THE MPs pictured here – the current Secretary of State for Disability, Health and Employment and three of his predecessors – were due to do some serious research this week.
By Wednesday, the current president, Thomas Pursglove, will have received a letter from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Disability – backed by The Mail on Sunday, Mencap and a number of senior MPs and colleagues – calling for a debate in the House of Commons and a government review to address the systemic failings and lack of support for Britain’s 11 million people with disabilities. Also at the time.
For four years I have been reporting on the situation of people with disabilities and their families as part of The Mail on Sunday’s Dignity for People with Disabilities campaign.
The stories never cease to shock me: paralyzed pensioners who are forced to move across the country to find a house that fits in a wheelchair; severely disabled children are not cared for because they are “too heavy to lift”; young people with brain injuries crammed into nursing homes – one of them, just 25 years old, was placed in the same home as his grandmother, who had dementia.
With each story, I am amazed at the superhuman resilience of those affected: Every day is a battle against seemingly insurmountable resistance.
Current Disability Secretary Tom Pursglove has been MP for Corby since 2015. He has held the post for the past four months and is too busy to talk about the outrageous treatment of people with disabilities across the country.
It is not just the challenges of disability itself – although there can be many; It’s the fact that the system designed to support our most vulnerable often seems completely against them. Many do not receive even the most basic support.
In the end, some can’t handle it. A mother of three I spoke to was left alone and without help to care for her eight-year-old son who was blind, partially deaf, autistic and on tube feeding. She was eventually hospitalized after collapsing from exhaustion.
Last week we published the story of veteran BBC reporter Humphrey Hawksley, whose infant son Christopher survived a life-threatening illness but remained severely disabled.
He is now 26 and technically homeless, as local health chiefs cannot find a care facility to meet his complex needs. Christopher is forced to stay in an emergency room, where he sits alone all day and sometimes scratches his face in frustration. Humphrey wonders heartbreakingly if his son would be better off dead.
The case of Olga Freeman still haunts me: A mother suffocated her 10-year-old autistic son after years of struggling with inadequate social service support. She is now locked up “indefinitely” in a psychiatric hospital.
We did not have a chance to contact the next minister, Claire Coutinho. She was only on duty for a month, between September and October 2022
To be honest, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. But more importantly, how can they get along in a civilized society?
When I saw some of these cases, I hoped that the Disability Ministers (these four since the start of our campaign) would share my dismay and want to act immediately. How wrong I was
In November 2019, we called on Justin Tomlinson, who held the post until September 2021, to step up.
We published the story of two-year-old Jaxon Jones, a disabled toddler who is at risk of being removed from his care despite his condition putting him in constant danger of choking on his own vomit. Mr Tomlinson’s office at the Department for Work and Pensions got in touch the next day – but only to tell us that we should really target the Department for Health and Social Care (who didn’t seem very interested either).
After Mr. Tomlinson came Chloe Smith. In a statement to the newspaper, she said she was “proud” of having “done a lot” in her role to help people with disabilities.
We contacted her in June after Paralympian and Disability Activist Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson wrote about disabled people on planes. With no staff to help, people had to walk down the corridors to use the toilet or were left behind for hours.
Chloe Smith, pictured, said in a statement to this newspaper that she was “proud” that she had “done a lot” to help people with disabilities in their role
Ms Smith quotes: She was “passionate” about the need for all means of transport to be accessible to all.
And then she resigned: “The Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority have reached clear agreements with industry about the support they must provide to air travelers with disabilities.” I tried to call Mrs Smith to find out what she was doing to ensure this, but she could not find time to speak.
We did not have a chance to contact the next minister, Claire Coutinho. She was only on duty for a month, between September and October 2022.
Next came the new boy, Mr Pursglove, who has held the role for four months now. I approached him last week to ask if he would talk to us about Humphrey Hawksley’s problems. He didn’t have time to talk either.
However, a spokesperson for the ministry simply commented: “We are committed to ensuring that people with disabilities have the same opportunities for decent housing as everyone else.
“Since 2010 we have invested £4.8 billion to deliver around 490,000 home improvement jobs. We also encourage the provision of accessible housing to help people with disabilities lead independent and fulfilling lives.”
In November 2019 we called on Justin Tomlinson, who held the post until September 2021, to step up
In closing, Humphrey also wrote that his own Hammersmith MP, Labour’s Andy Slaughter, was not much help either. But Mr. Slaughter finally did the decent thing and reached out to apologize and say he wanted to help.
The £4.8 billion spent on home alterations seems like a lot. The NHS also spends around £5bn each year on health and care costs – including residential facilities – for people with long-term illnesses, including people with disabilities. And around £12bn is spent by local government on welfare costs for working-age adults – three-quarters of which goes to people with learning disabilities.
This is more than a tenth of what the NHS spends in a full year.
And yet, according to a government survey, only 5 per cent of people with disabilities feel adequately supported by health chiefs. Is the money well spent? Hopefully the relevant ministers will be forced to answer that question if and when the review takes place.
It is true that employment prospects for the UK’s eight million people with disabilities have improved. Millions more people have been employed since 2017 thanks to programs that bring together vulnerable adults and employers.
Chloe Smith also secured a one-off payment of £150 for six million disabled Britons to help with rising living costs.
But it will be of little use to the people in our articles who are desperate for carers, some who are locked in a single room in their home, unable to access a toilet and have to use a bucket.
Officially, the Disability Minister, who is part of the Department for Work and Pensions, only deals with issues related to employment and benefits. I would argue that the title – Secretary of State for Disability, Health and Employment – suggests otherwise.
Most of the challenges for people with disabilities are in the areas of health, social care, housing, social services and transport. And if the Minister for Disabled Persons cannot help, who can? No one seems to.
That is why we are now asking for action. The letter from Lisa Cameron, chair of the APPG for Disabilities, calls on ministers from all relevant government departments to attend the proposed debate and get involved in the review. She says: “The focus is always only on one piece of the puzzle – social services, health or housing – but politics does not look at everything as a whole. If we can make ministers realize that all departments must be involved in a plan, this is the first step towards real change.”
Four influential politicians support our initiative, including former health secretary Lord Lansley and Baroness Altmann.
The need for action is urgent. “Last week we received calls from a mentally disabled man who was recently made homeless and an elderly couple who were forced to pay for the care of their disabled daughter,” says Jackie O’Sullivan, Executive Director of Communications, Advocacy and Activism at Mencap. “Some families know they can call us, but many don’t and fall between two chairs. Do we really want to live in a society that allows this?’
In a statement, a government spokesman said: “We met our target of getting more than a million people with disabilities into work five years earlier… and we provided billions of pounds of financial support through the Social Security system. “
Terrible cases preachers easily bypass
The November 2019 story of disabled toddler Jaxon Jones
This story illustrates the government’s neglect of the suffering of disabled people as part of our Dignity for Disabled campaign.
Omar Moustapha’s story was highlighted on September 12, 2021
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Crystal Leahy is an author and health journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a background in health and wellness, Crystal has a passion for helping people live their best lives through healthy habits and lifestyles.
