After the Canary revealed the glaring conflict of interest of presenter Fraser Nelson in Channel 4’s Dispatches, the producer has come out and contested this. This concerned its latest rancidly ableist, and error-riddled episode titled: ‘Britain’s Benefits Scandal’.
Notably, the Canary highlighted that Nelson sits on the advisory board to the dodgy dark money think tank at the heart of the programme. It was none other than the notorious Iain Duncan-Smith founded Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). Now, the episodes’ executive producer, Eamonn Matthews has claimed Nelson no longer has anything to do with the board or think tank more broadly.
However, there’s just one problem with this. Nelson said the exact opposite – on the very day the programme aired.
Dispatches: Channel 4 denies Nelson’s conflict of interest
On Monday 2 December, Channel 4 televised the Dispatches documentary fronted by Nelson. As the Canary wrote however:
Nelson is a policy advisor to the very organisation the documentary turned to throughout. This is former DWP “grim reaper” Iain Duncan-Smith’s controversial think tank, the CSJ. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t mention this association. So, the whole programme falls on its ass – since it turns out it’s little more than a CSJ puff piece.
So, Disability News Service’s (DNS) John Pring put this to the broadcaster. In responses Pring kindly shared with the Canary, the Dispatches executive producer Eamonn Matthews told him that:
Fraser, along with others, was on the advisory board which is no longer active and he plays no part in the running of the CSJ.
In short then, Channel 4’s producer is claiming that Nelson is no longer on this board. However, this isn’t what Nelson has said. By contrast, in an article Nelson penned for the Scottish Herald, he wrote that:
This ‘Easterhouse agenda’ led to the Centre for Social Justice (on whose advisory board I sit) and later, in welfare reforms cut worklessness to the lowest levels ever recorded.
And crucially, the outlet published the article – get this – on Monday 2 December. Baffling? That’s an understatement. Here, Nelson is talking about sitting on the advisory board, in the present tense. Conversely, the Channel 4 producer told Pring he’s no longer on the board. What, as of the very moment of the reply – after the Canary put his conflict of interest in the spotlight perhaps?
Someone’s telling porkies…
Either way, someone isn’t being honest about this. Maybe Channel 4 didn’t know – but there’s no excuse for inviting him to present the programme and not checking this. More likely, it did know, and didn’t expect to be caught out. After all, you don’t ask the former editor of the Spectator with a body of published work bashing benefit claimants to head a Dispatches, unless you have a very particular rightwing editorial ambition for it.
And even if we’re to take the claim that he “plays no part in running” the CSJ, Nelson still has significant involvement in its work. For instance, Nelson presented the CSJ’s 2024 annual awards ceremony. He was also a speaker at a fringe event the CSJ hosted for the Conservative Party’s 2024 annual conference.
Nonetheless, despite his galling conflict of interest, Channel 4 isn’t pulling this bullshit documentary. Instead, it’s actually doubling down and hoping this CSJ-Nelson debacle will blow over.
But here’s the thing, the CSJ’s role in shaping this Dispatches episode is a serious red flag. It’s not some innocuous information source. The CSJ has a history – and it’s one of aiding and abetting dangerous welfare reforms. So, how much it had a say over this Dispatches is very relevant. And it’s evident the CSJ was very heavily involved in its direction – likely thanks to Nelson.
CSJ front and centre
Nelson has crafted his own little website for the shoddy piece of poverty porn propaganda masquerading like a real documentary. It’s “written and published” by none other than Nelson himself, naturally.
Of course, it’s originally-named: benefitstrap/.com (we’re not going to link to it). As with the Dispatches, forget this blather about a benefit “trap”, it’s the biggest claptrap going more like.
The vital point is however, here too the CSJ is front and centre. And where the documentary said almost benignly “calculations for Dispatches show”, Nelson’s website confirms just who ran those stats for the programme.
Drum roll please: the CSJ!
It was obvious anyway, but it’s definitive proof that the whole documentary is genuinely entirely based around a bunch of biased bullshit stats from the opaquely-funded think tank.
One statistic demolishes Dispatches‘ whole premise in one fell swoop
An especially dubious figure in particular on the site and in the documentary exposes the CSJ’s involvement indisputably.
This is the supposed £24,000 a single claimant could get in so-described sickness benefits. That’s less than 40 hours full-time work on national minimum wage (NMW) by the way – so paltry poverty pay if we’re being honest.
But the biggest piss-take about it is the fact it’s not actually true anyway – at least certainly not in the way Nelson described and wanted viewers to go away with.
Because the problem is, the figure just doesn’t stack up.
By the Canary’s calculations, a claimant could get in total: £18,562 a year. This includes both higher rate awards for PIP comprising £737 a month, alongside both the base rate and LCWRA amounts for Universal Credit.
Crucially however, as we pointed out about this already, getting the enhanced rate of PIP is notoriously difficult to obtain.
Around 2.3 million working age people get full PIP or DLA. This means that they get the enhanced rate for both daily living and mobility elements. Of those, around 450,000 are on Universal Credit Limited Capability for Work-related activity (LCWRA). For the ESA support group, it’s approximately 580,000.
That is, of those claiming benefits like Universal Credit and ESA who are unable to work due to ill health or disability, just 30% and 45% respectively have awards for full PIP.
In other words, the majority of claimants on low incomes who aren’t working due to long-term sickness, aren’t getting both the higher rates of PIP. So, the idea that it’s easy to obtain and the norm as Nelson tried to suggest, is completely preposterous.
Even supposing claimants were getting this, £18,562 is less than the national minimum wage (NMW) for even the lower end 35 hours of full-time work. In other words, chronically ill and disabled people unable to work are living on less than the NMW regardless.
Fictitious figures full of holes on Dispatches
So where is the CSJ getting this £24,000 for Dispatches from exactly?
A single graph on the website shows how the CSJ has come to this – and spoiler, it’s hugely problematic.
For one, it naturally assumes the higher rate of PIP. As we explained above, this is hardly a “typical” person claiming so-called sickness benefits. Less than a third of Universal Credit in the LCWRA group are getting this. This means of course that the majority – around 70% – are not claiming full PIP.
For the sake of analysing the rest of Nelson’s CSJ stats, we’ll set this aside for a moment. But the problem is, as we highlighted, with the Universal Credit base rate and LCWRA component, it still brings us to far less than £24,000 – which in fact, the CSJ’s graph also illustrates. So what’s going on here?
Turns out, the CSJ has factored in the housing element of Universal Credit for this too. Except, here’s the thing, that amount won’t go into the pockets of benefit claimants. This is to cover rent – ergo, it goes to landlords. In fact, as the Canary’s James Wright previously pointed out, 88% of the governments’ housing budget goes to subsidising landlords through either the housing element of Universal Credit, or legacy housing benefit.
Bumping approximately £18,500 up to £24,000 also seems to suggest it’s worth on average £5,500. For most claimants, this won’t be true. In fact, this figure seems to use the rate for a claimant getting this for three bedrooms (for example, with a partner, and dependent) for some of the most expensive rental areas, like the City of London. It’s therefore wildly misrepresentative of what the majority of claimants can get for this.
There’s another more detailed graph too, though this came from social policy analytics company Policy in Practice. It’s as much of a joke as the first one – factoring in old-style benefits the DWP is phasing out RIGHT NOW, like Tax Credits, and ESA. Needless to say, it doesn’t paint close to an accurate picture of the reality for most claimants either.
A clear back-to-work and benefit cut agenda
Ultimately, Dispatches pulled entirely erroneous figures out of its arse to buttress its core message. This is that: benefits being so generous means there’s no incentive for people to go to work. It’s evident what this is implying. Cut benefits, and cut people who need them off benefits. This fits quite nicely with Labour’s crusade to ‘cut’ the benefits bill after all.
Of course, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the CSJ has wormed its way into the so-called “worklessness crisis” discussion with dodgy statistics.
The Canary has highlighted the think tank doing so before. This was for a figure bandied about by the rightwing corporate press and politicians with reckless abandon. Most recently featured in Labour’s new Get Britain Working White Paper, this is the supposed 600,000 people off work due to long-term sickness that would like to move into employment.
We debunked this too for the baseless statistic it really is, that uses fallacious data that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Most importantly was the fact that – dodgy stats aside – a person wanting a job, is wholly different from someone being able to actually do one. Just because chronically ill and disabled people want to work, doesn’t mean they can, or should. This shouldn’t need saying, but the CSJ conveniently forgot this – and so has every politician citing its trash stat since.
Did this bogus statistic also happen to come from CSJ reports that Nelson promoted in the event he spoke at during the Tory Party CSJ fringe event? Yes it did.
The facade it was ‘factually accurate’
We’re labouring over the CSJ’s misleading and deliberate misinformation to make an important point. This is that Channel 4’s obtuse obfuscation of Nelson’s intimate and long-standing connection to the CSJ is enormously problematic too.
It can’t contend that this doc is accurate, since it’s clear the CSJ and Nelson have an aligned agenda. Funnily enough though, that’s precisely what the Channel 4 Dispatches episode’s executive producer claimed it was to the DNS. In no uncertain terms, Matthews told DNS that:
As outlined in our statement the film is factually accurate.
That said, he also told the DNS that Nelson isn’t on the CSJ advisory board, all while Nelson continues to boast that he is. Clearly, something doesn’t add up here – and it’s not just the shady CSJ’s shoddy statistics.
Featured image via screengrab
