The DWP was faced with questions about why over 900,000 people needed help from Trussell Trust foodbanks last year – up from just over 340,000 the year before. The answer given has been used in literally hundreds of media outlets and is a master class in obfuscation, manipulation and …
Poverty and Inequality
Theology and other ways to waste time
In the second of this week’s blogs on child poverty, Nigel Varndell from The Children’s Society explains why they waste time on theology. According to the story, an American theologian once challenged his student class and his congregation to shout out the first word that came into their mind …
Why do we focus poverty on the young?
In the first of this weeks blogs on child povertywe look at why the youngest are also the poorest – and why this trend is set to intensify Children are the age group most likely to live in poverty. Children are the age-group hardest hit by austerity. We now have multiple reputable analyses – …
Freud, Foodbanks and Deliberate Ignorance
Lord Freud, the Minister for Welfare Reform, has again been asked for an explanation of the extraordinary rise in Foodbanks use. Remarkably he managed to produce another implausible answer which also contradicted his two previous contradictory and implausible answers. He stated to the House of …
Truth and Lies… about foodbanks
Last week I was sent a link to two blogs about food banks, both on highly reputable websites. As co-ordinator of JPIT’s work on this subject the sender thought, rightly, I’d be interested. Indeed, my heart leapt when I saw the title of one – by Katie Hopkins – was ‘The Real Reason Food Banks Have …
DWP Disability Benefit press releases “unfit for work”
The DWP estimates that the level of Incapacity Benefit fraud is less that 0.3% – the lowest of any means tested benefit. Disability benefits have always had a low level of fraud but I have never seen a DWP press release mentioning this – not even a tweet from the increasingly …
Dear MPs: Benefits Street is not social science
When the Chancellor last year talked of people with “closed blinds…sleeping off a life on benefits”, I joked that he had mistaken the series “Shameless” for a documentary. “Benefits Street” now gives us the opportunity to watch “Shameless” but using carefully selected real people. This is …
Mr Cameron: Stop saying disabled people are exempted from the Bedroom Tax – they are not.
During Prime Ministers questions David Cameron was asked about the impact of the Bedroom Tax (also called removal of the Spare Room Subsidy) on disabled people. The answer he gave was straight forwardly untrue: “Obviously, what we have done is to exempt disabled people who need an extra room.” …
Workhouse without walls? the Work for Benefits scheme.
In July 2009 there were 22,000 people who had been unemployed for more than 2 years. The latest numbers (July 2013) show that there are now 206,000 people who are long-term unemployed. It is hard to imagine that this increase was caused by a nationwide outbreak of laziness, poor CVs and bad …
Telling the truth about poverty: Response to Centre for Social Justice
Download the response …