Crippen Cartoons cartoons at the cutting edge of disability

And what have we here?

Yet another example of Labour’s intention to follow the lead of the previous Tory government. This time it’s their plan to increase pressure on disabled people to move off benefits and into work, completely disregarding risks to their health!

Set around a controversial report by the Pathways to Work Commission which makes a call for Department for Work and Pension (DWP) to become a “department for work” Liz Kendall, in her new role as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, announced this week that she wanted the DWP to move from being “a department for welfare” to becoming “a genuine department for work”.

It is one of several similarities between the report and comments made by Kendall as reported in Disability News Service (DNS).

Although she did not formally endorse the commission’s recommendations, she called it a “pioneering” report and welcomed many of its conclusions, and there will be concerns that its work has already influenced her plans to reform DWP.

The report focuses strongly on the need to push more people with long-term health conditions into work and includes a controversial recommendation for DWP to introduce a “duty to engage” with employment support.

It says this should apply to all those who currently receive benefits and are “economically inactive”, which it suggests will “support more of them into work”.

This would mean disabled people who currently do not have to engage with the department and its work coaches – for health or disability-related reasons – would be forced to do so.

Is it me or isn’t that what her Tory predecessor was saying?!

You can read the full story in DNS.

Description of cartoon for those using screen reading software

This cartoon takes place in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). A sticker sits across the department sign and reads ‘Work NOT Welfare’. A DWP clerk sits at a desk with a laptop computer. He is saying to a young disabled woman in a recliner wheelchair: “Have you thought about what job you’d like?”. She replies: “How about a politician – I can bullshit with the best of them!” Standing alongside of them is a caricature of Liz Kendall. She is saying: “And there we have it – Labour’s new initiative to get disabled people  off benefit and into work!”