Rishi Sunak’s autumn statement to push benefit claimants

Targeting the sick and disabled on the assumption that they are all scroungers is heinous. We cannot rule out that there might be a few swinging the lead but they are going to be very few simply because it is not easy to do. A medically qualified doctor has to declare you unfit for work, and you also have to get past the DWP medical process. And even if you have either an incurable or progressive condition, and it is never going to get any better but only worse, you still have to jump through the same hoops every year. So most of those being targeted will be the genuinely sick or disabled, who are being caused enough stress already

I myself have a progressive condition but intend to work for as long as I can, until state pension age if possible, to avoid the nightmare of the out of work benefits system which would be certain to make my mental health a lot worse. But state pension is 9 years away and my condition is highly likely to worsen before then. So this ill thought out malice is a potential risk to me in the future.

The vast majority of people on out of work sickness benefits either have serious mental or physical health conditions,

Take mental health. Some conditions can be treated with medication but are essentially incurable, eg paranoid schizophrenia. Others such as clinical depression or acute anxiety can be either overcome or greatly diminished by the right combination of meds and counselling. But the sufferer from these latter conditions needs to have as little excess stress as possible in order for their condition to be improved over time by the right interventions, so that when deemed ready they can get back into the work place.

I know something of what I speak from personal experience. 30 years ago I spiralled down into a state of clinical depression, during which I attempted to kill myself. As I overcame the worst of that with medical and psychological intervention, my condition morphed into a rather severe anxiety disorder with depressive episodes thrown in. I was on long term sick for several years but sought out help and got my head back together to the point where I could re-enter the workforce. I had the mental space to do this because aside from an annual assessment with a trained professional every year, I was under no pressure from the DWP to find work at all. Until I was ready and capable of holding down a job.

This government appears to exist in an alternate reality invented by the Daily Mail, where all these disabled people are in fact scroungers living the life of riley and who just need a good kick up the backside. A collision with reality seems not to have happened to them in this area.

Let me tell you about the state I was in when clinically depressed. Much of the time I just felt intense mental numbness where I felt emotionally flat and was incapable of focussing my thoughts upon anything very much. And when I did feel anything it tended to be intense sadness with me crying all day, along with thoughts of utter hopelessness and worthlessness and a feeling that I didnt want to live anymore. You feel weighed down by an intense blanket of overwhelming lethargy, doing anything at all - even getting up and going to the toilet - requiring what seems like utterly exhausting effort. In that state you barely eat, you dont wash, you dont get dressed, it is all just too much overwhelming effort.

Now the government seems to think that people like that are scroungers who need to be made to attend jobcentre appointments, prove they are looking for work, be threatened with draconian sanctions if they dont or cant, when they cannot even find the energy to eat or wash. Had what the government intends been inflicted on me at that time, I would never have been able to recover. I would have been psychologically incapable of complying with their conditions, been sent threatening letters, probably got my benefits stopped. Without a shadow of a doubt it would have tipped me over the edge and I wouldnt be here today, just another suicide statistic. Thats the reality for mental health sufferers in crisis, the sort of people the government think should be pressured and threatened and harassed into situations they are incapable of. These plans will result in many more sufferers killing themselves when they could be given the space and encouragement to recover.

And take paranoid schizophrenics. These cannot be cured and have to be medicated to control the symptoms which include intensely paranoid thoughts and voices in their heads telling them to do things, sometimes to harm themselves or others. The more stress such sufferers are put under the less effective their meds are at controlling their symptoms. And this is likely to result in more of them harming themselves or being a danger to others. So more people taking their own lives or perhaps even the lives of others, pushed over the brink by threats and harassment they are psychologically not stable enough to deal with. Because they are just scroungers after all.

And take physical disabilities. Someone who can barely walk should be able to work from home, the pitiful excuse for thinking goes. But I know people who work from home. Before they began their jobs they invariably had to have weeks if not months of training at the office, which anyone who can barely walk would seriously struggle to do. And to be a secure bet working from home to a potential employer you need to be in a relatively secure housing situation where installation of all that is needed for you to work from home is not going to be a problem. This very much is going to be a problem for many living in the private rental sector in overcrowded housing. And piling on intense pressure and threats and asking the impossible, all under the pejorative assumption that you are a low life scrounger, can not only worsen the mental health of mental health sufferers, it can cause mental health issues for people who previously never had any.

The policies as mooted seem utterly ill thought out and vindictively cruel, based on a pejorative assumption that is mostly baseless. And clearly signposts what utter scum are now running the country.