Attendance Allowance to Be Abolished

I have just signed this petition , my parents in their 80s are both disabled. My mother was my fathers career but she fractured her hip at Christmas they use my father allowance to pay for cleaner and help. Both very independent , without this they would not be able to live in own home which would destroy them. They moved 200 miles from us 20 years ago and have no family near them so help we can give is limited to some weekend visits as DH still works. We stayed there all over Christmas and new year for 3 weeks but then had to come home it is a huge worry. I am an only child, my DH has been a star.

Signed

Signed

Signed

Signed and shared on FB and Twitter - without this vital allowance my mother and MIL would have spent a great deal more time in hospital than they did. It doesn't make economic sense to stop it. What are they going to do next issue us all with a gun at 70?

Where has this information come from?

Av1dreader, those already receiving attendance allowance will continue to do so.

The proposals would only apply to new claims.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/119787

This is the one on the government's e-petitions website.

The AA allowance is a necessity to the well being of people staying their own homes
My father pleaded with my sister and I not to put him in a home.
we were able to honour this until 2 weeks before he passed away when he was in nursing home with palliative care
With out AA allowance be would have let him down
Signed by me and DH

Signed

Galen There is a consultation about it. The proposal is to give the money to local councils instead of to individuals.
This seems to be at variance with the idea of giving people their own personal care budget.
www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2015/december/future-abolition-attendance-allowance

I am very happy to sign this petition. Having said that, please could someone explain why there are two and if it's more effective to sign one over the other?

I ask because one appears more official but the other has significantly more signatures.

I'd like to make sure this issue is debated in Parliament - it would be a disgrace if this went through.

Galen it's part of the government's Local Government Finance Settlement 2016/17 (published just before Christmas). It suggested plans to abolish all new claims for Attendance Allowance from 2018 in favour of handing the money over to local councils to pay for support for older people.

AA allowed my dear Dad to live in his own home until almost the end when he went into a hospice at 92. It paid for a cleaner and gardener which allowed me to concentrate on other stuff for him. I should hate to think what local councils would do with the money. Signed.

Shestheone - I'd like to understand this too. I have signed both to make sure but is that permissable?

Shestheone and Greymary both petitions are separate protests about the same subject.

38 Degrees is an independent British not for profit organisation that campaigns on a wide range of issues. It aims to give a voice to ordinary UK citizens, by providing easy ways for them to take action on the issues they care about, e.g. climate change, human rights and poverty. The organisation was started in 2009 during the last Labour government as the MPs' expenses scandal grew, demanding voters should be given more powers to sack MPs. One of the founders is Gordon Roddick, co-founder of The Body Shop and husband of Anita Roddick.

The other petition is on the government's e-petition site. In theory, at 10,000 signatures you get a response from the government, and at 100,000 signatures your petition will be considered for a debate in Parliament. In reality, many petitions exceed this threshold and lead to no debate. They are passed to a backbench committee for consideration and response and that's the end of the campaign.

Digital campaign platforms such as change.org and 38 Degrees are far more successful than the government's e-petition site. A petition is often the start of a long campaign for change.

A good example was the fight to stop the government selling off the national forests. Over half a million 38 Degree members signed the petition against this policy. Then 38 Degrees brought together its members with local and national organisations like the Woodland Trust, the National Trust, the British Horse Society and Ramblers.

Over 100,000 38 Degrees members emailed or called their MPs urging them to stop the forest sell off.. Hundreds of 38 Degrees members donated to fund a YouGov poll which found that 84% of the public wanted the forests kept in public hands. Thousands of 38 Degrees members chipped in nearly £60,000 to pay for ads in national newspapers to highlight that 84% of the British public opposed the forest sale. The campaign lasted more than 2 years and led to the government revoking the policy. Incidentally, John Major's government considered adopting this policy and decided against it because of the potential public backlash.

Hope this helps.

One difference between the two is that the official one is supposed to be debated in the commons.
I do all of them, and have paid towards the ads for 38 degrees and change.org.
The jeremy Hunt one at the moment has over 288,000 signatures. They have already discussed a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Hunt, but all they said is that they had considered the petition.
38 degrees and change.org get to take boxes full of signatures to 10 Downing Street, but can then be ignored. There is no committee to decide whether to discuss in parliament.

Strangely enough, I have just received an email from 38 degrees.
130,000 of us gave our views on what they should do this year.
One of the ideas was to target Jeremy Hunt.

But as said above, there are 288,000 signatures on the government e-petition site.

If you think you should sign, but don't because you are not sure, what gets done?
It might be that nothing happens even if you do sign, but at least you have tried to affect things.
By the way, if you think you might have signed up to the government one before but are not sure, it will let you know and not allow you to sign twice.

I'm a member of 38 Degrees and change.org, although at the moment I think there's more of a momentum with change.org (e.g. currently I'm supporting the campaign for Helen's Law). I've donated several times to 38 Degrees campaigns, but not change.org (yet). I have signed lots of petitions on the government's website, although I feel I'm making a protest rather than backing a campaign.

For me the big difference between the three petition sites is that once you signed a petition on the government's site, the government holds all the information and there can be no follow up possible. With 38 Degrees and change.org, the people who signed the petition can have the opportunity to support the next steps in a campaign. All three sites rely on the momentum of campaigns and the strength of public feeling and have their place.

Getting back to the original topic of the abolishment of Attendance Allowance, I have a personal interest in this issue because I was recently diagnosed with MS. At the moment I don't need any extra help and if I'm over 65 when I do need help, I don't want to be at the mercy of my local council for it. This is the thin end of the wedge.

Agreed, Wilma. My mother in law had attendance allowance, before she went into the home, and both my parents did before they died.
None of them would have managed financially without it.

I think this government would just love it if all us oldies could not claim anything because we do not know what is available.
I seem to remember when I got my pension the information about how to defer it came before that on how to apply for it.

It's only in the consultation stage at the moment. Nothing has been published or decided. Let alone debated.

Thanks to both WilmaKnickersfit and durhamjen for clear explanations. Signed and shared - totally agree with this being the thin end of the wedge.

I've always belonged to the school of thought that if you don't do anything, (vote, etc) then you have no right to complain if you don't like something.

Galen, this government gets a lot of things through without debate.
I am completely against the House of Lords as it is, but it does manage to hold the government to account on lots of things.
The government uses statutory instruments instead of debate in the commons.
That's how the Lords had to stand up to the government over tax credit cuts.

Thank you for the information Ana