I'm aware you're an expert on this subject and of course you're quite right in all regards. I deliberately omitted to mention that A.A. existed before etc etc because it wasn't central to my main point that the LibDems can and did collude with doing the dirty on disabled people as well if given half a chance.
Oh absolutely but it is still not clear to me how much was the LibDems actually being in agreement and how much was them having to go along with it as the junior partner. I suspect quite a lot of the latter was going on to be honest. However given the choice between the Tories and either of the Lib Dems or Labour when it comes to disability benefits it isn't much of a choice in my view!!
Re your last sentence - I know a man younger than me, but of retirement age, who by all appearances has far fewer mobility issues than I do, and whom I happen to know had been getting Disabled Living Allowance pre retirement, then presumably PIP, and whose monthly sums from DWP are hundreds of pounds more than mine on that basis, which is irrational and, dare I say it, unfair. The problem is public ignorance, as in so many things. The number of people who say to me 'of course you must be entitled to more money, you need to look into it more' because they can't believe that an important part of the security blanket was whipped away without attendant publicity.
Absolutely. I presume the legislative intent was that these benefits are to help claimants with the "extra costs" of being disabled i.e. that they have needs in excess of someone without those health conditions/disabilities. But older people, in general, will have less mobility than someone of working age therefore it isn't an "extra cost" that they have to bear but a "fact of life". A somewhat similar concept still applies in Disability Living Allowance for children where you are, at least in part, comparing the child being claimed for to a child of a similar age without the health conditions (you can't get the Mobility component of DLA for a six year old just because they can't cross the road safely on their own, that isn't especially unusual. Your fourteen year old not being able to safely cross the road on the other hand...).
It goes back a long way this distinction. Mobility Allowance crops up in 1975 alongside Attendance Allowance but even then it was restricted to those under-65 (I'm not sure, therefore, if a woman whose pension age was of course lower could qualify despite having reached her state pension age as long as she was under-65!). It became part of Disability Living Allowance (and then PIP) so vanished as a separate benefit in the early 90s.
Perhaps in 1975 was life expectancy was much lower there was less expectation that pensioners would be fit and mobile for many years after reaching their pension age? But to have never been revisited by any government of any stripe in the intervening decades considering the number of years that someone reaching pension age now could, if they avoid ill health, could expect to be fit and mobile can be measured in decades feels deeply unfair.
Someone aged 66 who happens to develop say serious back problems meaning their mobility is ruined could never qualify for help with their new mobility needs despite many 66 year olds being as fit and mobile as people years younger and likely to remain so for many years more. Yet if their back trouble had developed twelve months previously when they were 65 they could have qualified for potentially £26.90 per week (Standard Mobility in PIP) or £71.00 per week (Enhanced Mobility) to help with the extra costs of having lost their mobility. They could also access the Motability Scheme, something that is blocked to pensioners as the qualifying criteria is Enhanced Mobility in PIP or High Rate Mobility in DLA.
Fair? Doesn't seem like it to me! But as you say the benefits system is shrouded in mystery and assumptions. Not helped of course by, in particular, Tory politicians and their friendly media outlets feeding a regular diet of how people are "living it large" (or similar) on benefits at
your expense. Balderdash of course but effective. It isn't until someone comes to rely on it that they discover the safety net has more holes in it than a nice piece of Swiss cheese. Indeed it's a conversation I've had more than once with an individual who has fallen on hard times "I worked all my life and paid my stamp but you telling me that this is all I can get?" "Yes" "But I can't afford to live on just that!" "..."
