The U-turn announced on welfare cuts by new Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb following the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith is a victory for common sense.

With apparent cross-party agreement on this issue, it is clear the Personal Independence Payments (PIP) cuts should never have been proposed.

Members of The British Polio Fellowship living with Post Polio Syndrome (PPS) should not have to live in fear of the changes being introduced and it was pleasing to see the support from all sections of the media, politicians of all colours and indeed the public in recognising that changes to PIP were a change too far.

I welcome Mr Crabb’s announcement that the government will not seek any further cuts this Parliament, but we can all learn lessons from this episode.

Changes to benefits for those with disabilities affect real people. Mr Crabb acknowledged that “behind every statistic is a human being and perhaps sometimes in government we forget that” and the sentiment could be applied to all of us.

The fact that 120,000 people in the UK are living with PPS is another statistic, but again these are real people and our members are used to living with a condition that a recent YouGov poll confirmed that only seven per cent of people in the UK have ever heard of.

Hopefully this change of tack will herald a turnaround in the government’s attitude towards people with disabilities and lead to a better informed debate more generally in society too.

Ted Hill MBE

CEO, The British Polio Fellowship