Disability benefits: why we shouldn’t call it ‘welfare’ | Letters
Letters: Susan Randall on Stephen Timms’ Pip review and those with longstanding mental illness and Ruth Lister on why social security spending shouldn’t be called ‘welfare’. Plus letters from Luke Howard and Katie Medd
With reference to your editorial (The Guardian view on disability benefits: Pip must not become another route for cuts, 10 July), and speaking as someone who has contributed to Sir Stephen Timms’ review on behalf of family carers dealing with those with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, I fully support a substantial revision of the whole approach to personal independence payment (Pip) assessment.
The assessment process is currently a daunting one for those who are justifiably applying for this much‑needed support.
We appreciate the need for a programme of investment, which leads to participation in work for the growing number of young people who have mental health problems, but within this, attention must also be focused on those with longstanding, serious mental illness who have no realistic hope of entering the workforce.
On no account should their case become an area to limit entitlement. Their award for Pip in its future form should be automatic on receipt of the required medical evidence.
They would love to be mentally unchallenged and to be able to join the workforce. However, given that this is not feasible, they need all the support they can get to make the difficult life they lead slightly more bearable.
Susan Randall
Cambridge
You rightly argue for acceptance of social security spending as “investment in independence and participation” to reduce current pressure for cuts.
It also is, or should be, a means of ensuring genuine financial security for all through social means. Hence the term social security.
However, the more that you and other journalists and politicians use the divisive American term “welfare”, with its connotations of a miserable residual scheme for the stigmatised “other”, the harder it is to resist cuts and the dominant false narrative of “ballooning” spending.
The minister of state for employment, Diana Johnson, recently described social security as “the bedrock of our welfare state”. As such, a decent social security system reduces pressures on other arms of the welfare state by reducing poverty. It should be a priority for any government that is committed to social justice.
Ruth Lister
Labour, House of Lords
You say in your leader that Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, “has seen the system from almost every angle”. However, he has not covered perhaps the most important angle – he has never been dependent on benefits to be able to afford to go to work or to meet the basic needs of his household.
“Nothing about us without us” should be the defining feature of discussion of the benefits system.
Sir Stephen’s view of Pip as an enabling benefit is undoubtedly an improvement, but until the structure and operation of the system is richly and meaningfully informed by the experiences of those dependent on benefits, there will always be a danger that procedural and bureaucratic barriers will prevent the payments from liberating recipients as they should.
Luke Howard
London
Your coverage of the Timms review did not mention the link between Covid-19 infections and rising levels of disability. Covid-19 is one of the largest mass-disabling events in modern history, and it isn’t going anywhere.
The decades-long neglect and downplaying of post-viral illnesses has led to a woeful lack of research funding, serious underestimation of the long‑lasting (often lifelong) devastation they wreak on sufferers’ lives, and no cures. We cannot afford to erase post-Covid conditions from the narrative.
Katie Medd
Devon
