This Friday at the end of May already feels the summer holidays: the morning train from Manchester, poured out its cargo of excited teenagers at the sight of the huge roller coaster mountains, which welcome them at the exit of the Blackpool Beach station. A few minutes by car, on the outskirts of this large seaside city of Lancashire, in the northwest of England, in the cramped premises of Disability First, we are far from thinking of having fun. This charitable organization helping disabled people faces a considerable demand: 24.7 % of the residents of Blackpool, who have 140,000, live with a handicap, and more than 19,000-a national record-affect the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the main component of public aid for disabled people in the United Kingdom.
Since in March the Labor Government of Keir Starmer has announced a drastic hardening of the conditions for the allocation of the PIP, of which 3.6 million people benefit in England and in Wales, the telephone sounds even more than usual. “We will have to reach a number of points [sur certains gestes ou capacités] to be still eligible. If you can lift your tea cup alone, you will lose your allowance, even if you are in a rolling chair. Only deeply disabled people will be likely to obtain it ”deplores Lindsay Barlow, disability manager First. The government wants to make 5 billion pounds sterling (5.94 billion euros) in savings by 2030, with this reform.
A vote in the House of Commons must intervene in June to validate it. Unless Keir Starmer renounces it because of the large number of deputies, in his own ranks, who refuse to put it on and find that Downing Street went too far in the merger with the center, or even with the right, to try to counter the advance of the extreme right party Reform UK, now in mind in the polls.
You have 76.67% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
Source: Lemonde