"You see the world through a different lens": Ed Davey interviewed by the Big Issue

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Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has been interviewed by Greg Barradale for the Big Issue in a way that skillfully combines the personal and the political.

You mention making that switch to PIP. I can imagine knowing you’re about to have to interact with the DWP in that way might be quite a source of stress for you and your son.

I’ll confess it’s my wife who did most of the work. I’m not sure if I really want this published, but the real thing for us was more the distress of having to say how disabled he was. You essentially have to say all the things you can’t do. For a parent, having to set out in hard detail all the things John can’t do, and will never be able to do – quite hard I have to tell you.

You know, it’s what the law says, and we did it. But that’s the hard bit for us. To be honest, we weren’t worried about not getting it because John’s so disabled it’s not a question, he was always going to get it. 

But I’ve worked for constituents who are on the margins, and it’s people who have conditions where they’re bad for one or two days a week and not too bad the rest of the time, but those one or two days a week occur every week. 

It’s those people who I have to sit down with, my team sit down with, and explain: ‘Look, you’ve got to say how you are on your worst day.’ People have got pride, right? They want to say how well they are. And we have to say: ‘Look, no, you’ve just told us that two, three, four days a week you can’t even get out of bed. You’ve got to set that down.’ 

I’m really conscious the process doesn’t do that, it’s trying to catch people out the whole time.

Ed says elsewhere in the interview: "To me, having been a young carer to having a disabled child, you do see the world through a different lens."

My memory of the John Major years is that two Conservative MPs decide to cross the floor to Labour, and both had experienced serious illness in  their families. That really does change your view of the world, as my mother's last years changed mine.