Call for views
Your Say: Long-term Conditions
Are you affected by welfare reform? The Welfare Reform Committee would like to hear from people with, or caring for those with, long-term conditions and get their thoughts about how welfare reform is impacting on them.
About a year ago, the Welfare Reform Committee began an initiative, ‘Your Say’, to hear directly from those who have been directly affected by welfare reform. Over the last year the Committee has heard the stories of people from Glasgow, Annan, Kirkcaldy, Dunoon, Stirling, Coatbridge, Hamilton, Dundee, Edinburgh, Biggar… the list goes on.
Some of these personal stories are extraordinary, moving, shocking and often painful. Many firmly believe that this process of exposing the impacts of welfare reform on the lives of every-day people is slowly having an effect on the way people feel about this process.
This current 'Your Say' call for views is specifically to look at the impact of welfare reform on those with long-term conditions, generally health conditions that last a year or longer, impact on a person’s life, and may require ongoing care and support.
The Committee held an evidence session on 18 February 2014 and invited three people who made submissions to Your Say: long-term conditions to the Parliament to give evidence at a Committee meeting. A video summary of this session can be found here
Michael McMahon MSP, Convener
Submissions
Audrey Barnett has provided some further information which includes a summary of a meeting which Audrey and others held with Danny Alexander MP to discuss issues with welfare reform. Following this summary is a Letter from Iain Duncan Smith MP to Danny Alexander MP responding to the issues which were raised from the group. View here (555KB pdf)
Contact us
Please send your experiences to the following email address: [email protected]
or if you prefer,
Write to the Committee at the following address:
Heather Lyall
Assistant Clerk
Welfare Reform Committee
Room TG.01
Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1SP
If you have any queries about Your Say you can also call Heather Lyall, Assistant Clerk to the Committee, on 0131 348 5182.
You can view some short video clips of previous Your Say sessions at the Parliament on our website.
All submissions will be treated with confidentiality and will be shared with Members of the Welfare Reform Committee only, however if you wish for your submission to reach as wide an audience as possible then please let us know that you are happy for your submission to be available in the public domain, details of how publically available submissions are treated can be found at the following link.