UK Disabled Community Against Welfare & Benefit Cuts

This petition is aimed at the Disabled Community, their families and loved ones and also anyone who works within the disability arena or has any specific interests in supporting the rights and justice for disabled people.

As those powerful lyrics of that uplifting protest song by Labi Siffre – ‘Something Inside So Strong’ shows, it is time to fight for the rights of the Disabled Community against these constant inappropriate, immoral, unjust, illegal and unfair attacks on the lives of innocent disabled people in the UK.

I have attempted to create this petition to be as broad and wide ranging so as to appeal to all sections of the Disabled Community so that it can be supported by anyone and everyone without fear, objection or prejudice and in the hope that the UK Disabled Community can be heard as one unified voice to make everyone take note of us all and to begin to treat us all with true and unconditional equality.

I cannot see why a target of 1 million signatures is not possible and I would also invite everyone who adds their signature to this petition to add a question that you would want your MP to ask the Coalition Government, ideally about disability issues, but it can be of any issue that you are wanting the Coalition Government to provide an answer to. Please add your questions to the comments section below, along with the name of your Local MP, so that I can compile the questions and add them to the Petition that we will present to the Coalition Government at No. 10 Downing Street.

We the undersigned call upon this Coalition Government to abandon its plans of Welfare Reform against the UK Disabled Community as it contravenes current Disability, Equality, Human Rights, EU Directives and the United Nations Rights of Disabled People which was ratified by the UK in 2009.

As the proposed Welfare Reforms and policies and procedures contained within it are illegal under UK and EU Legislation, we also call on the Coalition Government to cease the current Work Capability Assessment Process being carried out by ATOS Healthcare and to reinstate and replace any lost funds where claimants have lost entitlement to any benefits as a result of being failed under the biased scoring system contained within it.

We also call upon the Coalition Government that they respond to the calls that the WCA is “unfit for purpose” and the fact that Professor Harrington has stated that the current WCA Process was “flawed”, when he gave evidence to the Works & Pensions Select Committee in May 2011, as further evidence that the WCA Process should not be used until a new and fair process can be designed, tested and rolled out across the UK.

We also call on the Coalition Government to cease and desist from promoting an atmosphere of disability discrimination and hatred against the UK Disabled Community through press releases, interviews and sound-bites, that disability and sickness benefit claimants are all criminally fraudulent, workshy and the pariah of UK Society through these perceived actions. Since Coalition Government Ministers came into power, they have been promoting this immoral message through the media and as a result we have seen an increase in disability hate crime in the UK and a general impression that all disabled people are criminals from members of our Society. The Coalition Government have allowed the Media to further promote this wrongful impression and have not taken any actions against the media to stop the promotion of disability hate crime or retract their initial comments – and we also call upon the Coalition Government to stop this inappropriate and immoral practice immediately before any more disabled people are harassed and victimised just because they happen to have a disability.

We also call upon the Coalition Government to review their current plans to stop disabled people from appealing against DWP & ATOS decisions to remove benefits and services from disabled claimants. This proposal effectively turns the fair process and consideration that a person is innocent until proven guilty, on its head and also means that disabled people are forced into a review process that is no better than a ‘kangaroo court’ where decisions are effectively made before the disabled person is allowed to enter any evidence to support their claims.