Myfanwy and Helen Mary welcome u-turn on support for older and disabled people after pressure from Plaid

Dr. Myfanwy Davies, Plaid's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Llanelli and local Plaid AM, Helen Mary Jones, have welcomed a u-turn from Labour over support for older disabled people. Attendance Allowance and Disability Living Allowance previously been under threat to pay for Government schemes in England.

The Government has now promised that they will no longer be looking to change them in the next Parliament.

Myfanwy and Helen Mary had supported local disabilities and pensions campaigners in fighting the threat and had worked closely with Plaid colleagues in Westminster to oppose these changes which would have seen thousands of elderly and vulnerable people in Llanelli between £65 and £75 per week worse off on average.


Dr. Davies said:


“This U-turn doesn’t come a moment too soon– although some might question its timing just before a general election”.

Across Llanelli, 4,000 people depend on Attendance allowance while 8,000 people depend on Disability Living Allowance.

“These people are all either disabled or over the age of 65, the groups least likely to be able to live on their own and look after themselves.

“The proposals that Labour made last summer put enormous pressure on our most vulnerable people. It is wrong that so many of them and their families have had to live with the uncertainty about how they would manage to live independently if this support was taken away”.

“It was unacceptable that the Government suggested these cruel cuts in the first place”.

“They are not doing our most vulnerable people a favour by removing the threat that they themselves made.”

Helen Mary added:

“We have fought these changes since they were first suggested and we have been supporting local disability rights and pensioners groups in putting pressure on the Government to change its mind”.

“It is clear that the combined pressure has helped the Government towards this last minute conversion”.

“We should not have needed to defend support for the most vulnerable but, time and again, we have had to do so. Decisions on support for our most vulnerable need to be made by the Assembly in Cardiff so that we can avoid the distress caused to so many older and disabled people by these cruel cuts initially planned by Labour.”