After reading English at university, Neil had a variety of lecturing jobs in England and abroad before returning to Cornwall to teach English in schools. Since retiring, he has worked as a volunteer advocate for adults with a learning disability, going into day centres and visiting people in their homes.
That work led to Neil's first book, Austerity’s Victims, which was published in 2018. The book aims to show how adults with a learning disability have been affected by UK government austerity measures since 2010 and to bring their situation into the open. It concentrates on five men in Cornwall with a learning disability, comparing their spending with the Minimum Income Standard of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as well as UK and Cornwall medians. Their spending averages 48% of the UK median, 55% of the Cornwall median and 71% of the Minimum Income Standard. The book highlights not just relative poverty but other problems for the men: cuts in support hours at home and in day centre attendance; loss of benefits; and, obviously, poor quality of life, with loneliness a major issue.
Since Austerity’s Victims was published, much of Neil’s advocacy work has concentrated on supporting people through the benefits process, in several instances all the way to the tribunal stage. This work formed the basis of his second book, Benefits on Trial, which was published in 2022. It focuses on the way the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) treats people with a learning disability, of whom there are over 1,000,000 in the UK.
It describes how six people have to battle with the DWP whose system, with built-in hurdles, is loaded against them. Two of them – Danny and Thomas – figured prominently in Austerity’s Victims. The others – Ben, Jon, Tony and Denise – are also treated by the DWP in a way which pushes them deep into relative poverty. With such poverty defined as when a household has less than 60% of UK median household income, the people in the book being rejected for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) on average are left below 30% of that UK median.
The book explores the strain not just on their finances but also, inevitably, on their mental health. Denise suffers panic attacks and Jon’s mother is reduced to saying, ‘There were times when I was so low that I started to wish that Jon and I weren’t here’.
Benefits on Trial also examines, however, what happens when they appeal to an independent tribunal. The injustice at the hands of the DWP is set right, with its decisions overturned by a massive margin either at a tribunal or through an out-of-court settlement. All the people in the book who appeal received no points whatsoever – and, inevitably, no award – when they applied for PIP; at the tribunal stage, however, an average of over 21 points is given, with in four cases not just a standard but an enhanced award made. Tony’s case, with 35 points, is particularly striking.
The DWP stands exposed by the evidence of this book. Only one conclusion is possible: the current benefits system, with its distortions and dirty tricks, does not need minor tinkering; it instead needs to be replaced by one that takes fair assessment as its guiding principle.
