I’m severely disabled and largely bedbound. I don’t claim housing benefit because I paid off my own home before I became ill. I also don’t use Motability: after a very long delay I’m now occasionally hoisted into a chair for short periods, but I remain mostly confined to bed. The benefits I receive are not overly generous for someone in my position. I have to pay people to do many of the things I used to manage myself—tasks carers aren’t allowed to perform even when they’re willing. I live with anxiety, yet I can’t have a support dog because I’m unable to look after one. Losing the companionship of a dog has been particularly painful. PIP, when I can access it, is essential. (That’s a separate issue: difficulty getting help to renew my claim left me without it for the entire year, and it’s still being processed.) It doesn’t just cover the basics; it allows me to save a little and occasionally afford small treats that make life feel worth living. I don’t accept that it’s reasonable for me to be left eating the bare minimum, prison-standard food for the rest of my life after the large contributions I made while working. I also don’t expect I’ll ever be able to afford a holiday again, even if one were practically possible. We’re seeing rising hostility towards disabled people as a result of the country’s economic problems. This hostility has two main drivers. The first is more obvious: people who claim disability benefits but don’t appear “very disabled.” Disability can be highly variable. Some people are only able to get out and about and look relatively well because of the support that extra money provides. Others may simply be having a good day. A very small minority are genuine fraudsters who should be prosecuted and barred from further claims—but they are not representative of the majority. The second driver is that many working people are not being paid enough, and in some areas there simply isn’t enough work. Those claiming benefits are, in effect, being topped up by people who are working hard. This situation has two main causes: the high cost of living driven by net-zero policies, and the scale of migration—begun under the Conservatives and continued under Labour, with support from the Liberal Democrats and Greens. The current level is economically unsustainable. We now have people working extremely hard who still struggle to afford the basics. That is not acceptable. This is not solely a problem of illegal immigration. Large-scale legal migration also suppresses wages and increases pressure on welfare. We are often told that migrants are simply doing jobs British people won’t do, yet the NHS—our largest employer—recruits heavily from abroad while UK-trained staff, including many young doctors, struggle to find work or leave for Australia and elsewhere. That policy is indefensible. An independent review has also found that the mental health of young people has deteriorated sharply. Contributing factors include money worries, exaggerated climate-disaster messaging, gender-identity ideology, and repeated claims about the “far right” that have left many young people less resilient and in a state of permanent anxiety. These pressures feed into the broader economic and social strain. The current political system—the Uniparty approach across the main parties—has failed the people of this country. It cannot continue.