... AS A NATION ROLLS BACK TO THE 1930s ... ONE DWP DEATH AT A TIME...
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Number is finally up for 'cruel and incompetent' IDS - alias 'Iain's Dodgy Stats'
The Work and Pensions Secretary is finally being called to account for using
inaccurate and misleading statistics to justify his policies
Inspirational figures: Jayne Linney and Debbie
Sayers
Since being appointed as Work and Pensions Secretary in 2010, Iain Duncan
Smith has had so many problems with statistics it’s earned him the nickname
‘Iain’s Dodgy Stats’.
From November 2010, when he was caught out using figures from the website
findaproperty.com instead of his own DWP statisticians, to his claim in May 2013
that the benefit cap had driven 8,000 people back to work, he has been censured
by bodies including the Office for National Statistics.
This summer, two disabled women – Jayne Linney, 51, a grandmother from
Leicester, and Debbie Sayers, 49, a mum from Cornwall – decided enough was
enough.
“We felt dodgy stats were being used to take away people’s benefits,” Jayne
says, helped into the Commons by Tony, her disabled partner and full-time
carer.
“The way ministers tell the story affects how people see our lives. It is one
thing to live with the physical challenges of a disability - it is quite another
to hear misinformation every day from our own government.”
The women, who both suffer from fibromyalgia and other health problems, had
only ever met through Facebook – but they decided to launch a Change.org
petition together calling for IDS to be held to account over use of statistics.
Within weeks, it had 105,069 signatures.
Yesterday, the petition was placed by Jayne’s MP Liz Kendall, according to
tradition, into the green bag behind the speakers’ chair.
Hansard records that “The Petitioners therefore request that the House of
Commons urges the Work and Pensions Select Committee to question Mr Duncan Smith
at their earliest convenience to hold him to account on his use of statistics
and urther requests that the House requires Mr Duncan Smith to retract any
incorrect statistics...”
Meanwhile, the Select Committee has agreed to “examine the way DWP releases
benefit statistics to the media”.
“It feels wonderful to be at the House of Commons,” Jayne says. “And it’s
wonderful to finally meet Debbie after all these months. It’s been a painful
journey for both of us to get here – but we are determined that Iain
Duncan-Smith should have to answer to MPs.”
On Monday, after delivering the petition to Liz Kendall and Kate Green MP,
the shadow disabilities minister, I went with the campaigners to the debating
chamber – to watch Duncan-Smith answer questions put by his Labour opponent
Rachel Reeves.
But even while we were in Parliament, IDS dropped another dodgy statistic.
This time, he claimed that child poverty rose under Labour - in fact it dropped
by 800,000.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies now estimates it will rise by 600,000
thanks to IDS’ welfare reforms.
“What really got to us in the beginning was a claim by Esther McVey, then the
disabilities minister, that people getting Disability Living Allowance rarely
had face-to-face medicals,” says Debbie.
“We knew this wasn’t true. When we looked into it, it turned out only nine
per cent of DLA funding was spent on this basis.”
McVey had also made other claims, that Jayne and Debbie could prove were
mistaken. They began with an open letter asking her to desist from “persistent
use of dubious facts”.
'Statistically challenged': Iain Duncan Smith
But they realised the issue also affected her boss IDS, who in 2010 had been
rapped by the UK Statistics Authority for “serious deficiencies in the handling
of unemployment data”.
So in April 2013, they launched their petition to bring IDS and the whole
department to account, including McVey. The following month, IDS made his claim
about the 8,000 people supposedly driven to get a job by the Benefit Cap.
It was true that 8,000 people had gone back to work, but his own department
had made it clear they could prove no link with the Cap. The Trade Union
Congress made an official complaint.
In July 2013, Andrew Dilnot CBE, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority said
IDS had “broken the code of practice for official statistics”, and Jonathan
Portes of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said the DWP
boss had gone “beyond spin”.
IDS started to take another tack, that conveniently required no statistics at
all. “I have a belief I am right,” he told the Today Programme on Radio 4.
Even with a petition of over 100,000 signatures, the two women have had to
fight hard to bring IDS to account. The Select Committee has said it will grill
IDS when he appears before them with his department’s annual report – originally
due in April.
The appointment been repeatedly cancelled – but will now happen in December,
a stunning eight months late.
In the time that the women have been fighting, Debbie’s husband John has been
through a battle with bone cancer, losing his left leg below the knee. Their
family faces even more disability.
“This petition is so important because it is holding Iain Duncan Smith and
Esther McVey to account for their repeated misrepresentations of disabled
people’s lives,” says Liz Kendall, shadow care minister.
“They are not just cruel but incompetent – and use them to justify policies
like the Bedroom Tax.”
Now, thanks to a disabled mother and grandmother, the Secretary of State for
Work and Pensions will have to face an MPs’ select committee on December 9th –
calling an end to Iain’s Dodgy Stats and Esther’s McVague Truths.
