Give us a chance Tucked away among the jobs pages (Seriously ill people forced back to work, says charity, The Press, March 24), it could easily have gone unnoticed.

The insensitive changes regarding incapacity benefit, Employment and Support Allowance are something that should definitely be highlighted. The last thing the disabled want is having their benefits cut off because of this Government trying to save a few quid.

I am disabled myself, and I know how hard it is to find work in a prejudiced working environment.

Employers all too readily dismiss you as inadequate to hold down a job, or sack you on a whim. The recent Government thinking is to discard the sick-note philosophy in favour of a structured return to work.

This is summed up in Dame Carol Black’s review, Working For A Healthier Tomorrow.

However, when you are suffering from terminal cancer or suffer from Parkinson’s, the actual working practice of these fine aims can degenerate into a blinkered vision of saving Treasury expenditure.

With regard to other drains on the economy, such as the banks and immigration policies, this latest trend smacks of a “kick the disabled” mentality, and is surely not the way forward for a decent, civilised society.

All the disabled want anyway is a hand-up, not a handout. Is that too impossible to ask for?

Phil Shepherdson, Chantry Close, Woodthorpe, York.