We’re constantly told about a ‘bloated’ disability benefits bill, yet disabled people struggle with unsuitable services and unaffordable costs. We need to look at the issue a different way, says SANDRA WILSON.
As a society, all too often we assume disability is something that affects ‘others’. Yet almost a quarter of the total UK population identifies as disabled, a number that increases every year, while there are more than 5.5 million disabled people in employment.
With this level of disability, we might expect Britain to provide easy-to-access transport systems, hospitality venues and homes at affordable costs that are not inflated when the user is disabled.
Unfortunately, this is far from the case. Transport is costly, services are all too often unsuitable for disabled people and houses are built without disability measures, meaning adjustments have to be made later at further cost. When disabled people attempt to access many services, they are told it is too difficult, too expensive or too time-consuming.
State benefits are adjusted to take this into account. But the real beneficiaries are not the people who need the benefits but the people they have to pay to provide transport or fix their home to make it usable.
Some politicians, and much of the media, tell us the disability benefits bill is far too high – that we must cut personal independence payments (Pips), slash Motability schemes and reduce measures designed to ease access to work. The aim is always to cut the cost of the apparently bloated social security bill, the assumption being that disabled people’s needs are overstated.
Yet, according to Stephen Timms’s recent government review, the disability benefits system itself is “not fit for purpose” and “dehumanising” for claimants. For me, the social security minister’s interim report confirms that we are looking at the problem entirely the wrong way.
The issue is not that some people need financial help from the state to access basic services and facilities, but that services and facilities are not planned or made with adaptations built in from the start.
It could be different. In Norway, for example, traffic experts realised that laws designed to stop accidents didn’t work because people drove dangerously anyway, so the number of deaths on the roads did not decrease. They took a radical approach and instead changed the roads themselves, making it less likely that dangerous driving would lead to injury or death.
The strategy behind Norway’s highly successful traffic safety scheme is rooted in Vision Zero, an approach first pioneered in Sweden in the 1990s and formally adopted by Norway in 2001. The core philosophy is that no loss of life on the roads is ethically acceptable, so the road system must be designed to accommodate human error.
Risk assessment
We could be taking a similar approach to disability. Instead of trying to ‘compensate’ disabled people by giving them extra money to access services that non-disabled people pay less (or nothing) for, we should change the laws so plans for new buildings have to include risk assessments for disabled access and modifications.
That would mean accessibility must be taken into account before a building is ever given planning permission, let alone constructed or renovated. For example, heat efficiency (to keep a property at the correct temperature for disabled people), could be a planning requirement, as could measures to remove steps and incorporate lifts and ramps as standard.
What’s more, why not provide public transport that caters throughout for those who cannot access current facilities? We could have buses on which all the seats pull down, for example, so wheelchair users can sit anywhere regardless of how many other passengers are on board. Those not using wheelchairs would still have somewhere to sit. Similarly, all buses could provide audio as well as visual information about stops and routes.
Some will say implementing all this is too expensive, but consider how many disabled people currently rely on state-funded Motability schemes because public transport is so unsuitable.
A few changes such as these could be implemented quickly and would have a major impact on how well disabled people are incorporated into society. There are ways both to reduce the need for benefit support and increase self-respect for those who rely on it.
It requires a new way of thinking, but would be a major step towards equality for millions of people who are currently portrayed as unworthy benefit recipients.
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Sandra Wilson is owner of Peaceful Pastimes, a disability due diligence company.
This article is published to coincide with Disability Pride Month.
