A United Nation’s committee vice-chair told a delegation of civil servants in Geneva that “Reforms within social welfare benefits in the UK are premised on a notion that disabled people are undeserving and skiving off and defrauding the system. This has resulted in hate speech and hostility towards disabled people.”
The UN’s committee on the rights of disabled people Australian vice-chair, Rosemary Kayess, said the UK social security system and rhetoric from ministers “devalues disabled people and undermines their human dignity”, and she suggested the government had breached its treaty obligations to “combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to disabled people”.
The committee had previously accused the UK government of demonising disabled people and treating them as “undeserving citizens” by preparing to fund tax cuts through slashing disability benefits. They had also found the government guilty of grave and systematic violations of the UN convention in 2016 as a result of breaches of articles on social security, employment and independent living.
Members of the UN’s committee on the rights of disabled people provided a string of examples of how the government had continued to breach its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
They pointed to a benefits system that traumatised claimants and led to some taking their own lives; increasing rates of institutionalisation; and a disproportionate number of disabled people who were now too poor to heat their own homes or buy food. They added that there was also evidence of “regression” in how the UK government was meeting its obligations under the convention.
Rosemary Kayess, a human rights lawyer and Australia’s new disability discrimination commissioner, told the UK’s delegation: “We see a reform agenda that is framed in a political narrative that demonises disabled people, including proposals to cut disability benefits to reward working people by cutting taxes, which tells disabled people they are undeserving citizens. And this is coupled with an onerous and complex social benefit system that is the basis for trauma and preventable mental distress.”
She also questioned whether the government had failed to meet its obligations to “closely” and “actively” consult disabled people’s organisations when drawing up its National Disability Strategy.
Following the session and absorbing the “significant” amount of written and oral evidence provided by disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and allies, the committee will now prepare a report on its findings.
Read John Pring’s full report of the UN session in Disability News Service.
Description of cartoon for those using screen reading software
The scene is at a village pond where a wheelchair user, holding a ‘disability benefit claim form’ is suspended over the water. Standing at the side of the pond next to a large winching system are Rishi Sunak and Sir Iain Duncan-Smith who is dressed in a Puritan costume. A sign at their feet carries the message ‘Crip Finder General – Sir Iain Duncan-Smith’. On the floor alongside the sign is a copy of Disability News Service with headlines ‘UN accuse UK government of grave and systematic violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities’. Sunak is saying: “We’ve developed this fool-proof method of identifying if a person is really disabled or not …”. Duncan-Smith adds: “Yes – if they swim then they’re faking it … If they drown then they really are a genuine disabled person!”
Crippen Cartoons 