I tweeted about the thousands of people that will lose Motability cars (and wheelchairs) when their DLA is taken away.
About 100 Motability customers a week are losing their car because of PIP. Exactly what we said would happen. http://t.co/bSxpJK5F2t
— Latent Ella (@latentexistence) March 13, 2015
A clueless person replied
they get £2k when car is taken away! Lots of folk can’t afford a car at all no matter what their situation x
Lots of poor people are “trapped” without a car but they don’t get £2k to help x
Where do I start?
Most people can walk, or cycle, or get the bus without it causing pain and exhaustion, or get the train, or do a combination of all of that. And yes, if someone is a customer of Motability when their DLA is taken away, they’ll get £2K from the charity. (Part of Motability is a charity.)
It won’t go far.
I have to have a car that is
- big enough to get a wheelchair in,
- comfortable enough not to leave me in pain,
- automatic, with an electric handbrake and cruise control, otherwise, again, pain.
£2K will not buy that car. It will also not do many taxi journeys to doctors, hospitals and supermarkets while living out here in the countryside. So I’ll have to use my electric wheelchair and the bus. I’ve only got the wheelchair because I begged for donations - remember, some use Motability to get one, and it’s a choice of wheelchair or car.
Taking the wheelchair on the bus is extremely exhausting for me and ultimately, painful. If I run out of energy or get overwhelmed by pain half way, I’m screwed. So I’ll stop going out except for vital things, like the doctor. Without a car, that trip takes several hours.
Then I spend a week recovering.
If I stop going out, my already precarious mental health takes a dive. I’ll probably become suicidal again.
Problem solved for the DWP, I suppose.
Just in case you’re under the misaprehension that PIP/DLA is only being taken away from people that don’t really need it, here’s what the DWP themselves said, quoted at a Judicial Review last year:
“we were aware that the vast majority of recipients of DLA were individuals with genuine health conditions and disabilities and genuine need, and that removing or reducing that benefit may affect their daily lives.”
The government is deliberately taking help away from people who can walk more than twenty metres but still less than fifty, and they say they know that those people have “genuine need”, they just don’t care what cutting DLA will do to them.
Is it right to take DLA away from thousands of people because “Lots of folk can’t afford a car at all no matter what their situation”? Ask yourself if it has quite the same impact. Or why the hell you don’t ask why those other people aren’t paid enough to afford a car.