We’ve seen strong reactions from Disabled individuals and organisations about the Channel 4 Dispatches programme aired earlier this week.

In this open letter, we’ve joined Inclusion Barnet and the Disability Benefits Consortium to call on Channel 4 to address our concerns and make corrections in a follow-up programme.

If you have seen the programme and share our concerns, you can write to them directly via this link: Ofcom Complaints.

Open letter to Ofcom:

Programme title: Britain’s benefits scandal: Dispatches

Date of broadcast: 02/12/24

Time of broadcast: 20.00

Channel/ station: Channel 4

Subject: Benefits and employment (complaint of bias)

Description: Documentary

I write to complain of serious bias in the coverage of the issues with which this programme was concerned, in contravention of Channel 4’s own impartiality code: Due impartiality | Channel 4 

This started with the title of the programme (Britain’s benefits scandal) which is tendentious, sensationalist and politically slanted. 

The presenter (former Spectator editor Fraser Nelson) has a known political position on the issues involved. This should have been balanced by a commentator with alternative, or at least neutral, views. A disabled commentator would have been particularly appropriate. 

There was no attempt to address a number of matters that are surely essential to a balanced examination of the issues, notably: 

  • The adequacy of benefit levels, whether basic benefits or those relating to the extra costs of disability; and whether provided to people in or out of work.  
  • Many employers’ reluctance to employ Disabled people. 
  • The poor quality of many benefit assessments, with claimants wrongly denied their entitlements.  

There is much evidence on these matters, not least that assembled in various reports of the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee. 

There was no explanation of the range of possible reasons for increased numbers of disability and health-related benefit claims, including: 

  •  The health impacts of poverty. 
  •  The pressures of the cost-of-living crisis. 
  • The rising pension age. 
  • Statistical differences in recording Universal Credit claims as compared with its predecessor benefits. 

There was unclear and inaccurate information on the benefits system, notably: 

  • Contrary to the implication in the programme, there is no need to end a Universal Credit claim if moving into work, as UC is an in-work benefit also, so simply continues as a top-up to low wages. 
  •  As noted above, there was no reference to the well-documented problem of inaccurate benefit assessments wrongly denying entitlements, although prominence was given to suggestions that benefits were too easily awarded.  

There was a tendentious selection of case examples – for example, nobody was shown moving into work and struggling on low pay topped up with inadequate in-work benefits, in spite of this being a frequently occurring scenario. 

The extent of biased presentation and reporting in this programme was quite remarkable and in our view unacceptable. It should be corrected by means of a follow-up programme presenting a balanced range of perspectives and evidence.  

 

Geoff Fimister 

Head of Policy at Inclusion Barnet, on behalf of the Campaign for Disability Justice & Co-Chair of the Disability Benefits Consortium. 

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