Even with concessions, welfare reform cuts remain a threat to disabled people – but they’re not the only one, writes David Hilferty
Free. Confidential. Impartial. For over 85 years, those three principles have been the calling card of the Citizens Advice network in Scotland. Our advice is free. Always has been, always will be.
Following intense pressure from charities like us, the UK Government last week announced concessions to its proposed welfare cuts. In our view, these still fail to go anywhere near far enough. All they do is create a two-tier system: present and future. Cutting the income of any disabled people is incomprehensible, and the entire approach must be reversed.
Yet if the prospect of future cuts to essential support isn’t concerning enough, private commercial firms too are taking money away from disabled people. And this is happening right now, in plain sight.
In recent months, we have identified instances of private firms offering a ‘no win, no fee’ service to access social security payments. Commercialising a service that people may not always know is freely available.
Most recently, we’ve seen examples of this for Adult Disability Payment (ADP) – which replaces the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for working-age adults in Scotland.
Some of the activity is happening through sophisticated, targeted social media marketing. People are being charged up to £400 plus VAT per successful application, with as much as a 10% deduction from their ongoing monthly payments.
Over the course of a multi-year award, this could earn the private firm thousands of pounds – clearly a lucrative if thoroughly unethical approach.
For us, this is a pernicious practice – profiteering from people who need support most. It is the very worst kind of innovation and opportunism, clearly undermining the policy intent of these payments to provide vital financial support to those who need it most.
Expert, impartial and confidential advice should be free of charge to everyone who needs it in Scotland. And that is what we in the CAB network provide.
If the advice sector was the health service, we would be accident and emergency.
Because while our advice and information is for everyone – somewhat naturally demand is greatest where need and crisis is most acute and urgent.
Like no one else, the Citizens Advice network supports people who are experiencing most harm.
And so people are presenting with ever more challenging circumstances, usually at a point of crisis where they have nowhere left to turn. Our essential frontline service provides a lifeline to over 190,000 people in Scotland every year.
We are so very often the last door open for people who are out of options and facing unimaginable difficulty – frequently acting as a backstop for failure everywhere else, from social security to energy markets.
We know ours is advice that changes lives because people tell us that.
During the first three months of this year alone, our advisers secured ADP Daily Living entitlements worth £6,659,046, mostly upon initial application.
In simple terms, what does that mean?
Well, it means securing the right outcome, first time-round for people who then get the essential support they need.
As we wrote here last week, day-to-day. essential living already costs more when you have less.
It shouldn’t cost you anything to access that kind of expert advice.
David Hilferty is director of impact at Citizens Advice Scotland.
This column first appeared in The Herald.
