As Labour gets to grips with the financial mess left to it by the Conservative Party, it’s also under pressure to placate the concerns of the traditionally right-wing voters who helped it get into power. Keir Starmer’s willingness to keep up his predecessors’ tough talk about state benefits has left many disabled people afraid that they will lose the support they need to cope day to day.
This support is essential because being disabled is expensive. Accessible accommodation and transport cost more, basic equipment costs have to be met, and then there’s the cost of powering equipment. Things like staying warm if unable to move around much, paying for medication not available on the NHS, maintaining a specialist diet and buying specialist clothing all add to the day to day burden. But there are ways that the state could save money and help disabled people at the same time. By focusing on those, the new government could help everyone.
Make work more flexible
The Conservatives claimed to want to get more disabled people into the workforce, but the way they went about it was disastrous. The reality is that there will always be people who can’t work full time and there will always be people who can’t work outside their homes. Changing the benefits system so that people are no longer penalised for working part time would immediately cut the cost of Universal Credit. Incentivising employers to take on more work-from-home staff, and helping individuals to meet the initial cost of setting up workspaces at home, would enable far more people to become economically productive. It would also help those who are caring for family members but want to work as well.
Support early action on mental illness
Mental illness costs the treasury an estimated £300bn in England alone, but early intervention, and support for a wider range of interventions, could slash that bill. The Conservatives’ effort to push everybody into cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) was doomed to failure for two reasons: it’s not suitable for all patients, and there are just not enough trained therapists available. Investment is needed in training therapists more broadly and in recruiting from abroad. Furthermore, incentivising employers to give people the flexibility they need for recovery could prevent problems from being compounded, and costs to the state increased, by unemployment.
Tackle discrimination
Disability is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act (2010), but the reality is that discrimination is commonplace and successful prosecutions are rare. It’s a major contributor to unemployment among disabled people, and it also exacerbates mental health problems by cutting them off from social opportunities, which means that some people end up disabled for much longer. An easily accessible regulator with real teeth is needed to deal with the worst cases. Increased investment in public education campaigns would also help, but what’s most important is to lead from the front. Instead of treating disabled people as a burden, the government needs to be positive about us.
Invest in research and development
Some of the biggest improvements in disabled people’s lives, enabling them to be more active and engage more fully with wider society, have come about as a result of improvements in technology – and yet, Covid aside, government funding in this sector has been static for the past two decades. The speed with which the Covid vaccine was developed showed what’s possible when the will is there. Strategic investment focused on some of the most common disabling illnesses could save us a fortune over the longer term, as could support for research into tackling the infirmities associated with ageing, and endeavours to improve equipment that lets people retain their independence.
Stop disabling more people unnecessarily
Around 30% of adults who become infected with Covid develop long Covid, and, at the last count, 381,000 people in the UK reported that the symptoms of long Covid were limiting their day to day activities a lot. The damage done by Covid is cumulative, so we can expect this to get worse. It is the single largest mass disabling event to affect the UK population since the Second World War, and this disability is, to a large extent, preventable. Simple measures like bringing back masking in hospitals and GP surgeries, making vaccines more widely available and discouraging people from going to work while infected would significantly reduce spread. The cost would be massively lower than what we will end up paying otherwise.
Despite what you may have been told, a national economy is not like a household budget. it’s much more like a business budget, and in business you generally need to invest money in order to have more of it in future. The government should not be afraid to do this where disability is concerned. In place of scapegoating disabled people, smart investment could significantly reduce what we have to pay now and in the future. It could keep many people from becoming disabled at all, help others to adapt or recover more quickly, and give still others the opportunity to be net contributors in spite of their impairments.
There is no need to place support for disabled people at odds with economic progress. They can work together. All that’s needed is a government with the guts to ditch the populist rhetoric and approach the matter practically.
