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One hot night last summer, Angela Smith woke up thirsty at 3am.

She couldn’t get a drink, because she has cerebral palsy and finds it very difficult to turn taps on or to fill a glass.

Angela was thirsty because the previous day her afternoon carer had been off sick. She hadn’t had a drink since 2pm and she began to panic.

“I started getting hot so I thought I can’t wait until nine in the morning,” she says.

At around 5am, she managed to climb into her motorised wheelchair and drive it to the 24-hour ASDA near her home.

“I bought a drink and I got a straw and I asked the woman at the checkout to open it and help me.”

Welcome to Lord Freud’s welfare state – the one he has reformed.

The one presided over by him, Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey.

The one where a woman has to drive herself in a motorised wheelchair in the early hours of the morning for emergency help at a 24-hour supermarket.

Angela is one of the people in a 10-minute film I’ve been making with blogger and campaigner Kate Belgrave, Inclusion London, Disabled People Against Cuts and Moore Lavan films, about the Conservative-led Government’s lies about cuts to disabled people.

What Lord Freud said last week about disabled people not being “worth” the minimum wage is despicable.

But his words are the least of the harm he has done to disabled people.

Judge him instead on his actions.

What the welfare reform minister and his colleagues in the DWP are doing is not just callous but ­downright dangerous.

On Wednesday, disabled people will go to the High Court once again to fight the closure of the Independent Living Fund – a lifeline for 18,000 profoundly disabled people.

The Tories love this particular welfare reform so much that they have fought two court battles to keep it. And this week, they will fight a third.

Today, as campaigners head back to court for another judicial review, PCS – the union that represents DWP workers – tracked down Professor Pat Thane, whose research was quoted by the department in the last court case.

Prof Thane says she is extremely puzzled that the DWP has used a memo of hers from 2009 to support the closure, when she believes closing the ILF is likely to mean “overall ­inadequate support for people in need”.

She adds: “The report is depressingly… glib and superficial in the way that it glosses over the fears of people who will lose their ILF payments.”

And she says the Government has failed to look at the “potential cost implications of failure… leading to increased need for costly residential and NHS care”.

The DWP says local councils will be given extra funds to pay for people’s care. But campaigners say that money will ­disappear into the black hole of council fund shortfalls because it won’t be ringfenced.

The closure of the ILF will radically change 22-year-old Nadia Clarke’s life.

“I feel so worried,” Nadia, from West Yorkshire, says.

She is deaf and has cerebral palsy. She uses a special computer to communicate, but also relies on the help of personal assistants funded by the ILF.

“It will be terrible because I will feel so depressed and unable to take part in society. My parents will have to look after me and may even have to give up their paid work. My life will be worthless.”

The ILF means “I can come to work and do a meaningful job,” says Daphne Branchflower, 64, who works for the NHS.

“I’m hoping to work until I’m 71 because I was a late starter.”

Speaking through his PA, Mark Williams, a former social worker, laughs that the ILF allows him to be part of the “Big Society”.

(Image: PA)

“It means I can be an active school governor,” he says.

Don Jones, who cares for his sister Sheila who has severe learning ­difficulties and autism, says he fears having to do her personal care.

“We’re now fighting for my sister’s survival. I can’t afford to sit back and think that the local

authorities are going to provide because they won’t.”

Angela’s story encapsulates the worst fears of disabled people.

But instead of reforming the system to make her care more like the ILF, the Government plans instead to drag ILF users into the same badly funded mess.

“You can see why people who receive the ILF are prepared to fight so hard for everyone who needs it,” says Kate Belgrave.

“Those people generally use their ILF money to pay for the extra care hours that councils can’t afford.”

Angela, a masters graduate, listened to David Cameron speak about his beloved son Ivan at the Conservative Party conference with sadness, but she says she wants to tell him “I am still alive, and I need help”.

When she found herself at ASDA at 5am, she says she thought: “Am I really living in one of the richest ­countries in the world? Why is my life so undervalued?”

Nadia wants to tell the Prime Minister about her hopes for the future. “I want to travel the world, study at university, live independently, become a model, interview famous people, become a working adviser for disability rights and to have a relationship and children.”

In other words, she wants an ­independent life.

Save the ILF vigil at the Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London 12.30pm on Wednesday and Thursday

Petition to sack Lord Freud – change.org/lordfreud

And Lord Freud's colleague Esther McVey is also in campaigners' sights

As the calls for Lord Freud to be fired reach fever pitch, Wirral TUC is dedicating itself to getting rid of his colleague – local MP Esther McVey.

Under McVey’s reign as Employment Minister at the DWP, around 800,000 people have been sanctioned, plunging families into misery and poverty. And a million visits have been made to foodbanks.

Public meeting this Friday at 7pm, Woodchurch Leisure Centre, CH49 8EH. John McDonnell MP will speak.