The DWP is being forced to withdraw “entirely misleading” statistics about the number of people found incapable of work from a press release, launched as part of the softening-up process prior to the Pathways To Work Green Paper release.
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) received a number of complaints, including one from Benefits and Work, about the claim in the 13 March press release that:
“The number [of people on Universal Credit health with no requirement to look for work] has almost quadrupled since the start of the pandemic when 360,000 people were considered too sick to look for work – a 383% rise in less than five years.”
The OSR found that “The statement that the number of people claiming disability elements of Universal Credit has increased by 383% presents an entirely misleading picture to the public.”
This is because the overwhelming majority of the increase is due to the fact that new claims for employment and support allowance (ESA) had been replaced by UC claims. So, as the number of ESA awards shrank, the number of UC awards rose.
But adding the two figures together shows that the actual increase is only 50% and that includes the effect of the pandemic.
This wasn’t the first time the DWP had been caught peddling this bogus comparison.
Just the week before, the DWP had been challenged by the Disability News Service over a claim in a press release that there had been a “staggering 319% increase” in people on the health element of UC.
The DWP removed the figure but refused to add a note showing the press release had been altered.
On this second occasion, after being contacted by the OSR, the DWP continued to use the untruthful 383% figure but now with a small amount of explanation.
The OSR has instructed the DWP to remove the figure entirely by 4 April, add a note that the press release has been updated and refrain from using the untrue figure again.
Of course, all this comes much too late, with the bogus statistic having featured in the media at the time and few people ever likely to see the correction.
When he became DWP disability minister, Stephen Timms claimed that he would create a new era of transparency at the DWP, as part of an effort to restore trust in the department.
We will wait a long time, we suspect, for an apology from Timms for this lapse of transparency.
You can read the OSR’s ruling here.
