The systematic Tory abuse of disabled people

Don't pretend you don't know. You'd have to have been living in a lead box for the last seven years to not know about at least a few of the disgusting ways in which the Tories have been systematically abusing disabled people.

Here is a far from exhaustive list of examples of the systematic abuse of disabled people that has been going on since 2010.

• The government's own figures admit that thousands of disabled people have died within six weeks of being declared "fit for work" and stripped of their disability benefits by the Work Capacity Assessment (WCA) regime.

• The WCA regime was declared unlawful for the way it discriminates against people with mental health conditions, but the Tory government carried on regardless.

• Appeals against botched WCA rulings have been costing £50 million a year. This cost is paid for by the taxpayer, not the profiteering corporations that made the botched assessments in the first place.

• The WCA disability denial regime costs way more in corporate outsourcing contracts to administer than it will ever save in reduced disability benefit payments, meaning the Tories are forcing the taxpayer to subsidise their systematic abuse of disabled people.

• An incredible 420,000 disabled people were hit by the Tory "Bedroom Tax", many of them for "spare" rooms used for medical equipment, or for carers to sleep in. The financial stress caused Stephanie Bottrill to commit suicide leaving a note blaming David Cameron and the Tory government.

• Tens of thousands of disabled people were forced onto the Tories' shambolic Work Programme, but the outsourcing companies running this scheme knew they could never make a profit from helping "difficult to place" clients, so disabled people were just "parked" while the corporate parasites focused on cashing in on easy to place clients. Just 8% of disabled people to be put through the Work Programme end up finding jobs!

• A United Nations investigation into the treatment of disabled people in the UK found that the UK government was committing "grave and systematic violations" of disabled people's rights.

• In March 2016 309 Tory MPs voted to cut the Employment and Support Allowance by £1,500 per year. Not a single politician from any other party voted in favour of these cuts. As a result of this brazen economic assault on disabled people, several Tory MPs were sacked as patrons of disability charities.

• The Tory party claimed to be scrapping the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and replacing it with Personal Independence Payments (PIP) in order to make sure the money went to the right people, but in April 2017 they slashed PIP payments by 33% using the perverse excuse that this would incentivise them to find work (despite there being no evidence whatever to back up this claim).

• Disabled people undergoing PIP assessments have routinely been asked "why haven't you killed yourself yet?" by their assessors.

• An incredible 65% of PIP decisions that go to appeal are overturned, yet the profiteering outsourcing corporations making these botched assessments (Atos and Capita) just had their contracts extended by two years by a no-bid process!

• The Tory party constantly claim that the purpose of their disability cuts is trying to get disabled people into work, but they deliberately laid off 1,500 disabled people by shutting down Remploy factories, many of whom are still out of work years later.

• Despite constantly going on about the importance of helping people with mental illnesses, the Tories have been doing precisely to opposite; slashing funding for mental health services and actively instructing it's corporate army of disability assessors to discriminate against people with mental health conditions.

• The Tory government are confiscating an astounding 900 adapted motability vehicles from disabled people per week. In one case they confiscated the motability vehicle to save £6,000 and then agreed to pay £65,000 in taxi fares so that the disabled person could continue going to work!

As I said at the beginning, this is a far from exhaustive list of examples of the systematic Tory abuse of disabled people.

Are you honestly going to endorse this?

If you vote Tory on June 8th, you'll be endorsing the continuation of this disgusting Tory agenda of abusing and impoverishing disabled people.

If you know anyone who has a disability and you actively endorse the continuation of this systematic abuse of disabled people, you know perfectly well what kind of person that makes you.

If you have a rudimentary level of basic human foresight, you must understand that one day it might be you, or a member of your family, or a cherished friend who develops a disability or seriously debilitating illness. Which means that by endorsing the continuation of this systematic Tory abuse of disabled people, you're stupidly inviting it on yourself and the people close to you.

Please share

Please share this article as widely as you can to help people understand how appallingly the Tories have been treating disabled people. It's especially important to share it with people who don't have social media or even Internet access. Show them on your phone, or even print it off and hand them a physical copy.

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