Ask your MP to vote for a Cumulative Impact Assessment and to end the Work Capability Assessment.

By Sue Marsh.

Many of you will have written to your MP already asking them to attend the #WOWPetition debate on 27 February.

Sadly, that means that by now, some of you will have received standardised replies from coalition MPs, lazily parroting DWP soundbites and half-truths.

Disheartening though it always seems, it’s always worth following up a “thanks, but no thanks” reply in the hope that you can persuade him or her to change their mind.

If nothing else, it might start a dialogue you can build on in the future.

Below is my impassioned reply to one such letter.

Obviously you can’t just cut and paste it to your own MP, but I hoped it might  be helpful to use as a guide.

“A Dr Simon Duffy from the Centre for Welfare Reform has just a few days ago released the most comprehensive cumulative impact assessment (CIA) of all the welfare changes so affecting sick and disabled people to date. You can read it here.

Perhaps it won’t be perfect, but if you actually read the DWP’s own equality impact assessments , I think you would have no choice but to agree that they are inadequate and incomplete.

For instance, they all claim that there will be no impact on health or social justice, but even if just 10 per cent of what Dr Duffy concludes is correct, this clearly isn’t the case.

As ever though in politics, we’re arguing on a pinhead over whether or not a cumulative impact assessment is feasible.

Meanwhile the real issues are hidden somewhere amongst deep, dark paper trails.

I would have given anything to be an MP, but sadly, I just got too sick. I envy that you’ve been elected to parliament by an electorate of your peers. An honour just 650 people can claim.

I know that I’m not the only one of your constituents to write to you about this issue and I know that desperate pleas due to benefit changes for sick and disabled people make up an ever increasing part of your mailbag and surgeries.

I recognise the now familiar DWP soundbites in your reply wearily, and they sadden me. I can’t believe that anyone who reads the welfare reform impact assessments from the DWP  in full could stand by these policies.

However, no one should, in good conscience, refuse to contemplate that Dr Duffy’s findings might be a good proximation of what’s unfolding.

All I, or any constituent asks, is that you represent me and attend the debate with an open mind.

The dignity and well being of some 7000 of your sick or disabled constituents may be at stake.

To ask that you judge the issue on merit and hear what opposition politicians you may hate have to say, with an open mind is a small thing to ask.

I ask you to reconsider and hope very much to see you there on the 27th.”

The debate will be under a single line whip, which means that MP’s can choose to either attend or vote. So much for the status of an e-petition! Therefore it is up to us to convince our MPs to attend and here are some suggestions as to how to do this.

Before 27 February 2014

1. Write to your local MP (you can find the details by using this  Write to your MP tool) and there are a couple of suggested template letters  here (outline) and here (detailed);

2. Or if you’d prefer to e-mail your MP, there is an automated tool to help you compile and send it here.

WOW supporters – and allies – are planning to lobby MPs in the Central Lobby from 10-30am until the #WOWdebate.

However, you are only allowed to lobby your own MP, so before making the effort to get to the Houses of Parliament on 27 February, please check with your MP that they will be available by using this automated toolthat will send an e-mail informing them that you wish to lobby them in the Central Lobby on 27 February and requesting that they make themselves available, as well as asking them to attend the debate and vote on the motion.

Please only ask your MP to make themselves available to be lobbied if you are planning to attend the #WOWdebate.

There will also be a vigil outside the House of Commons next to Old Palace Yard, from 10.30am onward.

If you do not plan to lobby your MP you can still support #WOWdebate by joining the vigil.

For more information, click here.

A version of this post first appeared on Sue Marsh’s  blog ‘Diary of a Benefit Scrounger’.

Sue has a rare form of Crohn’s Disease: she has had many operations to remove strictures (narrowings in my bowel that grow like tumours), suffers daily pain, often vomiting, malnourished and weak; takes mega-strong medications every day including chemo-style immuno-suppressants, opiates and anti-sickness injections.