Oct 062013
 

IDS Has Done It Again

An article published yesterday  in the Express (Saturday 5th October) revealed that 16,500 claimants had found a job after the clamp on benefits.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/434431/16-500-find-jobs-after-clamp-on-benefits

The article refers to people living in benefit-capped households and quotes figures which has been revealed exclusively to the Daily Express, which show that ‘Mr Duncan Smith’s promise to “make work pay” is starting to change a culture where some lifelong layabouts viewed benefits as a limitless cash machine’.

Unfortunately for the Express, Iain Duncan Smith and DWP, these figures were  published on the 3rd of October 2013 and are in the public domain:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/245802/benefit-cap-jcp-activity-sep-13.pdf

What the official figures show is that out of 400,000 households affected by the benefit cap, people in 16,500 of those households had found a job.

16,500 sounds like a large number but it represents only 4% of the households affected by the cap.  Hardly what can be described as a success.

In other words, these statistics show that 16,500 people potentially affected by the benefit cap found a job, but that does not mean that it was the benefit cap that forced these people to find work.

Some people in these capped households would have found work anyway, with or without the cap, so it is impossible to say from the statistics if the benefit cap had any effect.

In fact the official DWP statistics document emphasises this point and warns that The statistics are not intended to show the additional numbers entering work as a direct result of Jobcentre Plus support”.

So what has happened?

Is the Express lying when it claims it has been given exclusive access to these figures?

Or did DWP officials approach the newspaper promising an exclusive which was pure misinformation by manipulating the figures to promote their own agenda.

We don’t know. But one thing is for sure, this isn’t the first time that Duncan Smith and the DWP have been caught doing this.

In May this year, Iain Duncan Smith was strongly criticised by the UK Statistics Authority for making exactly the same misleading claim https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/may/09/iain-duncan-smith-benefits-cap-statistics

Another thing is for sure – Duncan Smith hasn’t heard the last of this.

 

By Annie Howard.

 

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[suffusion-the-author display='description']
 Posted by at 19:16

  6 Responses to “IDS found misleading again.”

  1. My brother recommended I may like this web site.
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  2. Mark Hoban replacing Esther Mckvie, was the problem that she was too much in touch with society? I doubt it, we just have an IDS clone

    Sandra, we’re closer to the workhouses than you think, I heard a rumor that one plan was to create “selective areas” to group disabled people together to help them integrate into work, strange didn’t a similar party have the same idea in the 1930’s?

  3. Stats can be manipulated to show whatever and its about time people are educated to know this.
    Thanks for the info.

  4. Excellent article, thanks Annie.

  5. hear..hear mark…smith fought to keep his job as executioner and cares not for anyone outside his cold world..but what goes around comes around…i mean mark this low life didnt have the balls to except a challege to live on £52.00 a week….not when his father in law gave him a 2 million pound mansion to live in…what a shit and coward….what do you expect from this creature who built his own life on a pack of lies…example his army career was as bagman to an officer and he spent time in the states with faciast groups…hence his nazi mentality…to punish those who don’t fit this goverments ideal…what’s next…the poorhouse and the camps…treat this shit like the enemy…that what he is and will always be….regards to you…sandra.

  6. The Devil’s Tune plays on like a stuck record. This man is evil incarnate.

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