Thank you, Jezza!

Disabled people respond to Jeremy Clarkson

You may well have heard that Jeremy Clarkson, in his characteristically understated fashion, has decided that disabled benefit claimants should be required to write a weekly email thanking a randomly selected taxpayer for funding their income.

While inevitably fuelling hostility towards disabled people, his newspaper column has also inspired some powerful responses from disabled people putting him right. Two very similar ironic “thank you” letters to Jezza have been circulating, and I haven’t been able to pin down who wrote first.

Two disabled people landed on the same argument: PIP isn’t a gift, it’s what makes work and independence possible; the “gratitude” demand runs one way because disabled people are expected to justify support that wealthy people take for granted. That convergence is the story as much as either letter is.

Rather than risk leaving any author’s work uncredited, I am crediting both here.

Dermot Devlin of My Way Access
Stuart Thompson creator of the STILL Method – Overcoming Anxiety

Dermot Devlin of My Way Access writes:

Dear Jezza,

Thank you for your concern about how I spend my benefits.

I understand you were aiming your comments at young people you believe are sitting at home doing nothing. But you did not limit your proposed weekly humiliation exercise to them. You said people receiving benefits should be given the email address of a randomly selected worker and forced to explain how they spent the money. No suitably “fulsome” and “effusive” thank-you email, no benefits.

So here is mine.

I was born with Morquio syndrome, a rare and degenerative condition that affects my bones, joints, breathing, hearing and mobility. I am three feet tall, have severe hearing loss and use a powered wheelchair. I did not choose my disability. I did not order it online with next-day delivery, although that might be useful given how long disabled people often wait for essential equipment.

I receive Personal Independence Payment. PIP is not an unemployment benefit. It helps towards the additional costs of disability, whether someone is working or not. I work part-time. My PIP helps me maintain the independence that makes working and participating in society possible.

My disability brings costs that many non-disabled people never have to consider: specialist equipment, accessible transport, wheelchair repairs, hearing technology, heating, care, medication and the price of simply trying to access a society that was rarely designed with people like me in mind.

Every Friday, I give up most of my day to receive treatment for my condition. That treatment helps protect my mobility, independence, breathing and quality of life. The other six days are not spent running around in little circles to demonstrate my gratitude.

I work. I campaign. I help disabled people challenge inaccessible services and unfair decisions. I co-founded Disabled People Against Cuts Northern Ireland. I chair the Omagh Access Forum, serve as vice-chair of a council Access and Inclusion Group and run My Way Access. I have worked with public bodies, transport providers, councils and politicians to improve access for disabled people. I have helped people challenge housing problems, transport barriers and failures in social care. I have spoken publicly about independent living, accessible taxis, welfare reform and the rights of disabled people.

This work is not paid work. All of it contributes to society. My PIP does not pay me to sit at home. It helps make it possible for me to leave home. It helps me work, volunteer, campaign, attend medical appointments and live independently rather than being unnecessarily institutionalised or completely reliant on my family. That is what disability support can achieve when it is designed to enable people rather than degrade them.

But your proposal is not really about accountability. The government already knows what benefits people receive. Claimants complete lengthy forms, provide medical evidence, attend assessments and face repeated reviews. Your proposal is about making people perform gratitude for their survival. You want disabled people, carers, pensioners, low-paid workers and people who have lost their jobs to approach a stranger each week like Oliver Twist holding out his bowl.

Perhaps I should describe exactly what I did with every pound. Maybe I should explain which part helped cover accessible transport, which part covered the electricity needed to charge my wheelchair and which part went towards the additional costs of living with a lifelong disability. Perhaps I should include photographs, receipts and a short video of me wagging my imaginary tail. Would that be effusive enough?

But as we are exchanging thank-you letters, perhaps you could send me one as well.

Thank you, Dermot, for paying taxes despite having significantly higher living costs than most people. Thank you for paying your television licence during the years the BBC provided the platform that made me wealthy and famous. Thank you for paying for public roads, healthcare, emergency services and infrastructure that support my television programmes, businesses and farm. Thank you for contributing towards a society from which I have benefited enormously.

That is how society works, Jeremy. We contribute collectively because none of us is completely self-sufficient. You benefited from publicly funded infrastructure before you ever became wealthy enough to complain about other people receiving support. Farmers receive support. Businesses receive grants. Broadcasters benefit from public infrastructure. Wealthy people employ accountants to minimise their tax liabilities. Yet it is the disabled person receiving help with the cost of leaving their home who must bow, scrape and demonstrate sufficient gratitude.

Support for wealthy people is called investment. Support for disabled people is treated as charity.

I am grateful for the support that helps me live independently. But gratitude is not submission. PIP is not a personal gift from Jeremy Clarkson. It is part of a social security system into which millions of us contribute and which exists because disability, illness, unemployment and old age can affect any family.

You recently experienced serious ill health yourself. I genuinely hope your recovery continues. Perhaps that experience might eventually teach you that none of us is invincible and that needing support does not make someone lazy, wasteful or less valuable.

So thank you for your concern, Jezza. I hope my taxes, television licence, subscriptions, employment, voluntary work and contribution to society have been gratefully received. Please send your own thank-you letter by Friday, along with a full breakdown of everything public services and ordinary taxpayers have contributed towards your success. Make it fulsome. Make it effusive. And do try to look grateful.

Yours in independence, dignity and equality,

Dermot Devlin

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Stuart Thompson’s letter is very similar

A second letter, credited to Stuart Thompson, has also been circulating. Much of it — sometimes word for word — makes the same case. Where it diverges is in his use of Personal Independence Payment.

Stuart Thompson writes:

That money [PIP] goes towards the Motability car I use to travel to work. It is not a free car. It is not even my car. I exchange the mobility part of my PIP to lease it. The car takes the lot. Which is awkward, because that same payment is also meant to help cover the additional costs of being disabled, including a wheelchair that is actually usable for my job and hearing aids that allow me to do it. There is nothing left for either. I chose the thing that gets me to work.

That car enables me to work and, because I can work, I now pay considerably more in tax than I have ever received in PIP.

But my contribution does not end with my own tax bill. I have built programmes that hundreds of people now use to earn a living. They pay tax too. Those programmes have helped thousands of people overcome anxiety, return to their lives and, in many cases, return to work. Then there are all the people supported by the coaches and practitioners I have trained. That is what disability support can do when it is designed to enable people rather than humiliate them.

My PIP did not disappear into some great benefits black hole. It helped provide the transport that allowed me to work, build a business, create opportunities for other people and contribute far more than I could ever have done without it.

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Other voices challenging entrenched hostility towards disabled people

These letters have gained some traction on social media – I hope they will be widely shared so that they reach beyond the disabled community, where people are already all too well aware of the limits and challenges of the welfare system.

Others have been making these points about the hostility shown towards disabled benefit claimants, both by the DWP and the mainstream media, for many years, generally without much by way of reaction.

Most notable is Mo Stewart, research lead for the Preventable Harm Project (external link will open in a new browser tab or window).

While you are focused on this topic, here are links to some of her pieces we have published on this website:

An end to political harm? 

First do no harm

EHRC probe too limited

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