The Scottish Government’s rules for the new Adult Disability Payment (the ADP regulations) come to parliament this week and will define Scotland’s replacement for Personal Independence Payment.

We all remember that sinking feeling when our mum said: ‘I’m not angry, I’m disappointed,’ well, today I am both.  We had an opportunity to do something different, a chance to recast the rules and reset the poverty that disabled people experience. Instead, these regulations continue almost all existing parts of a system that has made it harder for so many disabled people to escape poverty.

There is nothing in the regulations to address the fact that nearly a quarter of households with a disabled person in them live in poverty or that thousands who need support don’t get it.

This has been the first chance to properly address social security for disabled people in years. As someone with high ambitions for a better Scotland that delivers for disabled people, to say I am disappointed in these regulations would be an understatement. I have – and I know thousands of others do too – huge ambitions for a system that recognises the real additional costs incurred by disabled people, we expected more than just tinkering around the edges.

We had ambition for a system that consigns to history degrading and arbitrary measures like the 20 metre and 50% rules that fail to consider the fluctuating conditions of many disabled people.  A system where the descriptors that are the ticket to the support people need, reflect the real experience they live.

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