A Fair Society?
Produced for the Campaign for a Fair Society, this report shows how government cuts in the UK target disabled people.
Author: Simon Duffy
The current UK Government aims to significantly reduce the level of public expenditure in the UK by an overall cut of £63.4 billion by 2015, a reduction of 10.8%. However, not everything is being cut. The NHS and Pensions are protected. No. 10 and No. 11 have increased their own budgets by over 240% and the level of cuts to other services varies considerably.
If we exclude the areas of growth and protected services there are in fact cuts of £75.2 billion. And of these cuts over 50% fall on just two areas, benefits and local government, despite the fact that together they make up only 26.8%of central government expenditure. Most people do not realise that local government’s primary function (over 60%) is to provide social care to children and adults.
In other words, the cuts are not fair but targeted, and they target people in poverty, disabled people and their families.
The government seems to have made no effort to understand the cumulative impact of its cuts on minority groups, especially those with the greatest needs. It has rejected calls for a ‘Cumulative Impact Assessment’ of the cuts despite the obvious fact that those with the most severe disabilities now face the combined impact of:
- Social care cuts
- Benefit cuts
- Housing cuts
- Regressive tax increases
For this reason the Centre for Welfare Reform, on behalf of the Campaign for a Fair Society, has written its own analysis: A fair society? How the cuts target disabled people.
Read and download the free pdf in your browser here.
The publisher is the Centre for Welfare Reform.
A Fair Society? © Simon Duffy 2013.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.
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- A Fair Society? PDF | 2.88MB