The UK can “no longer claim to be a leader in disability rights” after a United Nations committee found that government policy has “undermined the human dignity” of disabled people, charities have said.
Delegates from the UK government faced the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) on Monday (18 March) over claims of “grave” and “systemic” violations of disabled people’s rights.
The Big Issue has reported on the committee’s arguments that disabled people in the UK are “demonised” by the government and face a “traumatising benefits system”. In some cases, it claimed, policy has led to deaths of disabled people.
Alexandra Gowlland, the deputy director of the Disability Unit in the Cabinet Office, said: “Our goal to reduce the disability employment gap remains. We will continue to galvanise action to ensure that we are ambitious about the employment of disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work.”
She added that the benefits system is “committed to transforming the benefits system for the future so it focuses on what people can do rather than what they cannot”.
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Rosemary Kayess, the chair of the UNCRPD, responded: “Reforms within social welfare benefits are premised on a notion that disabled people are undeserving and skiving off and defrauding the system. This has resulted in hate speech and hostility towards disabled people.”