Helping the disabled does not mean believing all they say

I WAS listening to the radio yesterday morning and - suddenly - found myself transported back in time and space to the Winter Palace, Margate, in the early December of 1975. The sharp voice that provoked this unwanted translation belonged to the Social Security Minister, Hugh Bayley. I had heard it all those years before, when I was a delegate from Manchester University to the conference of the National Union of Students, and Mr Bayley had been the NUS's vice-president for something or other.

Then, as now, Hugh had been put up to do a difficult defending job. It was left to him to argue the unpopular line that the British student movement should not put its full weight behind the legalisation of cannabis. This firm anti-drugs line was motivated by two considerations, one practical and the other ideological. In practical terms, it would be damaging to its role as a serious negotiating body - it was thought - were the NUS to be seen as a gang of spliff-rolling potheads. And, ideologically, the Stalinist element on the NUS executive, like their Russian friends, believed that alcohol was the only true socialist path to oblivion, and that cannabis was a petit bourgeois deviation.

So up gets Bayley and loyally commences his attack on the weed. Since there is nary a student in the hall who hasn't indulged at one time or another, opinion is running against him. Eight-foot joints are being rolled and waved, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers T-shirts are being displayed. And then Hugh brings the house down. "Marijuana," he declares impassionedly, "is a social disease!" Mayhem. Uproar. Hilarity. Hugh sits down, dejected.

Yesterday it was Minister Bayley's difficult job to defend the disability provisions of the new Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill. Seventy Labour MPs, including some loyalists, were said to be on the verge of rebellion, disability groups had walked out of consultations, fearsome commando groups of Hell's Wheelchairs were getting ready to chain themselves to ministers, then pour red paint over everyone. Shades of the traumatic single parents' revolt hovered over Westminster. Even once the vote was won, further trouble lurked in the Lords.

Bayley knows what I know, and what anyone who has worked for a pressure group knows. When I was president of the NUS, we held off the desire of the Government to replace the fabulously expensive and internationally unique system of student grants with loans. We used any argument that came to hand. A favourite was the "negative dowry" in which, we warned, betrothed ex-students would come to the nuptial bed with debt, and not gold. Our moral high ground was the argument that loans would seriously erode the entry of working-class kids into higher education.

We were wrong about that; but, in the context of a Government that wanted merely to cut money from higher education, it was perhaps a forgivable error. When the choice had to be made between increased access to universities on the one hand and maintaining student grants on the other, the same error would not have been so benign. The hard truth is that a system of loans for maintenance and tuition fees, with places for many more students, represents a major act of redistribution from the wealthy to the less well-off.

So I am careful when the disability organisations shout defiance at poor Mr Bayley. Not because all the disabled get a fair deal in Britain; they don't - there's an awful lot of prejudice and ignorance still around, not least at work. But because no disability group is ever going to admit that any money could usefully be saved in any area of spending on those classified as disabled. Indeed, a pressure group dealing with disability would think it a great success were the nation to spend half its entire budget on the disabled. That's how they work.

It is the Government's contention that too much money goes to those who are already sufficiently well-off and able to look after themselves, when it should be targeted at those more severely disabled and requiring help. Furthermore the Government believes that too many of those who are entirely dependent on benefits could in fact work, if motivated so to do. Mr Bayley and his colleagues are not planning, they say, to deprive current claimants of what they have, but will introduce these changes for new claimants.

I buy this overall proposition (without subscribing to all the details), but with one moan and one caveat. The moan is that maybe we could do without this row altogether, given that the last Budget unnecessarily cut one penny off the standard rate of income tax. Nevertheless it's hard to see why perfectly well-off people with disabilities (not all of whom require wheelchairs, guide dogs, etc.) should receive benefits that poorer people without disabilities do not get. Nor does it seem reasonable to tell employers and managers about all the wonderful things that disabled people can do, and yet suggest that - on the other hand - the same folk are not to be strongly encouraged to take on this employment.

But here's the caveat, and a big one it is too. Although the ranks of those claiming some form of disability benefit have been swelled alarmingly over the last few years, and although the disability threshold seems somehow to have been lowered, nevertheless a "pull yourself together, man" approach won't wash. I met a good friend yesterday who has become, over the years, severely disabled. He told me that it would be a mistake to see those disabled who could work and don't, as being analogous to the young unemployed. The youngsters have never worked, and require - above all - the simple experience of working to give them a start. A little bit of coercion may do the trick.

But it's different for the disabled. Even where the problem is stress or back pain, those who become disabled have probably suffered a collapse in confidence and esteem as a result of their disability. They may well have been insensitively treated at work and by friends. They can be incredibly anxious about losing benefit if they show any improvement, worried about finding themselves too ill to be positively employed and too well to carry on claiming. They need help.

So this is the question for Mr Bayley: Hugh, is there enough carrot with your stick? Is there sufficient help, advice and encouragement available to the disabled which can get them over that psychological barrier that so many have to cross before they can work again? I'm not talking here about the Incapacity Earnings Provision, or the Work Trials, which essentially deal with those who are already motivated; but about the advice, counselling and help that are available the moment that someone becomes disabled.

My advice to the reader, in the meantime, is to deal with the arguments of both Hugh and his barrackers very carefully. They are very committed, and he is - as ever - very loyal.