Tories pledge to block Motability access for people with mental health disorders
The Tories have pledged to block people with mental health disorders from accessing a scheme designed to help disabled benefit claimants get cars through the welfare system.
Under the proposals, eligibility for the enhanced rate of personal independence payments (Pip) would be tightened to rule out people with conditions such as ADHD, mild depression and anxiety.
To qualify for the enhanced rate of the benefit, claimants must currently need extra help with getting around.
This can include “physically moving around” as well as “working out a route and following it” and “leaving your home”, according to Government guidelines.
Claimants receiving the enhanced rate of Pip can then also apply to join the Motability scheme, which is designed to help with the cost of leasing a new vehicle.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who is expected to set out the party’s wider position on welfare in a speech next week, said the proposal to tighten the rules was “fair, proportionate and reduce the burden on taxpayers”.
“Welfare isn’t working. Instead of a system where those who genuinely need support can access it, we have created one where it is all too easy to abuse the generosity of hardworking people,” she said.
“While Labour don’t have the backbone to reduce the welfare bill and just put up taxes to pay for more welfare, the Conservatives are once again the party for working people, and we will get Britain working again.”
In 2017, the then-Tory government changed the rules for the enhanced Pip rate so that people would not be entitled because of psychological distress, which a High Court judge later ruled was “blatantly discriminatory against those with mental health impairments”.
The Conservatives said their plans to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act would prevent future changes from facing legal challenges.
The Government has been contacted for comment.
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Tory party and reform a bunch of evil people. Kemi is following orders from Vance and co.
Do people with mild depression and anxiety really get cars from the taxpayer?
Severe anxiety possibly, that crap prevents people from getting out, they can’t use public transport and they only go to say Asda in the middle of the night when there’s hardly anyone around. Been there, done that. Having a panic attack mid bus ride is zero fun for either you or anyone around you.
But mild depression and anxiety wouldn’t even be eligible for pip though.
No – severe anxiety contributes to the scoring for the mobility element only if accompanied by panic attacks – this used to fall under a diagnosis of severe Autism.
Knowing the right this probably refers to people who are also paralysed from the waist down but they forget to mention that bit.
Look up ‘Eugenics’ and next time you hear a Toryformee banging on about ‘British values’, know that this is what they mean. Those who may or will need the help of some state benefits to survive in the future and have voted for this evil must accept that they have signed their own death warrant and ‘oh, most generously’ that of millions of others. Thanks a lot morons!
No that’s not eugenics (I looked it up) it’s racism and discrimination.
“Negative” eugenics sought to discourage or prevent reproduction among those deemed “unfit” (including racial minorities, the poor, people with disabilities, and the mentally ill) using methods such as social exclusion, marriage prohibitions, segregation, forced sterilization, and in its most extreme form, mass murder.
My ‘Negative’ eugenics post was an extracted definition of the meaning. Racism/discrimination are included in what IS the definition of ‘Eugenics’.
This fixation on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and abandoning the Human Rights Act is right out of Trump’s play book. It would degrade, if not destroy many of the rights we all enjoy and give too much power to the government. The laws protect us all from tyranny. The Tories and Reform are determined to scrap the laws because it stops them acting against people on benefits and immigrants. People, they are trying to make us believe, are the reason this country is in such a mess. People who are desperately poor and need help are targeted… Read more »
Motorbility probably does need to be looked at… reduce some of the more premium ‘luxury’ brands. If people want those kind of cars they can buy them themselves and then have the adaptations fitted via motorbility funding (or motorbility pay the difference between the two cars). There is more than a fair selection of cars available through motorbility, many of which you need to pay additional money towards, so it’s not exactly the free ride the tories think it has. Nowadays it’s actually not worth using the scheme due to the expense and the loss of no-claims insurance bonuses you… Read more »
Will the tories then be funding and restoring Guards on Trains, Conductors on buses ? For those with severe anxiety the shared spaces on buses and trains present severe problems leading to Panic attacks, the motabiliity scheme mitigates a lot of these problems for those with severe anxiety and social phobias, do the tories just want to forget these people and create more social isolation ?
Politicians are tip-top recently at attacking the disabled and pensioners and threatening to cut benefits. Perhaps they need to look nearer to home at what cuts they can make to their own wages, pensions, expenses, perks and other advantages they get. They attack pensioners and the disabled because they know that those people cannot go on strike or protest. Cowards, the lot of them. If they had a disability they would be first in the queue to claim.
The Dunkin’ Donuts ‘Fit For Work’ scandal deliberately swept up profoundly disabled people during the media ‘scroungers’ narrative and the deaths by financial asphyxiation are in the hundreds of thousands and rising yet swept under the carpet. Starmers’ red Tories are largely dancing to the same tune for fear of the deluge of bile which would come but they did lift the two child benefit cap and sure enough, one of the bile valves has been opened with the ‘Benefit Street’ headlines.