But then look at the same story in the Mail. The headline slants it as "claimants win legal right to keep money". But in the very first sentence we have: "Benefits claimants cheats are able to keep money they are not entitled to ...." And this is the slant throughout. IDS is nobly trying to clamp down on cheats but the tribunals are failing to deal with this because there aren't enough DWP officers turning up to put the case in person. It's a lie. There's no other word for it. Those 250,000 people are not "cheats". But that's the Mail's hate-filled agenda.
Monday 9 June 2014
How the Daily Mail lies to you
The basic story is straightforward. When people find that their benefits have been cut, disagree with the decision and take their appeal to a tribunal, they find that DWP officials only turn up to 4% of the hearings. There were 250,000 benefits tribunals last year, a surge in numbers after Iain Duncan Smith turned the screws. You can read all this on the Telegraph's website, where it notes that "Last year, in cases where a presenting officer turned up, the DWP’s decision to cut the benefits was upheld 57 per cent of the time. Where they did not turn up, the Government’s success rate fell to below half, at 49 per cent, according to figures obtained by Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary." Given that this is a Tory paper, it's a fair report.
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Indeed the Mail article is the usual hysterical and warped pack of lies designed to incite loathing in the readership. Sad that the press has plumbed these depths.
ReplyDeleteI do however find some solace in the readers' responses which are far more balanced than I had expected. Unfortunately I couldn't add my own response as I am banned from commenting by the Mail because some time ago I accused them of "lazy journalism".
Perhaps the offending word was "journalism".
DeleteGissajob, good to see you still out and about on the various sites. The Mail article is desperate stuff even by their standards, talk about clutching at straws. So you're banned from The Fail as well? You seem to be a specialist at being banned from crap websites, I seem to remember you saying you were banned from Indus Delta on three separate occasions under three different aliases.
DeleteNo mention of ATOS's decission to leave the contrct for WCA though. It is reported today ATOS feel their replacement will also struggle to achieve what the goverment want. The Sunday Mirror also reported an increase in the backlog regarding PIP - the benefit set to replace DLA.
ReplyDeleteIt is also reported that "...an inability to make a sufficient profit was a factor in the firm's decision to withdraw from the contract, for which it has had to pay compensation." Full Story - http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27767779
DeleteThe Torygraph say they are describing the stats for appeals in cases where the benefits claimant says that s/he has been incorrectly assessed for ESA. The Torygraph concedes that the DWP loses in 43% of the appeals anyway, therefore the DWP assesses over 40% of ESA claims wrongly. How bluddy incompetent, inefficient and wasteful of public money.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Daily Wail, isn’t it possible to buy better-quality parrots?l
They hand over 100 of £millions of tax-payers money to private firms, and they then produce results about as accurate as someone flipping a coin. It's almost funny.
DeleteFour percent of 250,000 is 10,000. The BBC today report over 700,000 people are awaiting a ESA decision.
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