ABSTRACT
In a 2010 op-ed entitled 'Iain Duncan Smith on Benefits Britain' that appeared in The Sun newspaper, political editor Tom Newton Dunn (2010) cited Iain Duncan Smith's claims that disabled people were responsible for the UK deficit. To be sure, this negative portrayal of disabled people coheres with a larger trend in British print media; as Emma Briant, Nicholas Watson and Gregory Philo (2011) have documented, a total number of 713 disability-related articles appeared between 2004 and 2005. As 'disabled' and 'women', this population is further threatened by changes to benefits and services, restrictions in local authority (LA) eligibility criteria for social care support, the replacement of the DLA with Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF) and changes to Housing Benefit (HB). In the context of council budget cuts and the National Health System (NHS) being under considerable pressure, disabled women's human rights and needs could remain unmet elsewhere.
