Hundreds of disabled people took to the streets of Newcastle on Saturday 27 October and also held a vigil in Sunderland on the evening of Friday 26 October to protest against cuts to disability support.
Peter Bennetts, 56, who spoke at today’s rally said: “The examples used in the Government’s consultation on PIP imply that I could lose support because I can get to familiar places on my own, but when you can’t see there is no such thing as a ‘familiar journey’. It can change at any time because of things like travel disruption or street works. They also seem to think that over time it becomes easier and cheaper to live with sight loss. But this is just not true. I’ll always need extra help with everyday living and the price of that isn’t going down.”
Henri Murison, RNIB Regional Campaigns Officer said: “Disabled people in the North East are at a tipping point because the financial and human cost of cuts to benefits is far too high. Disabled people have already endured £9 billion worth of spending cuts nation-wide in this Parliament, and the Government has recently announced its intention to cut a further £10 billion from the welfare budget.
Cuts are already pushing many disabled people into poverty, ill health and isolation and we are calling on the Government to rule out further cuts to disability benefits and support in the next budget and spending review, and to ensure that they take action to make new benefits like Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit as fair as they can be for disabled people.”
The Hardest Hit 
Tremendous. I agree.
you’ll find that panorama have been gagged and will not in future be broadcasting anything to do with ATOS or any deaths resulting from their negligence
what about human rights free speach panorama ought to fight thuis for everyones sake even the panorama crewe might need some disability support one day
the people of the uk and government in general only see the sick and disabled as scroungers and on that basis which has always been the case in the uk you cant move forward and the death toll as high as it is with regards the sick and disabled and with them being told their fit for work and there not and die is very high approaching over 2000 members of this group at the last count
the bbc panorama team have told me that they cannot investigate are under strict instructions to not get involved so in reality the sick and disabled are stuffed and am sure the death toll will go higher and like the government and bbc wont in silence
If the French government started doing what our goverment are doing, there would be a national strike until the goverment backed down.
In Iceland, the government was sacked by the public.
Why don’t we Brits do something? A national strike would bring this “we don’t give a damn about the poor” government. Nothing they are doing adversely affects the rich, it only affects the poor, and proves that the Tories are just the same as they’ve always been – the rich man’s party. The libdems have proved to be completely spineless by not fighting Cameron on the cuts the poor and disabled are being forced to endure. If the government close all the tax loopholes, make the big companies pay the tax they are supposed to be paying, and stop borrowing huge amounts of money simply to give it away in foreign aid, (often to countries who hate the British anyway) the national debt would be reduced by a much larger amount and in a much shorter timescale than taking so much money off the poor and disabled. The cost of implementing the cuts, along with the cost of the high number of appeals means the savings being made by attacking the poor and disabled is a miniscule amount.
WILL THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS, I HOPE NOT.