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The Sun
38 minutes ago
- The Sun
Judges grant two out of three people taxpayer-funded benefits after their claims are refused by the Government
JUDGES grant two out of three people taxpayer-funded benefits after their claims are refused by the Government, The Sun on Sunday can reveal. In astonishing figures seen by this paper, 69 per cent of cases win the award on appeal after taking their case to a tribunal panel. Last night a Government source said: 'This is a staggering success rate because in many of the cases the judges see the same evidence the original Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) officer saw when they refused the application. 'It clearly shows that the whole system is becoming a joke.' More than one half of all applicants applying for state benefits are successful. Out of 721,100 Personal Independence Payments (PIP) claims processed during the period of 2023/24, 332,800 were declined - making the rejection rate 46 per cent. Claimants are able to appeal in two stages. One in five people win an award by simply asking the DWP to change its mind by way of a 'mandatory reconsideration' of their application. If this fails they are then allowed to appeal to a tribunal where two out of three people are successful at overturning the DWP's decision. The tribunals are headed up by lawyers and consist usually of a legally qualified judge who chairs the panel, a medical member and a disability member who has experience with related issues. The latest full financial year data published by the DWP shows that in 2023/24 there were 46,803 PIP appeals cleared at tribunal hearings. Of these, 32,222 - 69 per cent - were decided in favour of the applicant. Moment Starmer TRIPS as he leaves Downing Street amid welfare fiasco In 2007 Sir Ernest Ryder, former senior president of tribunals, said that the quality of evidence provided by the DWP is so poor it would be 'wholly inadmissible' in any other court. In an extraordinary outburst he called the department 'incompetent'. And said he and his fellow judges were so incensed by the volume of cases where there was 'no justifiable defence to the appeal' that they were considering sending them back – or charging the DWP for the cases it loses. It comes after Sir Keir Starmer's attempts to win over welfare bill rebels fell flat this week after Labour MPs opposed any attempt to bring it under control. Under the Government's original proposals, daily living assessments were to be tightened for millions with physical or mental health conditions who claim PIP. But ministers were forced to dilute the proposals - applying stricter PIP eligibility rules only to new claimants rather than those receiving the benefit - after 126 Labour MPs threatened to vote them down. Originally, the measures were due to save £4.8billion, then that figure dwindled to £2.5billion. But now any changes will affect only new claimants and only kick in after welfare minister Sir Stephen Timms has concluded a review with disability groups. Sir Keir had promised to stand firm over PIP changes, but caved in after days of protests. Rebel ringleader Rachael Maskell - whose bid to reject the entire package was defeated by 328 votes to 149 - said: "The whole bill is now unravelling and is a complete farce." Jon Sparkes, chief executive of learning disability charity Mencap, insisted: "Disabled people should not have to pay to fix black holes in the public finances." Proposals to cut the health element of Universal Credit by almost 50 per cent for most new claimants from April next year remain in place. Plans for an above inflation increase in the benefit's standard allowance also stand. 1
Times
an hour ago
- Times
What does your rosé say about you?
Provençal rosé rarely invites conversations about what time in the morning the grapes are picked, or even what grapes are used. All anyone wants to know is: what colour is it? Any shade of pale pink with a gemlike clarity will do. Basically, is it 'nice rosé'?Exports from Provence — pink makes up 90 per cent of the region's wine output — have increased 500 per cent in 15 years, and the UK is one of the world's biggest importers: 12 million bottles in 2022, second only to the US. Last month Waitrose revealed it is mainly drunk at a particular time too — apparently rosé sales soar by 150 per cent when the temperature hits 20 rosé is now the accessible luxury statement drink that helps you semaphore who you are while getting gently pissed in the sun. But what does your choice say about you? First seen on the giant Chesterfields of Soho House, Lady A was created by the brand's founder, Nick Jones, as a 40th birthday gift for Markus Anderson, his global membership director (who is close friends with Meghan Markle). Made at Château La Coste, the art world's favourite vineyard, attached to Paddy McKillen's sculpture park in Aix-en-Provence, Lady A is also known as 'the one with the butterfly on it', drawn by Damien Hirst, no less. Its true loyalist is a city girl who knocks back a sneaky 125ml on her lunch break after a posh spin class. £19, Ott is an old wine estate and, until the premium rosé explosion of the late Noughties, was the most recognisable brand to anyone who had visited St Tropez, thanks to its skittle-shaped bottles. Now owned by Louis Roederer, it's still valued by the old guard, for whom rosé remains a strictly seasonal drink, only ever imbibed on yachts in the Med. £38, The Manchester United of nice rosé (its cult stretches from Cheshire to Dubai), this was the first to convince men that rosé was manly, hence the nickname 'brosé'. Blatant dupes abound, including Lidl's Breath of Paradise and Asda's Screaming Devil, while the Whispering Angel brand now includes The Beach for all-day drinking and the richer Rock Angel. (The estate's premium cru, Garrus, is loved by Lady Beckham.) £22.50, Made by a cool and credible winemaker outside Barcelona, the style is Provençalish. For the Ibiza regular who still yearns to be hip, this is a godsend because La Rosa is a rare beast: a gluggable, fancy-label beach-club pink with actual wine snob cred. This is spot-on for the self-conscious natural-wine-drinking hipster crowd. If you squint it could actually be orange. £22, In just five years Kylie has created a pink drink juggernaut: her signature rosé (£7) is the bestselling branded rosé in the UK and her wines are now available in 31 countries. It's all a big money win for Kylie, whose premium pink (£12, is proudly Provençal and pitches at a more discerning audience than, say, Dolly Parton's Dolly rosé (notes of, appropriately, dolly mixtures). It's the gateway to nice rosé — next stop Brad and Angelina's Miraval and a hook-up with a brosé drinker who works in biotech. This is the one for the British wine insider. Owned by a former director of Domaine Romanée-Conti in Burgundy (maker of some of the world's most valuable wines), this rosé has long been on the wine lists of every stylish restaurant, from the Notting Hill 'local' Dorian to high-grade rural pubs like Margot Henderson's Three Horseshoes in Batcombe, Somerset. It's entry into the nice rosé league comes via discerning hospitality staff, who quietly down it after serving wine to charmless Whispering Angel-drinking punters every evening. £15, • Read restaurant reviews and recipes from our food and wine experts Developed by a former JP Morgan banker, Rumor is a play to corner the actual — and aspiring — billionaire market. It has been cleverly crafted to tick every box: gluggable, with perfect acidity for all-day sipping, a pale pink so pretty it could be an F&B paint colour, and the mandatory minimalist gold label. Cornering the 'helicoptering in' set, it's exclusive to big money prestige joints like Hôtel du Cap and Estelle Manor. Won't appear in Tesco for some time. £27,
Times
an hour ago
- Times
The Clarkson review — the Land Rover Defender Octa is ‘the real deal'
When I was growing up, business was ever so simple. You decided you wanted to be a coal merchant, so you bought some coal for 20 shillings and sold it for 25 shillings. And then you used the 5 shillings you made on every transaction to heat your house and feed your family and buy tangerines, and coal, for your children at Christmas. Today, though, no one starts a business to take a weekly wage. Or pass it on to their kids. They start a business so they can sell it as fast as possible. They don't want a few shillings every week. They want a billion pounds tomorrow. So they don't necessarily want their business to be profitable. They want it to be valuable. And to me those are two very different things. The trouble is, I don't really know what I'm talking about. And to make sure I remain in the dark, businesspeople have invented a language that only they understand. You know how people in certain pubs in north Wales will switch to Welsh when an English person comes through the door. Well, that's what happens when I walk into a boardroom. I know that before I got there they were saying 'profit' and 'first quarter'. But when they see me coming, they switch to 'ebitda' and 'Q1'. As the biggest shareholder I sit on the board of Hawkstone, which is a company that turns my barley into lager. It's become quite successful and now turns lots of British farmers' barley into lager. This means it needs to be run by professional businesspeople, and that in turn means that when I'm sitting in a board meeting, I understand about one word in seventeen. Someone says 'cap X' and I have to quietly google that to find out what it means, and by then they're talking about 'PBT'. Often someone reads out a jumbled-up bit of the alphabet and there's a chorus of whoops and high-fives and it's like I'm watching American football. There's a sudden burst of excitement and I've no idea why. Another aspect of the business I don't understand is the range. We started with a beer that everyone liked. So we brought out another and then another, and then a stout. And occasionally I'd put my hand up in the meeting and ask why we were doing this. It just seemed to me like we were competing with ourselves. They would look at me with expressions of pity and reply, 'Because the Q3 forecast calls for a Tipte input of 14 and with IBT impacting on the Ewipt, we must act now.' All of which brings me on to Land Rover. If I was on the board and someone had suggested making a £150,000 Defender, I'd have interrupted and said, 'Why would we make a car that will pinch sales only from the Range Rover? That makes no sense.' It turns out, however, that actually it does. When the new Defender first came along six years ago, I was unimpressed. They'd aped the style and ethos of the original — a car I've never liked — but lost the substance. You only had to look at the fiddly little shopping bag hooks in the boot to know that if you ever used this car as an actual rough-and-tumble off-roader, they'd snap off in about one second. The car was, I concluded, a fake. Over time I had to admit that while it wasn't 'real', it was certainly a looker. I decided it was a cut-price urban understudy to the greatest off- road car of all: the Range Rover. But here's the thing. The new Range Rover, and I know this because Lisa has one, is not really an off-roader at all. Oh, I know that if you go on a shoot you'll see lots, with their summer tyres, slithering about on the wet grass. But here at Diddly Squat it feels wrong when you put a sheep in it. Or drive it through a wood. It's like going rambling in a pair of Jimmy Choos. It can go off-road, of course. It has the tech and the ground clearance. But mostly it's for going to the theatre in. And that's what brings us to the reason why Land Rover has just launched a £150,000 Defender. It's called the Octa, which means something that made sense in a marketing meeting but nowhere else. So let's get to the important stuff. Because this is emphatically not just a Defender with a supercharged 626bhp V8 under the bonnet. There's a lot more to it than that. First, it comes with bigger wheels than a normal Defender. Much bigger. They're so big that, to make them fit, Land Rover's engineers had to move both the front and rear axles. That's a huge job. They also replaced the antiroll bars with a hydraulic system, and fiddled with the control arms, links and knuckles. They also armour-plated the undersides and added the biggest brakes ever seen on any of their cars. I took it around the farm and it felt like it belonged. It also felt like it was never going to get stuck. So does this mean there are compromises on the road? Yes. The knobbly tyres are noisy. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're going to drive a monster, you have to accept that from time to time it's going to be a bit roary. You might also expect it to be a bit bouncy. But it rides beautifully. It also feels meaty. Unlike the standard Defender, which feels like a stylish interpretation of the real deal, this is the real deal. And it's bloody fast as well. The top speed depends on the tyres you fit, but doing 0 to 62mph in four seconds in a 2.5-tonne car like this is hilarious. Drawbacks? I was amused to see that in the command and control system there's a facility for measuring your lap times. Which seems odd in a car with off-road tyres. And while we are on the subject of computer nerds being allowed to fit stuff just because they can, it has the same automatic headlamp dim/dip system you get in a Range Rover. It's very clever, I'm sure, except it doesn't work. It blinds everyone coming the other way and if you try to override it you only make everything worse. The fact is, the Octa is a brilliant car. You sense there's some proper engineering in the mix and, thanks to its new flared wheel arches, it looks better than ever. It's also a hoot to drive. Better than a Range Rover? Ooh, that's a tricky one. The Range Rover is quieter, more civilised and has that split folding tailgate that provides you with somewhere to sit in the West car park at Twickenham. Whereas the Octa feels like you're on the pitch, in the actual scrum. So, two cars that appear to be similar but aren't. Is that Land Rover competing with itself? Yes. But it's also Land Rover giving its customers a choice. Which is why we sell lots of versions of Hawkstone. I think.
