Another Angry Voice on the Tory Policy of Destroying Embarrassing Evidence

Another Angry Voice has another excellent post up, this time on the way the Conservatives are deliberately destroying and suppressing the evidence of the harm done by their vile policies. The evidence from information collected from the government agencies themselves have refuted and challenged Tory claims on the moral and economic basis of their cuts to the welfare services on everything from the foodbanks to the bedroom tax. In particularly they have shown that a horrifying 10,600 people have committed suicide due to losing their support from the state under the Tories’ reforms. The government’s response has been, in all of these cases, consistent: shoot the messenger. The agencies have simply stopped collecting the information. The Voice’s article begins:

‘In April 2013 Iain Duncan Smith’s woefully mismanaged Department for Work and Pensions furtively cancelled the collection of data on the reasons they have been referring people to food banks.

Prior to the introduction of “bedroom tax” and a range of wide ranging welfare cuts in 2013, the DWP food bank referral form included a section to indicate the reason for the referral (benefit delay, benefit change, refusal of crisis loan). After April 2013 this section was removed.

These referral statistics had been used by the Trussell Trust (one of the UK’s largest food bank networks) to utterly demolish Anthony David “Lord” Freud’s ludicrous claims that the soaring number of people reliant upon food banks had nothing to do with his welfare reforms (here’s an article outlining some of the Trussell Trust’s statistics).’

He goes on to criticise sharply the specious arguments and claims spouted by the Conservatives to try to rebut this embarrassing evidence:

‘What is even worse than their efforts to bury these inconvenient statistics is the frankly disgusting rhetoric coming from high profile members of the Conservative party. Who could forget Freud’s ludicrous claims that the ever increasing numbers of people relying on food banks are just idle people scrounging “free commodities”. Then there’s Michael Gove and his revolting “blame the victim” narrative that families turn to food banks because of “poor financial management”‘.

I’ve blogged on here before that I don’t trust government statistics on unemployment after successive Tory administrations, beginning with Thatcher’s in 1979, altered the way they were collected to suit them. This is further proof of the cavalier way the government alters and ignores information when it proves inconvenient. Their policies show the contempt they have for the poor, and the complete indifference and hostility to facts and evidence regarding their claims. The British people have absolutely no reason to trust them at all. Mike’s satirical take on their attitude to fact is summed up in his piece, Iain Duncan Smith: The Musical!, which lampoons IDS’ expressed preference for ‘belief’ over evidence. It’s an attitude which extends to the entire administration.

Tags: Another Angry Voice, Bedroom Tax, Conservatives, David Freud, Food Banks, Iain Duncan Smith, Statistics, Trussel Trust