Guardian UK 'Scrounger Stigma puts poor people off applying for essential benefits'

[Firestormm]

I don't know if this might best belong here. Sorry.

Published under the Guardian's 'Breadline Britain' series, this relates to a report completed by researcher's at the University of Kent. Kind of a wake-up call for some of the press and those inciteful and wrong quotes given by certain parliamentarians including Lord Freud the other day:

In an interview with House Magazine, Lord Freud is reported to have said the benefits system is "dreadful" and discourages poor people from taking the risks he implied they should be willing to bear to change their circumstances.

"The incapacity benefits, the lone parents, the people who are self-employed for year after year and only earn hundreds of pounds or a few thousand pounds, the people waiting for their work ability assessment then not going to it – all kinds of areas where people are able to have a lifestyle off benefits and actually off conditionality," the Conservative peer said...

...

Freud, a former journalist and investment banker, told the magazine that his background did not make him unable to understand the reality of living on benefits. "You don't have to be the corpse to go to the funeral, which is the implied criticism there," he said.

It is not the first time senior Tories have publicly criticised the culture of benefits, and the party has been accused of stirring public distrust by making dramatic claims about rich lifestyles and fraud.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/22/benefits-system-dreadful-tory-minister?INTCMP=SRCH

Not that Labour's quote was entirely straightforward I felt:

Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: "The nasty party is well and truly back. This government has comprehensively failed to get Britain back to work and frankly it's a disgrace that ministers now choose to kick people when they are down rather than even pretend to offer a helping hand."

I couldn't help but wonder if that's what he felt Labour had done when they were last in power i.e. merely pretending to offer a helping hand? Perhaps it speaks of the reality of those parliamentarian's and their election winning promises?

Anyway, the above article goes on and refers to the report I mentioned:

A report by the University of Kent this week calculated that hundreds of thousands of people were put off claiming benefits because of perceived stigma, a problem the researchers also blamed on the media.
The report dismissed government claims that there were families receiving as much as £100,000 a year in housing benefit – it later emerged there were just five such families – and that people had been off work for more than a year with diarrhoea – it turned out they had serious bowel diseases...

Now that article is here (phew - got there in the end folks):

'Scrounger' stigma puts poor people off applying for essential benefits

Research shows 'climate of fear' whipped up by media stories on benefit fraud delay or stop people in need from getting help

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/20/scrounger-stigma-poor-people-benefits

Analysis by researchers, led by the University of Kent's social policy team, said polls and focus groups had revealed a quarter of claimants had "delayed or avoided asking for" vital welfare payments because of "misleading news coverage driven by [government] policy".

This "climate of fear" means 1.8 million people have potentially been too scared to seek help they are entitled to from the state. Such is the scale of successive governments' disinformation that the report calls for ministers to abandon briefing journalists ahead of their speeches and asks Whitehall departments to seek corrections "for predictable and repeated media misinterpretations".

The researchers tested the accuracy of recent government statements and found them lacking. The report highlights that ministers – including the chancellor, George Osborne – had claimed there were families taking £100,000 a year in housing benefit. In fact there were only five such families in the UK.
Last year ministers appeared to brief that 1,360 people had been off work for a decade with diarrhoea, when in fact they had severe bowel diseases and cancer.

The report, entitled Benefits Stigma in Britain and commissioned by Turn2us, part of the anti-poverty charity Elizabeth Finn, examined more than 6,000 articles on social security between 1995 and 2011 from the major newspapers – the Times, the Mirror, the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Daily Express.

Benefit fraud remains a popular topic for papers: 30% of all articles dwell on the issue even though, the report points out, rates of fraud do not rise beyond 3%.

The study shows that disproportionate coverage of fraud is linked to higher levels of stigma, with the readers of "stigmatising newspapers", such as the Sun, believing there were "higher levels of deception within the welfare system"....

...

However, the authors said the country was "seeing a surge in negative stories compared to the previous 10 years", noting that the amount of coverage is now comparable to 1998 when Labour arrived with a big "welfare reform" agenda.

The big change in coverage in recent years, says the report, is to focus on "scroungers" as opposed to "cheats".

It says this shift began in 2008, when "scrounging" replaced fraud as the main welfare issue covered in the press – at a time when the then Labour government was developing tests for incapacity benefit recipients and the Conservatives were pushing the idea of "broken Britain"...

...

Rob Tolan, head of policy at Turn2us, said the rhetoric was affecting the public. "At a human level, stigma sees the elderly, sick and disabled people skipping meals or keeping the heating off … One lady we helped, who was left disabled by a brain tumour, ate porridge five nights a week, rather than ask for help."

Moreover, there are fears that hardening attitudes have translated into an increase in verbal and even physical attacks on claimants.

A 2011 survey showed that nearly half of disabled people had experienced a worsening of attitudes towards them and in February, the six major disability charities issued a warning about "an increase in resentment and abuse directed at disabled people, as they find themselves being labelled scroungers"....

They're all the bloody same. Right. Back to the Workhouse for me then chaps. 'Hi Ho. Hi Ho... to the grave I go...' What a sad ruddy country in which I live.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

but it's ok ot wage illegal wars on lies, screw eveterans out of aid, make millions for deals made while in office, and billions are sotlen by the rrich and corproation in tax evasion
oh yes, and wasting billions on useless nuclear weapon systems and basing them right next to scotland's two main cities
ah huh

and THIS is the reality, Ian Duncan Smith, the architect of the UK's mini "Final Solution" on being asked about the deaths he's caused...yes, it's all ok to "get disabled peopel back into work!"
Ends justify the means to these bastards

not media is deeply in bed with this evil and manipulate such programme's to edit out as much of such as they can, liek a guy in studio who protested abotu ATOS

 

[Firestormm]

but it's ok ot wage illegal wars on lies, screw eveterans out of aid, make millions for deals made while in office, and billions are sotlen by the rrich and corproation in tax evasion
oh yes, and wasting billions on useless nuclear weapon systems and basing them right next to scotland's two main cities
ah huh

and THIS is the reality, Ian Duncan Smith, the architect of the UK's mini "Final Solution" on being asked about the deaths he's caused...yes, it's all ok to "get disabled peopel back into work!"
Ends justify the means to these bastards

not media is deeply in bed with this evil and manipulate such programme's to edit out as much of such as they can, liek a guy in studio who protested abotu ATOS

Thanks for the Question Time extract there, Silver. I'd missed that one. Was it a recent episode? Thanks.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

yeah it was the most recent one.
what an arrogant git he is! :/

 

[Firestormm]

yeah it was the most recent one.
what an arrogant git he is! :/

Thanks. I must watch it. THought I had. Oh well...