As a lifetime Labour supporter, and until recently a Labour Party member for over 40 years, I am disgusted with the current administration's intended policy of cutting financial support to disabled people. How can this possibly be justified by a party that was founded to improve the lives of the impoverished and disadvantaged? Let's be clear, the main aim of this policy is NOT to help disabled people into work but to cut spending. This is going to have a massive impact upon a large number of people who are already leading lives that are immensely challenging. Even those who end up not losing support will nevertheless be in a state of extreme anxiety and fear for the next year or so until they know their status under the new rules. As if they didn't already have enough to cope with.

People on benefits have become easy targets for cuts ever since George Osborne's assertions, backed up by the likes of the Daily Mail and Telegraph, of welfare claimants opting for a lifestyle. This was a blatant lie aimed at the most disadvantaged and powerless people in the UK. It is a nightmare to claim benefits and particularly so for disabled people who need extra support. Even the UN has on numerous occasions been highly critical of the UK government's behaviour toward welfare claimants. In 2018, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston said of the UK that "ideological" cuts to public services and welfare since 2010 have led to "tragic consequences". There have been several subsequent communiqués all echoing this criticism.

My 28 Yr old granddaughter is one of those whose life will be blighted by this policy. She has a long term condition which means she easily becomes very tired, to the point of complete exhaustion. She has other conditions and was first awarded a Personal Independence Payment, or PIP, when she was 19. Within a few years she was diagnosed with a more debilitating and long-term condition. Subsequently, when her PIP was reassessed, and after a 30 minute interview, she had her PIP withdrawn. The letter on her recently diagnosed condition and its implications, written by her consultant who had been a specialist in that area for at least 30 years, was completely ignored. The subsequent report written by the interviewer was inaccurate and gave a deliberately false impression of her problems. Her mother had to struggle for almost 9 months to get this overturned. At that point the seriousness of her condition was recognised and her PIP was reinstated at an enhanced rate. The worry over those few months, and the emotional exhaustion of dealing with an indifferent bureaucracy, was a cause of great emotional distress. Worst of all, it was totally unnecessary. That's how it works, the system is set up in a way that deters people from accessing the help they need. It is truly wicked.

Despite all of these challenges, for over 5 years my granddaughter has been living a more-or-less independent life in London. She works for around 25 hours per week which is all she is physically capable of doing. In itself this would not be sufficient but with her PIP she manages a life of sorts. She has shown incredible resilience and fortitude in maintaining her independent life and I am extremely proud of her. All of this is now at stake because of the callous and cruel assault by this government on disabled people. Under the new rules just published she would lose a significant amount, if not all, of her PIP which would mean her having to give up her job, her independence, and her hopes of a career. It would lead to her being forced to return home to Devon where her chances of further employment is nil. This cannot possibly be justified and is unforgivable.

If Rachel Reeves wants to balance her budget according to her arbitrarily self-imposed rules, even though there is no need, there are many ways this can be done by taking the money from those with the broadest shoulders economically speaking, that is the wealthy. The choice this government has made shows without a doubt whose side they are on and it's certainly not ordinary folk.

Robin Horan

South Brent

I was a river boat man back in the day, when big ships up river found their way

to land at Totnes at the Baltic Wharf, before the town gradually morphed into an old hippie colony.

And we had a proper navy back then, ready to defend the nation— just like Nelson would’ve. It wasn’t about career paths, as it is today.

The shipyard built lightships and a tug or two, and the council had guts, even if they were in on a dodgy deal or two.

The river wasn’t anywhere near as clean as it is today, but us kids still swam in it, the same as always.

And we didn’t have enthusiastic outsiders trying to turn us into what we’re not, and everybody was broke, so we all just shared what we got.

And there wasn’t any motorway, so you didn’t have gormless idiots in Range Rovers driving around all day trying to park.

The ferries were a bit ropey, but ever so cheap. They wouldn’t pay overtime, but the machines went away at 10 o’clock at Regatta— after which, what you took, you could keep.

The council chambers were where they debated the business at hand, not on street corners or in the pubs. Everything was open— not in any way underhand.

There weren’t parking attendants sneaking around dressed in black, and Devon County didn’t just take our money and spend it on ‘statement kids’— they gave an awful lot back.

It wouldn’t take two years to build a wall to the castle. If it collapsed, they’d have started rebuilding that very same day.

Scaffolders didn’t do as they pleased, parking where they liked, and it was up to you if you wore a helmet on your motorbike.

We had a cottage hospital— one we townsfolk paid for brick by brick. It wasn’t closed down by overpaid, well-dressed Torbay clipboard hicks.

And if you needed to die, you could die in peace with a river view— not have social services see what you were worth, or care homes asset-strip you as you were dying.

There weren’t so many people on the payroll back then, and it’s really questionable if we actually need all of them.

There weren’t chubby, ruddy-faced fellows in day-glo tabards, industrial boots, and hard hats, but the roads got swept and the bins got emptied— absolutely always, as a matter of fact.

If you were posh, you played tennis at the Naval College courts. The town was a proper harbour and sea port, not full of Airbnbs, homeless young people, and nothing more than a holiday resort.

And they didn’t write in to tell you to do more, when you’d already done so all your life— until your hands didn’t work, your knees didn’t work, and the council toilet door flew open in the wind for five years or more.

I was 69 then. Now I’m 74.

Poem by Kevin Pyne