Letters: Disabled people live in constant fear we will lose our benefits – which we need to survive

Big Issue readers are critical of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) disability benefits system, but offer praise for our recent housing supplement.

Disabled people are afraid

It’s disgusting how the government treats disabled people. It seems Labour is no better than the Tories when it comes to this. We live in a constant fear we will lose our benefits, which we need to survive. Also to add to the money argument, I understand why there is a £6,000 cap to stop people having loads of money and claiming. However disabled people often have to pay for their own mobility aids and some wheelchairs can cost more than £6,000, so how are disabled people meant to save up to buy one without losing their benefits? How is that fair?

@Avani.tasma, Instagram 

Good migrations

There are two issues that Labour need to win on in 2029 to stop something similar to Donald Trump’s election win happening over here. Economy and immigration. The Tories lost in 2024 because they messed up both. All they had was a useless Rwanda plan – designed to appear to be doing something while keeping immigration high because they needed the economy to keep growing. This meant that landlords had more competition for rent and that hotels were compensated for losing paying customers by the government paying over the market rate for immigrants to use the rooms.

Reeves has promised growth, but if the way to get growth is high immigration, then Labour is toast. It’s all good to talk about the benefits of migration – and we are reliant on it – but when the social fabric is being pulled apart, and you’ve got migrants committing crimes or a story about a migrant doing something becomes a national sensation, it’s not going to go down well.

u/lizardk101, Reddit   

• Disabled people are being left out of the climate conversation
• Tory government ‘demonises’ disabled people who face ‘onerous’ benefits system, UN warns
• Disabled people are again missing out on extra cost of living support – it’s cruel and embarrassing

Look no further

Forget Labour’s manifesto platitudes, question the priorities in the King’s Speech and, definitely, wait and see if Rachel Reeve’s first budget heralds a pathway to genuinely affordable homes. If you want a blueprint for a solution to the UK’s housing crisis, look no further than Big Issue’s 24-page housing supplement [Issue 1639]. It recognises that housing is “the crisis of our times”, and promotes a number of possible solutions.

Labour has promised ‘big’: to build 1.5 million homes. But numbers on their own are not enough. What Labour has not explained in detail is how it will deliver all these new homes. Big Issue’s supplement throws down the gauntlet and suggests some alternative ways to address this decades-long problem.

Take Community-Led Housing (CLH), which gives local communities the power to build affordable homes. Big Issue Invest has supported a successful model of this strategy by investing in a community group that built a block of 36 homes in Lewisham by themselves. It’s small-scale but could be scaled up. 

Beyond new homes, Henrietta Blackmore’s suggestion of converting empty spaces is a sustainable alternative to new builds. Well over 7,000 commercial properties owned by councils in Britain have been vacant for over a year. It was heartening to read the report of a local charity, Embassy that has tackled rough sleeping by building 40 homes under Manchester’s railway arches. 

Like Eliza Filby, I am part of the generation that benefitted from the housing boom created by Thatcher’s property revolution. How to reverse the inequalities generated by ‘inheritocracy’ and the ever-spiralling property prices is beyond my economic abilities, but it is an issue that the government must tackle.

It must start by helping those in greatest need: the homeless. That requires building more affordable homes, particularly in the social housing stock. We should adopt an updated model of the council homes that were built throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

Mike Hobbins, Woking 

Bear with me

Many bits of gold in the 1640 issue. A shocking story of funeral poverty in The Dispatch; memorable words from James Cleverly about the benefits of a diverse population; the failure of government leaders summed up in a nutshell by Lord Bird; and much more. And three cheers for Paddington! 

Juliet Chaplin, Sutton  

First-time buyer

I had never bought a Big Issue until I encountered the disarmingly persuasive Frank McGucken in Sloane Square at the weekend and, when I opened the first page of my copy of the magazine at the back, was surprised (and delighted) to see that he himself was featured in an article with a picture of himself with Rishi Sunak. His story should be an inspiration to many, but his modesty had not allowed him to alert me to the My Pitch article. His positive enthusiasm brightened up my day and I will certainly look out for him on future visits there.

Lord Forbes, Aberdeenshire   

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