As a journalist, what I can’t work out is how such a huge scandal is going almost completely unnoticed. When unemployment hit 3 million under Margaret Thatcher, there was outrage. But, when the number on sickness benefits hits 3 million, almost nobody seems to ask why, how on earth we got to this stage, or what life is actually like, for those now caught in the system.

    Almost nobody? Except quite literally every single rightwing corporate media outlet and politicians of both major UK parties, incessantly, more like.

    Naturally, Nelson and his guests made their fair share of ableist comments throughout as well. In one scene, he did the “you don’t look disabled” ableism 101:


    Others talked about chronically ill and disabled people not in work as being “written off” or “put on the scrapheap”. Implying of course that people not powering the billionaire capitalist wet dream’s lives have no value.

    ‘Sickfluencers’ or just people trying to help?

    None of this is yet to mention that Fraser Nelson’s Dispatches was also built on the biggest pack of lies going.

    Naturally, he repeatedly brought up the rise in people claiming benefits due to long-term sickness over the last five years. Nelson proposed why this is and predictably it involved puerile finger-pointing. The benefit system must be easier, or have relaxed criteria. Save those, it’s so-called ‘sickfluencers’ teaching people how to game the system.

    Yes, the infamously “easy” PIP application that has a form over forty pages long, and a notoriously difficult assessment. See: just 41% of PIP applicants successful on first application to it. See also: people having to go through a lengthy appeals process to get PIP, where over 70% are then approved.

    Speaking of, Nelson drew attention to the high rate of appeals success in the programme too. For him though, this was another sticking point showing how easy it is to get disability benefits. We’ll say it again, there’s nothing “easy” about the DWP rejecting your PIP application and fighting at a tribunal hearing to overturn this.

    Far from the nurse-turned-DWP-assessor’s claim that people are putting it on for benefits, disabled people are more likely to downplay their condition, as psychologist Dr Jay Watts highlighted:

    As for people on social media sharing tips – these are chronically ill and disabled people supporting other chronically ill and disabled people through a process the DWP has designed to shut them out. People offering help to those navigating the complex benefits system? Nelson obviously took issue with this. By contrast, you wouldn’t see the pompous posh boy going after financial advisers telling rich people how to evade paying their fair share of tax:

    Handing out higher rate PIP like candy – as if

    However, the cherry on top of his grossly inaccurate reasons was when Fraser Nelson spoke on Dispatches to a former employee of a undisclosed private company the DWP has outsourced Work Capability Assessments (WCA) to. He told Nelson how assessors had the incentive to mark people for the higher rate of disability benefits. Purportedly this was down to the fact that assessors could claim a bonus on each case over five that they completed. He said that assessors could curtail calls with claimants in the higher category “early”.

    If the notion that assessors are handing out the highest rate of PIP like candy sounds ludicrous, that’s because it is. PIP is made up of two parts, which assessors score applicants for. These are the ‘daily living’ and the ‘mobility’ components. There’s a basic, as well as an enhanced rate for each. Notably though, it’s extremely difficult to get the enhanced mobility amount.

    And through his forty-five minute hit piece, what didn’t mention once? That in those five years there’s been a global health pandemic that a Tory government let run rampant, kill hundreds of thousands, and leave over two million grappling with long Covid. But applying for disability benefits got easier, didn’t you know?

    A fit note fiction and more fibs from Dispatches Fraser Nelson

    Onto fit notes and Fraser Nelson on Dispatches thought he’d found the long-lost map to the lost city of Atlantis. He told viewers that the Labour government will need to rewire the “entire benefit system”:

    starting with the first step: sick notes given out by doctors. Or, as they’re now called: fit notes.

    Then, in his best benefit scrounger-baiting narrative, he detailed that:

    Doctors are handing out about a million more fit notes than they did five years ago.

    Of course, it couldn’t possibly be that more people are sick after a mass disabling pandemic swept the globe. What’s more, his argument rather fell down here too. This is because a fit note can only cover a maximum of three months for Universal Credit claimants. Longer than this, and claimants have to complete a WCA to continue claiming without working, or looking for work.

    Then there was Amy’s story. After an ample dose of ableism, Nelson preyed upon thirty-year-old disabled mum Amy’s fears over losing her benefits if she returned to work. Amy told him that if she did move into work, her benefits would stop “overnight”. So, Nelson seized on this, and centred the bulk of the programme round this issue that people would instantly lose their benefit security.

    However, this is patently false. PIP is a disability benefit, so Amy could continue to claim this. Where Universal Credit is concerned, she’d also continue being able to claim this as well. This would simply taper off as her wages go up until she earned the equivalent amount.

    In reality, Amy’s constant pain from her pelvic condition and institutional ableism is what makes going to work pie in the sky, because doing so will likely worsen her health. She hinted at this, but Nelson dismissed it out of hand. And as the Canary has pointed out before, just because someone wants to work, doesn’t mean they can.

    Dispatches: Fraser Nelson client journalism at its best

    In multiple scenes during Dispatches, Fraser Nelson posed like a real journalist in a seat opposite Labour DWP boss Liz Kendall. And of course, he put no critical questions to her whatsoever. Instead, Kendall got whole segments to voice Labour’s callous continuity Tory plans. She harped on that:

    You fall out of the workplace, you’re written off, you’re categorised as can work or can’t work and then left. That isn’t working for people or for taxpayers.

    Of course, this was a complete lie. On Universal Credit, the DWP sets a limit on which someone is classed as having Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) – anything between one and three years. Then, claimants are reassessed again.

    Plus, the vast majority of PIP and DLA awards are either short-term or ‘longer’ fixed term arrangements. This means that the DWP will reassess the bulk of claimants after certain periods. For instance, the latest statistics for the quarter ending July 2024 showed that the DWP awarded:

    • 79% short term awards – up to two years
    • 13% longer term (over two years)
    • Just 7% an ongoing award that usually requires a review at ten years

    It was a similar story for DLA claimants, with 28% short term, 59% longer term, and only 13% awarded ongoing. So far from being left alone, the DWP actually forces people through distressing reassessments at regular intervals – not that Nelson deigned to mention this once.

    Mel Stride cameos for more mental health maligning

    And if cosying up to Kendall weren’t peak client journalism enough, he got some good ol’ cameos from wet wipe Mel Stride in there too. Somehow still suspending his slide into perpetual irrelevance, Stride told Fraser Nelson during Dispatches his Tory brand of deliberate untruths too. Once more, here was that blatant lie that after getting disability benefits, the DWP leaves people alone.

    However, his most disgraceful diatribe teetered on the edge of highly problematic social contagion theory. This is the idea that people’s behaviours are influenced by the people around them. Specifically, Stride trivialised young people’s mental health, stating:

    I think there has been a tendency for in some cases the people who have experienced the normal ups and downs of life – we all have difficult moments in our life – but I do question whether perhaps in too many cases – particularly young people, are being labelled as having conditions.

    Translation: Stride thinks young people are making up their mental health problems.

    And don’t forget kids, working for exploitative ableist capitalists is great for your health. Or so says rightwing dark money think tank the CSJ policy director Ed Davies. As the Canary has consistently pointed out, this conflation of work as a health outcome is enormously problematic. It’s also quite frankly not true – it’s a lie that the DWP itself helped to foment.

    CSJ rears its head in Dispatches Fraser Nelson

    To sum up then, the biggest take-home from Dispatches was that Fraser Nelson is likely angling to be the next DWP SpAd or comms director. Watch this space. Yet aside from being a complete piss-take the whole way through, Nelson hosting the entire charade completely undermined it all anyway.

    This is because Nelson is a policy advisor to the very organisation the documentary turned to throughout. This is former DWP “grim reaper” Iain Duncan-Smith’s controversial think tank, the CSJ. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t mention this association. So, the whole programme falls on its ass – since it turns out it’s little more than a CSJ puff piece.

    The Canary has pulled up the CSJ on multiple occasions for its bullshit over benefits. Notably, we have highlighted how it’s the CSJ’s talking points that Labour has been spouting. It’s little surprise, when the party has openly welcomed the deceptively-named think tank into the fold at multiple annual conferences.

    Ultimately then, the programme was also dangerous propaganda for a right-wing Labour government. Of course, the CSJ’s drive-home message that it’s chronically ill and disabled shirkers “bankrupting” the country lands well for Labour.

    Now, this plays nicely into this new government’s narrative. It provides justification, and manufactures consent for whatever ways it decides to tear into disability benefits come Spring.

    Laying the groundwork for more harms against disabled people

    Throughout Dispatches, Fraser Nelson bandied about statistics and statements without qualification. None of it addressed the fact that huge chunks of people’s benefits go to paying racketeering private landlords for instance:

    Overall, Nelson had neither nuance, nor factual accuracy in his horrendously demonising documentary. There was no acknowledgement of the structural causes of ill health and poverty. Some on social media pulled him up on this:

    Many chronically ill and disabled people on social media showed their dissent to the doc with their remotes. Turning over the channel – people rightly didn’t want to give Nelson any oxygen to air his rancid diatribe. More than this however, it was for folks’ own mental health that they decided to tune out to the inevitable cesspit that was social media’s tide of scapegoating as Channel 4 televised the programme.

    From assisted suicide to ‘sick note culture’ slander in less than a week

    Fraser Nelson’s Dispatches came just days after parliament passed Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill at second reading. And crucially, these two events bookending the weekend are not unrelated. On Friday, chronically ill and disabled people fought to show parliamentarians that prevalent systemic ableism meant that legalising assisted suicide put their lives at risk. On Friday, parliamentarians showed chronically ill and disabled people that prevalent systemic ableism thrives in the halls of power.

    Now, Nelson’s documentary has hammered home the disgusting message that chronically ill and disabled people’s lives are lesser. In tandem, it lays the groundwork for Labour to ramp up its back-to-work benefit-stripping agenda.

    When every single Deaf and Disabled People Organisation (DDPO) came out against the bill and warned of the prospect of coercion – this was what they meant. In a society that not only fails to assist chronically ill and disabled people, but actively tells them their lives aren’t worth living, it’s obvious where this goes.

    So shame on Channel 4 for making this programme. Shame on it for putting Nelson at the helm. But most of all, shame on the broadcaster for airing it right after the assisted dying bill proved how little society values chronically ill and disabled people’s lives.

    Dispatches Fraser Nelson

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Disabled people can no longer trust parliament or MPs – as Assisted Dying Bill is passed

    Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill has passed through parliament at its second reading – despite vigorous campaigning from chronically ill and disabled people against it.

    Assisted Dying Bill: politicians vote for state-sanctioned culling

    On Friday 29 November, large numbers of anti-Assisted Dying campaigners came to parliament; more than groups like Dignity in Dying had organised:

    Assisted Dying Bill

    People were vocal about their opposition:

    assisted dying bill

    However, in the face of Dignity in Dying’s campaign, it wasn’t enough. As the Canary has documented, the group has had huge financial backing from right-wing trusts, offshore donors, and pro-euthanasia advocates.

    Moreover, the group has direct links to Keir Starmer’s government – which may well have helped influence the vote. Even some left-wing MPs like John McDonnell – historically supportive of groups like Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which had spearheaded campaigning against the bill, reportedly voted for it.

    However, during the Assisted Dying Bill debate one of the most powerful speeches came from a veteran Labour MP.

    Discrimination is rife against disabled people

    During the debate, Diane Abbott gave a powerful speech in Parliament objecting to the current form of the Assisted Dying Bill. The bill is intended to give terminally ill people the right to die when they choose. However, as the Canary has previously reported, there are serious concerns that the bill relies on the state ensuring disabled people are not coerced into dying:

    Of course people should be allowed agency over when, where, and how their lives end. But the UK state, and society, cannot be trusted to endorse and carry it out on their behalf.

    Risk tens of thousands of people’s lives every year in the future? Or alleviate at most a thousand people’s suffering in the immediacy? This is a choice we shouldn’t have to debate, and a choice MPs shouldn’t have to make.

    But those are the positions the Assisted Dying bill has forced us into.

    Now, Diane Abbott is speaking out to make the same points:

    Assisted living

    One of the key points Abbott has made is that the UK needs to become better at assisting people to live before it turns to assisting people to die:

    Abbott explained why she wouldn’t vote for the bill, saying:

    I am not against assisted dying in any circumstances. If this bill passes, we will have the NHS as a fully funded – 100% – suicide service, but palliative care will only be funded at 30% at best. The former Member for Dunfermline, Gordon Brown, has said recently we need to show we can be better at assisted living before deciding whether to legislate on ways to die.

    Abbott continued:

    I represent very many vulnerable people in marginalised communities. I cannot vote for a bill where I have doubts about whether they will be protected.

    She concluded:

    We can come back, we can have a commission, we can pass a better bill, but I will not be voting for this bill this morning.

    Earlier this week, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), on behalf of a coalition of Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) made the salient point that the current bill is not accessible for deaf and disabled people. Disabled people are much more likely to be impacted by the consequences of this bill potentially passing. It would be a travesty if disabled communities weren’t given the time and space necessary to be involved in consultations for the bill.

    Coercion will happen – make no mistake

    Another central part of the objections to this bill are around coercion:

    Better Way, who oppose assisted suicide, shared more of Abbott’s words:

    As Abbott argues, coercion is unlikely to be something that can be evidenced to the state or to courts. How exactly the bill allows for the possibility of coercion – a serious factor in the context of assisted dying – must be examined further.

    In fact, a report from Better Way argues that assisted dying cannot ever be a safe practice:

    Allowing this practice would give rise to profound injustices. Injustices that affect disabled people, people facing poverty, people who are isolated and lonely, and many others. No amount of legal drafting could rule out citizens electing to end their lives because they lack sufficient support to go on living. This, in itself, should prevent a change in the law.

    Yet still, MPs voted the bill through. It received 330 yes votes compared to 275 noes – a majority of 55.

    The Assisted Dying Bill: a shameful day for the UK

    Campaigners outside parliament tried to reassure disabled people that the fight against the Assisted Dying Bill wasn’t over. It has more stages to go through and can still potentially be stopped.

    That was cold comfort to many chronically ill and disabled people who the Canary spoke to outside parliament. Many were visibly distressed after what has been not only a physically and emotionally draining campaign – but decades of abuse at the hands of a state which has now turned on them once again.

    Britain has systemically demeaned, abused, and stigmatised chronically ill and disabled people for decades. Parliament, and the MPs who voted for the Assisted Dying Bill, have now compounded that further. All of them will have blood on their hands in the future.

    Cries of shame rang out from chronically ill and disabled people outside parliament as the vote passed – and they were right.

    The passing of the Assisted Dying Bill is a shameful day for the UK. A stain on the MPs who just voted for further persecution of chronically ill and disabled people.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Evening Standard

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Disabled people have made a last minute plea to Keir Starmer over the Assisted Dying Bill

    Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), on behalf of a coalition of Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) has written to Labour Party prime minister Keir Starmer over the Assisted Dying Bill being brought by Kim Leadbeater.

    Sent late on Thursday 28 November, the letter – republished in full below – outlines disabled people’s grave concerns over the proposed assisted dying legislation.

    A letter to the prime minister over the Assisted Dying Bill

    Dear Prime Minister,

    We are writing to urge that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) bill does not go ahead in this way at this time.

    The mechanism being used to attempt legalisation of assisted suicide – a Private Members Bill – circumvents the Equality Act 2010 duties that apply to government legislation with Parliament being exempt from these duties.

    The passage of this bill does not comply with the accessibility needs of Deaf and Disabled people to engage despite the high stakes that we have in this question.

    Accessibility requirements covered by the Equality Act include information provided in accessible formats, extended timeframes for responding to consultations and opportunities to give our views in accessible ways.

    The speed with which this bill is progressing places Deaf and Disabled people and our organisations at a disadvantage in getting our voices heard and many of our MPs are unable to respond to constituency emails in less than six weeks.

    Additionally, there is no requirement on PMBs for a statement of compatibility with human rights and we have not seen an equality impact assessment for the bill, as highlighted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

    Deaf and Disabled people have been left fearful and voiceless.

    On top of this, we have been gas-lit by supporters of the bill who claim we are scaremongering. Deaf and Disabled people have been repeatedly told during the progress
    of this bill that it does not affect us.

    This is untrue for multiple reasons as listed on the enclosed document.

    It is also re-traumatising in the way that the silencing of our voices also discounts our lived experiences of medical neglect, inequality and discrimination within underfunded health services. These experiences have occurred alongside ongoing political rhetoric which demonises Disabled benefit claimants and which dismisses the validity of our disablement – in breach of recommendations from the special inquiry of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Disabled People which found the UK responsible for grave and systematic
    rights violations.

    At the same we are faced with the threat of further disability benefit cuts, in particular through changes to the Work Capability Assessment specifically targeted at Disabled people with mobility impairments and those who are at high risk of self-injury and suicide.

    According to official figures only 3% of the more than 450,000 Disabled people who are estimated to be affected by these changes by 2028/2029 will be able to move into employment. 424,000 of them will meanwhile be eligible for out of work benefits at no more than 47% of the current rate.

    The result will unquestionably be more benefit deaths and an increase in already rising rates of disability poverty.

    The message we are hearing loud and clear from Westminster is that Deaf and Disabled people are not welcome within society and that our lives are expendable.

    We look forward to receiving your assurances that this is not the case.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Doctors tried to coerce me into a DNR for my disabled son. The Assisted Dying Bill is a danger.

    A campaigning foundation, founded by a bereaved father after the death of his son at the hands of the NHS, has spoken out against the Assisted Dying Bill – hours before MPs vote on Kim Leadbeater’s proposed law.

    Patient Lives Matter

    Campaign group Patients Lives Matter is speaking out against the upcoming vote on the Assisted Dying Bill, following the heartbreaking and preventable death of the organisation’s founder, Jay Patel’s son, Balram Patel.

    Jay Patel’s comments come as the debate surrounding Assisted Dying legislation gains momentum, and his family’s personal tragedy serves as a reminder of the dangers of unchecked authority in medical decision-making.

    “We believe in the sanctity of life and the protection of individuals facing critical health decisions” said Jay Patel, Founder of Patients Lives Matter:

    Our organisation is not against the idea of people having choices about their own lives. However, we strongly oppose the passing of laws that allow Assisted Dying because we fear the potential for abuse, especially by those in positions of power.

    Balram Patel’s death has been a source of immense pain for the Patel family. After enduring a difficult medical journey, Jay Patel was repeatedly coerced to sign a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order for Balram, despite the family’s protests.

    Balram subsequently died.

    Although his health challenges were profound, including liver cancer and other life-threatening conditions, he should not have died in the way that he did:

    Balram Patel Assisted Dying

    Balram’s final story

    In July 2023, he was admitted to St Thomas’ Hospital due to an infection that caused significant fluid retention. Initially, he was treated with oral diuretics, which proved ineffective, leading doctors to administer the medication intravenously – a method that successfully reduced the excess fluid.

    However, following a Covid-19 outbreak on the ward, Balram was discharged with a plan to continue treatment at home using oral diuretics, despite previous evidence of their ineffectiveness. His father, Jay Patel, expressed concerns and requested a second opinion, but this request was denied.

    Balram’s condition deteriorated rapidly after his discharge. On 7 August, Jay Patel contacted the hospital, pleading for a reassessment of his son’s treatment as the oral diuretics were not working. His appeals went unanswered, and no alternative treatment was provided. On 8 August, the family rushed Balram to the hospital’s A&E.

    An X-ray revealed that his lungs were filled with fluid, yet there was a significant delay in administering the necessary intravenous diuretics. Tragically, Balram passed away in the early hours of 9 August, just hours after the appropriate treatment was finally initiated.

    The hospital initially did not list pulmonary oedema (fluid accumulation in the lungs) as the cause of death. It was only after Jay Patel’s intervention with the coroner’s office that this was acknowledged. The coroner has since opened an investigation into the care and treatment delays that Balram experienced.

    In response to his son’s death, Jay Patel founded the Patients Lives Matter foundation, aiming to advocate for patient rights and prevent similar tragedies. The foundation seeks to establish an independent body to investigate complaints against NHS staff and institutions, ensuring accountability and prompt action when patient care concerns arise. Jay Patel has also initiated a parliamentary petition to support this cause:

    Assist people to live, not assisted dying

    Balram’s untimely passing, Jay Patel states, was a direct result of the failure of medical institutions to follow proper protocols and respect his family’s wishes.

    “The system failed our son” Patel says:

    While we were already coping with the unimaginable stress, the establishment’s failure to adhere to medical guidelines further compounded our grief. Balram deserved better care, and no family should have to face such traumatic experiences.

    With the Assisted Dying Bill currently under consideration, Patients Lives Matter remains committed to advocating for the protection of patients’ rights.

    Jay Patel’s message is clear:

    We must ensure that vulnerable individuals are not subjected to exploitation, especially when it comes to life-and-death decisions. The focus must be on improving medical care and creating NHS accountability through an Independent Review Board, not passing laws that may open the door to dangerous manipulation:

    Balram Patel Jay Patel Assisted Dying

    Featured image supplied

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A hospital in New Zealand discharged a young severe ME/CFS patient to a care home for pensioners

    A hospital in New Zealand discharged a 34-year-old severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) patient to a care home for pensioners. There, staff were hugely ill-equipped for her care and the environment utterly inappropriate for her condition.

    Now, she’s seeking to return to the hospital that previously treated her. However, it’s a no-win situation. This is because the hospital setting will also likely make her ME worse. What’s more, it’s there that doctors and some clinical staff abused and neglected her before.

    Of course, it’s an all-too frequent and familiar story for people living with severe ME. Once again, the diabolical lack of ME-informed clinical care, treatment, and social safety net is driving an extremely sick chronically ill young woman into yet another unconscionably helpless situation.

    Severe ME/CFS: Rhiannon in New Zealand

    Rhiannon is a 34-year-old woman living with severe ME/CFS in Wellington, New Zealand.

    ME/CFS is a chronic systemic neuroimmune disease which impacts millions of people worldwide. Similar to, and sometimes overlapping with long Covid, it affects nearly every system in the body and causes a range of symptoms that impact patients’ daily lives. These include influenza-like symptoms, cognitive impairment, multiple forms of pain, and heart, lung, blood pressure, and digestive dysfunctions, among other significantly debilitating symptoms.

    Significantly, post-exertional-malaise (PEM) is the hallmark feature of ME, which entails a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities.

    Rhiannon explained to the Canary that:

    I developed ME/CFS at 11- after a 24 hr vomiting bug. Spent a few years in bed. Then on and off in and out often worsening over winter to bed ridden again. At 16ish I developed fibromyalgia and the pain became my main issue still with mild ME/CFS with regular PEM episodes. And episodes of decline.

    And for Rhiannon, it was the Covid vaccine that initially triggered a worsening in her ME. She told us that:

    The vaccine then dropped me to moderate. The second vaccine dropped me into severe pain and bedridden. I used LDN [low dose naltrexone] and thought I was recovering until I went back to uni. Overdid it and then had a friend die sending me all into very severe rolling PEM for seven months straight.

    So now Rhiannon lives at the severe end of the scale for ME and has been “bedridden ever since”. Those with severe ME are mostly, if not entirely permanently bed-bound or hospitalised. On top of this, they are often unable to digest food, communicate, or process information and are fully dependent on others for their care.

    Crucially, severe ME can be fatal. The recent inquest into the death of Maeve Boothby-O’Neill after an NHS hospital’s catastrophic litany of failures, is a harrowing reminder of this.

    Until June, Rhiannon’s mother had been her primary and full-time caregiver. However, after her mother underwent surgery, she was no longer able to continue as Rhiannon’s carer. It was at this point that Rhiannon entered Wellington Hospital.

    Shunted into an ‘aged care facility’ ill-equipped for severe ME/CFS

    Tuesday 12 November marked 194 days Rhiannon had spent in hospital to seek treatment and support for her severe ME/CFS. It also marked Rhiannon’s last day in hospital – and the date it shunted her into a ‘specialist aged care facility’.

    Pōneke House is a 49-bed care home in Newtown, Wellington. It’s a residence for people aged 65 or over who cannot manage in their own homes, or disabled people 50 or over who need 24-hour care.

    In New Zealand, residential care facilities will sometimes accept disabled people with serious health needs under the age of 50. It’s why the hospital in Wellington was able to discharge her into its care.

    If there could be a more perfect metaphor for reality not living up to bravado, it might be the welcome sign pasted to Rhiannon’s door at the home. It’s a laminated A4 print-out in landscape. A profusion of tropical flowers frame ruby red text, the shadow effect setting her heavily stylised name apart from the pink backdrop, reading in block capitals: “Rhiannon – welcome to Poneke House”. Above this and her door number is another glossy plaque. Nondescript stock illustrations of a chaffinch mid-flight adorn either side of her name in bold black capitalised letters.

    It’s a well-intentioned gesture, but the Comic Sans-like quality of the text and liberal use of early millennium Microsoft WordArt make the dissonance of her stay in the aged care residence only that much more blatantly jarring. Overall though, the point it underscores is more that the flourishes and florid language belies a more significant issue with placing a young severe ME patient into an aged care residence.

    Pōneke House’s sleek brochure bristles with appealing and warmly-lit photographs, reeling off a list of its facilities. In one bold statement, it claims:

    Everyone enjoys the relaxed, friendly atmosphere at Pōneke House and residents are always treated with the respect and dignity that comes with our personalised care approach.

    However, if that all sounds a bit too good to be true, that’s because it is. This is far from the experience Rhiannon has had since she entered the home.

    A day in the life of Rhiannon’s ‘care’ at Pōneke House

    When the hospital moved Rhiannon to Pōneke House, there appears to have been no hand-over. As a result, the nursing staff at the home have so far repeatedly dismissed her needs – not least in terms of ME/CFS.

    From failing to administer medication at the correct and consistent times, refusing to close her door, leaving lights on, and ignoring her requests for assistance, the staff have continued to put Rhiannon’s health and well-being at risk.

    Rhiannon kept a short diary at the start of her stay. It’s peppered with accounts of the staff’s routine neglect in her care:

    14th November

    10:30 am: Medications due at 10:30 am were not administered until 11:15 am. Rhi’s condition is at serious risk due to inconsistent medication provision.

    1:35 pm: Staff member refused to close the door, left lights on, ignored Rhi’s requests for assistance, and then closed the door in her face.

    1:30 pm – 2:23 pm: Non-compliance with dietary restrictions: Rhi requested food at 1:30 pm, but it was served late at 2:00 pm, filled with spices and including eggplant, which is high in histamines contradicts dietary needs. Caused severe digestive pain.

    Man never returned to empty commode and take away food
    Advised to wear n95 to enter. They still seem unaware.

    3:39 at my worst

    Food present with allergens:
    Eggplant
    The crumbed fish has seasoning I can’t have
    I can only eat specific low histamine Dairy free gluten free and lowish fibre
    Low fodmap food which needs to be carefully checked

    6pm: Commode still not changed 3 people have been asked in total all have either delegated or not done it.
    I have had to hold bladder for hours its too full. I already dropped the lid in it. It smells like piss in here

    9:29pm: was told someone would come clean my room remove stuff – Never happened
    whenever a nurse delegates a task it seems like it doesn’t occur or only is half completed ?
    Ketotifen missed. Not getting given Panadol doses. Followed up with nurse about it. But not sure it’ll change.

    Carer came in: I asked for 3 things received only one again (A glass, remove the old food and rubbish bag). Not sure what’s going wrong here?

    11:57pm: Someone entered my room without knocking or permission and then slipped away before I could see who it was?

    Would prefer all my meds in the morning due to the issues I’m having.

    Not safe for severe ME/CFS patients

    Her journal is in sharp contrast to the claims the care home makes too. The brochure says it provides “dietician-approved meals and catering for special diets”. By contrast, it has ignored Rhiannon’s dietary needs around ME/CFS, causing her extreme gastric pain and PEM crashes. She was also assured that she would be living in the “quiet” part of the residence. Again, this hasn’t quite been the case in reality. There’s ongoing noise and disruption at all hours from staff and residents. Besides this, her room is regularly above 25°c, and since arrival, her fatigue and tachycardia has ramped up.

    Rhiannon told the Canary how eventually, staff had fixed the issues with the food that had been essentially poisoning her. However, she then learned that staff hadn’t been providing her the correct dose of her medication. This had likely also heightened her gastric issues, causing her severe gut pain.

    And issues with her medications has been a mainstay of her time at the home more broadly. She expressed to the Canary how staff hadn’t given her another of her medications in over a week. A nurse also hadn’t known the difference between two different drugs Rhiannon takes to help manage her symptoms.

    Rhiannon has written about other instances of disgraceful treatment in the care home on her X account. In one post, she described how a nurse had laughed in her face when she’d requested one of her medications:

    Sent to the care home based on ‘multiple lies’

    Moreover, its supposed “unparalleled quality of personalised care” has clearly been anything but. Rhiannon made the staff a care plan, but they’ve not implemented it to date. Of course, that’s the rub: even supposing the nursing staff were giving her high quality care – which they’re patently not anyway – they simply have no training in care for people living with ME/CFS.

    Rhiannon told the Canary that:

    I was sent to an unsafe care home based on multiple lies from that care home, they cannot meet my basic needs including getting a sleep that isn’t interrupted at all hours by yelling, this is worsening my condition to the point I cannot even do basic tasks like speak and even using phone is becoming inaccessible, each day I get worse. There’s no cure or treatment. If I get worse that’s it.

    Rhiannon has continued to fight for the care home staff to meet even her most basic needs. But the combination of staff ignorance on the condition and a room poorly set-up for a severe ME patient has meant the care home is actively harming Rhiannon.

    It’s little wonder then that Rhiannon is now desperate to leave the home. She told the Canary how she feels her only choice is to return to hospital. However, as she rightly pointed out, this isn’t a safe place for her either. She expressed that:

    Care homes clearly aren’t safe for us. Hospital is safer here which says a lot.

    Hospitals: a hotbed of harm

    The Canary has written extensively about the harms of the hospital environment for people living with severe ME/CFS.

    For instance, the Canary’s Steve Topple has documented a litany of abuse and neglect from clinicians at multiple UK NHS hospitals. In the last couple of years, this has included multiple women living with severe ME and common comorbidities associated with it. Most recently he wrote about 24-year-old Carla Naoum who West Middlesex University hospital has now sectioned.

    Alongside Carla, he also highlighted Fiona Wood’s recent experience in Royal Bournemouth Hospital. Fiona kept a regular record of the hospital’s missteps and failure to provide her adequate, ME-appropriate care. Crucially, she underscored clinicians’ repeated misdiagnosis and treatment throughout her stay that left her ultimately worse off than when she’d come in.

    We’ve written about Anna in Australia trapped in an abusive household, who hospital staff have refused support and put at greater risk.

    In Greece, psychiatric staff forced 26-year-old Katiana into a psych ward, after multiple previous visits dismissing her conditions. These invariably sent her moderate ME spiralling into severe – and her health has only continued to deteriorate.

    Hospitals in Pakistan have continuously failed 29-year-old Nevra at every turn – and lack clinical expertise to treat her multitude of debilitating comorbidities. She’s extremely sick and getting worse by the day.

    Over and again, the story from one end of the planet to the other, is a rinse and repeat of the last. Nowhere has the know-how, the will, or the compassion to treat severe ME patients and the common cluster of their co-occurring conditions.

    Instead, the paucity in research and effective treatment, has left patients at the hands of an abusive medical establishment that gaslights them and perpetually lets them down.

    Abusive, neglectful doctors – here we go again

    It should come as little surprise then that Rhiannon has had multiple experiences like this in hospital in New Zealand as well.

    Nurses administered medications incorrectly, and failed to wear masks properly around her.

    In one dire incident, a doctor conducted a forced stand test to measure her CO2 levels. When Rhiannon expressed feeling faint, a nurse held her up against her will. Despite asking them to stop because her legs were burning and aching, the medical team continued.

    Afterwards, Rhiannon said that the doctor told her in a “smug manner” that she would bounce back after drinking some ice cold water. Of course, this is not what happened. The period of forced standing triggered a severe PEM crash, and her understandable pain and distress left her uncontrollably crying.

    And if that all weren’t enough, the hospital had initially placed Rhiannon in a room where temperatures were exceeding 28°c. The heat caused multiple conditions to flare. To begin with, the hospital provided two fans to help with this. However, these were filled with dust, and set off severe mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) reactions.

    Eventually, it did move her to a different side room. The temperature was safer for her there, but it brought with it other issues.

    No mental health support

    To make matters worse, in all this time, the people overseeing her care haven’t provided Rhiannon any mental health support either. The hospital promised this to her, but it has never materialised. That is to say, after spending close to 200 days in hospital and then being shipped off to an aged care facility for elderly people, clinicians have paid no attention whatsoever to her mental health needs.

    As she relayed to the Canary:

    as an inpatient I should have immediate access and I never did get it.

    It seems almost ironic, given how quick clinicians have been to stigmatise ME/CFS as a psychological condition, and used this label to mete out abuse in so many cases against severe ME patients. There seems to be little to no middle-ground between weaponisation of psychological diagnoses and complete disregard for severe ME patients’ mental well-being while trapped in hospitals and other care settings.

    A no-win situation, no options, just an illusion of choice

    Overall however, Rhiannon feels that returning to hospital is still a better option. Of course, it’s also basically her ONLY option, since the state won’t fund her a full-time carer at home.

    In hospital, Rhiannon will as a minimum have access to healthcare staff who can provide her appropriate medication. On top of this, some consultants had been more sympathetic and responsive to Rhiannon’s severe ME/CFS needs. Rhiannon described one nurse – Grace – who’s been fighting in her corner. She expressed how she:

    was great and really protected and look out for me in hospital. We are friends to this day. I couldn’t have made it through hospital without [her].

    Alongside Grace, Rhiannon said that her consultant Elaine had worked:

    tirelessly despite an overloaded schedule to facilitate how she can.

    Rhiannon explained that overall, she felt that the clinical staff who had been supporting her were operating under difficult circumstances. She expressed that:

    Unfortunately there are no specialist ME/CFS at the hospital that have been able to provide any help and her care is often self directed. Thankfully her clinician supports her in these decisions.

    However, the hospitals systems are currently crumbling in NZ and seem to create a significant barrier to accessing success, with requests put through for help ignored or rejected from specialists as an inpatient.

    This has made it hard to access adequate support [and] have any sort of medical plan moving forward.

    But she felt that:

    In general the hospital has strived to put me in safe situations.

    They’d placed her in an isolated ensuite room, and had enforced masking “as best they could”. However, Rhiannon said that it was:

    not always possible in an underfunded overloaded health system reflected in the unsuitable and unsafe hot room.

    Forcing Rhiannon through the emergency department

    Moreover, Rhiannon came up against a significant snag in her aim for readmission. This was that the hospital had been refusing to expedite her through to the ward that previously cared for her. Instead, it bureaucratically stipulated she would need to enter via the emergency department (ED).

    Obviously, this is extremely unsafe for someone living with severe ME/CFS and long Covid. The loud noise, bright lights, and risk of contracting a virus from other patients, could irreparably harm Rhiannon.

    Rhiannon summed up the truly abysmal set of ‘options’ – if you can call them that – that were available to her as a severe ME patient:

    My only options right now are wait in a place that actively harms me. Harm myself going in via ED. Or death.

    Thankfully now, after Rhiannon’s concerted fight to get the hospital to readmit her, it has finally agreed to let her bypass ED – as it rightly should have from the beginning.

    More problems foisted on the shoulders of a severe ME patient

    Obviously though, it’s only a small win – as there’s still nothing in place for her to come back home or into the community after her stay.

    To make matters worse, even knowing that Rhiannon is extremely sick with severe ME/CFS, the hospital and home have offered her no help in her move back. She explained that:

    They’re taking me back but its created all these problems for me that I’m too sick to deal with and don’t have any help.

    They’re admitting me with nowhere else to go. No one to help me move my stuff. They’ve dumped me with this hospital bed they refuse to take back. And I’m being hounded by the care home for paperwork. I’m actually just shutting down in the face of it all.

    So to sum up, despite the fact she’s bedbound and requires 24-hour care, the hospital and home expects her to:

    • Move all her personal possessions, medical aids, and other items herself, or otherwise arrange for someone to do this.
    • Deal with a hospital bed – seemingly expecting her to move it or again arrange for someone else to move it.
    • Fill out forms.

    Of course, the reason Rhiannon has had to turn to the hospital in the first place is that she has no-one who can physically support her basic care needs. Quite how it expects her to do all this when she’s bedbound with severe ME is a mystery. More to the point, even supposing she could, physically moving all her stuff, or arranging someone else to do it, will invariably cause a PEM crash. In other words, the process will actively harm her health and likely cause her to deteriorate further.

    Care home compounding all these issues around severe ME/CFS

    Meanwhile, the care home is compounding all this by chasing Rhiannon for payment. Notably though, when the hospital originally moved her into the home, it indicated the state would cover her stay. However, Rhiannon has since learned she would have needed to complete forms for this. The hospital had neither informed nor provided her with beforehand. Specifically, Rhiannon told the Canary that:

    The place that is actively harming me is trying to come for payment too when government said they’d cover it but never gave me the forms to do so prior to leaving. Nor was I informed these needed to be filled out.

    She explained how:

    they’re just billing my aged disabled mother randomly who is not even my primary contact.

    Essentially, the hospital had given her no financial information, or even residential agreements for the conditions of her stay. She said that no-one had provided any of this:

    until after I was already here informing me weeks later of the details and forcing me into agreeing to them.

    That is, in the hospital’s rush to discharge her, it had given her none of the necessary information or documents about her residence at the care home it was forcing her into.

    Listen to severe ME patients first and foremost

    Rhiannon’s story is yet another harrowing and damning indictment of the appalling lack of care and support for people living with severe ME/CFS and complex comorbidities.

    That the New Zealand healthcare system discharged her into an aged care home facility with no awareness or medical training for her condition – and that hospital staff have also treated her so disgustingly – should be a serious scandal. The fact that it’s not says everything you need to know about the state of medical care for ME patients in 2024.

    Because, the fact is, it’s no better wherever severe ME patients find themselves across the globe. For Carla, Millie, Karen, Fiona, Anna, Katiana, Nevra, and now Rhiannon too – and doubtless countless others – it’s the same old, unconscionable story.

    The names and places have stacked up, but there are currently no good solutions, no answers, no support. It’s severe ME patients like Rhiannon who understand the problems undergirding their day-to-day lived experiences best. In a heartbreaking post on X, she articulated that:

    That’s exactly it. These are systemic failures, on a global scale. And people living with severe ME have every right to be furious.

    Rhiannon has an ongoing fundraiser to help her with medical costs, ventilation equipment, supplements, and legal support, which you can find here.

    Grayscale image. Left: Rhiannon after severe ME/CFS hit, lying in bed with her ear defenders, and a hospital screen monitor beside her. Right: Rhiannon standing in a coat on a hill amidst pockets of shrubbery.

    Featured image supplied

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • How to get involved with Friday’s #AssistUsToLive anti-Assisted Dying action online

    On Friday 29 November, Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill will have its second reading in parliament. For those opposed to the proposed legislation, there is an in-person lobby and demonstration outside parliament from 9:30am.

    However, conversely many people potentially affected by the Bill are chronically ill and disabled, and may not be able to attend an in-person demo. So, here’s what you ca do online to get involved.

    Assisted Dying Bill: further revelations just before the vote

    Opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill have been strong – albeit not as well-funded as those on the pro-assisted dying side of the argument. As the Canary has documented, the main campaign group Dignity in Dying has received funding from dubious sources like right-wing trusts and offshore anonymous donors.

    It has direct links to the current Labour Party government; the original organisation (before it became Dignity in Dying) was originally involved in the push for more generalised euthanasia, and has historic links to Eugenicists.

    However, it gets worse. As the Telegraph wrote, a new report into assisted dying found:

    Two cases in which men who killed their partners were “championed” by Dignity in Dying, despite histories of domestic violence.

    In 2022, the group backed a man under police investigation for assisting his first wife’s death in the 1990s, despite him being jailed in 2017 for bludgeoning his second wife with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

    [The report] also accused the pressure group of operating a “cut-price British Dignitas” in the 1970s and 1980s.

    Research revealed that two men working for the organisation, including its general secretary, were convicted for six deaths – five involving women suffering from multiple sclerosis, depression and cancer.

    The report also noted that:

    Of the 100 UK “mercy killings” over 25 years, the report found that 88 per cent of perpetrators were male, and 78 per cent of female victims were neither terminally ill nor willing to die but were often elderly, disabled or infirm.

    Killings were frequently triggered by care demands and involved excessive violence, with “overkill” – the use of unnecessary brutality – common.

    This comes on top of concerns the Canary has outlined more broadly about the Assisted Dying Bill. That is:

    • The safeguards are not adequate.
    • There is no guarantee it will not be extended in future beyond just terminally ill people.
    • The risk of abuse of the bill is still high.

    #AssistUsToLive

    So, people against the Assisted Dying Bill will be converging on parliament on 29 November from 9:30am. Please remember to wear a mask if you can (as Covid isn’t over):

    This is partly because so many MPs are still undecided on how to vote. So, there is still time for people to lobby them.

    However, if you cannot be there in person, then the Canary would urge you to get involved online. Perhaps the most important thing to do is tag your MP on social media such as X and Bluesky – telling them why you’re against the Assisted Dying Bill. Canary guest author Melissa Parker has designed this graphic you can sharer, to encourage people to do it:

    On November 22-29, tag your MP and share why you're against Assisted Dying. Let's tell them why it's personal #AssistUsToLive

    As per the above image, the hashtag to use is #AssistUsToLive – along with #AssistedDyingBill.

    Campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) has created this thread on X which details why 350 Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) – every single one in the UK – is against assisted dying:

    In the final hours before MPs vote on the Bill, Leadbeater has admitted she believes someone ‘feeling like they’re a burden’ could be a legitimate reason for wanting assisted dying.

    This sums up the issue. It shows that the MP bringing the Bill has no understand of coercion – and that clearly, the safeguards within it are not fit for purpose.

    So, if you disagree with the Assisted Dying Bill get involved online. The Canary has had a lot to say on this. So, we will leave it to DPAC to sum up:

    Disabled people in the UK are in urgent need of adequate support to meet our most basic needs.

    We urge Parliamentarians to be on the side of real and meaningful choice – not only over the deaths of individuals who live with pain and distress but also over the right of millions of Disabled and older people to live.

    Featured image via DPAC/Not Dead Yet

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour’s Get Britain Working plan is based on a massive LIE the DWP has pushed for nearly 20 years

    The frantic government and media propaganda campaign around economic inactivity has picked up a pace. The Labour Party-run Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has finally published Liz Kendall and Co’s Get Britain Working White Paper. It sets out how the government plans to ‘solve’ the worklessness ‘crisis’. Predictably, it’s all the same kind of ideas that successive Conservative Party governments tried. And just like them, it’s also based on one, big lie – along with a few smaller ones thrown in for good measure.

    Get Britain Working: but how?

    Let’s put to one side the fact that think tank the Resolution Foundation says the government has overestimated the economic inactivity rate by nearly one million people – meaning an already overblown piece of propaganda is now even more overblown. Overall, the Get Britain Working White Paper is full of the usual drivel that successive, right-wing governments have pushed.

    For example, Labour thinks one of the answers is more talking therapies like the cheap Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and the even-cheaper ‘behavioural activation‘. It has also confirmed that ’employment advisers’ will be infesting the NHS to target people as part of their health treatment; or, as the White Paper puts it:

    expand access to expert employment advisers as part of treatment and care pathways, in particular mental health and musculoskeletal services. We will also continue to expand access to Individual Placement and Support (IPS) for severe mental illness, reaching 140,000 more people by 2028/29

    IPS is a failed model, by the way. As the Canary previously reported, in the US (where it was founded) it made no significant impact on long-term employment outcomes. Over here, and previous data showed that only 12% of participants got, and kept, a job for longer than six months.

    Moreover, breaching the sanctity of a healthcare environment with work coaches should be a massive red flag for anyone. However, it’s the talk around economic inactivity which exposes Labour’s plans for what they really are: Tory ones just dressed up with cuddly language.

    Who are these scroungers?

    Overall, the White Paper states that:

    Over 700,000 additional people are outside the labour market compared to when the economic inactivity rate was at its 2020 low.

    If we believe these figures, then we know that most of these people are either:

    • Those who have retired early.
    • Students who are not working.
    • People living with long Covid, other health conditions, and mental health conditions.

    For long Covid, there are no proven treatments or cures. Currently, the NHS provides very little for these patients. So, the government has got no way of getting these people back into work – aside from forcing quackery upon them, like CBT or other talking therapies.

    Also, the White Paper states that:

    33% of working age people who were economically inactive (excluding those who were retired) were on NHS waiting lists, in comparison to 19% of those who were either employed or self-employed.

    But A does not equal B – ergo Labour is wrong to assume that getting NHS waiting lists down will get more people into work. It just means sick people won’t be waiting so long to be seen.

    Lies, damn lies, and (lying) statistics

    The Get Britain Working White Paper also states that:

    Many people who are off work with long-term health conditions want to work, with 600,000 stating that they would like a job at the moment.

    However, as the Canary’s Hannah Sharland previously debunked, this is a nonsense use of a statistic. That’s because a chronically ill person wanting a job and actually being able to do one are two very different things. The data the White Paper uses does not make this distinction.

    Moreover, of the people who are long-term sick, the biggest rise has been not in people living with mental health conditions (contrary to tabloid narratives). It has been in those with what the government classes as “other health problems or disabilities”. This is where long Covid would fall, along other physical health conditions (away from cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and digestive ones). Autism and learning disabilities would also come under this.

    Overall, the data from the Get Britain Working White Paper clearly shows that Labour has got no room to move on economic inactivity except to:

    • Force sick people back to work.
    • Make students get jobs, too.
    • Drag people out of retirement.

    But for health conditions particularly, thinking that pushing some scam talking therapy and putting employment advisers in the NHS will make a difference is at best deluded, and at worst being wilfully obtuse. Talking therapies DO NOT HELP PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. It seems bizarre that this even has to be said – but clearly it needs to be.

    The greatest trick

    However, one of the central and most worrying constructs of Get Britain Working is this (the bolding is ours):

    For individuals, having a job helps provide a sense of purpose, value and control. It provides financial resilience, enabling families to improve their living standards and escape poverty. The benefits also go beyond a pay cheque: research shows that good employment is good for physical and mental health and promotes full participation in society and independence.

    Liz Kendall and Keir Starmer have also pushed the idea that work is a health outcome in the media.

    However, the idea that working is good for your health is simply not true – especially in the UK. As researcher Kitty S Jones wrote, the DWP itself helped create this fallacy:

    There is plenty of evidence that indicates government policy is not founded on empirical evidence, but rather, it is ideologically framed, and often founded on deceitful contrivance. A… [DWP] research document published back in 2011 – Routes onto Employment and Support Allowance – said that if people believed that work was good for them, they were less likely to claim or stay on disability benefits.

    So a political decision was made that people should be “encouraged” to believe that work was “good” for their health. There is no empirical basis for the belief, and the purpose of encouraging it is simply to cut the numbers of disabled people claiming… [benefits] by “helping” them into work.

    Inadvertently, the White Paper exposes that the lie actually goes back further tan 2011. But again, it was fomented by the DWP. It was just five years earlier than first thought.

    Get Britain Working: based on a fundamental DWP lie

    A 2006 research paper, funded by the DWP, concluded that:

    work is generally good for physical and mental health and well-being. Worklessness is associated with poorer physical and mental health and well-being. Work can be therapeutic and can reverse the adverse health effects of unemployment

    Again, this is nonsense. Clinical psychologist Dr Jay Watts told the Canary that by saying work is good for your health the DWP is reinforcing:

    the message work is the central goal of a meaningful life. This increases the shame, guilt and anxiety disabled people already feel. Even more so under a welfare system that equates worklessness with worthlessness. It is exacerbating mental health problems. The goal of mental health services has always been to improve quality of life and reduce distressing symptoms…

    This ‘back to work’ obsession places huge demand on patients to fulfil the neoliberal dream. One whereby health is linked to how much one can contribute to the public purse. But this is foreclosing the reality of long-term disability. We do not, would not, hear that chemotherapy is worth funding because it helps the public purse through getting people back to work.

    To be clear, despite what the Get Britain Working White Paper claims:

    • Work is not good for your physical health if you are already physically ill.
    • People are not working because they’re ill. They’re not ill because they’re not working.
    • Giving a person a horrible ‘McJob’ is not good for their mental health.

    Again, it seems bizarre any of this needs saying – but that’s the rabbit hole we’re down.

    The claimants looked from man to pig

    Overall, Labour’s Get Britain Working White Paper is no different to anything the Tories tried – except the language has been toned down a notch. Just a notch mind – because as think tank the Social Market Foundation said in a statement to the Canary:

    There remains, however, some concerns about the government’s rhetoric and its approach to sanctions. While the Prime Minister has promised to end the cycle of “blaming and shaming”, warnings of “clear consequences” for those who don’t seek support could perpetuate the stigma surrounding welfare recipients.

    There will still be the threat of sanctions hanging over DWP claimant’s heads. Any MP who in their right mind still believes making someone even more destitute will encourage them to get a job should not be an MP. Over decade of data on sanctions proves they do not get people into work.

    But here’s the thing: the idea that Britain has got a worklessness crisis, and sick people must get a job, is all based on lies, manipulation, and self-interest from those in power. It is highly likely that cuts to people’s benefits will follow next year.

    Why? Because on top of everything else, the estimated number of job vacancies is 831,000. This is dwarfed by the number of people claiming unemployment-related benefits (Jobseeker’s Allowance etc). This is now 1.5 million people.

    The point being, there are not enough jobs for actual job seekers, let alone the economically inactive people Labour wants to push into work. The government can argue it will create them. But that’s currently pie in the sky – and even if it does happen, it won’t be anytime soon.

    Get Britain Working is selling the public a lie – made up of lie on top of lie on top of lie – to once again paint chronically ill and disabled people as workshy scroungers. It’s just that, unlike the Tories, Labour aren’t saying it quite so loudly this time.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Channel 4 just gave Fraser Nelson a show about disability and benefits. For shame.

    A new Channel 4 Dispatches documentary claiming one of the biggest challenges to the Labour Party government is people on long term DWP sickness benefits will air on Monday 2 December. However, the man heading it up is none other than ToryBoy pseudo-academic Fraser Nelson:

    Fraser Nelson: read his old tweets…

    This is the same man who said people that were off sick were ‘complaining about anxiety, depression or other mental health issues’ and moaned about poor working-class boys not going to university. Oh, and he also said that Britain’s social security was “some of the most generous in Europe” – which was at the time, and still is, categorically untrue.

    Let us spell this out. Channel 4 got the former editor of the rightwing benefit claimant-bashing Spectator to host its documentary on so-called economic inactivity. Did we mention, that would be Fraser Nelson who has also penned hit pieces for the Torygraph? Yep, yet another right-wing shitrag punching down on chronically ill and disabled people for a past-time:

    Not to mention being part of the corporate media at the very centre of blaming benefits claimants as workshy scroungers:

    He’s also on the advisory board for the notorious Iain Duncan-Smith thinktank the Centre for Social Justice. They set the wheels in motion for disastrous Universal Credit and other callous welfare reforms:

    Not a coincidence

    More recently, Fraser Nelson moaned in 2022 that “how can there be a labour shortage and record joblessness?”. He said this was “a sign of a deep dysfunction in the welfare state”.

    What a coincidence that the number of people off sick long term has risen so drastically in the midst of a pandemic. Fraser Nelson obviously didn’t get the memo about long Covid. Or the long term mental health impacts of lockdowns or family members dying:

    In April, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that over two million people in the UK were living with long Covid. However, this is probably an underestimate anyway. It’s likely there are many more living with it in reality.

    Despite this, the upshot is that this surge in post-viral chronic illness could well account for a significant proportion of the rise in long-term sick people not able to work:

    This is nothing more than a shameless PR exercise for the government. It’s no coincidence Fraser Nelson announced this the day the DWP is putting out its White Paper on employment reforms. This predictably emphasises people not working due to long-term sickness.

    His documentary is there for nothing more than to manufacture consent for the government forcing chronically ill and disabled people into work.

    Demonising disabled people on Channel 4?

    People who are sick that need help being able to afford staying alive?

    How dare they.

    Rich people who aren’t so keen on paying their fair share of tax? Don’t you dare you mention that:

    At the end of the day, the capitalist system we all have no choice but to live in is set up for people who are non-disabled. Is there any wonder people are getting sicker when we are constantly competing to survive?

    For someone like Fraser Nelson – a non-disabled, white, straight male – who clearly has no worries about where his next meal is coming from, the idea that the system is making people sicker is just too hard to grasp.

    Meanwhile, treating people who can’t work as burdens on society is going to do nothing other than worsen their health. But you carry on Fraser.

    Feature image via screengrab

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Assisted Dying Bill is an ableist abomination – not that Kim Leadbeater even realises

    Dignity in Dying has ramped up its campaigning ahead of the second reading of Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill on Friday 29 November. Little wonder, really – as the Canary can reveal that in 2023 it got one donation of £700,000 from a right-wing trust.

    However, it begs the question, how on earth are chronically ill and disabled people supposed to fight back in the face of money, power, and influence – like Dignity in Dying has?

    Dignity in Dying: rolling in funds

    As someone shared on X on Monday 25 November, Dignity in Dying has effectively taken over one of the London Underground passenger walkways at Westminster station:

    This is unsurprising. Previously, the Canary pointed out that in recent months the organisation has thrown enormous sums at Facebook ads. This has made it among the top spenders in the UK.

    Specifically, between 22 September to 21 October it forked out £68,926 of this for 190 ads. Then, the week of Kim Leadbeater’s bill’s first reading it forked out another £30,000.

    We now know that for the last 30 days (24 October- 22 November) it spent £106,122 for 602 ads. This made it Facebook’s second-biggest UK spender.

    In one week – 2 to 8 November – Dignity in Dying even surpassed the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Gaza fund. It was number one in ad spend. This was down to the fact it had forked out £30,707 for 134 ads in just that seven day period alone.

    Evidently, it’s doubling down with its tried-and-tested campaign strategy. This is, of course, something it’s been doing for decades. But for the first time it seems like Dignity in Dying has found the right MP to nobble – in the shape of Kim Leadbeater.

    Leadbeater: hardly a beacon of disability advocacy

    Leadbeater’s motivation for pushing the Assisted Dying Bill is not wholly clear. She admitted she has no personal experience of this. But she says she has been moved by people’s stories around terminal illness.

    Before becoming an MP, Leadbeater was a college lecturer in physical health and a personal trainer. Since becoming an MP, one of the biggest pieces of work she has done was a report for the Fabian Society (a Labour-affiliated think tank that in the last century supported eugenics). It was called Healthy Britain: a New Approach to Health and Wellbeing Policy. Yet throughout the entire 30-page report she only mentioned disabled people once. She used the ableist term “the disabled”. Leadbeater also failed to mention chronically ill people at all.

    Leadbeater claims she has listened to disabled people. Yet every single Deaf and Disabled People-led Organisation (DDPO) in the UK (350 of them) has come out against her Assisted Dying Bill. Every single one. As far as they, and we, can tell, not one professional body representing doctors, consultants, nurses, etc have come out in favour of the bill. Their positions are either against it or neutral.

    So no, Leadbeater is not listening to disabled people. She is listening to the voices of some terminally ill people – and those who have been campaigning on the issue for decades.

    Assisted Dying Bill MKIII

    Dignity in Dying is supported now by exactly the same people who a) were pushing assisted dying last time, in 2015, and b) funded the supposedly ‘neutral’ Assisted Dying Commission that came before that in 2010 – that medical bodies refused to take part in due to it bias. The majority of the commission’s committee were openly in favour of assisted dying.

    That is, Bernard Lewis (of River Island fame) and his ‘charitable’ trust are one of Dignity in Dying’s main backers.

    The Canary’s Hannah Sharland has documented how Dignity in Dying has:

    • Direct links to the Eugenicist movement.
    • More direct links to the Labour government.
    • Funding directly from the Bernard Lewis Trust that also fund Tufton Street think tanks and ethnic cleansing projects and the IDF in Israel.
    • More funding from anonymous trusts based in tax havens.

    The Bernard Lewis Trust’s slush money (because that’s really what it is) is some of the most questionable, as Sharland has documented. However, that still hasn’t stopped Dignity in Dying take a huge £700,000 from it in 2023 – as accounts published in the last few weeks reveal.

    The trust also gave £400,000 to Dignity in Dying’s sister charity, Compassion in Dying. As Sharland previously documented, essentially the latter is little more than a legal laundromat for the former – with Lewis’s slush funds flowing fairly freely between the two.

    There are no guarantees

    Of course, the tired and insipid arguments for Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill are that:

    • It’s only for terminally ill people with six months to live.
    • There are adequate safeguards in place.

    However, for chronically ill and disabled people – and for that matter those living with mental health issues, and anyone else the state and system consider an economic burden – this is cold comfort.

    Keir Starmer’s middle-management style of centrist government is hardly the norm in the Global North, now. What Dignity in Dying et al cannot guarantee is that ‘mission creep’ won’t set in.

    There is nothing to say that in 2029, a hard-right libertarian government won’t use Henry VIII powers to introduce secondary legislation to amend the Assisted Dying Act. This was a widely-condemned tactic of Boris Johnson’s government when it came to post-Brexit laws. That is, a minister can change an Act without parliament having to properly scrutinise it.

    Moreover, there are dozens of MPs who already believe that the Assisted Dying Bill should go further.

    The point being, Leadbeater, Dignity in Dying, and everyone else can claim the bill is safe. But they have absolutely no way of proving it.

    Yet still, every single DDPO and medical professional body in the country is being ignored. This is all thanks to the funding and influence of right-wing millionaire’s Bernard Lewis’s trust and a handful of well-connected people.

    Disabled people are being ignored (or smeared by Dignity in Dying and the Guardian) as fundamentalist Christians) when it’s their lives that are literally on the line.

    Listen to disabled people over the Assisted Dying Bill

    In places like Canada and the Netherlands euthanasia accounts for 5% of all deaths. Therefore, when (not if) the Assisted Dying Bill’s scope is extended (if it becomes law), potentially around 30,000 people a year in the UK could be euthanised with the state’s consent. That’s 29,000 more than Leadbeater et al’s 1,000 a year estimate.

    If this was a risk-benefit analysis, serious questions would be asked.

    No one is arguing that people should suffer in immeasurable pain. However, due to our failing healthcare systems, the Western societal attitude of measuring everyone’s value in economic terms, an inhumane welfare state, and appalling social care system, the debate around the Assisted Dying Bill is left as being between the least worse of two options.

    Of course people should be allowed agency over when, where, and how their lives end. But the UK state, and society, cannot be trusted to endorse and carry it out on their behalf.

    Risk tens of thousands of people’s lives every year in the future? Or alleviate at most a thousand people’s suffering in the immediacy? This is a choice we shouldn’t have to debate, and a choice MPs shouldn’t have to make.

    But those are the positions the Assisted Dying bill has forced us into. If the choice has to be made, then sadly we cannot sacrifice countless chronically ill and disabled people’s lives every year for the sake of a few people’s suffering. We should collectively be pushing for better palliative care, better social care – but crucially, better research into illnesses in the first place.

    So, listen to disabled people. The bill is an abomination against them – and should not be allowed to pass.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • An open letter to my MP Cat Smith over the Assisted Dying Bill

    The following is an open letter to Labour Party MP Cat Smith, over the Assisted Dying Bill. 

    Dear Cat Smith,

    I am writing to express my concern about the Assisted Dying Bill and ask you to vote against it.

    I have thought about this letter so much, rewrote it, and rewrote it so much; the grooves of my mind ache. I have tried to put in order what I have seen, heard, what I know and knew before. I wanted to place my knowledge and experience in straightforward paragraphs. “What’s a good opening paragraph?” “A line that’ll snag on something within her?”

    I have worn myself out and worn myself down in the process of trying. The problem is that I have too much skin in the game. I come from a line of disabled women in history who lost something of themselves because of the choices of others. I see and feel the past, present, and future here.

    There is a quote from a film that has rather accidentally got into my bones as I move through life; it’s from You’ve Got Mail: “Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.”

    I cannot imagine anything more personal than this bill, and I wonder what words on a page will convince a stranger, though we have met briefly, to vote against it.

    Should the words be plain and clean, stark but unimpassioned?

    Here’s the simple truth: I have a constant, sickening ache in my gut, bile rising in my throat. But, I have always been taught to bite reaction and emotion down as I experience ableism – abuse.

    I used to be pro-assisted dying. I used to believe it should be everyone’s right to choose. It’s such a superficial, shallow little sentiment that I barely want to own it. I didn’t think about how it would impact disabled people, and I have been disabled since the day I was born, nor how it would be controlled. I didn’t stop to think it through. What choice are disabled people going to have in a decade or more – or less? I’m a little older and wiser now, and the world is a little uglier.

    So, here’s the staring-you-right-in-the-face experience.

    I am a disabled woman now, and that comes with hard truths and responsibilities. It comes with an instinctive need to put everything into this fight because I have occupied the real world and social media in a disabled body and know what could happen. I have come to accept one simple truth: some non-disabled people think we’d be better off dead.

    I have been told in the supermarket and on the street by strangers that if it happened to them: “They would off themselves.”

    They would want to die.

    People like me? We’re the scroungers, the scum – yet the sometimes Superhumans. Sometimes, I must move through the world with my head down, eyes forward, rigid. Sometimes, a non-disabled person will stop me as I go about my ordinary life, and I will silently, wordlessly, beg them not to say anything that will pummel me down further, not to touch me or move my body without permission as I plead “No”.

    There’s a pulsating fear that comes with living in a disabled body now. I used to think that my startle reflex was solely the result of my disability. Now, I believe that the feral thing that sits in muscle also comes from experience.

    Could you rely on the judgement of non-disabled strangers having gone through such events? It’s a dangerous time to change the law; it is too much to ask disabled people to trust in a system, in a set of safeguards, when we have seen, felt, and tasted the fear of such things and witnessed the Covid-19 response.

    The Assisted Dying Bill states that only adults with a terminal illness who are expected to die within six months will be suitable for assisted death. The person must have the mental capacity to choose the end of their life and must have a “clear, settled, and informed” wish free from coercion and pressure.

    But how can anyone believe that a system already under such strain could listen intimately and re-listen and re-listen, searching carefully for a fracture, for fear, in another’s voice, eyes, or posture?

    I know this is a fight for disabled lives.

    So, here are some stinging realities about these ugly things that are staring us right in the face.

    We’ve already seen the widening of categories that are open to people wanting to have an “assisted” death. In Oregon, this includes ‘loneliness’ as a category. In the Netherlands, bases for seeking an assisted death include anxiety, depression, and alcoholism.

    People who support assisted dying often assert that this broadening won’t happen here. But how can they be sure any safeguards will be hardy enough; that these are? How do they know? Non-disabled people too often make pinky promises with little care if they crack our fingers.

    I feel for anyone who is suffering and in pain, and we need more support and understanding for those who work in end-of-life care, the dying, and their families. But we can’t trade one person’s pain for another’s, and we can’t promise the noose won’t ever tighten as we place it lightly around disabled people’s necks.

    I am not opposed to assisted dying if safeguards are properly put in place thoughtfully. But while I still feel this pulsating ache, and bile still rises in my throat, while it all still feels so personal and impersonal – I hope you vote against it.

    Yours sincerely,

    Melissa Parker.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Melissa Parker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Deaf people face systemic barriers in TV, film, media – and it’s got worse

    The film and television industry needs to “move from well-meaning words to tangible change”, according to a Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity (LHC) report which has researched the systematic challenges that deaf people face.

    The Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity at Birmingham City University is an independent body drawing on the work and experience of media professionals and academics to track the progress of media diversity in the UK.

    The Centre aims to critically analyse policies in the media industry with a view to increasing diversity and inclusion, improving policy decisions, and spreading best practice. Now, it has turned its attention to inclusivity for deaf and hard of hearing people.

    Unmuted: deaf people’s experience of working in the media

    UNMUTED: Experiences of deaf film and TV professionals in the UK media industry found that 98% of participants had experienced discrimination whilst working in the industry.

    “The voices of deaf people are still being marginalised within the screen industry and, as a result, potential talent is being lost or unrecognised due to the barriers they face on a daily basis,” said lead researcher Erika Jones, who has worked in the broadcasting industry for more than 10 years.

    A deaf and British Sign Language (BSL) user herself, Jones cited the fact that it had taken nearly 60 years for a second UK feature film to be directed by a deaf person – from 1967’s The Return of Dracula by Stephen Pink to Retreat by Ted Evans, due for release in 2025.

    “This is not down to a lack of talent, passion or hard work,” insisted Jones.

    She added: “This report is shedding light on what changes need to be made in the industry to move towards an UNMUTED broadcasting industry, where all voices, regardless of whether they’re deaf, disabled or hearing, are heard and counted.”

    Shrinking representation

    The number of deaf professionals working off screen in the UK broadcasting industry halved from 1.8% in 2016-17 to 0.8%-0.6% in 2020-21 – an estimated loss of 275 deaf professionals.

    This is despite 12 million working-age adults in the UK, nearly one in five, having some form of deafness (Royal National Institute for Deaf People, 2024).

    One of the participants interviewed for the study – she has been called Cleo to protect her identity – spoke about some of the barriers she has faced in the industry.

    “I have to do my own work and, on top of that, I have to educate my own interpreters,” she said. “It’s quite draining and exhausting.

    Training has been very hearing orientated. It was a constant fight, to battle the barriers, simply just to get the access I needed.

    I have to work triple as hard and feel a huge responsibility as a deaf staff (member).

    Systemic change is needed for deaf people

    Recommendations from the report include:

    • A database of sign language interpreters for the media sector.
    • More apprenticeships for the deaf and hard of hearing.
    • Reviews of pay disparity between deaf and hearing workers.

    Another recommendation is to establish a dedicated BSL television channel, something that Cleo supports.

    She said it would “provide a stream of employment for deaf people’, adding:

    We will see a more diverse group working in television and film. This will help to get serious funding for training, for it to be properly recognised.

    Professor Diane Kemp, Director of the LHC and Professor of Broadcast Journalism at Birmingham City University, said:

    At the Sir Lenny Henry Centre, we want to achieve representation of all sections of society across contemporary UK media.

    We welcome this report and its recommendations as they offer specific, practical ways to combat issues highlighted by the authors and participants.

    We will follow up on their implementation and offer any support we can to achieve better working conditions in the industry.

    The report has been published on the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity website, and can be read here.

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Pro-assisted dying group has its origins in eugenics – and it all revolves around your favourite chocolate company

    What does a sitting Labour MP, a multimillion charitable trust, and the most prominent UK-based pro-assisted dying lobby group have in common? It turns out, quite a lot actually – and all of them may be about to ruin your favourite confectionery treat forever.

    However, the string of perturbing connections the Canary is about to reveal has far more alarming, and dangerous implications. This is because it exposes the shocking eugenics origins and links of the foremost pro-assisted dying organisation in the UK – Dignity in Dying.

    Worse still, it sheds light on the fact that eugenics is the thread weaving through its long history – and still casts a shadow over it to this day.

    In particular, it revolves around one famous family who is still a key backer of the group, and also supports other organisations that grew out of the eugenics movement. It’s vital context ahead of the second parliamentary reading on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill. Most importantly, it underscores all the more why MPs must take chronically ill and disabled people’s concerns about a slippery slope of assisted suicide, extremely seriously in the upcoming vote.

    Assisted dying: the eugenics origin of a prolific lobby group

    Before the Canary irrevocably wrecks your go-to cocoa snack, we should first delve into Dignity in Dying’s eugenist genesis.

    Dignity in Dying started out in 1935 – but then it went by the name the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society (VELS). It later became the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES), before changing its name in 2005 to its modern day counterpart. Then chief executive Deborah Annetts revealed the new name in tandem with the announcement of its new patrons. On this, she hinted back to the VELS’s origins:

    Our two religious patrons connect us with our roots because we were set up by Churchmen

    However, what Annetts didn’t publicise is that these ‘churchmen’ were also active eugenicists. One was Dr Killick Millard – who also later served as president of VELS. He was a Eugenics Society associate, member, and part of its council for multiple periods.

    Canadian historian Ian Dowbiggin has previously explored Millard’s eugenicist beliefs. As Live Action reported:

    Dowbiggin found that “in principle he was not against the notion of euthanasia without consent nor was he unalterably opposed to applying euthanasia for eugenic purposes to young children with mental or emotional deficiencies.” Millard also celebrated the high infant mortality rates of “slum dwellers” because it ensured they would not threaten “the quality of the race.”

    Labour peer Lord Arthur Ponsonby was another founding member. As the Spectator wrote, he:

    put forward the Voluntary Euthanasia Bill in 1936, arguing against the ‘mistaken notion’ that the Bill was about sparing people pain, insisting that it was really about ‘being a burden’, intended for those who ‘are no longer of any use’.

    Worse still, it’s not only Millard and Ponsonby Dignity in Dying has seemingly hidden from its history. Co-founder of VES Dr Charles John Bond was a consultant surgeon at Leicestershire Royal Infirmary. Crucially, he was another Eugenics Society associate, member, fellow, and vice-president.

    Bond sat on the Committee to establish the Bureau of Human Heredity and wrote a number of racist eugenics-orientated publications. For instance, this included one titled: ‘Causes of Racial Decay’.

    In a 1930 speech at the Modern Churchmen’s conference, Bond’s ableist, classist eugenicist beliefs were on full display. He purportedly told the conference that:

    sterilisation… should be applied to cases of irresponsible persons of
    low intelligence and weak will.

    In short, Dignity in Dying began life as an organisation neck-deep in the abhorrent racist, classist, ableist eugenics movement. Naturally, it’s not a fact the group likes to shout about today.

    Death by… Cadbury’s chocolate?

    However, its founders aren’t the only problematic part of its sordid racist, ableist, and classist history. There’s more it can’t sugarcoat about its eugenicist past – as well as its millionaire-funded lobbying present.

    Let’s get this out of the way. The unexpected common denominator in all this is the family best known for inventing Britain’s most-beloved chocolate brand: Cadbury’s.

    To start with, splashed across Dignity in Dying’s sister charity Compassion in Dying’s accounts is the GW Cadbury Trust. Between 2017 and 2021, it handed the organisation £43,158. It didn’t donate to the non-profit in 2022, or 2023.

    Edward Cadbury Junior, and George Cadbury Junior set up the trust in 1922. The brothers were heirs to the Cadbury’s legacy, as grandsons to the chocolate manufacturer founder John Cadbury. It’s George Cadbury Junior the world has to thank for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. He and his research and development team launched it in 1905.

    On the face of it, there’s nothing necessarily shady about a wealthy family setting up a trust for philanthropic purposes. Having said that, philanthropy itself is often paternalistic, and there is a problem with the capitalist penchant for concentrating wealth in the hands of the few. Nonetheless, the Cadbury’s family were Quakers, and many engaged in campaigns for various progressive social reforms. What’s more, early Cadbury’s is synonymous with concerted advocacy on workers’ rights – as per the legacy of Bourneville village.

    However, less well publicised is that some of its members were also wrapped up in the Eugenics Society. And alarmingly, it was in these eugenics circles that the Cadbury’s family appear to have come to support the concept of voluntary euthanasia – or as advocates today are euphemistically calling it – assisted dying.

    The Voluntary Euthanasia Society and Cadbury’s

    George Cadbury Junior’s wife was a member of the Birmingham Hereditary Society, the Eugenics Society’s most prominent provincial branch. So too George and Edward’s eldest brother Laurence John Cadbury was a fellow of the Eugenics Society.

    In Laurence’s case, records show that he was a fellow from 1937 through to at least 1977. He was on the society’s council between 1938-39, 1941-44, and 1947-49. Most significantly, he was vice-president of the Eugenics Society for two stints between 1945-46, and 1950-51.

    Crucially, Laurence is one of the first links of the Cadbury’s family to the VES. Specifically, in 1971, he signed “The Case for Voluntary Euthanasia” by then VES chair Benjamin Downing in Catholic journal New Blackfriars. Notably then, it was at the same time he was a member of the Eugenics Society, that he also came out in support of euthanasia.

    However, this was just the beginning. These were hardly the only connections members of the Cadbury’s family had to eugenicist-originating causes.

    Yet more eugenics in assisted dying

    The GW Cadbury’s Trust appears to take its namesake from George Cadbury Junior’s son George Woodall Cadbury. He was born in 1907 – so would have been 15 at the time his father and uncle established the trust. Unsurprisingly, he became a trustee for the trust.

    Like his mother and uncle, George was a Eugenics Society fellow, showing in its records from 1965 and 1977.

    It’s with George that another eugenicist founded organisation came into play as well. Live Action’s article on the VES’s eugenics origins compared it to Planned Parenthood with its eugenicist founder Margaret Sanger. But it turns out, there are actually links between the two groups as well.

    Sanger’s engagement with this racist, ableist, classist ideology entangled an organisation that’s ostensible aims purportedly revolved around women’s reproductive rights, with eugenicist notions of forced sterilisation. In other words, birth control in this context moved towards state arbitration over poor, migrant, racially minoritised, and disabled women’s bodies. Essentially, it was the antithesis of the progressive ideals Planned Parenthood claims to espouse.

    Obviously, it doesn’t mean that it operates with these eugenicist views now. Nonetheless it’s a complex and controversial legacy that the organisation mustn’t shy away from if it’s committed to genuine reproductive rights and liberation for women and people who menstruate today.

    But Sanger is not the end of its eugenics history either. Enter George Woodall Cadbury. He was a Canadian economist, and chief economics advisor to the Province of Saskatchewan. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he helped the country’s first socialist government set up a health care system. But George was also an international leader in Planned Parenthood. He was chairman of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and honorary director of Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada.

    Population control rears its head

    His involvement in Planned Parenthood is littered with uncomfortable contradictions, likely borne out of his eugenicist leanings. On the one hand, George and his wife Barbara led the campaign to remove contraception from Canada’s criminal code. On the other, they:

    had long been associated with work on behalf of population control.

    Barbara Cadbury also co-edited International Planned Parenthood News alongside Sanger. Their work on this contributed to the launch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Bombay, in 1952. Of course, it was likely no accident Sanger and others established the IPPF in India either. After all, it was arguably the Western colonialist petri dish of racist coerced sterilisations in the Global South. Naturally, it’s an atrocious moment of Malthusian population control history in which the IPPF played a part.

    Why does all this matter in the context of Dignity in Dying? For one, it’s George’s eponymous trust that funds the work of its sister charity today.

    However, there are more significant connections between George Woodall Cadbury’s eugenics associations and the organisation today calling for legalising assisted suicide. One of these was the fact that at King’s College, Cambridge, he was:

    personal pupil of John Maynard Keynes

    Keynes was another Eugenics Society member, in his case, a life fellow, and at various points vice-president and director. Not only this however, but Keynes was also an early supporter of the VELS.

    Cadbury descendants supporting assisted dying today

    Today, George Woodall Cadbury’s daughters and grandchildren have carried his work on birth control forward too.

    Caroline Ann Woodroffe and Lyndall Elizabeth Boal, their husbands, and some of their children are now the GW Cadbury Trust’s trustees. It’s still a regular funder to Planned Parenthood. In 2023 for instance, it donated £5,155 to the organisation. Incidentally, Caroline also penned her father’s obituary for the Guardian, lionising his and wife Barbara’s long-term work with Planned Parenthood.

    What’s more, Woodroffe has continued in the tradition of her parent’s work in various women’s sexual health and fertility job roles. One that stands out is her former chairship of the Birth Control Trust. This is because, once again, it’s another organisation with a direct line back to the eugenics movement. The Galton Institute founded it in 1977, and crucially, the institute was none other than the Eugenics Society in shiny new wrapping. Only, its new namesake was hardly a break from its eugenics provenance either. Instead, it was a hat tip to yet another rampant early eugenicist, Francis Galton.

    And in the legacy of her forebears’ nexus of eugenics, birth and population control, as well as voluntary euthanasia, Woodroffe too has ties to the modern-day rebranding of the VES.

    Specifically, she appears to have thrown her support behind Dignity in Dying’s call for legalising assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. In particular, as an epidemiologist, she signed the Dignity in Dying instigated Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD) campaign in support of the organisation’s aims in 2012.

    Her name doesn’t appear in its more recent webpage iterations. However, the organisation appears to have pared down the information it publicises on its supporters more generally across its website.

    A Cadbury family legacy – now in parliament

    Other Cadbury descendants have also dabbled in divvying out donations to Dignity in Dying. John Crosfield was another grandchild to George Cadbury Snr, alongside George Woodall Cadbury. Crosfield’s mother – Eleanor Cadbury – was sister to GW Cadbury Charitable Trust founders George Cadbury Jnr and Edward Cadbury Jnr. And Crosfield’s son – Richard – wrote a book about his father’s life. In this he put that John Crosfield was a “long-time member of” and gave “substantial sums” to charities including Dignity in Dying.

    But perhaps most significantly, a contemporary Cadbury is sitting in parliament now – and backing Kim Leadbeater’s bill.

    This is Ruth Cadbury – Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth since 2015. She’s the granddaughter of one Paul Strangman Cadbury, yet another Eugenics Society fellow between its 1937 and 1977 membership lists.

    Paul was the son of Barrow Cadbury, who took over the Cadbury’s business from his uncle George Cadbury Snr after his death in 1922. Barrow Cadbury’s wife Geraldine was another Eugenics Society member. He set up the Barrow Cadbury Trust, which Ruth was a trustee of until elected, and she chose to step down. Many of her close family members remain on the board.

    The Canary approached both Ruth Cadbury MP and the Barrow Cadbury Trust for comment on this. Ruth did not respond to this specifically. The trust replied that:

    With regards to Paul Cadbury and his mother’s membership of the Eugenics Society, the Trust has no previous knowledge of this, and knowing it has no bearing on our current work. We do know that Paul Cadbury and his wife were active campaigners to improve educational opportunities of children in the West Midlands with cerebral palsy. This included the setting up of Carson House school in the Harborne area of Birmingham in 1948, with Steve Quayle of Quayle Carpets in Kidderminster, as well as helping to set up the Midland Spastic Association in 1947, today known as Cerebral Palsy Midlands

    Funding for public attitude research on voluntary euthanasia

    As far as the Canary can find, the Barrow Cadbury Trust hasn’t given directly to either Dignity in Dying or its sister charity. Nor have we found evidence of it financing the work of the organisation under its former names. However, it did fund a 2020 to 2024 King’s College, London research series called the World Values Survey (WVS). This aimed to track:

    the evolution of values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour on topics that range from cultural identity, migration, interpersonal trust, empathy and human tolerance to media usage, political interest and views on science, technology and environmental protection.

    Most significantly, one publication it put out included a survey that looked at different demographics’ views towards voluntary euthanasia across the UK.

    Professor Bobby Duffy led the WVS work. He told the Canary that:

    The Barrow Cadbury Trust did contribute financially to the World Values Survey (WVS), as one of eight funders, with the major funder being the Economic and Social Research Council. The WVS study has no connection to the September study. The WVS is one of the largest and longest-running social surveys in the world, covering around 290 questions across a very wide range of issues, on attitudes to immigration, government, work, parenting, trust and many more, with a number of questions going back to the 1980s. There is one single question on euthanasia, which has been asked since 1981, and the Barrow Cadbury Trust had no role in the questionnaire design or release of these results.

    Meanwhile, the spokesperson from the Barrow Cadbury Trust had a similarly-worded response, stating that:

    Barrow Cadbury Trust is proud to support the Policy Institute’s work on the global World Values Survey (WVS).
    WVS is one of the largest and longest-running social surveys in the world, covering around 290 questions across a very wide range of issues. Assisted dying is not an issue we have worked on or are currently working on, nor do we have a position on the issue. We were not involved in any discussions about the question related to assisted dying in the World Values Survey, which is the same question that has been asked since its inception in the 1980s.

    Polling the public

    The same group at King’s also conducted a separate survey on assisted dying in September, alongside the King’s Complex Life and Death Decisions (CLADD) research group. Duffy is director to both – and led this more recent assisted dying survey as well. The groups put their findings out the same week Kim Leadbeater introduced her bill to the House of Commons.

    Duffy did however confirm that the Barrow Cadbury Trust did not fund this piece of research. He told the Canary that:

    The research conducted in September was paid for using internal funds. No other organisations contributed financially.

    Crucially though, in both projects, headline results have revolved around the seeming broad public support for legalising assisted dying.

    However, Duffy and his team at CLADD have tempered against taking these results at face value. Notably, they’ve previously pointed out that polling on this often obscures the complexities of public attitudes towards legalising it.

    Nonetheless, the King’s press release – and resulting corporate media coverage – honed in on the purported two-thirds public support.

    Ruth Cadbury MP: a prominent advocate of Leadbeater’s bill

    However, it’s Ruth Cadbury’s outspoken support for assisted dying that’s most telling. She has previously spoken in multiple debates airing her pro-assisted dying views.

    In April, Dignity in Dying hosted an event outside parliament where Ruth Cadbury promised that:

    a future Labour government would make time for a private members’ bill and a free vote, so that Parliament can have the final say.

    It’s therefore not out of the realms of possibility Ruth was a driving force behind Leadbeater’s introduction of the bill.

    Then, in September, she schmoozed with Dignity in Dying representatives at Labour’s party conference fringe. So it’s perhaps unsurprising she has also publicly declared her backing of Leadbeater’s bill:

    Ruth also identifies as a Humanist and attended the group’s fringe at the 2024 September Labour Party Conference. There, she:

    emphasised the importance of rallying around the upcoming Private Member’s Bill.

    According to the Telegraph in October, at least 38 Labour MPs are pushing for Leadbeater’s bill to extend to people “incurably suffering”. Humanists UK was the Telegraph’s source for this, and the organisation is leading the charge on extending the scope of the bill.

    The Canary therefore enquired with Ruth Cadbury whether she is among the 38 Labour MPs and supported the Humanist UK’s calls for a broader law. She confirmed that she is not one these MPs, stating to us that:

    I do not support, and have never supported, extending the scope of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill.

    Nevertheless, Ruth is still a key force in parliament pushing for the legalisation of assisted dying for terminally ill people. She’s now chair of the Dignity in Dying co-run All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Choice at the End of Life. Crucially, she appears to have taken on this role around the time Leadbeater confirmed she was planning to introduce the bill. The register – the most recent available – shows the APPG’s membership on 9 October. The previous register in August didn’t list the Choice at the End of Life APPG.

    Failing to reckon with its eugenicist past…

    None of this is to say that the GW Cadbury’s Charitable Trust trustees, Ruth Cadbury MP, or Dignity in Dying itself are motivated by eugenicist beliefs or goals today. The fact remains however that the organisation and its supporters haven’t acknowledged or remotely reckoned with this past.

    The Canary put all this to Dignity in Dying/Compassion in Dying’s media communications team. A spokesperson for the organisations commented that:

    Dignity in Dying is a modern campaigning organisation, focused on changing the law so that terminally ill, mentally competent adults can have the choice of an assisted death. We have over half a million supporters and polling consistently shows that 75% of people in Britain support the change we are campaigning for. We want dying people to have the choice of a safe, legal assisted death alongside excellent end-of-life care.

    As set out in Compassion in Dying’s annual reports, the charity has received funding from the GW Cadbury Trust, which is a charitable trust regulated by the Charity Commission.

    Dignity in Dying and its proponents might argue that its values have shifted with the times. Its roots were in eugenics, but now, its focus is on the alleviation of incurable human suffering for people with terminal diagnoses. Its slick rebrand from the Voluntary Euthanasia Society to Dignity in Dying is this in a nutshell. It equates its aims with the seemingly laudable, compassionate pursuit of a person’s agency over their own death, and the idea that this is a vital part of maintaining their dignity.

    A burden

    This is rife with issues anyway – not least that there’s a subtle implication of terminally ill people being a burden, and the fact it equates losing dignity with people becoming progressively more disabled. Essentially, this raises the spectre of society’s internalised ableism acting to subliminally coerce people to assisted suicide – which is obviously a big part of the problem.

    The same goes for chronically ill and disabled people. While the bill currently doesn’t extend beyond people deemed terminal within six months, we’ve made the point before that in other countries – like Canada for instance – expansion has tended to follow.

    And for all its progressive-sounding rhetoric, as the Canary previously revealed, the organisation and its sister charity are being financed by multi-millionaire corporate capitalists and mystery donors obscured behind tax haven-based offshore firms. Largely though, the lobby group itself is hush-hush about its big donors. Obviously, it begs the question of just who could be pushing the UK to legalise assisted suicide.

    And the eugenicist present

    And as it turns out, society hasn’t really moved on from eugenicist ideas as much as we’d like to believe either. Now, it simply takes on new, masked forms. Forms that conceal the racist, colonialist, and ableist cracks at the heart of today’s global capitalist economic set-up. You might even say it’s like a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate. Over the years, the recipe may have changed, but all the same basic ingredients are still there – creating a new flavour of more palatable eugenist policy.

    What is the state-sanctioned deaths of tens of thousands of disabled people under the UK’s punitive, repressive social security system, if not eugenics masquerading as economic conservatism? Hundreds of thousands of poor, marginalised people dying to austerity was another example of indirect eugenics through fiscal policy.

    Think Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) notices on learning disabled people at the height of the Covid pandemic. Then there’s Boris Johnson’s so-called herd immunity “let it rip” policy. It disproportionately led to the deaths of chronically ill, disabled, poor, and racially minoritised people. This is all eugenics by any other name. And medical professionals, politicians, and sizeable portions of the public have condoned them with barely a second thought.

    Capitalist profit motives for assisted dying

    Moreover, when the capitalist profit motive and eugenics go so neatly hand in hand today, Dignity in Dying, and its backers dismissive attitude to the dangers of legalising assisted suicide is extremely problematic too.

    In 2021, Canada passed its bill to legalise assisted death for disabled people with non-terminal illnesses. Since then, harrowing stories have emerged of chronically ill and disabled people turning to MAID due to poverty, homelessness, and a lack of quality healthcare.

    Meanwhile, in Oregon and California in the US, insurance companies stopped funding potentially life-saving or life-extending treatments. Notably, this was after these states passed assisted suicide legislation. But, insurance providers told patients they would cover euthanasia drugs, naturally.

    In these instances, the state and corporations are deciding whose lives are worth supporting, who is worth saving. And it reads right from the eugenics playbook. In short: not poor, chronically ill, disabled, racially minoritised people.

    Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill: a danger to chronically ill and disabled people

    So, however much Dignity in Dying have tried to bury its eugenicist past, it’s a chapter of the organisation’s history that holds ramifications for the upcoming parliamentary vote on assisted suicide. That remains the case whether it – and backers of the bill more broadly – choose to face up to these origins and lingering connections or not.

    Because at the end of the day, all this begs the question: is legalising assisted suicide safe in a society where capitalist eugenicist undercurrents are still at play? Not for many groups the pro-assisted dying lobby has pushed to the margins in this debate. Unfortunately, across the world, there’s already ample enough proof of that.

    Feature image via the Canary/ Youtube – Aaron Walderslade/ Wikimedia – Wellcome Library, image altered, licensed under CC BY 4.0

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Long Covid has left me feeling worthless and invisible – and Labour is making it worse

    My name is Sam. I am 52. I am doubly disabled. I am Autistic and I have been disabled with long Covid since 15 March 2020.

    There are two parts to my disability experience. The first part is the disability itself. That’s really bad. The second part is how society treats me and people like me. That’s much worse. The UK is in deep denial about long Covid and about all disabilities. Society both ignores and shames me.

    My feeling of social abandonment is total.

    One in four people in the UK are disabled and our numbers are growing. Around 4% of the UK have long Covid. A recent survey showed that one third of all health care workers have long Covid symptoms. 1% of all kids have long Covid.

    Long Covid continues to grow because of the deep denial.

    Labour is proving to be much worse than we thought

    Being disabled under a Tory government was awful. I had no idea that it would be so much worse under the Labour Party. You know that saying sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. It’s not true.

    Something has happened to the Labour Party. They have become obsessed with economic growth. To Labour growth is the only metric of prosperity and success. As a consequence, paid work is now the only unit of worth. As soon as the general election was over, Keir Starmer was talking about the need to get the long-term sick into work and most Labour ministers on the media round started talking about ‘economic inactivity’.

    Economic inactivity is a rather derisory and inaccurate name for people on benefits. It’s inaccurate because I receive DWP PIP, and every single penny of my benefit money re-enters the economy. Not only has Labour become obsessed with economic growth, they keep talking about wealth creation, like something out of the 1987 film Wall Street. For Labour, wealth creation may only be achieved through paid work. I started feeling that for Labour worklessness is worthlessness.

    Writing in the Telegraph Keir Starmer said “hand outs from the state do not nurture the same sense of self-reliant dignity as a fair wage”. In one stroke, Starmer denigrated stay-at home-parents, carers and people on benefits. It’s a deeply conservative position, and devalues half of all contributions to society.

    Chronically ill and disabled people are not scroungers

    On 17 July, I posted this on Twitter:

    The New Labour Government has created 2 tiers of people, people who do paid work are of value, people who create wealth and economic growth are to be celebrated. Everyone else is completely worthless. That’s the story they are telling. I have never felt less valued.

    To my mind, a kind and virtuous society cares about people out of work for their own sake, a kind and virtuous society acknowledges that those who do unpaid work are valuable contributors to society, a kind and virtuous society acknowledges and makes space for disabled people and where possible tries to make them better and give them the best care. Labour isn’t behaving like a kind of virtuous society.

    Here’s the thing, people with long Covid want to work. They want their health back. We can’t do that without treatments and medication. At present, the Labour government is doing nothing to help.

    Recently, respiratory physician David Joffrey wrote:

    It is crucial that issues around plans for rehabilitation and return to work strategies appreciate that the vast majority of long Covid patients will never achieve anything close to their prior function.

    As the year has gone on, Labour politicians have been drip feeding more and more scare stories to the media.

    Gaslighting and re-traumatising people with long Covid

    Talk of migrating of all benefits into Universal Credit, reducing PIP to vouchers, cutting the benefit bill down. It emerged recently that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched a consultation on disability benefit cuts. It did so despite failing to work out how many of us would get a job as a result of having our benefits removed.

    I was getting more and more upset. If it wasn’t Wes Streeting pushing weight-loss drugs on the overweight unemployed, it was Liz Kendall sending work coaches to see the mentally ill in hospital.

    My friend Dr Jenny Ceolta-Smith has long Covid. On 21 October, Jenny made a video on the stigmatising language of economic inactivity and long Covid for the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People. The video was to be my inspiration.

    Jenny asks:

    Will there be a pathway within our Social Security system for us to live well, if we cannot work? Economic inactivity rhetoric causes us harm. It is distressing, fear inducing and has led some of us to have suicidal ideation.

    Jenny reminds us that many people became disabled with long Covid in the workplace due to inadequate safeguards. And it’s not just the workplace I don’t feel safe in. I am being cut off from feeling safe when I go to the shops, to the doctors, to visit family.

    My friend Anne has long Covid and she is losing her job because she is no longer being allowed to work from home. On 22 October, I woke up in profound distress. I was in tears, which is incredibly rare for me as an Autistic person.

    I made a video in an attempt to explain what I have been experiencing.

    Worthless and invisible

    There’s a book called The Body Keeps The Score: it’s about how our bodies absorb and retain trauma. That’s what my video is about. I suddenly realised that a combination of the social abandonment and the toxicity of the Labour Party rhetoric has been making me feel worthless and invisible:

    So much so, that I have been neglecting to look after myself in the most basic ways.

    I have been able to carry on being of service to my family but not to myself. For example, I have been forgetting to keep myself clean, let alone perform any personal grooming.

    I have absorbed the Labour Party message that I lack the “same sense of self-reliant dignity”.

    I’m crying as I write this.

    I made a vow to try to look after myself a bit better. Let me tell you the results: I have been in a Long Covid crash ever since. I don’t have the energy to look after myself and cook the dinner and walk the dogs. I have had to spend a lot more time in bed during the day. I’m more disabled than I thought.

    I have continued to feel upset. The video seems to have meant a lot to everyone who’s seen it. I wish the Labour cabinet was brave enough to watch it. The best feedback is from clinical psychologist, Dr Jay Watts:

    What Sam captures so powerfully, though, are the quieter, equally devastating effects on our everyday lives—the struggle to feel worthy of basic self-care, like moisturizing our skin or nourishing our bodies. How can we care for ourselves if no one cares for us? Our interdependence, whether working or not, is not just about survival; it’s essential to our humanity, to our drive to live. Sam reminds us of the real cost when we let policies assign value to human lives.

    Long Covid: are out lives cheaper than everyone else?

    As I finish writing this, life seems cheaper than ever.

    The minister for public health, Andrew Gwynne, has confirmed that Labour hasn’t bought any of the much-needed alternative Covid vaccine Novavax. If you’re clinically vulnerable, or susceptible to vaccine injury, your only option is to pay for it and travel to wherever it’s available.

    Sadistic DWP Secretary Liz Kendall still won’t reveal if PIP payments will be replaced with vouchers.

    I am more disabled than I thought.

    I am so glad I have written this article, and it has taken a terrible toll. It has dramatically worsened by Long Covid neurological symptoms, and made me feel really ill. If it causes a few people to rediscover their humanity and make space for me in the world, it will have been worth it.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Williams

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Disability rights and the climate crisis #cop29


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Labour benefit reforms ALREADY fatally flawed, by banging on about saving £3bn

    Labour Party plans to get more disabled people back to work must ensure that the risk is not carried solely by the individual if they take steps towards work, new research from Scope and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) concludes. Planned benefit reforms to health and disability social security from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) prioritise cutting costs by £3 billion, but meeting arbitrary savings targets will drastically limit the policy’s effectiveness.

    A fresh approach to DWP benefit reforms is needed

    Ahead of the imminent expected release of the “Get Britain Working” white paper, JRF and Scope are urging the government to take concrete steps to reduce the jeopardy attached to disabled people engaging with work:

    • Put in law a “Work Transition Guarantee” to prevent reassessment for benefits within 18 months for those who participate in job support and to reinstate benefits if work doesn’t work out.
    • Replace the Work Capability Assessment with a fairer system developed with disabled people.

    These recommendations have been informed by research with disabled people and will unlock work for people who receive DWP health and disability benefits as well as addressing hardship.

    The government’s current approach to economic inactivity and ill-health

    The “Get Britain Working” benefit reforms white paper will include details on how the government intends to support people with disabilities or long-term health conditions into work and is set to be published this month.

    Reforms to the DWP health and disability benefits system, which aim to make £3 billion worth of savings, are set to be announced in early 2025.

    When over half of families in poverty contain someone who is disabled and almost two thirds of people in destitution have a long-term health condition, Scope’s survey findings reinforce that benefit reforms to a health and disability system that are primarily designed to cut costs will lead to further distrust rather than supporting disabled people into work, as well as causing significant increased hardship.

    Iain Porter, Senior Policy Adviser at JRF, said:

    Developing a policy that works doesn’t start with a demand to save £3 billion, an arbitrary figure chosen to match the plans of the previous government. The system for supporting disabled people into work does need reform. That reform should be based on effective, long-term policy which recognises that disabled people shouldn’t be bearing the bulk of the risk. It might take several attempts to get a job that works if you’re managing a complex health condition.

    Without a guarantee of support through the process this risks leaving our society’s poorest and most vulnerable people taking the leap into work while fearing they’ll lose out on vital benefits if things don’t work out. These fears are well-founded, as people who receive disability and health related benefits already face disproportionate levels of hardship.

    These cuts also won’t help more disabled people find work. A harsher system that stems from cutting costs would deepen distrust and fail to address real employment barriers for disabled people. Instead, the government should rethink these cuts and design support alongside disabled people to encourage steps towards employment without penalizing those for whom work doesn’t work out.

    James Taylor, Director of Strategy at disability equality charity Scope, said:

    We all want to get more disabled people into work, and it’s clear from this research that the WCA and back to work support both need massive upgrades.

    The upcoming Get Britain Working white paper, and investment in localised employment support for disabled people are welcome. We know that at least a million disabled people want to work and could with the right support. But in the budget the government also announced their intention to take money out of our welfare system.

    We have a government that is pulling in two different directions at the same time. They want to get more disabled people into work, and to cut back on the financial support that allows disabled people to live in the first place. Ultimately, this approach could make some disabled people more fearful of the government’s back to work schemes.

    Benefits system acts as a barrier to disabled people getting into work

    New research from disability charity Scope highlights the overwhelmingly negative outcomes experienced by disabled people within the existing DWP system, demonstrating that benefit reforms with savings as the primary objective would be the wrong approach, and should instead focus on improving the experience of those interacting with it.

    Scope surveyed over 900 people with lived experience of disability, 382 of whom currently claim a work-related disability benefit, in fieldwork running from February to July 2024.

    Disabled people said that the risk of losing benefits prevents them from engaging in employment support:

    • Over three-quarters worried about engaging with employment support because they worried it could trigger a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) reassessment in which they might be found ‘fit for work’.
    • Seven in 10 worried engaging could trigger a WCA reassessment at which they might lose extra financial support.
    • Almost two-thirds worried that if they came off benefits but a job didn’t work out, they wouldn’t be able to reclaim all their previous entitlements.

    Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates from last year predicted that similar levels of savings from reforms to the WCA benefit reforms announced by the previous government would lead as few as 15,000 recipients into work, despite 424,000 people being denied extra financial support by 2028/29.

    Disabled people already face disproportionate hardship – without benefit reforms

    New JRF analysis shows the already high levels of hardship facing disabled people – without Labour’s planned DWP benefit reforms:

    Three quarters (75%) of recipients of health-related elements of Universal Credit experience material deprivation, a government poverty measure derived from a lack of items and activities deemed necessary for an acceptable standard of living. For working-age adults receiving non-health-related Universal Credit this figure is two-thirds (66%).

    Almost half (48%) of adults in a household where someone claims health-related Universal Credit are also in a household without reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious, healthy food, compared to 11% of all working-age adults.

    Almost a quarter (24%) of working-age adults in a family receiving health-related Universal Credit have had to use a foodbank in the last year, compared to 3% of all working-age adults and 17% of working-age adults receiving non-health-related Universal Credit.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Access to Work scheme is letting down countless disabled people

    When Glyn Hayes from Welwyn in Hertfordshire applied to Access to Work for a new wheelchair attachment, he never expected what was supposed to be a 12-week process to last for over 12 months.

    Access To Work: not working?

    Glyn is a full-time wheelchair-user after sustaining a spinal-cord injury. He applied to Access to Work for help to buy a new front wheel attachment for his wheelchair to aid with work-related travel when he started a new job at Spinal Injuries Association in August 2023.

    But what should have been a straightforward process quickly descended into a “bureaucratic nightmare”.

    Though promised his Access to Work application would be processed within 12 weeks, it took over three months for Glyn to get an initial interview, where it was suggested that he go for a comprehensive wheelchair assessment to see if a new wheelchair, along with the front wheel attachment, would better suit his needs.

    What seemed like a positive step forward only marked the beginning of more struggles and frustration for Glyn, an experience he now calls “The Herts Wheelchair Services saga”.

    The Herts Wheelchair Services Saga

    He said:

    Initially I was told that an assessment could be done over the phone, as all I needed was a talking consultation to determine if the reasons I required a work chair were valid. I later received a letter stating that an in-person appointment was necessary after all. This exact issue happened again where I was told only a phone consultation was needed. Back and forth, this continued for months, culminating in a 15-minute fact-to-face assessment where the physio agreed that a new wheelchair and front wheel attachment were needed.

    When Glyn was promised a supportive letter to Access to Work detailing the reasons why he needed a funded chair for work, he was met with more delays and very little response from the Herts Wheelchair Services. He eventually received a generic letter from AJM Healthcare, which failed to address his specific work-related needs.

    Glyn said:

    The consequences of these systematic failures were significant. Access to Work initially agreed to fund only the front wheel attachment, despite my outdated and potentially unsafe wheelchair. I then took on the process of obtaining a new wheelchair through charities, which took an additional four months. Throughout this period, I had to navigate changing Access to Work officers and reapply for support, further delaying the assistance I desperately needed.

    After over a year of bureaucratic struggle, Glyn has finally been granted the funding for the front wheel attachment.

    Spinal Injuries Association published their What Matters report in June 2024, which highlighted that a staggering 87% of people with a spinal-cord injury are concerned about access to employment. Many are keen to get back to work but the barriers around Access to Work can prevent this, leaving them relying on benefits.

    While Glyn works in a disability-friendly workplace, many people are not so lucky and such delays in the system would seriously damage their employment prospects. As a former councillor, Glyn has experience of navigating complicated bureaucracy but still faced big delays.

    Being denied the right to work

    Access to Work is often a necessary lifeline to disabled people to help them stay in employment and retain their sense of self after a life changing injury.

    But reflecting on his experience, Glyn, now parliamentary and public affairs coordinator for Spinal Injuries Association, said there were key changes needed for the system to work. These involved, he said, “streamlining the application process, improving communication between agencies, and prioritising the needs of applicants are crucial steps towards making Access to Work a truly supportive and effective resource for disabled people”.

    A spokesperson for the Spinal Injuries Association said:

    For most of us, our careers fundamentally affect our self-esteem; interaction in a workplace can help remove feelings of isolation and loneliness which we know is prevalent amongst our members and those we support. People with a spinal cord injury are being denied the right to work where small adjustments would make it possible. This must change.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ruth Hunt

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Disabled people need YOUR support fighting against the Assisted Dying Bill

    Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill will have its second reading, and vote, in parliament on 29 November. As the Canary has documented, the campaign in support of the bill is funded by some dubious backers – to the tune of millions. However, chronically ill and disabled people against the Assisted Dying Bill are coming together to voice their opposition, too. Here’s how you can get involved.

    The Assisted Dying Bill: not dead, yet

    As of 11 November, Leadbeater still had not published the text of the Assisted Dying Bill. Therefore, MPs still did not know what they were voting for. On the face of it, the legislation is intended for terminally ill people with less than six months to live. It will ensure that there is oversight of the decisions around a person’s wishes. And safeguards will reportedly be in place.

    As the Canary has previously said, assisted dying is an extremely sensitive, complex, and polarising issue. There surely must be few, if any topics that split the left and right so profoundly. There are course many who want to see it law as a compassionate option for those with terminal diagnosis.

    That’s understandable – to an extent.

    However, as we’ve underscored, that also brings up its own problems where economic burden narratives are concerned. The main problem is though, the buck doesn’t stop at terminally ill people. When you take the Assisted Dying Bill in the context of the corporate capitalist ideology politicians espouse, and the system we all live under, it’s clear this will become a slippery slope.

    A hostile environment for disabled people

    Disability rights activist Paula Peters has been vocal in her opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill. She told the Canary:

    It’s deeply shocking and concerning that MPs still have not had the text to Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill.

    MPs have no idea what they are voting on and very little time to scrutinise such an important bill as this.

    But this bill is deeply worrying when we have the NHS and social care broken and in crisis, hospice care centres closed due to lack of funds, and difficulty in accessing pain management and palliative care support.

    In countries across the world where assisted dying is legal it’s important to highlight to MPs that safeguards have been laxed over time. In Canada for example, assisted suicide under MAID process is the 5th highest cause of death

    After 15 years of austerity where poverty and homelessness are rising, there’s deep concern about disabled people being coerced and pressurised into ending their own lives prematurely. That we will be a burden on the state and too expensive to keep.

    This is terrifying especially in the hostile climate with the government we are under.

    So, campaign group Not Dead Yet has organised a two-pronged campaign.

    Assist us to live

    The action is being supported by other groups like Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC). Not Dead Yet says people can do the following:

    Write to your MP over the Assisted Dying Bill. 

    “Write to your MP (you can do that here) and explain your concerns about the assisted suicide bill. Individualised emails rather than copy-pasted ones are best, and remember to ask your MP to vote against it.

    “If you don’t want to write your own email, you can copy this one.

    “When you contact them, attach a copy of the briefing paper Not Dead Yet UK has created to explain disabled people’s objections to this becoming law.

    Make a one-minute video.

    “Maybe writing is difficult for you or maybe you just prefer to express yourself differently. There are other ways to share your thoughts: a short video can be a really powerful way to communicate your views.

    “It doesn’t have to be fancy, just use your phone and record yourself talking for up to one minute about why you believe that bringing assisted suicide into law in England and Wales would be a grave mistake.

    “Once you have recorded it (and captioned it if you know how), send it to your MP and send us a copy at contact@NotDeadYetUK.co.uk so we can share it on our social media channels, too”.

    DPAC is doing similar. Paula Peters has created an example video:

    Protest at parliament over the Assisted Dying Bill

    The culmination of this, for now, will be a protest outside parliament on the day of the Assisted Dying Bill’s second reading (Friday 29 November).

    Not Dead Yet has written a blog post. It outlines the core reasons why it opposes the Assisted Dying Bill. The group says these are:

    • Coercion and feelings of being a burden.
    • Inadequate safeguards.
    • The need for better palliative and social care.
    • The role of doctors.
    • A dangerous precedent.

    There will be a slippery slope

    Overall, Leadbeater’s attempt at pushing through her Assisted Dying Bill – assisted suicide in all but name – on the face of it seems well-meaning. Maybe it is. But Leadbeater and others are being incredibly naive – or intentionally obtuse – if they believe this legislation won’t be the start of something similar to MAID in Canada.

    There are apparently still over 100 undecided MPs just in Labour. Meanwhile, Leadbeater herself has admitted she has no “personal connection” to the bill – which raises the question as to why she is in favour of it, and who influenced her decision to table it.

    She also claimed, without evidence, that her Assisted Dying Bill would not “be a slippery slope” to assisted suicide being available to chronically ill and disabled people, and those living with mental health conditions. Yet 54 MPs are already calling for exactly that to happen – including 38 Labour MPs, thirteen of which are in government positions.

    The Assisted Dying Bill must be stopped in its tracks

    Paula told the Canary that:

    We need disabled people and allies to raise concerns about Kim Leadbeater’s bill, why it’s important that we demand a fully funded NHS and social care system, easier access to palliative care and pain management, and publicly funded hospice care.

    We demand the government fix the foundations of our services and assist us to live so that we have autonomy and choice and be in control of our lives

    We urge everyone to contact their MP especially the 100 undecided Labour MPs and oppose this bill.

    Share your story with them and make your voice heard.

    The Assisted Dying Bill is not a done deal – yet. With so many MPs undecided, there is still time to ensure this does not get through parliament. So, record a video, email your MP, and use #AssistUsToLive to make sure everyone knows that this piece of legislation is dangerous – and should not be passed into law.

    Featured image via Not Dead Yet

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Disabled people need YOUR support fighting against the Assisted Dying Bill

    Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill will have its second reading, and vote, in parliament on 29 November. As the Canary has documented, the campaign in support of the bill is funded by some dubious backers – to the tune of millions. However, chronically ill and disabled people against the Assisted Dying Bill are coming together to voice their opposition, too. Here’s how you can get involved.

    The Assisted Dying Bill: not dead, yet

    As of 11 November, Leadbeater still had not published the text of the Assisted Dying Bill. Therefore, MPs still did not know what they were voting for. On the face of it, the legislation is intended for terminally ill people with less than six months to live. It will ensure that there is oversight of the decisions around a person’s wishes. And safeguards will reportedly be in place.

    As the Canary has previously said, assisted dying is an extremely sensitive, complex, and polarising issue. There surely must be few, if any topics that split the left and right so profoundly. There are course many who want to see it law as a compassionate option for those with terminal diagnosis.

    That’s understandable – to an extent.

    However, as we’ve underscored, that also brings up its own problems where economic burden narratives are concerned. The main problem is though, the buck doesn’t stop at terminally ill people. When you take the Assisted Dying Bill in the context of the corporate capitalist ideology politicians espouse, and the system we all live under, it’s clear this will become a slippery slope.

    A hostile environment for disabled people

    Disability rights activist Paula Peters has been vocal in her opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill. She told the Canary:

    It’s deeply shocking and concerning that MPs still have not had the text to Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill.

    MPs have no idea what they are voting on and very little time to scrutinise such an important bill as this.

    But this bill is deeply worrying when we have the NHS and social care broken and in crisis, hospice care centres closed due to lack of funds, and difficulty in accessing pain management and palliative care support.

    In countries across the world where assisted dying is legal it’s important to highlight to MPs that safeguards have been laxed over time. In Canada for example, assisted suicide under MAID process is the 5th highest cause of death

    After 15 years of austerity where poverty and homelessness are rising, there’s deep concern about disabled people being coerced and pressurised into ending their own lives prematurely. That we will be a burden on the state and too expensive to keep.

    This is terrifying especially in the hostile climate with the government we are under.

    So, campaign group Not Dead Yet has organised a two-pronged campaign.

    Assist us to live

    The action is being supported by other groups like Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC). Not Dead Yet says people can do the following:

    Write to your MP over the Assisted Dying Bill. 

    “Write to your MP (you can do that here) and explain your concerns about the assisted suicide bill. Individualised emails rather than copy-pasted ones are best, and remember to ask your MP to vote against it.

    “If you don’t want to write your own email, you can copy this one.

    “When you contact them, attach a copy of the briefing paper Not Dead Yet UK has created to explain disabled people’s objections to this becoming law.

    Make a one-minute video.

    “Maybe writing is difficult for you or maybe you just prefer to express yourself differently. There are other ways to share your thoughts: a short video can be a really powerful way to communicate your views.

    “It doesn’t have to be fancy, just use your phone and record yourself talking for up to one minute about why you believe that bringing assisted suicide into law in England and Wales would be a grave mistake.

    “Once you have recorded it (and captioned it if you know how), send it to your MP and send us a copy at contact@NotDeadYetUK.co.uk so we can share it on our social media channels, too”.

    DPAC is doing similar. Paula Peters has created an example video:

    Protest at parliament over the Assisted Dying Bill

    The culmination of this, for now, will be a protest outside parliament on the day of the Assisted Dying Bill’s second reading (Friday 29 November).

    Not Dead Yet has written a blog post. It outlines the core reasons why it opposes the Assisted Dying Bill. The group says these are:

    • Coercion and feelings of being a burden.
    • Inadequate safeguards.
    • The need for better palliative and social care.
    • The role of doctors.
    • A dangerous precedent.

    There will be a slippery slope

    Overall, Leadbeater’s attempt at pushing through her Assisted Dying Bill – assisted suicide in all but name – on the face of it seems well-meaning. Maybe it is. But Leadbeater and others are being incredibly naive – or intentionally obtuse – if they believe this legislation won’t be the start of something similar to MAID in Canada.

    There are apparently still over 100 undecided MPs just in Labour. Meanwhile, Leadbeater herself has admitted she has no “personal connection” to the bill – which raises the question as to why she is in favour of it, and who influenced her decision to table it.

    She also claimed, without evidence, that her Assisted Dying Bill would not “be a slippery slope” to assisted suicide being available to chronically ill and disabled people, and those living with mental health conditions. Yet 54 MPs are already calling for exactly that to happen – including 38 Labour MPs, thirteen of which are in government positions.

    The Assisted Dying Bill must be stopped in its tracks

    Paula told the Canary that:

    We need disabled people and allies to raise concerns about Kim Leadbeater’s bill, why it’s important that we demand a fully funded NHS and social care system, easier access to palliative care and pain management, and publicly funded hospice care.

    We demand the government fix the foundations of our services and assist us to live so that we have autonomy and choice and be in control of our lives

    We urge everyone to contact their MP especially the 100 undecided Labour MPs and oppose this bill.

    Share your story with them and make your voice heard.

    The Assisted Dying Bill is not a done deal – yet. With so many MPs undecided, there is still time to ensure this does not get through parliament. So, record a video, email your MP, and use #AssistUsToLive to make sure everyone knows that this piece of legislation is dangerous – and should not be passed into law.

    Featured image via Not Dead Yet

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.