Sally Witcher: Social security is not a bail out for people who failed

“On paper I fulfilled a lot of the criteria,” she admits. “But you never know.”

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Head of the charity Inclusion Scotland, which is pushing for positive change for disabled people at all levels across society, Witcher will chair the Scottish Commission on Social Security from the end of the month.

Overseeing the country’s newly devolved welfare system, it’s a brand new role and will see Witcher exercise one of the principles she values the most – independence.

It’s a word she uses a lot, along with dignity, integrity and stigma. The latter is something she is determined to challenge.

“Social security is not a bail out for people who have failed,” she says, “It is an investment in people at times when they require it or to support them to contribute as much as they can.

“People should not be ashamed to claim it, it is their right.”

Witcher is encouraged by the language used by the Scottish Government in relation to benefits, with Social Security Scotland holding “dignity, fairness and respect” as its core principles as it delivers 11 benefits to 1.4 million people.

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It is, she says, a “stark contrast with some of the rhetoric we’ve seen from down south”.

However, she cautions that managing high expectations about the potential for change could be one of the system’s biggest challenges.

“What we are doing here is something rather different,” she says. “It would be foolish to think it can be perfect on day one.

“We have got to be clear about not trying to do too much, too fast and then falling over. It is a big job to get this right.”

Big jobs are nothing new to Witcher.

A member of several Scottish Government working, advisory and project groups on health, transport, inequality and more, she previously led the Child Poverty Action Group and was deputy director of the Office for Disability Issues, which is part of the Department for Work and Pensions.

THE Commission role will mean cutting her hours at I ncl u s ion S c ot l a nd , something agreed by its board. “My quest to achieve my work-life balance won’t be massively advanced,” she concedes, “But I’m not going to burn myself out.”

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Witcher, from Edinburgh, moved north of the Border 20 years ago. A Fine Art graduate, she went on to attain a masters in policy studies and complete a Phd at Edinburgh University before making inclusion and poverty alleviation her life’s work.

But it’s her experience as a social security claimant that she says complete her “360 degree view” of the factors that determine welfare delivery, and the impacts that can have on members of the public.

Rheumatoid arthritis means Witcher relies on her motorised wheelchair to get around. Problems first arose after she sprained her ankle at age two, and while her condition has since progressed, the biggest barriers have been mental, not physical.

“A lot of people don’t want to say they are disabled,” she tells the Sunday National. “I get that. The stigma is real.

I rejected the label for many years – if anybody had suggested it, I would have probably verbally nuked them.

“My impairment is gradually getting worse, and every so often I have to confront the fact that I can no longer do something. It took me a long time to really get my head around life would be much easier if I was in a wheelchair. I wasn’t psychologically ready to accept that.

“As people age, it is very hard to say, ‘actually, I do need a grab rail on the bath now’, but once you do, life becomes much easier.

“That said, disabled people face a shed-load of discrimination and appalling attitudes.

“When you are disabled, you are invisible. Once you are in a wheelchair, you cease to exist.”

That question of existence, of independence, capability and agency, is something Witcher faces constantly. She has many examples.

“I can go from a meeting with a cabinet secretary and the taxi driver will ask my PA – not me – ‘where does she want to go?’”, she reveals.

“On my first day as a senior civil servant, when I was going to be responsible for a division of people, my taxi driver helped me out and as he turned me around he went ‘oopsadaisy’. I asked him why, and he said it just reminded him of his children. I said, ‘are your children wheelchair users too?’ “I had to go from being treated like a child to getting into the lift, coming out and exercising leadership. That is the sort of experience you get as a disabled person.

“I get people saying, ‘I’m glad I met you Sally, because I thought I had problems til I did’. I get total strangers coming up to me on the train, saying, ‘I just have to say, I think you are very brave’. Just for living my life.

“People don’t intend to insult, and they don’t intend to discriminate. They just don’t think about it.

“But attitudes can change, just like buildings can change.”

As well as these ad-hoc assessments of character and capability, Witcher, like millions of other people in the UK, has had to undergo formal processes in order to secure the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) she uses to help meet the additional everyday costs that impairment brings in a world organised for a homogenised majority, filled with stairs, narrow pavements and inaccessible buses.

With the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) now replacing DLA under Westminster reforms, she is now braced for another such test.

“I’m waiting with fear and trepidation for that brown envelope,” she says.

“I’ve already got personal experience of having to go through assessment processes which are stressful. I know how awful it is.

“You have to demonstrate what you can’t do. As disabled people, we spend our lives saying ‘of course we can find a way to do that’.

“To dwell on what you can’t do and impress that to an assessor leaves you feeling really quite miserable.

“It gives me an insight and a sense and a commitment to making Scotland’s system not be like that. I don’t want anybody going through that sort of procedure, feeling degraded, coming away pretty much in tears, which is what happened to me.”

Witcher’s antipathy for such tests are matched by that for Universal Credit, the six-in-one package replacing long-established benefits. Its rollout is long-delayed and has been met with repeated criticism from users, campaigners and charities.

“The day I develop superpowers, one of the first things I will use them for is to get rid of Universal Credit and put something rather better in its place.”

As it stands, Witcher says the Commission’s biggest weapons are its integrity and independence, something which is enshrined within its charter.

“We are not subject to the direction and control of any member of the Scottish Government – it’s really important to stress that,” Witcher stresses. “It’s not about us being party political.

“I don’t have an agenda to promote or support the policies of a political party. None of us will. And none of us will hesitate to challenge where we think policy is not achieving what it is meant to.

Much of that accords with how Witcher would prefer the world sees her – not as “brave” just for “continuing to breathe”, but as “effective, independent, committed to achieving social change, and not afraid to challenge”.