While at the conference their leader, Sir Ed Davey, stocked the fires of the hostile environment towards the sick and disabled, using tired old tropes and unsupported figures! See video
For istance, Sir Ed, sounding very right wing himself, regurgitated the "fact" that there is widespread fraud by those claiming PIP (Personal Independence Payments) while talking with a radio broadcaster see video
While fraud has seen an increase, from 0.0% to 0.4% which is approximately £1.2 billion, and is born out by the governments own 2025 figures. To put that in context, the welfare bill is £303.3 billion per year.
Further comparison shows that tax fraud in the UK figures were £48.8 billion a year, and known tax evasion was £0.7 billion.
So it would take a person on average wage in UK a huge 31,645 years to save up the value of PIP, or over 1.3 million years to cover the tax fraud and avoided!
Despite these facts, Davey said: “There’s a real suggestion in those numbers, by the way the Conservatives managed the system, that there’s quite a lot of fraud there"
The excellent DNS (Disability News Service - run by journalist and author John Pring) interviewed the Lib Dem Disability
spokesperson, Steve Darling MP, who told him told that far-right activists were launching similar attacks on disabled claimants using dubious figures on economic inactivity.
Darling said: “My real fear is that in our now Trumpian world, [the far right] don’t need the facts to add up to make outlandish claims.”
He also said it was disturbing how “the far right will just make up narratives for their own purposes".
During the interview with DNS, Darling "declined" to respond when asked Sir Ed's comments.
Not happy with joining the hostile environment on disabled people, Sir Ed Davey reached deep down inside the bag of right wing tropes, and pulled out the claim that it was "vital to reduce spending on social security", this despite the governments own data once again showing that spending is in effect stable as a share of GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
While Sir Ed's comments on PIP were particularly distressing, he used his main conference speech to attack Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage, invoking the demon of a “Trump-inspired country Farage wants us to become”.
The Liberal Democrates have not covered themselves in glory this week as far as the disabled community is concerned, it is with deep trepidation that we await the Labour conference in Liverpool.
From ensuring more children end up poverty than the Tories before them, to potentially exposing pensioners to make choice between heating and eating, and the shockingly handled creation of a two tier welfare state for those who are disabled in the future, many are dreading the Labour conference, and what horrors they will reveal they want to impose with no mandate to do so!
Fact Check Me;
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