We Stand for World Socialism

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There is great confusion in the world today over the question of what is socialism. Our aim in the Socialist Party is to try to clear this up.



While Labour politicians talked about socialism, in practice they carried on running capitalism. They did introduce certain reforms which ameliorated the effects of some of the worst features of capitalism in the spheres of health, housing and family support. Collectively, these became known as the ‘Welfare State’ – but they were not socialism. The essential feature of capitalism, that very thing which makes the system one of exploitation and robbery of the mass of wage workers by the ruling class of capitalists, namely the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, this remained untouched.  That did not stop the ruling class from denouncing Labour governments as ‘socialists’ or ‘communists’ at every opportunity. They made the most of their control of the media and almost all sources of information to imprint this ‘big lie’ on people’s minds.



 The Socialist Party exposes the whole machinery of capitalist exploitation of the working-class. The Socialist Party does not oppose supporting reforms under capitalism. What we do not embrace reformism attempting to build support by allying with openly class collaborationist parties. Our generation is living through a fundamental transformation of society in which international capitalism must be  displaced by socialism if civilisation is to thrive.



Socialism must involve the total transformation of social relations. This will mean:

1. The abolition of the private ownership of the means of production.
2. Elimination of competition and production for exchange value and its replacement by democratic planning and production for use.
3. Workers’ and people’s management of the economy and society.
4. The institutionalisation of mass forms of democracy, freedom of association and criticism. Progressive elimination of differences between manual and mental labour, town and country, men and women and between different races.
5.The abolition of wage labour.
6. The elimination of classes.
7. The disappearance of the state.
8. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
We stand for an end to the oppression and exploitation of man by man. We live in a world torn by crises and wars. We live in a society which puts a price tag on everything. Our generation is increasingly disillusioned. We seek new paths, new roads forward. We search for social change. The world can be changed. For our generation and for humanity it must be changed. As socialists we believe that this social ferment must be harnessed to the great task of transforming this society—of building a new world. We stand for a world which can eliminate poverty and hunger and war; a world in which freedom is more than a word in a textbook; a world in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the producers themselves and the wealth of mankind are available to all. We stand with the oppressed, with all those who struggle for a better world. Above all, we declare our full solidarity with our fellow-workers. Around the world humanity is saying “Enough” and is beginning to move. Though our lives and conditions be different; though we live in different parts of the world; though our struggles take different forms; ours is a common goal—an end to the oppression and exploitation of man by man. What democratic rights we have were not handed to us on a silver platter—they were won in struggle. For most working people democracy remains a word without meaning. We are cut off from the ability to make decisions affecting our own lives. The giant corporations determine all the key questions. What does democracy mean to those deprived of his or her heritage and birthright? Or to the worker whose strike is broken by the corporate controlled courts and police forces? Or to non-whites faced with racism? Or to the many who live in poverty, denied the social power to escape it? Or to women denied by law the right to control their bodies. Behind the facade of parliamentary democracy lies the fact of a fundamentally undemocratic distribution of power that is inherent in capitalism. The Socialist Party works to extend democracy to all areas of life.
How can the world be changed? Certainly no elite will serve the task. We do not want to replace one group of masters with another. Nor do we want the patronising assistance of those whose real interests lie with the present system. We must look to those whose interests lie in change—to the working people, the people who work in the factories and offices of our society. They built the society—and they too are cut off from power and progress by the tiny minority that owns the wealth. The bosses need the working people—but the workers don’t need the bosses. Despite the relative complacency of the working class, it is clear that their very life situation forces them to come repeatedly into conflict with the system. They find themselves in daily conflict with the employers in the struggle for decent wages and security. It is the people, when they see the need for real social change and are armed with socialist ideas, that will build world socialism.

Those who doubt that socialism would ever come about are challenged today by the existence of the world’s peoples who are clearly on the road to the most thoroughgoing social change in history. A new world can be created—a world which will put people before money, which will create a participatory democracy every level. The potential of mankind virtually limitless, if it is freed from economic and social oppression. People everywhere are beginning to break from the conservatism of the old order. New movements are being formed, new directions are being tried. A new generation faces the task of finding the means to take up the struggle which the old movements have failed to carry—to participate in the international movement for socialism. We are part of the world community of socialists. We have no illusions that the way will be easy, no visions of quick success. But the future belongs to humanity and socialism.




The Coming Catastrophe

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A report, which took the form of a survey of 222 leading scientists from 52 countries, conducted by the international sustainability network Future Earth, found that 

world is facing a series of interlinked emergencies that are threatening the existence of humans, because the sum of the effects of the crises is much greater than their individual impacts, according to a new global study.

Climate breakdown and extreme weather, species loss, water scarcity and a food production crisis are all serious in themselves, but the combination of all five together is amplifying the risks of each, creating a perfect storm that threatens to engulf humanity unless swift action is taken.

The links among the crises are clear in many cases, but the methods the world has chosen to try to solve them do not take account of these connecting factors. For instance, extreme heatwaves can add to global heating, because they release vast amounts of stored carbon from affected ecosystems, in a feedback loop. It has been seen clearly in the Australian bushfires, which are already contributing significantly to the store of carbon in the atmosphere.

The links do not stop there: as the heatwaves damage natural ecosystems, killing off wildlife and flora, they also lead to greater water scarcity, and in turn damage agriculture. These combined effects exacerbate the harm done to people struggling with food and water shortages, in a vicious cycle.

Faced with these crises in nature individually, it could be possible to fix the problems causing them. But confronted with multiple interlinked emergencies that in combination amplify one another’s impacts, people are facing unprecedented dangers and many communities cannot cope.



Future Earth, found that the responses to these emergencies by governments, civil society, business and institutions did not recognise their interlinked nature. Trying to solve the problems individually, without taking account of the “cascading” impacts, was likely to be ineffective, the scientists said.



More than a third of the scientists surveyed said the five crisis types would worsen one another “in ways that might cascade to create global systemic collapse”.



While the risks are amplified when they are connected, so too are the solutions, however. Whenever action is taken to remedy environmental problems, the benefits also cascade: for instance, nurturing wildlife and flora in a wetland can also reduce water pollution and soil erosion, and protect crops against storm damage, alleviating water scarcity and allowing for more food production.



“Despite the ubiquity of connections [between these looming crises] many scientists and policymakers are embedded in institutions that are used to thinking and acting on isolated risks, one at a time,” the report says. “This needs to change, to thinking about risks as connected.”
The authors of the report, “call on the world’s academics, business leaders and policymakers to pay urgent attention to these five global risks, and to ensure they are treated as interacting systems, rather than addressed one at a time in isolation.”



The report also warned of social problems that scientists identified as potential major risks for the future. These included the rise of populism and fake news, trends in migration and the rise of artificial intelligence.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/06/humanity-under-threat-perfect-storm-crises-study-environment




Poor UK

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The proportion of people with a job who live in poverty went up for the third consecutive year in 2018 to a record high, according to a report that shows rising levels of employment have failed to translate into higher living standards.



The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said while paid employment reduces the risk of poverty, about 56% of people living in poverty were also in a working household in 2018, compared with 39% 20 years ago.



Seven in 10 children in poverty are now in a working family, the charity’s annual UK poverty report found.



Single-parent families have been the worst affected by the trend of wages falling behind living costs, it added. Working single parents accounted for three in 10 households in poverty in 2018, compared with two in 10 in 2011.

The JRF’s executive director, Claire Ainsley, said  it was an indictment of recent government policy that the number of people in poverty across the whole workforce jumped from 9.9% in 1998 to 12.7% in 2018.



Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, said: “The government must crack down on business models based on poverty pay and insecure jobs. Zero-hour contracts should be banned and the minimum wage must go up to at least £10 an hour right away.”



Approximately 14 million people are in poverty in the UK – more than one in five of the population, including 4 million children and 2 million pensioners, up by 400,000 and 300,000 respectively over the past five years.



A family is classified as being in poverty if it has an income of less than 60% of the median income for their family type, after housing costs. A family’s income includes earnings from employment, self-employment, state benefits and inheritances.



The report said people were more likely to be in poverty if they lived in certain parts of the UK, in a family where there is a disabled person or a carer, if they work in the hospitality or retail sector, or if they live in rented housing.



The worst-hit regions were London, the north of England, the Midlands and Wales, while the lowest poverty rates were found in the south of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the JRF said.
The charity was especially concerned about the rise in young people living with their parents, who in a previous era would have started to buy a house and start a family of their own, which it named “concealed households”.



Twenty years ago, 20% (2.4 million) of 20- to 34-year-olds lived with a parent or guardian. That proportion rose to 30% in 2018, affecting 3.9 million people, the JRF found.



The report describes in-work poverty as a “critical issue for our economy” and calls for action to reduce job insecurity, lower housing costs and increase earnings for low-paid workers.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/07/uk-live-poverty-charity-joseph-rowntree-foundation


Conservation for who?

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Investigators sent to northern Congo by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to assess allegations of human rights abuses gathered “credible” evidence from different sources that hunter-gatherer Baka tribespeople living close to a proposed national park had been subjected to violence and physical abuse from the guards over years. Armed ecoguards partly funded by the conservation group WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of Congo beat up and intimidated hundreds of Baka pygmies living deep in the rainforests.



 Stephen Corry, the director of tribal defence NGO Survival International, said: “This UNDP report is a devastating indictment which should spell the end of WWF’s model of ‘fortress conservation’ which has caused so much damage to people and the environment throughout Africa.



The allegations included Baka tribespeople being beaten by the ecoguards, the criminalisation and illegal imprisonment of Baka men, summary evictions from the forest, the burning and destruction of property, and the confiscation of food. The UNDP’s social and environmental compliance unit heard how the ecoguards allegedly treated the Baka men as “sub-human” and humiliated some Baka women by forcing them to take off their clothes and “be like naked children”.



The report says: “These beatings occur when the Baka are in their camps along the road as well as when they are in the forest. They affect men, women and children. Other reports refer to ecoguards pointing a gun at one Baka to force him to beat another and guards taking away the machetes of the Baka, then beating them with those machetes.



“There are reports of Baka men having been taken to prison and of torture and rape inside prison. The widow of one Baka man spoke about her husband being so ill-treated in prison that he died shortly after his release. He had been transported to the prison in a WWF-marked vehicle.”

The draft report adds: “The violence and threats are leading to trauma and suffering in the Baka communities. It is also preventing the Baka from pursuing their customary livelihoods, which in turn is contributing to their further marginalisation and impoverishment.” The report adds: “Baka men find they can no longer go into the forest to obtain honey. They fear that they are no longer able to trap small animals without running the risk of being severely punished by the ecoguards. There are numerous reports of Baka caught in the forest being beaten.”



The UNDP acted after it received appeals from the Baka in 2018. One, signed by people in Mbaye village, said: “They ban us from going to the forest. If we make camps in the forest the ecoguards burn them down. Many Baka are dead today. Children are getting thinner. We are already finished off with the lack of forest medicines. We tried to tell our difficulties to the WWF but they do not accept them. They just tell us we cannot go to the forest.”



Local Congolese WWF officials interviewed by the UNDP team “acknowledged the evidence of abuse against the Baku” by the guards, says the report. “Such occurrences were presented as isolated incidents due to the existence of a few bad apples among the ecoguards in what was otherwise a successful operation. A WWF staff member … explained that these incidences were occurring because of the psychological ramifications of putting someone in a uniform and giving him a gun, which for some men represents a licence to commit abuse.”



he $21.4m flagship Tridom 11 project in northern Congo set up in 2017 with money from the WWF, UNDP, the European commission, US and Congolese governments and the Global Environment Facility, as well as logging and palm oil conglomerates, includes as its centrepiece a 1,456 sq km area of forest known as Messok Dja. This global biodiversity hotspot is rich in wildlife, including elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees, and has been lived in and used for the hunting of small game by the semi-nomadic Baka tribes for millennia.



Investigators  identified multiple failures  to adhere to human rights policies and standards, and said little consideration had been given to the impact of the project on the Baka peoples. 

Not only were communities given little information that their customary land was to be turned into a protected area, but funders had assumed that the conservation project would bring environmental and social benefits, says the report.
Investigators also said they found no evidence that the UNDP had taken into account the risk of co-financing the project with palm oil and logging companies whose work by its nature threatens large-scale biodiversity loss.
“Logging, palm oil and tourism companies, as well as conservation NGOs are working together to steal Baka land. All the relevant UN policies and laws regarding respect for indigenous peoples and human rights were ignored from the beginning,” Stephen Corry explained.

The report strongly criticises the way conservation is practised in central Africa. “The goal of establishing Messok Dja as a protected area was pursued by following the established patterns of conservation projects in the Congo Basin, which largely exclude indigenous peoples and treat them as threats rather than partners,” it says.

The international NGO Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) found that WWF had only consulted the Baka communities likely to be affected by the park seven years after the idea had been conceived and long after discussions with government and logging companies had begun.

“By then it was far too late in the process. Information provided to communities has been incomplete and provided late,” the FPP report said.



The Socialist Standard carried an article some years back on this topic



https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2015/2010s/no-1334-october-2015/material-world-exiled-gardens-eden/

We stand for socialism!

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The Socialist Party stands with the oppressed, with all those who struggle for a better world. Around the world humanity is saying “Enough.“ Those who doubt that socialism would ever come about, are challenged today by its continued prevalence. The world’s peoples are still on the road to the most thoroughgoing social change in history.



Capitalism involves a restless search for profit by a class prepared to mobilise all means to pursue its ends and willing to elaborate all manner of rationales for its activities. This capitalist system offers unemployment, hunger, homelessness, welfare cuts, epidemics and the plague of drugs. We face two choices – either accept destruction and murder or set out to overturn this system. Technology is powerful enough to end hunger, homelessness and all want – but only if it is seized from the exploiters and organized in the interests of those this system has discarded. Though our lives and conditions be different; though we live in different parts of the world; though our struggles take different forms; ours is a common goal—an end to the exploitation of man by man. Only when we have economic democracy, when production is planned for use and not for profit, when the right of all to share in the abundance of our country is established – only then will democracy be truly established. A new world to be created—a world which will create a participatory democracy every level. The potential of mankind virtually limitless, if it is freed from economic and social oppression. 



The Socialist Party was formed to serve these aims. As a democratic and organisationally independent movement, we are part of the world community of socialists. We have no illusions that the way will be easy, no visions of quick success. But the future belongs to humanity and socialism. Only socialism will create a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, a world without war, without master and slave. Humanity’s primary duty will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, joblessness, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life.



In socialism, these instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth. In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. The preoccupation of socialism will be to assist in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world. In abolishing classes, class government and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known, truly representing the majority of the population. A citizen of a socialist society will look back upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel dictatorships as we now look back upon the dawn of written history. A socialist world will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people. Socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people. Socialism will eliminate illiteracy, which is one of the hallmarks of capitalism, and cease to regard schools primarily as institutions to produce skilled labour to help operate the profit economy. Socialism will create a system of health CARE in which the needs of the people and the improvement of the human race would be the paramount consideration,



Above all, socialism will provide jobs for all. But this will be work without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but the utilisation of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. The modern world already contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All about us we observe gigantic industrial establishments containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Man has developed a marvellous technology. The discovery and control of atomic energy has not only made it more possible for man to control his natural and social environment to create a fruitful life of abundance, but has made it imperative. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry. The fruits of their intelligence, learning arid research become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the labours of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.


Spanish Poverty

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Internas (live-in maids) or carers in Spain are underpaid, overworked, unappreciated, often from different countries – Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, to name a couple, trapped, sometimes scared, frequently disdained and often abused. They should be receiving at least the minimum wage of €950 a month, but many make closer to €800 despite working 18-hour days, six days a week.



“We look after old people, we look after children – we’re responsible for all that’s most precious in people’s families,” said Janina Flores, from Peru. “We act as psychologists and confidants, we double up as seamstresses. But we’re not valued.”



Another Peruvian, Adriana Araujo, added cook, butler and pet-sitter to the list. “We do everything you can imagine and more because we’re seen as the right kind of domestic tool,” she said. “But very often we’re valued less than a kitchen blender.”



Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, explained the irony they had outlined – “that people can rely so heavily and so intimately on another person but, at the same time, not really relate to them as a fellow human being.”



 Blanca Coronel, a 71-year-old Paraguayan woman who had been in Spain since 2006, said that despite her age and a knee injury she would need to work for another 10 years before she would have accrued enough pension contributions to retire.



 Sandra Delgadillo, from Bolivia, recalled being interviewed for a job looking after an old man with a broken hip and being told there would be a bonus if she were prepared to be sexually available.



According to figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute, 26.1% of the population lives at risk of poverty or social exclusion, up from 24.7% in 2008, while the unemployment rate of 14.1% is more than double the EU average. About half the population have some difficulty making ends meet, and poverty is persistently higher among children, migrants, and Roma populations.



At a housing estate in Torrejón de Ardoz, a town a little north-east of Madrid homemade banners decried soaring and abusive rents and where dozens of locals people turned out to tell the UN expert how they had been affected by the arrival of investment funds that bought up billions of euros’ worth of housing stock during the crisis. Rents have risen 50% since 2014, and some residents say they are now being asked to pay big increases by their multinational landlords. The situation has led to the formation of tenants’ groups and the eruption of bloques en lucha – entire blocks where residents are protesting by staying put, paying the previous rental rates and refusing to sign new contracts that they consider to be grotesquely unfair.

Alston told the crowd that “something drastic needs to be done”, adding: “Successive Spanish governments have done very little when it comes to housing rights.”



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/un-poverty-experts-visit-shines-light-on-struggles-of-spains-poor

Population Matters (Not so Much)

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The world’s population is on the decline. For decades we’ve read frightening headlines about the consequences of overpopulation, from food shortages to resource wars. But it turns out that the world’s population growth rate is now half of what it used to be.
The fertility of half of the world’s population is already below the replacement ratio. There has been a global decline in the number of children women are having. The fertility rate drop meant nearly half of countries were now facing a “baby bust” – meaning there are insufficient children to maintain their population size. There would be profound consequences for societies with more grandparents than grandchildren. As fertility falls, countries initially benefit from having a bulk of working-aged adults and relatively fewer dependent children and old people — known as a “demographic dividend.” Eventually that benefit reverses: By 2050 developed countries will have twice as many old people as young ones. 
All this does not mean the number of people living in these countries is falling, at least not yet as the size of a population is a mix of the fertility rate, death rate and migration. It can also take a generation for changes in fertility rate to take hold. Fertility rates continue to fall, yet the predictions are that the world population will continue to rise 10 billion inhabitants by the end of the century. That’s because the fall in fertility rates takes a long time to show up as a subsequent fall in birth rates. “Demographic momentum” wears on because there’s still a generation of people born in the previous echo baby boom (The first Echo Boomers were born between 1977 and 1982. The last Echo Boomers were born 1994 to 2004) who are just entering their reproductive years. This also means it is imperative that to cope, we must change the nature of society which already is incapable of providing for almost a billion of its citizens.


Prof Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, told the BBC: “We’ve reached this watershed where half of countries have fertility rates below the replacement level, so if nothing happens the populations will decline in those countries…We will soon be transitioning to a point where societies are grappling with a declining population.” 



OurWorldInData.org researcher Max Roser reports “The richer the people, the lower the fertility.”



When more infants survive fertility goes down and the temporary population growth comes to an end. If we want to ensure that the world’s population increase comes to an end soon we must work to increase child survival. It’s not numbers. It’s how we treat the quality of life for individuals.

According to Wolfgang Lutz, of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, the reason for the fertility decline, in a word, is education. “The brain is the most important reproductive organ,” he asserts. Once a woman receives enough information and autonomy to make an informed and self-directed choice about when to have children and how many to have, she immediately has fewer of them and has them later. “Once a woman is socialized to have an education and a career, she is socialized to have a smaller family,” he explains. “There’s no going back.” Lutz and his fellow demographers at Vienna’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) believe that advancing education in developing countries, brought about by increasing urbanization, should be factored into future population projections. Lutz believes the human population will be shrinking as early as 2060.
His is hardly a lone voice. Jørgen Randers is a Norwegian academic who co-authored The Limits to Growth, which predicted that global population would reach unsustainable levels by 2100. But since publishing the book, he has changed his mind. 
“The world population will never reach 9 billion people,” he now believes. “It will peak at 8 billion in 2040 and then decline.” He attributes the unexpected drop to women in developing countries moving into urban slums. “And in an urban slum, it does not make sense to have a large family.”

Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrell Bricker re-examined the UN forecasting models ‘In Empty Planet,’  to conclude that global population will start dropping in about 30 years, and warn ‘once that decline begins, it will never end.’

Poor in Poor Exam Results

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A breakdown of GCSE results issued by the Department for Education (DfE) showed the gap between disadvantaged pupils and others increased for the second year in a row. 



Just 456 of the 143,000 pupils classed as disadvantaged by the DfE achieved top grade 9s in English and maths last summer, compared with 6,132 out of 398,000 other pupils.



While more than two-thirds of non-disadvantaged children achieved grade 4 or higher in maths and English, just 36% of those eligible for free school meals did so.



Of boys eligible for free school meals, those from mixed white and black Caribbean backgrounds had the weakest results, along with children from Gypsy or Roma families. Of girls eligible, those from a white British background also ranked lowest for attainment in English and maths among the main ethnic groups.



“Some groups of disadvantaged pupils make less progress than others because of challenges in their lives, and this can penalise schools with more disadvantaged pupils,” said Duncan Baldwin, deputy director of policy at the ASCL.



https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/06/attainment-gap-widens-disadvantaged-pupils-gcse-results-england

Hurting the Vulnerable

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Nearly half the 14 million people living in poverty in the UK are disabled or live with someone who is, research for a charity suggests.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation blames the high cost of coping with disability and the struggles disabled people face in finding jobs that pay enough.
Executive director Claire Ainsley said their plight was “fundamentally wrong.
The charity says “shamefully high numbers” of disabled people are being pulled into poverty and the social security system is failing to protect them.
“The fact that disability continues to be an indicator of poverty shows the economy is not working for everyone,” Ms Ainsley said.
The researchers found that, compared with the rest of the population, people with disabilities:

were less likely to be working worked an average 13 fewer hours a week lived in households that were worse off by £200 a week

And of almost 4.5 million informal adult carers in the UK, almost a quarter were living in poverty, with working-age female carers particularly at risk.
Disability benefits are supposed to help people cope with the extra costs related to their conditions but research by disability equality charity Scope has shown they fall short.
Households with disabled members are also much more likely to claim other income-related benefits, which have been frozen for the past four years while prices have risen, says Scope.
James Taylor, its head of policy and campaigns, said the findings were shocking, but not surprising.
“Life costs much more for disabled people – on average £583 a month.
“At the same time, huge numbers of disabled people are denied the opportunity to get into and stay in work.”



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