Independent Media | Campaigning Journalism
Esther McVey is spending over £200,000 on a study everyone already knows the answer to
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) secretary Esther McVey has once again proven how out of touch she is. She’s launched a £217,000 study to discover whether the government’s continued commitment to austerity is “harming poor people”.
But people have already worked out the answer.
Are we to blame?
The Liverpool Echo drew on a Guardian exclusive, reporting that:
The Tory welfare chief and her department are trying to find out if its policies are behind the surge in people relying on food banks.
The £217,000 research will seek to answer what campaigners have long argued after the number of emergency food parcels soared from 61,000 in 2010/11 to 1.3million last year.
Continue reading below...
Yes, yes you are.
Yet McVey could have just asked the question on social media, as people were chomping at the bit to tell her the answer:
YES ESTHER, IT HAS!! (please tell me this is a wind-up, right?) 😡😡😡
Esther McVey wants to know if Tory austerity has made people suffer https://t.co/WE5SddwNV4
— Andrew Gwynne MP (@GwynneMP) August 2, 2018
And others thought that the fact she even had to ask is evidence that this government exists in a “parallel universe”:
We've been telling them this for years. This government lives in a parallel universe if they doubt whether their austerity agenda has hurt people! https://t.co/6kaZfUSwex
— Fiona Onasanya (@FionaOnasanyaMP) August 2, 2018
Meanwhile, campaigning lawyer Peter Stefanovic wasn’t impressed:
Its inconceivable this despicable Gov’t is in any doubt that it’s programme of austerity is responsible for a surge in people using food banks, no one could be that stupid, it simply thinks wasting taxpayers money on a report to cast doubt is a great idea https://t.co/542jsjuWPX
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) August 2, 2018
Delusional
McVey is MP for Tatton, close to Manchester and Liverpool. In response to her study, a Liverpudlian on Facebook stated:
Just goes to show what a clueless delusional gravy-train riding idiot she really is and so far detached from reality and her constituents it’s laughable.
I’ll do the survey for £10 and come up with the same answer.
And while the new research will focus on DWP policies, others have previously laid bare the impact of cuts elsewhere. A 2017 study published in the medical journal BMJ Open linked Tory cuts to health services to “around 120,000 excess deaths”. Meanwhile, research by food bank charity the Trussell Trust concluded:
Analysis of foodbanks that have been in full UC [Universal Credit] rollout areas for a year or more shows that these projects experienced an average increase of 52% in the twelve months after the full rollout date in their area.
Perhaps most startling of all is that, between July and August 2017, over 74,000 three-day emergency food supplies went to children.
Lip service
But people think the government is well aware of how damaging its policies have been:
This is nonsense there has been study after study, so the government is WELL AWARE of the consequences of these policies. Austerity related deaths are now well in excess of the 120,000 documented in 2017 & it's principle architects have yet to be held accountable.
— Princess Indigo (@Princess_Indigo) August 3, 2018
And welfare and disability campaigner Charlotte Hughes is concerned that the government is paying “lip service” to the issue in a bid to silence people:
They know already.. They are just playing lip service hoping that this will silence us. It won’t it will do the opposite.
— Charlotte Hughes. The Poor Side Of life (@charlotteh71) August 3, 2018
Therefore, it’s up to all of us to continue to pressurise this government into reversing its cruel policies. Thankfully, people aren’t buying McVey’s faux compassion.
Get Involved!
– Follow Charlotte Hughes’s blog, The poor side of life.
– Join The Canary, so we can keep holding the powerful to account.
Featured image via UKParliament/YouTube
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