In order to justify the adoption of harsh and unnecessary austerity measures, which were introduced without ethical approval, the Coalition administration elected in 2010 vehemently challenged the integrity of the chronically ill and disabled community and routinely accused disability benefit claimants of fraud; while failing to produce evidence to support their claims. Their often hostile rhetoric encouraged a 213 percent increase in prosecuted disability hate crimes, and successive administrations disregarded the thousands of deaths directly linked to the Work Capability Assessment, which was adopted using a discredited and dangerous biopsychosocial model of assessment to restrict access to long-term disability benefit. Influenced by corporate America since 1992, the UK social policy reforms guaranteed that many of those in greatest need were destined to die when, covertly, killed by the State with no-one held to account.
In this talk I identify the actors who knowingly created a public health crisis with social policy legislation, which now has chronically ill and disabled people living in fear of the Department for Work and Pensions with their excessive use of sanctions directly implicated in the starvation of disability benefit claimants.
BIOGRAPHY
Mo Stewart is a healthcare professional by training, a Fellow of the Centre for Welfare Reform and the non-academic expert leading the Preventable Harm Project since 2009. The research exposed the government induced public health crisis negatively impacting on those in greatest need, as social policies were adopted using a fiscal priority whilst disregarding health and wellbeing when creating preventable harm which was ideologically motivated. Published in 2016, Mo’s book ‘Cash Not Care: the planned demolition of the UK welfare state’ is recommended reading for various social policy courses.
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