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.

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.