Our first port of call was phoning his Tatton Conservative office and speaking to a woman called Jane Robertson. She was thoroughly unhelpful and told us as we weren’t members of the consistory Osborne would not participate in any interviews. We had the feeling Robertson wanted to end the call as quickly as possible.
We then phoned his agent, a lady called Hayley. At first she seemed quite sweet, even called us ‘love’ towards the start of the conversation. After asking Hayley if she could help us arrange an interview with Osborne she advised us to phone his secretary, who turns out to be Robertson! Figuring out we weren’t going to make much progress we told Hayley we were conducting a survey and asked her what she thought of the proposed cuts to the disability living allowance, which Osborne has backed. To say her mood changed is an understatement. Hayley told us she couldn’t make any comment about the situation as she was staff.
So, we asked her again.
And she quickly ended the call!
Trying to contact Osborne’s publicist was unsuccessful. We were told she wasn’t in the office and apparently she ‘floats’ from one location to the other.
Only one more port of call to try, Osborne’s own office at the House of Commons; however all we seem to be getting at the moment is a recorded message asking us to speak slowly after the tone.
We will try again later!
In the meantime allow us to give you a recap of what happened yesterday in parliament. Despite disability campaigners winning their bid from the House of Lords MPs overturned the defeats to change the proposed amendments to the welfare reform bill.
To ensure the government over-rule disability campaigners they are going to use a financial privilege rule so the House of Lords will be unable to send back the same amendments back to the Commons when the final bill is put forward.
The new disability allowance,(PIP – Personal Independence Payment) will come into place from 2013 and we are already concerned how assessments will be carried out. The proposal includes a ‘point system’ which we will cover in a forthcoming article. Included in the assessment are questions such as ‘Can the person undress his/hers upper body unaided’ and ‘Can the person undress his/hers lower body unaided’ and ‘Can the person bathe unaided’
The worryingly question we are asking ourselves is what exactly will this assessment involve and how degrading will it be to those who have to claim their disability allowance, which by the way is said to be cut by 20%.
We will keep you up to date, but for the time being let’s try to call Osborne’s office one more time at the House of Commons, it’s now 11.30am, surely there will be somebody in by now?...
Nope. There’s just some old woman asking us to leave our name and number and speak slowly after the beep. Tell you what, try for yourself on 020 7219 8214 and let us know how you get on. Good luck!
