Corporate media conglomerate Reach is at its fearmongering, clickbait antics again over Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Personal Independence Payment (PIP) plans. Its assemblage of local and national outlets have published a rush of news stories that the Labour government intend to reform PIP. This time, specifically it centres around potential means testing. However, behind the headlines there’s little substance to the stories.
That hasn’t stopped them spinning these to imply the DWP will implement means-testing for the disability benefit – with no evidence.
Of course, its all in pursuit of clicks for ad revenue – but its persistent nonsense like this unconscionably adds to chronically ill and disabled claimants distress.
DWP PIP: a new survey doesn’t mean means-testing
The originating outlet in question was the usual culprit: gutter pseudo-local news site BirminghamLive, which led with the headline:
DWP PIP claimants will be asked to detail disability costs as Labour plans reforms
As the name suggests, it concerned a new survey that the Labour-led DWP is carrying out. Minister for disabled people Stephen Timms referenced this in response to a written question by Poole MP Neil Duncan-Jordan.
Duncan-Jordan was querying what assessments the department had made to assess the “adequacy” of PIP for supporting the “extra costs of disability.”
As part of his reply, Timms said that:
DWP pays close attention to the evidence base on the extra costs faced by disabled people; including academic research, analysis by Scope, and DWP’s own commissioned research on the Uses of Health and Disability Benefits from 2019. In order to understand more, DWP is now undertaking a new survey of Personal Independence Payment customers to understand more about their disability related needs. This project has an advisory group of experts including representatives of the disability charity Scope and academic experts.
Essentially then, it looks as if the DWP is hosting a survey to find out the additional costs disabled people experience. Of course, this is yet another awful proposal from Labour, for numerous reasons – not least the fact it’s putting the emphasis on a marginalised group to quantify their additional costs.
Obviously, it could suggest the department plan to cut the benefit, or means-test it. It could also mean that it wants to uprate it to better align with disabled people’s needs.
In the context of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ austerity rampage, and DWP boss Liz Kendall’s rhetoric on long-term sickness, the former seems more likely.
The point is though, there’s a lot you can infer from this – but we don’t currently have concrete information. In short: we can only surmise what it could all mean.
Nothing new on DWP PIP reforms
In a nutshell, this was the entire basis of BirminghamLive’s story. Of course, it’s not a lot to go on – and the Canary checked – the DWP has yet to publish any further information on the survey. What was notable was that it wasn’t even the first time Timms had mentioned the survey. He’d done so in a different written question response at the start of October. The Big Issue had already reported on this in another story mid-month. Yet naturally, BirminghamLive was presenting it as something new.
Given the lack of detail, the outlet fleshed the article out with other information. And it was from this the scaremongering really took off.
In particular, the article brought up examples of disability benefits in other countries. Specifically, it wrote that:
In some other countries, specific costs are taken into account when deciding how much a person will receive in disability benefits, as outlined in the previous green paper to reform PIP. In New Zealand, the amount of disability allowance paid is based on actual extra costs that are verified by the person’s health practitioner, and these can include clothing, counselling, medical alarms, gym/swimming pool fees, energy/heating, special foods and prescriptions. All costs must have relevant evidence provided in the form of receipts, tickets and bills.
It also gave other examples of disability benefit systems that operate similarly in Norway and Sweden.
Of course, the implication of including this is obvious. Effectively, it linked Timms’ answer with information that made the implicit suggestion that this would mean means-testing PIP.
However, it was how another corporate media outlet leaned into all this that became really problematic.
Misrepresenting the DWP PIP survey
Media conglomerate Reach Plc owns BirminghamLive among its enormous portfolio of pseudo-local media sites. Reach also operates a number of national media sites including the Express, the Mirror, the Daily Star, and the Daily Record.
Alongside BirminghamLive, Reach faux local news publication Cambridge News covered the story. It linked to BirminghamLive’s original coverage as its source. And notably, in its version of events, it wrote how:
The department also made reference to international approaches, explaining that in other countries, disability benefits consider specific costs as shown in a prior green paper on PIP reforms.
You can read through the entire BirminghamLive article and there’s no suggestion that the international examples came from the DWP. However, here, Cambridge News is saying that it did. The error, or more likely, deliberate sleight of hand gives the impression that this is what the survey is really all about. But the news story it’s citing gives no firm evidence of this. Instead, the outlets have jumped to these conclusions seemingly of their own accord.
What’s more, another Reach outlet – the Daily Record – had already published news about the survey separately. This was days ahead of the BirminghamLive piece – and made no mention of the international examples.
Search engines and shareholders
And the misinformation is one thing, but the fear it could stoke for DWP PIP claimants is quite another. As the Canary has pointed out before, sensationalistic spin and preying on benefit claimants is Reach’s bread and butter.
Moreover, it churns out a stream of baseless, non-stories like this to tap into search engine algorithms.
The Canary’s Steve Topple has laid out how this works in practice. But crucially, there’s a reason for all this. And that’s its shareholders.
This would be the likes of asset management companies and investment banks. Among these are big players in the financial sector such as Hargreaves Lansdown, BlackRock, and JP Morgan.
So, it’s only natural these outlets – in bed with corporate capitalist interests – would punch down on DWP PIP claimants. This was just one of its latest clickbait pieces of drivel to makes money off the backs of chronically ill and disabled claimants’ fears. However, it certainly won’t be the last. Needless to say, if you want accurate information on PIP reforms, readers should steer clear of Reach’s sites.
Featured image via the Canary
