You may not remember the name Stephen Smith, but his body is hard to forget: a photo taken by the Liverpool Echo emerged in February that showed a skeletal Smith sitting in a hospital gown, his spine protruding from his six-stone frame. He had just had his disability benefits stopped.
It quickly became one of the most notorious images illustrating the cruelty and unreliability of the disability benefits assessment system: Smith had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, osteoarthritis and an enlarged prostate that left him barely able to walk and in pain, but regardless he was found “fit for work” and told to look for a job.
It took a year for Smith’s benefits to be reinstated. To get them, at the end of last year the 64-year-old was forced to obtain a pass to discharge himself from hospital; ravaged with pneumonia, he had to leave his bed to attend a tribunal and fight his case.
On Sunday night, news broke that Smith had died. I found myself crying when I heard of his death, which is probably strange considering I had never met him. But then, I am not sure what other reaction to have at this point. The details are not yet known and it’s clear he was struggling with numerous health problems. But what we do know is that Smith spent some of the last months of his life fighting to regain the benefits he needed to live on, and that he was put under incredible strain while severely ill by a government he trusted to support him in his time of need.
If it feels like we have been here before, it’s because we have. If it feels like campaigners, MPs and charities have repeatedly warned that disabled people are hungry, isolated and even dying as a result of the Conservatives’ “welfare reform”, it’s because they have.
It gives a hint of how horrifically Smith was treated by the Department for Work and Pensions that his case even caught mainstream attention. Since the coalition government rolled out pernicious new testing for both key disability benefits in 2013, these stories have littered the papers, each a parody of grotesque bureaucracy: the woman in a coma told to keep up “intensive job-focused activity”; the person with Down’s syndrome asked when they had “caught” it; the young woman with mental health problems quizzed over why she hadn’t “killed herself yet”. More than 70% of disability benefit rejections are overturned at tribunal; while multibillion-pound contracts are thrown to failing private companies, wheelchair users queue at food banks. Academics have linked “fit for work” tests to increased use of antidepressants and suicides among claimants. The United Nations has even dubbed the UK’s treatment of disabled people a “human catastrophe”.
And yet there has been no mass public outrage.In all the years this has been happening, not one minister has fallen. Indeed, Iain Duncan Smith – one of the key architects of the system – was permitted to resign with honour over disability cuts. We are still somehow waiting for a “Windrush moment”, in which the media and politicians – aghast at the incompetence and inhumanity – cross party lines and stand up for basic morality. How many deaths does it take exactly? When does the life of someone like Smith start to matter?
It would be easy to view all this as another example of the damage austerity does to the social fabric, or as evidence that the Conservative party cannot be trusted with social security. But that would be underselling it. This is the mass abuse by the state towards its disabled and sick citizens. By standards used by any business or public service, it would surely fail every marker for negligence. That it is being inflicted by elected officials should not make it immune.
We are witnessing acts of large-scale moral bankruptcy, enacted by privileged politicians who have outright disdain for people who dare to need the support of the state. In six years, they have inflicted unprecedented damage to the safety net for disabled people, evading all calls to investigate deaths, or enact the changes needed to make the assessments safer and more accurate.
It is time the politicians responsible were called to account, and with them the private companies that are profiting from human suffering. The disability benefits system is a national scandal, a disgrace in waiting. All Stephen Smith did was to ask for help. When will we finally say enough is enough?
• Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
