Spoonless Activists

Location: UK
Deadline: 17th Feb 2017
Time estimate: 2 hours?

The Green Paper on Work and Health will form the core of future government policy towards disabled people and those in ill-health, especially those of us unable to work. As you might imagine from a Green Paper that brings together Jeremy 'Privatise the NHS' Hunt's Department of Health and Damien 'IDS Mk II' Green's Department of Work and Pensions, it is more than a little problematical, starting from the whole idea that to be healthy you need to be in work. Other highlights including extending conditionality to the ESA Support Group, i.e. forcing those furthest from the labour market, including people with terminal illnesses, to engage in 'work related activity' or potentially face sanctions.

There is a government consultation on the Green Paper, with responses required by 11:45pm (!?!) on 17th February 2017.

Details of the Green Paper, in multiple formats, including signed, spoken word and Easy Read, with Braille available on request, can be found here, with details on the consultation available here.  However, it appears it is only possible to respond to the consultation online and the only available format it is presented in is written English/HTML, which really is a particularly poor example to set.

If you intend responding I would suggest copying the questions into a Word, or similar, document and preparing your answers offline, then cutting and pasting them into the web-form when done.

Catherine Hale has some good thoughts on the implications of the Green Paper when viewed from the perspective of our human rights as disabled people: A Rights Based Response.