Workers Disabled By Work Soon To Have Right To Legal Aid Removed

CWU members working in the postal, telecoms, and financial services industries are simply one workplace accident away from becoming disabled. Dangerous dogs, climbing poles, and slips and falls are examples of the kind of risks that CWU members face when at work everyday.

Given the government’s attack on health and safety legislation, and categorising workplaces like docks as being a low risk environment; the risk of being killed or made disabled at work will increase dramatically.

However, the Government seems more concerned about removing the right to legal aid of those suffering the trauma of unemployment through becoming disabled due to a needless workplace accident, by denying them the right to legal aid, whilst at the same time pushing them into a Work Capability Assessment; with the near-guaranteed outcome of being removed from disability benefit and deemed as fit for work.

Currently legislation to minimise the ability of people to obtain legal aid is going though the legislative process, with amendments made to it by the House of Lords.

These important amendments limit the damage being done to the rights of disabled people to be eligible for legal aid by the Government’s proposals set out in the Legal Aid Bill.

Without legal aid, the disabled unemployed will have to find thousands of pounds to pay for any challenges they may need to make to being denied disability benefits and being wrongly assessed as being able to work.

If legal aid advice is removed, people with the highest level of need will be left to navigate their way through a system that requires nearly 9,000 pages of official guidance to get the support they rely on to lead their daily lives.

Such concern for the plight of disabled people being forced to either pay for legal advice and help in fighting for disability benefits and not being forced to do work they cant do because of their disability; that both the Lords and leading law firms are adamant that the Government’s actions are both inhuman and unjust.

The consequneces of disabled people losing benefits and not being able to afford legal advice and support range from destitution as housing benefits will also be cut at same time disbaility benefits, increased hospital admissions as a result of not being able to afford necessary home care support, medication and treatment.

Consequently campaign groups are asking those concerned about the Legal Aid Bill and it’s affects on the disabled needing legal support and advice, that an email your mp campaign has got underway.

One such campaigning organisation is Scope, a registered charity that supports disabled people and includes Cherie Booth QC Barrister and Alastair Stewart OBE ITV news presenter and journalist amongst their patrons.

Scope’s website provides details of case histories of several people whom without legal aid would never have been able to get justice and regain some quality to their lives. This includes the story of one man whose disability scooter was parked outside a friends shop and was subsequently reported as working by a member of the public, resulting in immediate removal of his benefits and mobility scooter.

You can read more on the Scope website here

It is also important to understand that the Government’s attack on disabled people is two pronged:

• face Work Capability Assessments every two years, with ATOS making decisions that result in the majority of people being told they are able to work despite medical advice and evidence to the contrary,
  
  
• losing their benefits which are required for them to live on and the removal of Legal Aid from those on this situation and requiring legal help to appeal.

The email campaign is designed to alert MPs to vote for the Lords amendments to the Legal Aid Bill in order to ensure disabled people do not have their ability to receive legal aid removed from them.

Finally, these words by Lady Brenda Hale, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom when giving the Sir Henry Hodge Memorial Lecture 2011: Equal Access To Justice In The Big Society says it all: "However, there is a well-known ironic saying, usually attributed to Lord Justice Mathew, that ‘in England, justice is open to all – like the Ritz’ "

You can join the campaign and email your MP here

Source: Scope / The Law Society / The Guardian

See also this editorial from The Guardian newspaper

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