Watching Stephen Crabb and Labour battle over the cuts to disability benefits in the House of Commons on Monday, one thing was striking: the lack of disabled people in the room. As both party leaders and secretaries of work and pensions spoke, and as backbench MPs got up to ask questions, it struck me over and over: none of them had a visible disability.
That’s one of those things that’s so normalised your brain often forgets to notice it, in the same way you can use a wheelchair every day but it takes a step in a restaurant to remind you that you’re not viewed as an equal.
With each mention in the Commons of “disabled people” – what we need, what we feel, what we want – the scene felt more and more patronising. There is something deeply distasteful about having a room of non-disabled politicians casting judgment on how to live with a disability, a fact that is becoming ever clearer as disability cuts receive more attention.
Read The Guardian column in full here.
Dr. Frances Ryan 