Crippen Cartoons cartoons at the cutting edge of disability

I have recently been shown a letter addressed to Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2010-16) from Mo Stewart – Fellow, Centre for Welfare Reform and the Research Lead for the Preventable Harm Project (2009 – 2019) with the letter content identifying a recently published research paper – ‘The public health crisis created by UK social policy reforms’

In this letter Mo pulls no punches as she reacquaints the Right Honourable gentleman with recent research that identifies the well documented public health crisis created by the adoption of various social policy reforms, mainly instigated by him during his term in office.

She also takes him to task over his recent comments in the national press, where he urged the Government to get people languishing on sickness benefit back to work, thus indicating that his well-documented opinion of the chronically ill and disabled community who depend upon social security benefit for their financial and physical survival remains as hostile as ever.

Mo further accuses him of disregarding the volumes of published peer-reviewed research which identifies the public health crisis created by the reforms when using a fatally flawed assessment model to limit access to disability benefit. Also, his apparent disregard of the often-fatal human consequences and the disturbing increase in prosecuted disability hate crimes since he introduced these welfare reforms.  

She claims that his brutal and relentless assault on the integrity of claimants of long-term disability benefit(s) was in reality the creation of social re-engineering to remove the past psychological security of the welfare state when aided by the tabloid press. Something that worked only too well as the public is left with the wrongful impression that all people on disability benefits are work shy scroungers. Despite there being no evidence of any significant fraud by the chronically ill and disabled community. Indeed, according to the government’s own recently published figures, disability benefit fraud was only 0.5 percent, meaning that 99.5 per cent of claimants are not fraudulent.

She points out to him that we now have a situation where chronically ill and disabled people live in fear of the DWP. Someone surviving with end stage emphysema, for example, doesn’t wake up every day thinking about how much more benefit they can claim from the DWP. They are much more likely to wonder if this is to be their last day on earth.

Mo ends her letter by strongly suggesting that this relentless persecution must end connected as it is to many thousands of suicides linked to DWP hostility and intimidation found in most written DWP communication with claimants.

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a reply Mo!

Description of cartoon

Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP is standing in the House of Lords holding an open letter in his hand. A voice calls to him asking: “Did you see the letter in this morning’s post from Mo Stewart Sir Iain?”. His expression is stressed as he replies: “Oh shit – she’s noticed that the persecution of disabled claimants only started when I took charge of the DWP!”