How to get involved
Disabled activists have been fighting for decades against our institutionalisation, isolation and deprivation – it’s time the world started to listen.
The UK government will be facing the United Nations for violating disabled people’s rights. You can get involved!
Watch The Hearing!
When? Monday, March 18th, 2024
What time? 2pm-3:30pm UK time (it will be happening at 3pm on Geneva’s timezone). If you cannot watch it live, the recording should be ready afterwards on the link below.
Where? You can watch it online via UN livestream website, at this link.
The hearing will be signed in International Sign, which is different to BSL. There will also be live, embedded captions on the live stream.
How you can help
• Watch the evidence session and scrutinise the government’s answers.
o Share your thoughts – what do you think of what the government is saying? Are there any inaccuracies or missing information?
• Post your own short videos and share your lived experience
o give examples of policies you are worried about or impacted by – use the hashtag #CRDP24
• Follow the delegation on Twitter and share our posts: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1766837090061287862
• Write to your MP calling for the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People to be incorporated into UK legislation to give disabled people access to our rights (draft letter below)
Share some of the stats from the UK DDPO shadow report to challenge what the government is saying in the evidence session: crdp.org.uk
• 590 additional suicides linked to the WCA over just three years
• Three-quarters of disabled workers are paid less than £15 an hour
• One in seven workers with Long Covid lose their jobs
• Two in three workers with Long Covid experience discrimination at work
• Over one million benefit sanctions imposed on disabled people
• Over 230,000 disabled adults affected by loss of severe/enhance disability premium
• Over 330,000 disabled people hit by the bedroom tax
• 18,000 severely disabled people affected by Independent Living Fund closure
• Around 1.2 million disabled people hit by social care cuts
• Over 166,000 disabled people in social care debt
• Over 66,000 disabled people subject to debt collection for social care charges
• 2,030 autistic people and people with learning difficulties incarcerated as inpatients
• 1,500 crimes against patients over just 6 months caught on CCTV at Muckamore Abbey
• 2000 deaths of patients in Essex mental health hospitals
• Over 365,000 disabled people living in unsuitable housing in England
• Over 102,000 disabled people lost their Motability cars
• 250,000 children in the UK denied treatment for mental distress
• 7.2 million people in households with a disabled member are living in poverty
• Over 430,000 disabled people currently waiting for a PIP review
• 429,000 disabled people affected by £30 per week cut to ESA
• 1,650,000 disabled people denied £20 per week Universal Credit pandemic uplift
• Over 380,000 former DLA recipients turned down for PIP
• More than 10,000 households with a disabled member hit by lowering of the benefit cap
• Over 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain linked to austerity welfare reform
• 23,662 additional deaths over five years due social care cuts
• disabled job seekers 26 – 53% more likely to be sanctioned
• Disabled claimants twice as likely to leave benefit system & have no recorded income after a sanction
• 75% appeals successful for both ESA and PIP June – April 2019
• High Court ruled changes to PIP regulations were “blatantly discriminatory” December 2017
• Quality of benefit assessment reports of “systematic poor quality”
• “access to justice has deteriorated” in England and Wales – @EHRC
• “In England, households with more disabilities suffer much larger losses …largely because of social care cuts” – @EHRC
• “neither the overall scale of spending cuts in England, nor their precise impact on protected groups, was inevitable” – @EHRC
• Benefit assessments leave dis ppl feeling worthless and “dehumanised” – @commonsworkpen
• “[Social care] system with a growing disconnect between the care to which people are entitled, and the ability of councils to meet those needs” – @LGOmbudsman
• “Complaints about English social care increasingly due to funding constraints” – @LGOmbudsman
• Faults not one-off staff errors, but increasingly caused by council measures in response to squeezed resources – @LGOmbudsman
• Percentage of cases upheld shown a relentless rise over the last decade – @LGOmbudsman
For references see the UK DDPO shadow report: https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/campaigns-and-policy/uncrdp/crdp23/crdp23/
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