#DWP @DWPgovuk: public servant or #propaganda vehicle? #GaggingBill #share The Department for Work and Pensions - DWP, a government department which appears to be increasingly and inappropriately fashioned by the the #ideological welfare-cutting politics of secretary of state Iain Duncan Smith, displays some interesting communications priorities. On the one hand, the DWP -- bound by civil service standards of honesty, integrity and impartiality, remember -- appears ever keen to #tweet and press release 10 Downing Street line on #benefits, while often being too busy to respond to criticisms or enquirers about the propriety and accuracy of its claims. On the other hand, it finds time to try to close down social media sites challenging or parodying it, as in the recent case of @UKJCP on Twitter. It is not hard to figure why. A quick search under DWP on Twitter illustrates that the department is facing an avalanche of well-researched and documented criticism over institutional failings and inaccurate or misleading use of statistics -- by individuals, but also by the kind of civil society groups the government is proposing to gag at election times through its Lobbying Bill (soon to be law). We have the DWP pumping out a #statistic that implies large numbers of people are ‘on the #fiddle’. The BBC News has made an admirable attempt at a balanced report of the DWP Press release in a report entitled “Million sickness benefit applicants ‘fit for work’”. The story is however #misleading and #factually #inaccurate from the second sentence because it is based on the DWP press release and the accurate but ill-explained numbers within. It is not just the current coalition government that has allowed some civil service functions to become increasingly compromised tools for party propaganda. That corrosive process began under Margaret Thatcher and under Tony Blair. But, along with the increasingly selective spinning of data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), it is a deplorable trend nonetheless. There is a larger, disturbing pattern here. The subjugation of the executive to political whim, the pushing aside of solid advice from the revising chamber and the attempt to silence civic organisations goes-hand-in hand with government challenges to the independence of #judicial process (repeated threats to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights -- formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) and its flirting with other threats to civil liberties such as the now-abandoned #Ipnas (injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance).
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 01:14:01 +0000
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