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IPSO finds Times article on PIP was misleading
Good to see inaccurate reporting on benefit claims and claimants being pulled up by IPSO for a change.
Jonathan Portes complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Times breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “Mental health industry is cheating the public”, published on 19 August 2024.
The article – which appeared within the ‘Comment’ section of the newspaper – reported the writer’s opinions about what he described as the “mental health industry” and questioned whether psychiatry and psychology could be described as a “scientific discipline”. The article reported that “there are many good reasons why people may [be economically inactive] but the fastest growing group within this inactive cohort are those including mental health disorders in their claim for a personal independence payment (PIP: the substantially enhanced welfare benefit for people medically unfit for work). Such maladies, having no visible physical symptoms almost impossible to disprove. You can learn online how best to pitch your claim to your GP gatekeeper”.
The information provided did not demonstrate that the increasing number of claimants for PIP on the grounds of anxiety and depression were not in work. The Committee therefore considered that the publication had not taken care not to publish inaccurate information on this point, and there was a breach of Clause 1 (i).
The Committee turned next to the claim that GPs were the “gatekeeper[s]” of PIP. The Committee noted that those applying for PIP needed a medical diagnosis from a GP in order to receive the benefit, however, it was the DWP who had the ultimate say – which was not included within the article. The Committee considered this was, therefore, inaccurate. When considering whether the publication had taken care not to publish inaccurate information in relation to the above claim, which was again easily verifiable on government websites, the Committee noted the publication had not verified this information. As such, there was a further breach of Clause 1 (i).
The Committee considered that both of the above inaccuracies had the clear potential to mislead on a matter of public importance – the eligibility of disabled people for payments made by the public purse. Therefore, the Committee considered the article to be significantly inaccurate on these points, and a correction was therefore required under 1 (ii).
There is also the usual definition of PIP as a “benefit for those medically unfit for work”. Conflating it with ESA/UC(lcw), and thereby confusing a statutory disability benefit and a means-tested, earnings-replacement benefit.