Community is campaigning to improve government benefits for our members
We welcome in principle the Governments reform of the Incapacity benefit because it is clearly unsatisfactory that there are between four and five times as many people claiming it as were claiming invalidity benefit 25/30 years ago, against the background of the demise of most heavy industries, and we are aware that it has simply been used in the Tory years as a dumping ground to conceal unemployment.
Our concern remains that genuine claimants are protected from undue pressure and aggravation, and that the review actually improves the situation with respect to easy access to claims for disabled people, and in particular that any review does include a commitment to ensuring that all disabled people are contacted with respect to their rights to claim benefits, this in particular because we are aware that there are significant number of disabled people who are simply not in a position where they can access the benefit system and find it too complicated and burdensome to do so.
Additional to this, the League is in favour of the higher rate of mobility component in disability allowance where an impairment is demonstratably a barrier to mobility, for example blindness.