An authoritative overview of how Austerity targeted sick and disabled people in the UK.
Second Class Citizens by Stef Benstead was published by the Centre for Welfare Reform on 26th September 2019.
Despite severe criticisms from the United Nations, the UK Government has continued to reject claims that its austerity policies have targeted disabled people. Stef Benstead explores these competing claims and demonstrates without doubt that the UK Government is wrong and that it has indeed breached the basic human rights of disabled people.
Leaders of the UK Government claimed “We’re all in it together.” By the end of the book it will be very clear that we are not all in it together and that in fact these same leaders purposefully targeted some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups for harm and misery.
The UK was told that austerity was an economic necessity after a real-estate bubble, fuelled by irresponsible lending, collapsed and caused a global recession. But the recession was no more than a convenient cover-story for cutting back the state. The consequence, predictable and predicted, is a country whose public infrastructure is crumbling; and it is disabled people who have been those most hurt by this state failure.
The state has abandoned its responsibility for the wellbeing of its citizens, in the interest of private profit and ongoing growth at the top. The consequence is that, for all its moralising about responsible and hard-working citizens, those placed through birth, illness or injury into the lowest sections of society cannot realise any success from their hard work and have few options open to them from which to responsibly choose. When the state closes the doors, it is not the poor who are to blame for being out in the cold.
The post-2010 Governments have enacted huge changes to the social security system and welfare state. Disabled people are often amongst the most vulnerable to government policy whims, due to the vital role of the state in ensuring that there is healthcare, social care, income support and basic access to society. When this is cut back then it is disabled people who notice these changes first and who suffer most severely.
Everything that disabled people need has been cut. Income support has been slashed. Housing is unaffordable, inaccessible and often squalid. Healthcare is rationed. Social care has collapsed. Accessibility is subjugated to private profit. Education leaves disabled children a grade or more below their peers at GCSEs. All of this hit disabled people long before Universal Credit managed to grab public attention.
Austerity is linked to 200 additional suicides per year, 90,000 additional cases of mental illness, 30,000 extra deaths in 2015 above what was expected, and a rise in infant mortality.
Peter Beresford, Professor of Citizen Participation at the University of Essex and Co-Chair of Shaping Our Lives said:
“Second Class Citizens provides the definitive verdict on government welfare reform, the UK’s shame. It’s a policy against the evidence, against human rights and most of all against disabled people. Here the truth gap is filled with the real voices of disabled people.”
Niall Cooper, Director of Church Action on Poverty said:
“This is a benchmark study of the treatment of disabled people under austerity. A hugely well researched and comprehensive overview, which provides both the ‘long view’ of how disabled people have fared within the social security system from the origins of the Welfare State through to the current day. It is illuminated by numerous powerful personal stories illustrating the human impact of austerity, and a devastating critique of the shift from a positive vision of social security to today's welfare system based on a culture of blame and the myth of dependency. A must read!”
Baroness Jane Campbell, Patron of Just Fair (UK), founder and co-director of Not Dead Yet – UK, and chair of the Independent Living Strategy Group said:
“This is essential reading for a more balanced understanding of what disabled people face when caught within the complexity of the benefit or entitlement trap.”
Dr Simon Duffy, Director of the Centre for Welfare Reform said:
"There is no other book like this. Stef Benstead has provided a comprehensive overview of all the different attacks on the rights of disabled people. But in addition she has described how these attacks flow from at least four decades of poor policy-making and the growing power of elites. She shows that not only are these attacks unjustified and wrong, but the are also based on failed economic assumptions which are actually holing the whole of the UK back."
You can purchase Second Class Citizens from all good booksellers including Waterstones.
If you'd like to buy the book in bulk please email us: hello@citizen-network.org
Author: Stef Benstead
Publisher: Centre for Welfare Reform
Published: September 2019
288 pp
ISBN: 978-1-912712-18-2
Proceeds support the work of the Centre in challenging injustice and developing new ideas for a better future for all.
disability, politics, social care, social justice, tax and benefits, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Books
