When Did I Lose My Rights?

My friend asked me a question the other day. On Loose Women there was a debate over a man on benefits who had spent £250 on a spot the ball competition and won, both the cash prize and an expensive car. Apparently the debate was whether he should give back the money or not? I’m so out of touch with popular opinion that I couldn't even understand the question I was being asked. I was confused and then angry when my friend told me that the entire panel and most of the audience felt that this man should not have been able to have this prize.

I understand that by winning a large cash prize the man was no longer eligible for benefits and that is only fair, but I couldn't understand why he shouldn't be able to enter a competition or win. Apparently, it was felt that he shouldn't have been able to enter, because he was on benefits. Since the panel and all those virtuous audience members were working to fund his benefits they felt they could tell him how he could spend his benefits money.

I would like to come out here as a benefit claimant. I claim a certain amount of benefits because of my disability – some ESA and some DLA – but I also have a small pension. My pension comes from my late husband’s job at the Open University and is just enough to mean I pay income tax. I pay income tax at about the same rate that I get ESA. They offset each other. So, I guess I’m in a very unique position. I claim benefits and I pay tax. I just wondered when it was that benefit claimants lost all their rights? We seem to have come to a place where admitting to claiming money from the state, even if you are entitled to claim and legitimately disabled, is a dangerous thing.  On Saturday my friend and I were in a local department store, indulging in some retail therapy after some nasty spine injections. We were asked at the counter if we wanted a premier card for the store; a new credit and loyalty card they’d brought in. We politely declined and explained we were just indulging after clearing out the wardrobe on Ebay. They still pushed the point until we explained we didn't think we had enough income to qualify. She asked if we were on benefits and my friend actually hesitated before replying, because she didn't want to be judged. This is where the recent government and media rhetoric about benefits has gone too far.

If I get benefits does that mean someone else can judge me or tell me how to spend them? Yes, there are a certain amount of fraudsters out there, but the way the recession has been blamed on people like me is disgusting. The proportion of the welfare budget spent on disability benefits is small compared to pensions and the proportion of benefit fraud is also smaller than you would think. Last year I saw a headline in the Express that almost made my foam at the mouth: ‘Disability claimants given brand new BMWs’. Anyone who understands the Motability scheme knows that nobody is given anything; the DLA claimant pays a deposit and then surrenders their monthly benefit in order to hire a car along with insurance and maintenance. Sometimes the deposit is as much as £2000 for certain cars and I’m sure the BMW would have required this sort of deposit.  What people don’t know is that in order to have a lot of modifications such as hand controls, or wheelchair positions for driving, the claimant has to come up with even more money or wait for an application to go through the Motability charity.

Nothing comes for free where disability is concerned. My husband was given wheelchair vouchers totalling £600, when every wheelchair ever needed cost over £1000. He tried to work as long as possible so despite having a long list of drug requirements he was ineligible for free prescriptions as he didn’t claim a means tested benefit and had MS which isn't an exempt condition where prescriptions are concerned. When he gave up work because he was too sick to carry on, and got a pension worth half his monthly salary he was suddenly slammed with a care bill for over £700 per month; earned wages were exempt from care calculations, but pensions were fair game. When people talk to me about equipment, cars and money being given it is open season as far as I’m concerned – out comes the soap box and off I go!

In my opinion, people on benefits do not have to answer to anybody when spending their money. I don’t expect anyone to answer to me on how they spend their money. Yes of course there is the debate over people spending money on cigarettes, or drink when their children are being neglected but surely the issue there is child abuse or neglect not how they spend their money? Are we coming to the point where instead of benefits people will be given tokens so they have to spend them in certain stores? They would be banned from using them on things other ‘work hard and get on’ people find objectionable. This, for me, would be leaving the way open to those who object to disabled people living independently (how would we control their spending or the way they live?), driving cars that look like everyone else’s (surely they should all have invacars because they’re cheap and identifiable), and even having children (how will they look after them and what if they pass on their disability cooties?). I might object to the fact that the Queen hurried back from her duties to put some money on the Derby – what if she did win and should she give back her winnings considering she is funded by the state?

I do not defend people being on benefits for a lifestyle choice, but I’m not sure that there are many of those people out there, certainly not as many as the newspapers would have us believe. Even as I write this there has been another advert for a series on Channel 5 with the voice over - ‘welcome to the full-time job of living off the state’. We need to see this for what it is. Propaganda and TV producers wanting to create controversy and ratings; if they can get their program debated on The Wright Stuff tomorrow morning so much the better. Not all of us have the chances or the talent of some of the presenters on such shows as this and Loose Women mentioned earlier. I want people to think beyond the headlines and learn what it really is like to live on benefits. The man in the original story may well have been a gambling addict in which case he got lucky, this time. He might have decided to spend a week’s money on the competition because he was so sure he had the correct place and felt he could live on beans for a week. In the end, for me, it was his choice and his win. When we start taking away people’s choices we have become a society I don’t want to live in.