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• A councillor who caused shock and revulsion after telling Disability News Service (DNS) there was a good argument for killing some disabled babies, will be treated “like a pariah” when he returns to work, DNS has been told.
• The disabled peer who has led efforts to prevent the legalisation of assisted suicide has been forced to step back from the latest “desperate” fight to fend off a change in the law.
• MPs are set to hold a one-off evidence session to question a work and pensions minister about the department’s “misleading” use of benefit statistics.
• A new report by MPs and peers has called on the government to use its new care bill to provide a social care system that enables disabled people to live “truly independent lives”.
• The architect of the government’s unpopular welfare reforms could face an attempt to unseat him at the next general election from a leading disabled activist.
• Disabled people across the country are facing a “serious and real risk” of eviction because of the government’s “bedroom tax”, according to lawyers representing 10 disabled people and their families in a key court case.
• A campaign group says it is “hugely disappointed” with the conclusions of a commission set up to examine the cases of people with mental health conditions who died after contact with the Metropolitan police.
• The UK Independence Party looks set to jettison some of the discriminatory policies it campaigned on at the last general election, following the appointment of a disabled politician as its new disability spokeswoman.
• The particular barriers faced by disabled women have been included for the first time in a crucial report to the United Nations, thanks to the campaigning work of a disabled women’s co-operative.

A councillor who caused shock and revulsion after telling Disability News Service (DNS) there was a good argument for killing some disabled babies, will be treated “like a pariah” when he returns to work, DNS has been told.

There have been widespread calls for Colin Brewer to resign as a councillor, only days after he was elected by just four votes in his ward of Wadebridge East.

Since DNS published the interview with Brewer on 10 May, both Cornwall Council and Devon and Cornwall police have started investigations into his comments.

Cornwall Council will be examining a transcript of the interview provided by DNS, as well as photocopies of the shorthand notes taken by DNS’s editor, John Pring.

It has launched a “full investigation” to decide whether Brewer breached the councillors’ code of conduct with his comments, but has already warned that it does not have the power to sack or even suspend him.

Today (10 May), a protest calling on him to resign is set to take place outside the council’s Truro headquarters.

Detective Inspector Sally Crabtree, of Devon and Cornwall police, said Brewer’s comments had been recorded as a “hate incident” – following complaints from across the country – and officers were now examining the Public Order Act to see if any criminal offence had been committed.

In another development, the leaders of all six political groups on the council issued a statement distancing themselves from Brewer and his comments.

They said: “The recently published comments which are attributed to Councillor Brewer are completely unacceptable and are contrary to the council’s policy of supporting all people with disabilities.

“Such views have no place in local government.  These remarks represent the personal views of Councillor Brewer who does not speak for the council or the people of Cornwall.”

Andrew Wallis, an independent councillor, told DNS that the joint statement by the six council groups was “unprecedented”.

He said that Brewer could not be stopped from joining the council’s independent group, but if he did so he would be shunned by other members.

He said: “Within our group, it has been made clear he would not be welcome in it. People will not associate with him, both for their own personal protection and for the belief and the views he has portrayed twice.

“I think he will be treated as a pariah. It almost makes his role as a councillor impossible to do. Officers will not want to deal with him. Social care or children’s officers will probably find it very difficult to work with him.”

Brewer apologised and resigned as an independent member of Cornwall Council in February after it emerged that he had told a Disability Cornwall staff member in 2011 that disabled children should be “put down” to save money.

He decided to stand again and won re-election to the ward of Wadebridge East by just four votes in this month’s election.

But in an interview with DNS, just days after he was re-elected, he repeatedly indicated that he believed there was a good argument for killing some disabled babies with high support needs, because of the cost of providing them with services.

Disability Cornwall is among those organisations that have called on Brewer to resign, and this week it welcomed the council and police investigations.

It said it was “heartened by the fact so many people from all walks of life, disabled and non-disabled, have been equally outraged” by his comments.

Jade Farrington, a disabled power-lifter and a newly-elected Liberal Democrat member of Cornwall Council, said Brewer’s comments were “absolutely sickening” and demonstrated that he was “not fit for public office”.

She said she believed that “the absolute public rejection of his comments from all sides” showed that the time “when his would have been considered a remotely acceptable position is in the distant past”.

She added: “There’s no doubt that many disabled people face discrimination and bullying, but we do not have to fear for our lives and loving parents do not face the prospect of having their disabled children torn from their arms and murdered.

“When I think of what his views mean in practice it sends a chill through me.”

But the disabled writer-director-activist Liz Crow, whose work has frequently focused on issues that challenge disabled people’s right to exist, disagreed.

She said: “He has spoken out loud what is just below the surface for far too many people.

“Set against the current political climate of rising hate crime and increased rhetoric of disabled people as an economic burden, his repeated hostility becomes especially dangerous.

“To leave his views unchallenged, permits their doing to become more thinkable.”

She said it was “particularly disturbing” that he had been elected by local people who knew he had said that disabled children should be killed to save money.

She also called on him to resign, but said it was more crucial for him to apologise, for there to be “a public acknowledgement by him of the dangers inherent in his comments”, and for the council to uphold its duty to “promote and maintain high standards of conduct by its councillors”.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which has complained to the council about Brewer’s comments, said the councillor had made it “very clear” that disabled people “were not worth society’s efforts”, while he clearly had “no idea whatsoever of the contribution we make to society”.

DPAC said in its statement: “We believe Mr Brewer’s comments reveal that he is not fit to hold any public office whatsoever. How can you be a public servant, whilst advocating exterminating sections of the public who have done no wrong whatsoever?”

Brewer insisted this week in a brief interview with BBC Radio Cornwall that “people know I really am a good man” and that the interview with DNS had been taken “completely out of context”.

Brewer, who is on sick leave from his council duties, also referred again to medication he is taking for a long-term health condition.

DNS has now – on request – shared a transcript of the 45-minute interview with the police, Cornwall Council and a number of news and campaigning organisations.

17 May 2013

The disabled peer who has led efforts to prevent the legalisation of assisted suicide has been forced to step back from the latest “desperate” fight to fend off a change in the law.

Baroness [Jane] Campbell has been campaigning for 12 years against efforts to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide, and has played a leading role in the user-led campaign group Not Dead Yet UK.

But she told Disability News Service this week that her health could not take yet another lengthy campaign on such a “dark, difficult” subject.

Her decision to take a “back seat” role in the anti-legalisation campaign came after the Labour peer Lord Falconer – a former lord chancellor – published his latest private member’s bill.

This time, he wants to legalise assisted suicide for terminally-ill adults who are expected to live no more than six months.

His assisted dying bill was given its first reading in the House of Lords as the court of appeal was hearing the cases of three people seeking to overturn the current laws on assisted suicide.

Jane Nicklinson – whose husband died last year, days after losing a high court bid to give doctors the power to kill him at a time of his choosing – and Paul Lamb, who became paralysed after a road accident, are asking the court to set aside the Nicklinson ruling and order the case to be reheard.

In a separate case, also being heard this week, a disabled man known by the courts as AM, or “Martin”, wants the director of public prosecutions to provide clarity on how he can use assistance from professionals and non-family members to help kill himself.

Baroness Campbell said she viewed the need for another campaign to fight such moves to legalise assisted suicide as “depressing”.

She said: “I have been doing this for 12 years and I cannot do it again. I have done it twice now and it keeps coming back with the same velocity.

“It is so depressing and makes me feel so insecure hearing some of the reasons people are putting forward for assisted dying. It actually makes me quite ill.”

She said the huge funding problems facing the social care system added weight to arguments that legalising assisted suicide was unsafe.

She said: “Now is not the time to be discussing an easy way out for individuals who are naturally very depressed and frightened by becoming burdens on their families or for themselves personally.”

The peer also dismissed any suggestions that Lord Falconer’s latest bill was less of a threat than previous private member’s bills debated in parliament.

She said: “So many people have been given six months [to live], and five to ten years later they are bouncing around, enjoying and loving their life.”

If the bill became law, she warned, it would be “the beginning of the end”, and a few years later the door to assisted suicide for a wider group of people would be “at least open enough for a wheelchair to get through”.

She explained why she felt she could not lead another campaign against assisted suicide, and would concentrate instead on issues like social care reform. “It feels so personal, so much more than fighting on transport or jobs or inclusive education.

“This for disabled people is a real horror. It is so dark and it is so difficult to fight for. It is much easier to fight for something positive than to fight against something that is so desperate, so threatening.

“You get to a point where you think, ‘I can’t do this anymore, it is destroying my soul.’ It is the one [issue] that really, really makes me feel miserable, that a lot of people still feel about our lives that it is a life that is not worth living.”

She pointed to the comments of Cornish councillor Colin Brewer, who – in an interview last week with DNS – said that he believes there is a good argument for killing some disabled babies, which she said shows that “to some people our lives have little or no value”.

“I know that and I… find that quite hard to accept, but it is the truth.”

Baroness Campbell pleaded with other disabled people to “wake up and realise that people are trying to change the perception of who they are”.

She said: “Whatever we have campaigned for, the only thing that has made our campaigns successful is the numbers of disabled people coming forward and saying ‘not in my name’.”

And she warned that any campaign would have to double the number of activists who turned out for the first big demonstration on the issue outside parliament, after the publication of a bill by the Labour peer Lord Joffe.

But one disabled activist said he disagreed with Baroness Campbell, and that many other disabled people shared his views.

Greg Judge, who describes himself as an assisted dying campaigner, said that the disability community was “not clear cut” on the issue.

He said: “It is very much a divided issue. It is important that we have an open debate.”

Judge, who is a member of the Liberal Democrats, but was not speaking for his party, said the issue was one of “civil rights and equality”.

He said: “I campaign on it as a civil rights campaigner. People in all situations should have equal opportunities and rights to have choice and control.”

He insisted that Lord Falconer’s bill would introduce the necessary safeguards to ensure someone was “mentally competent and is not under duress”.

He said: “What these proposals bring about is choice and control for people with a terminal illness to make that decision.”

He said he accepted that doctors were not always right and could be wrong when deciding someone had less than six months to live, but what was important was “enabling people to have access to all the information”.

He said: “All you can do is make people fully informed of the correct prognosis and the very real possibility that people can continue full and active lives despite a medical prognosis.”

When asked whether the safeguards would be sufficient in a world in which relatives, friends and doctors do not always act with the best of motives, he said: “We do live in an imperfect world, but in public policy are you always going to have things put into practice in the way you want them to?

“All you can do is legislate, put in codes of practice, monitor and check cases.”

He insisted that the safeguards Lord Falconer had in mind would always be effective. “Yes, I do think they will. There is no reason why they will not.”

He added: “By ensuring the whole process is put into the control and choice of the individual, it is safe in terms of their decision.

“All you can ensure is they have all the information and they are the sole person making the decision.”

Baroness Campbell’s fellow disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson told DNS that she was ready to take her colleague’s place in the campaign against legalisation.

After starting a discussion on social media about the issue last week, she was flooded with emails attacking her and accusing her of a “lack of compassion” – some of them even admitting that they had been asked to contact her by the pro-assisted suicide charity Dignity in Dying.

She said she was prepared for such pressure to come from the well-funded and well-organised assisted suicide lobby, and added: “If you are going to nail your colours to the mast… a lot of people will hate me for it.”

She said: “Of course we don’t want to see people in pain and suffering, but there are an awful lot of people who want to live.

“If you shift the goalposts, I think it devalues people’s lives. When you move it that far, it blurs it round the edges for a larger group of people.

“I basically do not think it should be easier for one group of people to kill themselves. I am hugely sympathetic [to the individuals who are seeking assistance to die] but I just do not think you should make it easier.”

16 May 2013

MPs are set to hold a one-off evidence session to question a work and pensions minister about the department’s “misleading” use of benefit statistics.

Conservative ministers including work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey, the minister for disabled people, have faced repeated criticism over the way they have used official figures – particularly on disability benefits – to try to justify the government’s welfare reforms.

But Disability News Service understands that the Commons work and pensions select committee has now decided to ask a work and pensions minister – ideally Duncan Smith himself – to answer key questions about how ministers have used those statistics.

Before they question the minister, the committee plans to hold a closed session with the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), so that UKSA can brief the MPs on how the Department for Work and Pensions should be using official statistics.

The decision to hold the session was prompted by the Labour MP Sheila Gilmore, who has accused Conservative ministers of “knowingly misusing figures on benefits that disabled people rely on” as part of a campaign to undermine public trust in the welfare system.

She had pushed for a full inquiry into the misuse of statistics by ministers, but the committee – chaired by the disabled Labour MP Dame Anne Begg – is now believed to have settled on a one-off evidence session.

Neither Dame Anne nor Gilmore were available to comment this week.

McVey and Duncan Smith were both caught last month quoting increases in the overall number of disability living allowance (DLA) claimants – including older people and children – to try to explain why they needed to cut the number of people claiming DLA.

But they failed to point out that the number of working-age claimants – the only group who will be affected by the cuts – had actually been falling.

Duncan Smith quoted DWP figures which showed an increase in the total number of DLA claimants of 49,000 from August 2011 to August 2012, rather than figures for working-age claimants, which fell by 5,650 over the same period.

In August 2011, the government claimed official statistics showed the number of DLA claimants had risen by 30 per cent over eight years, when the growth in the number of working-age DLA claimants – excluding demographic factors – was just 13 per cent.

DWP ministers have also been accused of making misleading use of employment and support allowance statistics, in an attempt to justify cuts and reforms to incapacity benefits.

In November 2011, a member of the committee accused DWP of “pandering to the Daily Mail” over the issue of incapacity benefit reform, after it published a misleading press release about the results of its “fitness for work” tests.

A written submission to the Leveson inquiry on press standards by disabled people’s organisations including Inclusion London, the UK Disabled People’s Council and the Disability Hate Crime Network, pointed to strong evidence that disabled people were facing an increase in targeted hostility as a result of newspaper stories based on benefits figures used misleadingly by DWP ministers.

16 May 2013

A new report by MPs and peers has called on the government to use its new care bill to provide a social care system that enables disabled people to live “truly independent lives”.

The report, Promoting Independence, Preventing Crisis, offers the government a “clear, affordable and essential” solution to the adult social care crisis, just as the care bill – which applies to England and Wales – begins its journey through parliament.

The report focuses on the need for a right to independent living, more generous eligibility criteria for council support, a focus on preventative care, and the need for the government to provide more funding for social care.

It says that disabled people need a social care system that enables them to live as “active” citizens and not just as passive clients of care, and one which enables disabled people to live independently, with “dignity, fairness and respect”.

Leading disabled campaigners – including Jane Young, Liz Sayce and Julie Jaye Charles – gave evidence in person to the inquiry, while the disabled peers Lord [Colin] Low and Baroness [Rosalie] Wilkins were part of the 10-strong inquiry panel of MPs and peers.

The report was published just days before peers are set to begin debating the care bill, and is the product of an inquiry into adult social care reform for working-age disabled people, set up in February by the all party parliamentary groups on disability and local government, and supported by the disability charity Scope.

In an introduction to the report, the disabled peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell and Labour’s Anne McGuire, two of the inquiry’s joint chairs, said they believed their recommendations – if implemented – would help create “an ambitious care system fit for the 21^st century”.

Baroness Campbell told the parliamentary launch event she believed the public had “woken up properly now to the fact that social care is in crisis and they are demanding that us politicians meet and address this challenge”.

She said that parliamentarians were beginning to understand the meaning of “independent living”, and the rights enshrined in the UN disability convention.

Baroness Campbell said the report was a “rich source of up-to-date evidence on the state of care and support for disabled people” and should prove “invaluable” to peers and MPs as parliament debated the new bill.

Just minutes after the event, Baroness Campbell introduced her own social care portability bill in the House of Lords, which she described as “a model” for “what the government could do” in its care bill.

Her bill would allow disabled people in England and Wales to retain an “equivalent” support package when they relocate to a different part of the country – for a certain period of time – with “timely and seamless” transitional arrangements.

At present, the government’s care bill would ensure that a disabled person’s support package would continue when they moved to a new area, but only until they were reassessed by their new local authority.

If the costs or needs identified by the reassessment were different, the new council would then only have to provide a “written explanation of the difference”.

Sue Bott, Disability Rights UK’s director of development, said she was pleased with the progress on portability in the government’s bill, but going “that little bit further” and protecting people’s care packages would “really give people the confidence to be able to move”.

She said disability campaigners would also be focusing on how the care bill dealt with charging for care.

Bott said she was concerned that the bill could give local authorities “a licence to do whatever they like” when charging, because there is nothing that says councils have to pay due regard to what is reasonable and to people’s ability to pay, as there is in current social care legislation.

She said that charging was already “out of control. Local authorities can do what they like. There is nobody keeping an eye on what happens.”

She said she was also concerned that the care bill’s clauses on direct payments – which allow disabled people greater control over their support – might be a step backwards, with disabled people now appearing to have the right only to “request” direct payments, whereas councils currently have to “offer” them to someone with a care package.

She said she would like to see the bill include a legal right to direct payments.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat care services minister Norman Lamb announced new government plans for a more integrated health and care system, with “the biggest ever commitment to making coordinated health and care a reality”.

16 May 2013

The architect of the government’s unpopular welfare reforms could face an attempt to unseat him at the next general election from a leading disabled activist.

Julie Jaye Charles, who lives in Iain Duncan Smith’s Chingford and Woodford Green constituency, said she wanted to oppose the Conservative MP as a black disabled woman with bipolar disorder.

Jaye Charles is founder and chief executive of the black and minority ethnic (BME) disabled people’s organisation Equalities National Council (ENC), and is a government adviser and expert on issues around race, disability, health and social care.

She said: “I just want people to feel comfortable that people with mental health difficulties are not stark raving mad.

“I have lived experience of mental health but I have been a successful CEO and ambassador for BME disabled people.

“I just feel that it is time to stand as an MP to support the needs of the most grassroots communities, particularly the needs of people with long-term conditions, disabled people, people with learning difficulties and those with mental health difficulties.”

She has already secured support from the government’s new access to elected office fund, which helps disabled people with the extra disability-related costs they face while campaigning.

If she is selected by Labour to fight the seat, it could force Duncan Smith into a high-profile defence of the impact of his welfare cuts and reforms on disabled people.

Jaye Charles said: “He has made it quite clear in the way he has done business that he wants huge changes around what services disabled people should receive, and he has made it clear that he is making it difficult for us to access services.

“He has also made it clear on welfare reform that he is targeting people with long-term conditions and disabled people and so I think it is important not only that I am someone with a mental health difficulty but also that I am a black woman.”

Jaye Charles said that – if selected – she would campaign for more accessible housing, better access to health and social care, and more support for disabled people to get back into employment, including efforts to force employers to employ more disabled people.

Duncan Smith retained the seat in 2010 with a majority of nearly 13,000 over Labour, taking nearly 50 per cent of the vote.

16 May 2013

Disabled people across the country are facing a “serious and real risk” of eviction because of the government’s “bedroom tax”, according to lawyers representing 10 disabled people and their families in a key court case.

The warning came as the high court began a three-day hearing into the 10 claims brought against the housing benefit regulations that came into force on 1 April.

The claimants are all arguing that the regulations discriminate against people who need larger accommodation because of their impairment.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has “intervened” in the case, to argue that the new regulations could breach the Human Rights Act, the UK government’s duties under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Equality Act’s public sector equality duty.

Government figures suggest that more than 400,000 disabled people will be hit by the introduction of the bedroom tax, which will see tenants in social housing punished financially if they are assessed as “under-occupying” their homes.

But campaigners believe the true numbers will be even higher, as the government figures only relate to disabled people who claim disability benefits.

Several of the families taking cases have fled serious domestic violence, one couple have been told their son will need to go into residential care if they are forced into smaller accommodation, one husband has to sleep in a separate bedroom from his disabled wife for health reasons, while another uses a tiny “spare” bedroom to store his hoist, powerchair and shower seat.

Another claimant, Mervyn Drage, lives in a three-bedroom flat in a high-rise tower block, and has lived there for 19 years.

His mental health problems are exacerbated by stress, anxiety and changes to routine, and he feels safe and settled in the flat and is “very anxious” about the prospect of being forced to move.

Ellen Clifford, a member of the steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), warned that there were many cases like that of Stephanie Bottrill – a disabled woman who died after leaving a suicide note blaming the extra £20 a week she was told to pay through the bedroom tax – of disabled people who were not receiving disability benefits.

Clifford said: “These disabled people are often isolated. They don’t have support networks and they are not going to be in touch with people to help them to see this is unfair and that they do not need to worry.”

Clifford spoke on Monday (13 May) at a meeting organised by the national Benefit Justice Campaign in south London, and told campaigners of the need to put pressure on local authorities to make commitments not to carry out any bedroom tax-related evictions, and to “redesignate” spare bedrooms.

She said: “The first stage is to try to put pressure on councils to commit to no evictions.

“Some councils have committed to redesignated bedrooms and some housing associations have.

“There are stages before we get to protecting people from eviction. There is stuff that can be done.”

She said later: “With the bedroom tax our message is that we can beat it. It is not workable and we must put pressure on councils and housing associations not to implement it.

“The most important thing for me about the Benefit Justice Campaign is to mobilise communities to get in touch with people. People who are alone are very scared and frightened.”

She said councils were themselves “in crisis” and the funding the government has provided for discretionary housing payments to help some people affected by the bedroom tax “is not going to last”.

DPAC believes the bedroom tax needs to be scrapped and that “concerted campaigning” – similar to the widespread and successful resistance to the poll tax in the 1980s – was needed “to force a u-turn”.

But she said: “The message for disabled people from DPAC is not to despair if they cannot pay and cannot move and start to get into arrears. This rotten policy is unworkable. People who are worried or frightened need to seek support but not panic.”

Anne McMurdie, from Public Law Solicitors, who are representing three of the claimants, said the case was “extraordinarily significant”, and was also about the cumulative impact of government cuts to disabled people’s benefits and services.

Speaking before the case began, she said: “It is significant because this really is about the extent to which it is lawful for this kind of weight of cuts to fall on disabled people.”

She said the imposition of the bedroom tax was clearly discriminatory because if disabled people need extra bedrooms for impairment-related reasons, the council would not pay for them.

“Why should disabled people have to make up the shortfall which arises, solely as a result of their disability?

“We have a situation where people are going to have rent arrears, they are on benefits, they are not going to make up the difference.”

She said that councils and social housing bodies had policies that eventually lead to evictions once tenants are in arrears.

She added: “They will then have to be rehoused and will probably have to go back into the same size accommodation. The cost to the public purse is extraordinary. Local authorities are already under pressure.

“There is a serious and real risk of disabled people being evicted. It is absolutely what is going to happen.”

16 May 2013 

A campaign group says it is “hugely disappointed” with the conclusions of a commission set up to examine the cases of people with mental health conditions who died after contact with the Metropolitan police.

The Independent Commission on Mental Health and Policing reviewed 50 deaths and five cases of serious injury between 2007 and 2012, including six cases where the person was being restrained or was in police custody, and 38 suicides.

The report concludes that the Met was guilty of a series of failings, including a disproportionate use of force and restraint, discriminatory attitudes and behaviour, a lack of training, and a failure to deal effectively with calls related to mental health.

The commission, chaired by Lord [Victor] Adebowale, chief executive of the charity Turning Point, and set up last September by the Met police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, concluded that mental health needed to be part of the force’s “core business”.

It also called for improvements to the skills, awareness and confidence of frontline staff; better information systems; improved healthcare for those in police custody; and better joint working between police, health and social services.

The report also calls on the police to develop “a safer model of restraint”.

But Matilda MacAttram, director of the campaign group Black Mental Health UK, who has raised concerns about the number of mental health service-users from the UK’s African-Caribbean community who have died in police custody, said she was “hugely disappointed” by the recommendation on restraint.

She said: “The reason a disproportionate number of people who use mental health services die in custody is because they are restrained.”

She said that any restraint of someone with a mental health conditions was unlawful under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the UK has signed up to.

She said: “Restraint of any vulnerable person who has a mental health condition is unlawful – it criminalises and traumatises.

“The starting point needs to be ‘no restraint’. We need to look at how we de-escalate situations where vulnerable people are distressed.

“There is no place for coercion, there is no place for pain, there is no place for added trauma.”

In 2011-12, almost half of those people who died in, or shortly after, leaving police custody in England and Wales were identified as having mental health conditions, while in 2011, more than a third of those who died in police custody were from black or minority ethnic communities.

MacAttram said the police needed to be trained to engage people in mental distress “with humanity”, because it would “send a positive message to society at large about how we in the UK treat this vulnerable group”.

16 May 2013

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) looks set to jettison some of the discriminatory policies it campaigned on at the last general election, following the appointment of a disabled politician as its new disability spokeswoman.

UKIP’s 2010 manifesto included a call to move away from independent living and inclusive education, and for out-of-work disability benefits to be paid at the same rate as jobseeker’s allowance.

But UKIP has now appointed a disabled former Conservative party member, Star Etheridge, as its new disability spokeswoman.

In an interview with Disability News Service (DNS), she distanced herself from some of her party’s previous disability policies, and said the new version would be a “radical change” and about “common sense”, compared with the 2010 manifesto.

She suggested that leaving the European Union would bring huge savings, some of which a UKIP administration might use to reinstate the Independent Living Fund, which is set to close in 2015.

The 2010 UKIP manifesto called for key benefits such as incapacity benefit and jobseeker’s allowance to be replaced by a single, flat rate “basic cash benefit”, set at the same weekly level as jobseeker’s allowance.

But she said: “Definitely it is not something I would be putting forward. Being disabled is more expensive.”

The last manifesto included few disability policies, but called for a rethink on inclusive education and declared its support for “congregate” communities – self-contained “villages” for people with learning difficulties, such as the Ravenswood site in Berkshire, run by the charity Norwood.

Etheridge said: “You throw them all into one area on their own? It definitely will not be anything I would put forward.

“I really don’t know where that has come from. It seems rather bizarre. How can you get rid of intolerance if you don’t have everybody around? It’s like something from 1950s America. It’s definitely something I wouldn’t want.”

The UKIP manifesto also called for the policy of inclusive education to be “re-examined”, but Etheridge said she would not want such a “blanket policy”, although she would not push for inclusive education for all disabled pupils.

She said: “For some students [a special school] might be a good idea. However, to have it as a blanket policy… I think it should be up to the parents.”

Etheridge also backed away from UKIP’s 2010 policy to repeal the “misconceived” Human Rights Act, even though it has been used repeatedly by disabled people to fight for their rights.

She said the act had been “exploited” and “misused by over-zealous lawyers”, although she accepted there were “a lot of cases where there is a genuine need for that case to be heard”, so maybe there simply needed to be some “tweaking” of the act.

Etheridge, who has been a UKIP member for two years, has been working with her party on its new disability policies since last autumn, but was only appointed as its new disability spokeswoman earlier this month.

She has submitted policy ideas to her party’s national executive committee, but they have yet to be approved.

Etheridge, a wheelchair-user, is one of the few disability spokeswomen for a political party to have undergone a work capability assessment (WCA), which tests eligibility for employment and support allowance (ESA), the replacement for incapacity benefit.

Changes to the WCA are likely to be at the heart of the disability policy document, when it is approved by the party. Etheridge wants to see the tests conducted “by NHS doctors in an NHS environment”, although not by claimants’ own GPs.

Like thousands of other disabled people across the country, she is currently appealing against a decision to place her in the ESA work-related activity group (WRAG). And again like many other thousands of people, she has also been waiting for months – currently 42 weeks – for her appeal to be heard.

Etheridge, a qualified solicitor and law lecturer, said: “Unless I can get a job working from home, around hours to suit my illness, I am pretty much unable to work. If I was able to work, believe me, I would.”

Her Jobcentre Plus adviser has told her she has been put in the wrong group, and so does not force her to undertake any work-related activity, but “just rings me every few months”.

Etheridge said she was convinced that Atos Healthcare, the company which carries out the assessments for the government, was working to targets for the number of people it had to find “fit for work”.

She said: “Disabled people are made to feel they are scroungers. It’s just wrong. I don’t believe it is the assessors themselves [causing the problems], it is the managers over them.”

She is pushing for the assessment to become a “real world” test, so that it takes account of the barriers the claimant faces in the work environment.

Etheridge also wants her party to campaign to reinstate the Independent Living Fund, which faces closure in 2015.

She said: “I think that needs to remain. There will be a lot of people who will end up going into some sort of group care home [if it closes].”

As for her party’s headline policy – pulling out of the European Union – she said such a move would cut the health and safety “red tape” that she claimed was preventing disabled people finding jobs.

She said: “There is still going to be discrimination, but if we are out of the EU we are not going to be paying them all of that money [£53 million a day, UKIP claims], so there will be more money to put things back in. Things like the ILF.”

When DNS asked if being in the European Union was helping to bring disability rights and equality in other countries up to the standard of countries like the UK, she said: “No, I think that has to be done from the grassroots, and the people themselves will have to do it like we have done.”

She said she might stand as a candidate in a local constituency at the next general election in 2015 if her health stabilises, but will certainly be standing in next year’s elections to Dudley council in the West Midlands.

And she said that allowing MPs to job-share was – in principle – a good idea. “I would be an ideal candidate. I would happily work from home and do that.”

Campaigners want parliament to introduce new laws that would allow two people from the same political party to stand together for election to represent a single parliamentary constituency.

They believe such laws would open parliament up to disabled people who might not be able to work full-time for impairment-related reasons.

Etheridge also joined the condemnation of the comments of Cornish councillor Colin Brewer, who told DNS in an interview last week that he believed there was a good argument for killing some disabled babies.

She said: “I cannot for the life of me imagine how any person can think like that. I just can’t get my head around it.

“I don’t believe in killing something just because it isn’t perfect. That is just utterly wrong. I worry about the people who voted for him.”

Finally, she defended the controversial incident which led to her and her husband being forced to quit the Conservative party in 2011.

The couple – who are both members of the Campaign Against Political Correctness – posted a picture of themselves holding a golliwog toy on Facebook.

Etheridge said they had posted the picture after being told that it was no longer acceptable to buy golliwogs.

She said: “We thought, ‘that’s odd, it’s just a toy.’”

When DNS suggested that they were seen by many people as offensive caricatures, she said: “It’s just a rag doll.”

She insisted that neither she nor her husband were at all racist, and that her husband had a Sikh god-daughter, while her son’s god-mother was Polish.

When asked what she thought about the use of disablist language such as “retard”, “cripple” and “spastic”, she added: “I don’t like hate language. Anything that implies a hate of somebody is wrong. It is all about context. It depends who says [the words], where they are said and how they are said.”

15 May 2013