These are Reform’s five cruellest ideas

Farage’s party seems to have other ideas. These are five cruel promises and policies that the Reform Party has made, which should worry us all. 

Plan to abolish The Equality Act 

Should Reform win the next election, it plans to repeal the Equality Act, a landmark piece of legislation enacted in 2010, “on day one”. Suella Braverman – once a Tory, now in Reform – has said that Britain has been “ripped apart” by rules on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

This legislation protects against discrimination in multiple forms, while acting to guarantee the rights of people with “protected characteristics”, including the disabled, pregnant people, the elderly, religious folk, others. 

It’s not “woke” to want protection, or to expect a workplace that does not reject you on the basis of “difference”. The effect on millions of people will be huge.

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The War On Welfare

For over a year there has been so much focus on the welfare state, with outright lies told left, right and centre about the Personal Independence Payment. Also known as PIP, this benefit is for the extra costs of disability – estimated by Scope to be over £1,000 extra a month – and is awarded regardless of a person’s employment status because – repeat after me – it has nothing to do with employment! 

Reform wants to completely gut PIP, a vital lifeline against hardship. Thousands will be pushed into poverty, should this happen. 

Ear Defenders In Schools Are “Insane”

The Equality Act states that “reasonable adjustments” have to be made for disabled people – and this includes “neurodivergent” individuals. The umbrella term encompasses a range of people, such as if you have ADHD, Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), a brain injury, or are Autistic. 

For many reasons, it is a reasonable adjustment to use ear defenders, for example on trains, at the school gates, or even in classrooms. And the great by-product? A reduction or elimination of distress. 

But no – it seems that Farage’s deputy, Richard Tice, knows better. The use of ear defenders in class is, he says “insane” and has to stop. 

For Autistic people who are hypersensitive to noise like me, loud noise physically causes pain. But then it seems that the Reform leadership aren’t especially fussed about the suffering of other people. 

A clampdown on “overdiagnosis” 

Farage has said that Britain is “massively overdiagnosing those with mental illness problems” and that this is creating a “class of victims”. I am not mentally ill; my neurology is just different. Far right populism may not wish to acknowledge us, but it doesn’t mean we just disappear, nor does the rise in mental distress.

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End “Lawless Britain”

The prison system is overwhelmingly populated by neurodivergent individuals who ended up there as part of a pipeline. 

“Building rapidly” to solve a prison capacity crisis – an approach that aims to lock up more people – creates a larger inmate population. It will only make the problem worse, and a tiny part of the overall population will bear the brunt of it. Reform, as ever, are in favour of this. They have promised to build more than 20,000 new prison spaces in 18 months, throwing up makeshift jails on disused MoD land. Not once has the party questioned how to reduce the prison population, let alone why so many inmates are then diagnosed with a form of neurodivergence while on remand. 

When it comes to disability, and just trying to live peacefully as a disabled person, Reform’s policies seem relentlessly cruel. I’m not surprised, given the party fields candidates who describe people like me as “vegetables”. 

Once people tell you who they are, take them at their word. And Reform are telling us. For them, it seems, the cruelty is par for the course.