Aditya Chakrabortty’s article (The government uses your money to gaslight poor people, 6 November) revealed the depth that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will go to defend its failing flagship universal credit programme, which has pushed thousands of people into poverty. It is important people are able to make decisions that impact on their finances based on factual information.
The anti-poverty charity Z2K (Zacchaeus 2000 Trust) that I lead was the first to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about this series of ads, and we are named in the ASA’s final ruling. We were compelled to make this complaint because we simply could not understand why the DWP would make assertions without clear evidence to back up their claims.
We were really pleased to see such wide coverage of the ASA ruling, and to know that thousands of Guardian readers share our concerns. We are, however, very disappointed that the DWP is neither able to satisfactorily explain its actions or apologise for the harm they will have caused to the people who may have moved on to universal credit as a result.
The ruling comes too late as the now discredited campaign has already ended. That’s why Z2K has launched a public campaign calling for an apology from the DWP and an independent investigation into how and why these adverts came to be authorised. It is vital that we the public can trust government departments to be telling us the truth, particularly in being clear about their strategies to ensure that the social security system works as a safety net to reduce the numbers of people now living in poverty in the UK. Instead of using taxpayers’ money on a failed PR campaign, the DWP must now start engaging meaningfully with the widespread evidence of the impact of welfare reform on pushing people into poverty. Join our campaign to tell the DWP to #StopMisleading today.
Raji Hunjan
CEO, Z2K (Zacchaeus 2000 Trust)
• Aditya Chakrabortty points out that the government used our money to place misleading adverts about universal credit. What is more concerning is that claims the ASA call “misleading” are regularly used word-for-word by government ministers defending universal credit.
The ASA found that government claim “people move into work faster” under universal credit breached the advertising code under the rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation), 3.9 (Qualification) and 3.11 (Exaggeration). That exact phrase has been used by government MPs 67 times in parliament to defend universal credit, as well as in countless media interviews. It is the key plank of the government’s claim that universal credit is making lives better – yet it fails to meet the basic standards of truthfulness and honesty that we demand of soap powder commercials. It is time that it is removed from the mouths of government ministers.
Paul Morrison
London
• Huge credit to Aditya Chakrabortty. Credit also to cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill, for ruling that the government cannot publish a Treasury analysis of Labour’s spending plans. While both developments are clearly embarrassing to the Conservatives, I think they also reveal a worrying failure by the civil service to adhere to its “core values” of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.
Specifically, officials in the DWP and Treasury seem to have been willing participants in attempts by the government to manipulate the evidence in order to support a predetermined policy (universal credit), rather than providing an objective analysis of its impact; and to devote resources to rubbishing opposition spending plans for party political purposes, while apparently not having sufficient resources to analyse the impact of the government’s Brexit deal.
I worked for 38 years as a government analyst and I know that the UK civil service, in particular its analytical professions, has a deserved reputation for observing high standards of professionalism and propriety. It saddens me to see this now under serious threat from the actions of current government ministers, combined with the pressures from austerity and the demands of Brexit. It will be important for the next government, and civil servants themselves, to take steps to restore this reputation before it is too late.
Alan Spence
Southport, Merseyside
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