22 July 2015

What: A survey finds that disabled people are being subjected to disability hate crime as a result of benefit scrounger rhetoric. Over one in six of those disabled people who described in detail in the survey how they had been verbally or physically assaulted (11 of 61) said their attackers had called them “scroungers”, told them to get off benefits, or accused them of being too lazy to work. When asked about the motivation for the attacks, one disabled person said: “Most of the abuse is from strangers, who now think that everyone who is disabled is lying about being ill. Because this government are spreading so many lies, regarding us.”

Why significant: More evidence that rhetoric originating from DWP and supportive media is fuelling hate crime.