Poor children with disabilities have been betrayed by Cameron’s policies

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/21/disability-child-david-cameron-cuts-to-support

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‘The idea any government led by David Cameron would make the lives of the disabled worse makes no sense,” Michael Gove told Newsnight last week. Gove was responding to a question about Conservative cuts to disability benefits.

It was an odd answer, or would have been if it had not been delivering what is by now a familiar message: David Cameron’s personal tragedy of disability – with the death of his son Ivan – can shut down criticism of the fact his government has betrayed disabled citizens.

As an interview with Samantha Cameron in the Mail on Sunday put it:“No one can fault the compassionate credentials of a couple whose courage and devotion to their disabled son, Ivan, moved the entire nation…” But hey, it’s election time. Things cannot be subtle. Any other prime minister taking £28bn of support from disabled people – and promising to cull social security by another £12bn – would be some sort of monster.

Needing state help for their disabled children is now a reason for someone’s own family to turn against them

We are not supposed to talk about this. It is an unpalatable, discomforting thought. But then, it is discomforting generally – that the father of a severely disabled child who died would oversee policies that have left other people’s severely disabled children hungry and cold. A third of families with disabled children in this country can no longer afford heating, I reported in this column last year. The number going without food has nearly doubled in the past two years.

According to new findings from the charity Contact a Family, 70% of parents of disabled children say the stigma of claiming benefits for their children has increased in the last two years. And more than 10% say they have received verbal insults from friends or family for claiming benefits. That is worth repeating: needing state help for their disabled children is now reason for someone’s own family to turn against them.

As the punishment is bestowed – be it through cuts in money, stigma or both – it is worth understanding the crime. The demonisation we have watched fester over the past five years is not meant for disabled people as a homogenous group, but for disabled people who dare to be in poverty.

It is no coincidence last week’s Conservative manifesto took credit for a social security system that has supposedly ended “something for nothing”, while promising to enable the children of the wealthy to inherit £m properties tax-free. There are different rules for the poor. That goes for the disabled poor too.

The bedroom tax headlines punctuating this parliament may have talked of hitting “the disabled”, but the vital detail is these are the disabled people living in social housing, not in Downing Street – or those ever likely to reside there.

That is because this government’s cuts have fallen 18 times harder on severely disabled people in poverty than on the average citizen. Needing help to move or to eat shifts from being difficult to being terrifying when local councils say cuts mean your dignity is now too expensive.

That is not a reality David Cameron’s son ever had to endure, yet it is something his father has created.