When I first heard about the pending cuts to the Personal Independent Payment, a form of benefit that helps people with the cost of being disabled, I could barely breathe.
As I watched Liz Kendall, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, lay out the removal of £5billion a year from the welfare system, anxiety swelled, filling every part of my body.
When Kendall was pressed for details, as millions of us felt panic set in, she told us to wait for the Spring Statement, which was delivered by Rachel Reeves on Wednesday.
Despite the Chancellor confirming even more cuts to social security, there is still no certainty on how my own benefits will be affected.
The DWP are yet to contact me, but on average PIP claimants are expected to lose an average of £4,500 a year, with hundreds of thousands pushed into poverty.
But these aren’t just statistics, or numbers on a page. This is about real people. Real people like me and my family.
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The waiting is painful and has flared up every medical condition I have, both mental and physical.
I’m scared that my daughter and I will be plunged into poverty when we’re barely staying above the breadline as is. Many disabled people are.
I’d only just gone through a reassessment, an examination to determine the level of support I receive, which culminated early this year.
Reassessment is something I have to do typically every three to four years, and it took nine months, start to finish this time around. Changes may make it harder to pass these assessments, and will definitely cause me more anxiety.
During the assessment period, my stress levels are consistently high – sometimes lasting for a whole month or two. I’m usually unable to work until I have recovered. So much for the Government’s moral mission to get people back into employment.
I have a number of diagnoses, and my main symptoms are stiffness, chronic pain, reduced dexterity, subluxations, back pain, severe migraines, extreme fatigue, low and erratic moods, emotional instability and impulsivity.
As you can imagine, this makes work tricky, and this is largely why I made the decision to be self-employed.
I cannot commit to shifts due to the unpredictable nature of my symptoms, and cannot do full-time hours.
It’s part of the cost of being disabled, something PIP is designed to address.
If my PIP is cut, it won’t incentivise me to work more as the government is claiming.
I can’t be incentivised out of having the conditions that I suffer from.
And the stress of falling behind on debt payments, falling behind on bills, and not knowing how we’ll make ends meet will flare up my medical conditions and leave me with even less capability for work than I currently have.
My partner will also have to perform more care duties, leaving him able to work less hours and therefore worsening our financial situation even more.
It seems this isn’t something the Government has considered.
It is important to remember that, for all the talk of work, PIP isn’t an unemployment benefit.
It helps people with the extra cost of being disabled.
For me, this extra cost is typically through increased heating bills, accessible housing, pre-prepared food, heavy reliance on my car, and charges for both NHS and private prescriptions.
I also use my PIP for things that keep my symptoms manageable enough to be able to work, such as the gym and various therapies that aren’t available on the NHS.
Instead of targeting disabled people, the Government should work to improve the amount and quality of accessible jobs.
If they really wanted us to work more, they would make it easier.
Remote working is getting rarer, and part-time jobs are very in demand and thus hard to come by.
Recent analysis found that of the 95,000 jobs on the DWP website, only around 560 are fully remote.
Everything seems so bleak, and Labour’s Spring Statement certainly does feel like austerity all over again.
And that policy was linked to over 50,000 deaths.
Instead of working to expand austerity, Rachel Reeves should be trying to reverse it.
Because when disabled campaigners are on the streets saying that cuts kill, they mean it quite literally.
The last thing that disabled people like me need is less money, less support, and more stress.
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So we are not being dramatic, as some have implied – we are not dealing, as one minister said, with ‘pocket money’.
And we are not going to be incentivised into work.
As disabled people, we are quite simply terrified.
And with good reason.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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