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Spectator
a day ago
- Business
- Spectator
Revealed: the dodgy data undermining Universal Credit
As Sir Keir Starmer offers concessions to 126 rebels to water down his welfare reform bill, a scandal that undermines the entire Universal Credit system goes ignored. The Spectator has seen figures revealing that the HMRC data feed which powers Universal Credit payments to low-paid workers may be so error-strewn that as many as one in four claimants has been underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all. When Universal Credit was introduced 11 years ago to modernise benefits, it required a robust data system to drive it. HMRC's answer was the 'Real Time Information' (RTI) system – hailed at the time as the most significant overhaul of the tax system since PAYE's introduction in 1944. Employers were required to report payroll information every time they paid staff, enabling near real-time benefit calculations. The system was later used to support the Covid furlough scheme. But problems surfaced almost immediately. Financial penalties that were triggered automatically to ensure employers reported earnings records accurately and on time were abandoned after just one use in 2014, almost as soon as the data stream was turned on. A senior official at HMRC said at the time: 'We haven't been able to target them [400,000 automated compliance messages to employers] as sharply as we hoped and they went to people who had complied.' In hindsight, some insiders draw comparisons to the Post Office's Horizon scandal. The implications of flawed RTI data are vast. FTSE 100 companies have seen tax liabilities misstated by millions because what they owe in tax is also calculated using RTI. Businesses have lost faith in the integrity of the figures. This same stream underpins tax assessments for 30 million people and Universal Credit payments for 23 million. Yet the data is routinely late, inaccurate, or missing. The fallout? Missed tax receipts, unpaid benefits – and in the most severe cases, people wrongly accused of fraud. In 2023, I reported that, while the government claimed the RTI error rate was under 1 per cent, figures I obtained showed a monthly error rate closer to 5 per cent. One in 20 Universal Credit claims for working households, it turns out, may be wrongly calculated every month – a figure the government strongly disputes. More recent Freedom of Information requests suggest an error rate as high as 8 per cent, or 2.5 million incorrect records monthly. The benefits bill is unsustainably high and reform is clearly needed These reports in The Spectator led to the shop workers union USDAW including questions about Universal Credit payments in its annual survey to thousands of members. I have now obtained the results. Of those surveyed, some 1,265 said they claimed Universal Credit. Some 23 per cent admitted they had had issues with their UC claims because the details of their households' total pay were wrong at DWP or had an incorrect date shown. That suggests that almost one in four in-work UC claimants have been made a victim of this error that stems from the RTI system. Nearly 29 per cent of those who had experienced an error ended up in financial hardship as a result. Some 22 per cent said they'd experienced issues but not been able to get a satisfactory response from the DWP. The USDAW survey, which is the first of its kind to ask in-work UC claimants if they've experienced errors stemming from RTI, reveals that even the error rate of 4-8 per cent I've previously reported on could be a considerable underestimate. The survey responders are all USDAW members so tend to be people working in lower-paid private-sector roles. It's not possible to say for certain that they are all UC claimants, but their membership suggests these are the type of people likely to be in the in-work claimant population governed by RTI. A common issue raised was the misreporting of pay dates for supermarket workers paid every four weeks. The RTI system often logs two payments in a single calendar month, triggering a drop in benefit entitlement. These are not isolated glitches; they point to a systemic failure. A government spokesman said: 'In the vast majority of cases using Real Time Information supplied by employers is an efficient and accurate method of calculating Universal Credit payments – and less than 1 per cent of cases do not match. 'If a claimant wishes to dispute the earnings information we have used, they can submit evidence to us, and we will look into the case and make any necessary changes.' The benefits bill is unsustainably high and reform is clearly needed. But if Starmer is now open to concessions, this is his opportunity to go beyond cash savings. He should instruct Welfare Secretary Liz Kendall to review the reliability of the RTI system underpinning Universal Credit. At its core, the principle that work should pay is absolutely right. But it only holds water if the systems ensuring that promise are accurate, transparent and fair. Because too many claimants are being failed by the very mechanism meant to support them. If Starmer wants to reform welfare, he must start by fixing the machinery behind it before another Horizon-style scandal hits the headlines.
Spectator
a day ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Starmer's ‘one in, one out' migrant plan will end in failure
Britain and France believe they have found a solution to the small boats crisis. According to reports, Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron have agreed to implement a 'one-in, one-out' system whereby Britain will return to France illegal migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats. Britain, for its part, will accept migrants who have a legitimate case for joining family already resident in the UK. A government source told the Times: 'It'll start as a pilot but it's to prove the point that if you pay for your passage on a boat, then you could quite quickly find yourself back in France.' Under the scheme, Britain and France would process migrants using biometric details and separate those who have a valid claim for family reunification in Britain from those who do not. The latter would be returned to France. The French know a thing or two about 'gimmicks' when it comes to the migrant crisis The scheme could be officially unveiled as early as next week so Starmer has something to celebrate as he marks his first year in power. But is it a deal worth celebrating? This is not the first time Paris and London have solemnly pledged to work together to combat the scourge of illegal immigration. In 2002, Home Secretary David Blunkett and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy announced a deal to close the Sangatte migrant camp at Calais. 'We will also put an end to a symbol – a symbol which was like a magnet for immigrants who thought that by coming there they would find a way into the UK,' declared Sarkozy. The deal did little to stop the migrants, so in 2014 another deal was signed, in which Britain handed over €15 million to France. A year later another treaty was hammered out, this one signed by Theresa May and Bernard Cazeneuve. The pair put pen to paper on 20 August. Eleven days later Angela Merkel threw open Europe's borders to more than one million refugees and migrants with her now infamous cry of 'Wir schaffen das!'. As The Spectator remarked a few days later: 'She has exacerbated a problem that will be with us for years, perhaps decades.' Between 2014 and the end of 2022, Britain paid France £232 million to better manage their shared border. In March 2023, Britain handed over an additional £500 million, money well spent, according to the then prime minister Rishi Sunak. 'Working together, the UK and France will ensure that nobody can exploit our systems with impunity,' he declared, promising that the money would 'put an end to this disgusting trade in human life'. Nearly 37,000 people arrived in England illegally on small boats in 2024, 7,000 more than in 2023. So far this year, more than 18,000 have crossed (a 42 per cent increase on the same period in 2024) – a figure that is likely to surge over the summer as the traffickers take advantage of the good weather. The Tories were quick to criticise this latest scheme. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said that 'the French are failing to stop the boats at sea…and now instead of demanding real enforcement, Labour are trying a one in, one out gimmick'. The French know a thing or two about 'gimmicks' when it comes to the migrant crisis, as they do about broken presidential promises. The French people long ago stopped believing a word Emmanuel Macron says about solving their own migrant chaos. In July 2017, for example, two months into his presidency, Macron declared that he wanted: Administrative processing everywhere, from the very first minute, to determine whether an asylum application can be made or not, followed by a genuine policy of deportation. There was no processing, however, and as vast numbers of migrants continued to arrive in France, Macron came up with a new wheeze: instead of returning them whence they came, illegal immigrants would be dispersed in the provinces. The announcement of this plan, in 2022, was a political gift to Marine Le Pen's National Rally, and helps explain the party's electoral success in recent years. According to the Times, under the one-in, one-out scheme, illegal migrants will be 'returned to locations across France, away from its northern coast'. Le Pen's party will oppose such a project, as will the centre-right Republicans. The coalition government under Francois Bayrou is teetering on the brink after talks over pension reform collapsed earlier this week. The left have filed a vote of no confidence in Bayrou but Le Pen has said her party won't endorse it. The right are propping up the government, for the time being, but their support could easily be withdrawn – over a migrant relocation scheme, for example. This latest plan to solve the small boats crisis will play out like every other since 2002: a firm handshake, a media fanfare and a complete failure.
Spectator
2 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
In defence of exorcism
British politics and ghosts are subjects that rarely meet. Sometimes an MP or parliamentary aide might report a sighting of one of various spirits that inhabit the Palace of Westminster. It is said, for instance, that the ghost of the assassin John Bellingham haunts the Commons lobby at the spot where he gunned down Spencer Perceval. And last year the diary secretary to speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle excited the tabloids with her claim that once, in one of parliament's side rooms, she felt a phantom dog nuzzling against her leg. In general, though, politicians aren't preoccupied with the paranormal. One exception is David Bull, the former TV presenter of Most Haunted Live! and the new chairman of Reform UK. On Good Morning Britain earlier this month, he was asked by Richard Madeley whether he had ever seen a ghost. Not only did Bull admit to having driven with a ghost in the boot of his car, he also told how a poltergeist had taken hold of the celebrity medium, Derek Acorah, and tried to strangle him. This story was retold the other week with sceptical merriment at The Spectator's weekly editorial meeting. Feeling that I should intervene in support of the supernatural, I confessed to the editor and his crew that I once hired someone to perform an exorcism at my house in Maida Vale. Merriment turned to suspiciously demonic laughter. What were the supernatural events that led to my experience with exorcism? I am a heavy sleeper, but even I was occasionally woken by the banging of doors on the second floor. But not as much as friends who had to sleep in the guest room. They also reported sudden chills and apparitions. The man I turned to for help was not a priest but a dowser. He was a big cheese in the British Society of Dowsers. He was not at all 'new age'; he looked and spoke like an accountant. He identified the spirit of a young girl crouching in the corner of the room and thought that she had probably been a prostitute. Villas built in Little Venice in the 19th century, often for mistresses, became brothels in the 1920s. The Warrington public house on Randolph Avenue, close by my home, was a famous house of ill repute. Some have suggested that the word 'randy' (lustful) derives from the location. To release the ghost from her physic imprisonment, I was encouraged to knock a double door between two guest rooms at great expense. It worked. No more banging doors. I was so convinced by my dowser that when I later bought a pied-à-terre in Kensington Gardens Square, I got him to give it a psycho-spiritual once-over. My account leaves one big unanswered question. Why did I believe so readily in the presence of a pesky ghost in my house? The answer is simple. I have previous experience of the supernatural. Some years earlier I was sitting in my apartment in Bombay when I was called to the telephone. A woman called Rita Rogers wanted to speak to me. She told me that my father, Frank, who had died some years earlier, was sending me a message. He wanted me to have his gold Rolex watch. Not only had I never heard of Rita (who later became famous as the clairvoyant who gave advice to Princess Diana), nor she of me, but she could not have known about my father or his watch. I rang my mother, who told me that she had been meaning to give it to me. It was handed over. As communication from beyond the grave goes, it did make me wonder why my father had sent me such a humdrum message. Despite my own supernatural experiences, I still find it difficult to take ghost stories seriously – even my own. As a historian and geopolitical analyst, I live in a world of facts, evidence and logic. When friends or acquaintances tell me about the time they saw a ghost, I pass it off as an amusing anecdote in which I only half-believe. By contrast, for most of history society has taken this stuff very seriously. The best-known early account of exorcism took place at Gerasene, near the Sea of Galilee. Here Jesus met a lunatic possessed by demons (literally 'unclean spirits' in Greek) and asked his name. 'My name is Legion, for we aremany.' Legion begged Jesus to 'send us among the pigs'. The demons were duly despatched into a nearby herd of pigs, which rushed into a lake and drowned. But exorcism predates Christianity. In the first millennium bc, shamans in Mesopotamia called asipu performed exorcisms. The Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus recorded how a holy man called Eleazar called on King Solomon to draw demons out ofthe noses of victims. Meanwhile, demons in the Islamic world, jinn, have always been dealt with by exorcists called raqui. In the West, the publication of De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam ('Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications') in 1614 defined the practice of exorcism until minor adjustments were made in Vatican II. These changes stressed the connection between exorcism and baptism. It's a connection heavily emphasised in the Orthodox churches, which do exorcisms all the time. 'At every baptism we spit on Satan – literally,' one accomplished icon painter told me. The practice of exorcism today is seen by some to be an archaic medieval hang-over. But Pope Francis in an interview warned against the 'spiritual lukewarmness' that left people open to 'diabolical possession'. According to Vatican News, the demand for exorcisms in Italy has tripled in recent years and annual requests exceed half a million. Some attribute this to an increased use of recreational drugs and psychiatric disorders. In Britain, exorcisms are carried out by specially trained priests – in the Church of England there are 42, one for each diocese. And although they don't like to publicise it, NHS consultant psychiatrists have been known to work with exorcists (or 'deliverance ministers', as the C of E calls them) to treat patients with mental health problems. The belief in ghosts is an important part of human history. And despite the sceptics, it still has a place in modern life. It would be a great subject for Reform's new chairman to get his teeth into.
Spectator
2 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
The Spectator letter that marked a turning point in gay history
On 3 June 1960, a letter appeared in The Spectator which began: Sir, We are homosexuals and we are writing because we feel strongly that insufficient is being done to enlighten public opinion on a topic which has for too long been shunned. The letter was prompted by the government's failure to act upon the recommendation of the 1957 Wolfenden Report that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence. This had led to the founding of the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS) in 1958, and it was for this organisation that the letter's three signatories worked as volunteers. The letter was both unusual and brave because the writers had signed their real names at a time when being identified as homosexual risked investigation by the police. As the authors of The Light of Day point out, it also looked forward to future battles for homosexual equality in which acts of public self-declaration became a crucial tactic. Forty-three years later Christopher Stephens, who was embarking on a Master's degree at Oxford, was asked if he could visit a local man who was blind and needed someone to help with his bills and correspondence and to read to him. This man turned out to be Roger Butler, one of the signatories to the letter. As well as wanting an amanuensis, the 68-year-old Butler was looking for the kind of loving relationship he felt he had missed out on, and with Stephens he found both, although to his regret the friendship remained essentially platonic. Much of what Butler felt was recorded in letters to Stephens that he did not send but left to him on his death in 2011. He had also written memoirs, but never completed them to his satisfaction, and extracts from these and his correspondence have been skilfully integrated into a narrative that is both absorbing and often very moving. The names of many of those who fought to change the law in the 1950s and 1960s have largely been forgotten, but here we have their work described in detail by an eyewitness. Butler spent his evenings stuffing HLRS leaflets into envelopes in a dingy house in Islington that served as the Society's headquarters, its windows blanked out with whitewash. He was also among those who were gathered together by the sociologist Richard Hauser in order to research The Homosexual Society (1962), a highly unscientific, muddle-headed but fascinating survey commissioned by the Home Office. Butler's letter provoked a good deal of discussion about homosexuality in both The Spectator and the New Statesman, where a shorter version had been published. In addition it brought a personal letter of congratulation from another forgotten figure, Lionel Fielden, who was about to publish an autobiography titled The Natural Bent,in which he too declared himself homosexual. A former employee of the largely queer Talks Department at the BBC, Fielden had inherited a fortune at the end of the second world war and decamped to Italy, where he lived in considerable splendour with a man called Guido, who combined the roles of lover and factotum. His letters to Butler were nevertheless flirtatious, and although no romance ensued when they met, Butler adopted Fielden as his principal confidant, and much of his story is told through their lively correspondence. Butler's working title for his memoirs was 'A Shilling Life', taken from a poem by W.H. Auden which he felt suggested that a life of pottering, gardening, reading and writing letters, of doing small jobs around the house, might be as significant as the life of someone lauded as 'the greatest figure of his day'. The Light of Day bears this out, although Butler's story is more extraordinary than perhaps he fully realised. He rebuilt his life after he became blind and, with only a rudimentary education to his credit, was accepted to study history at Balliol College, Oxford as a mature student. He may only have got a third, but given the fact that he relied on core texts being read to him and in his finals had to dictate essays to a typist, to have attained a degree at all was, as his tutors recognised, truly remarkable. More importantly, in this community of his intellectual equals he truly flourished. After graduation he settled in Oxford, determinedly creating a beautiful house he would of course never see and working away on his memoirs. He was taken up by the philosopher Stuart Hampshire and his wife Renée, who invited him to dinner with the likes of Isaiah Berlin and Angus Wilson; while his continuing friendship with Richard Cobb, who had been his moral tutor at Balliol, led to his becoming a trusted sounding board for the books the historian was working on. Butler's own story is told in tandem with a frank and detailed account of his unusual relationship with Stephens, in a narrative that smoothly shuttles back and forth across time. Far more than a shilling life that gives you all the facts, this book elegantly and touchingly combines biography and history to produce a work of real and enduring value.
Spectator
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Being stalked by a murderer was just one of life's problems
Private Eye asked last week: Which of Michael Gove's luckless staff at The Spectator will be assigned to review this grisly account of their editor's marital woes? Reader, it's me! I'm happy to do this, though, because I have an interest in how to be a political wife (I am married to Alex Burghart MP), and perhaps have something to learn here, though I'm struggling to understand, eek, 'lesson seven': Realise… that when you step over the salt circle into the five-pointed star coven of politics, you have ceased to become a person. You are now a c**t. There's a feeling that the author still has a touch of PTSD. Readers with expectations of schadenfreude will not be disappointed. Sarah Vine shoots thunderbolts. She writes like she's just sat down at your kitchen table, poured herself a big glass of vino and let fly. It takes huge skill to blow off copy like this, accurately channelling the voice of Middle England, and since 2012 she has been a prize-winning columnist on the Daily Mail. But the Cameron elite could not understand her popular touch or value what she did, and when they took different sides over Brexit they fell out forever. We find her here looking back over the wreckage: 'This is my story, written with no fear, no favour – and, frankly, no fucks left to give.' The mood is quite Thelma & Louise. Scorched tyre tracks are left across David Cameron for his shock resignation the morning after the referendum ('what a massive man-baby'), as well as for offering the Goves an Admiralty flat that they could not accept ('another dick-move, Dave'). Theresa May is branded 'utterly graceless'; the journalist Emily Sheffield is told that 'not everyone has a baronet for a daddy'; and even Vine's own father is thanked for 'fucking me up so brilliantly'. But she never turns on Michael, 'the best ex-husband a girl could ever ask for'. She does tease him throughout, though. He is her 'goofy, incorrigible genius', unable to ski when they met on a group skiing holiday; legendarily clever, although not always gifted with foresight – she rags him for having written Michael Portillo: The Future of the Right. One gets the sense she was fun to be with, while also fiercely loyal. She eye-rolls, yet there's more than a hint of pride when she recounts how, while she was in labour with their first child for 23 hours, her husband spent the entire time reading Robert A. Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, only once complaining about the discomfort of his given seat, a bean bag. But when the Daily Telegraph drip-fed leaked MPs' expenses claims, aiming to damage Gove, she saw red. She would never work with the editor Will Lewis again, branding him 'the man who tried to ruin us', and noted the hypocrisy of Andy Coulson, too, later imprisoned for 18 months for phone hacking, yet hanging Gove out for claiming allowable expenses. Vine felt, during her husband's anguish, her 'tiger wife' awakening. 'From this point on, I became obsessed with convincing people to see Michael as the kind, serious, intellectual, public-spirited campaigner that I knew him to be.' She describes her father, a Welsh Del Boy-type, as Roger the Dodger, Mr Boom 'n' Bust – yet she has surely inherited a touch of his risky charisma. She rolls like a fighter, carelessly swaggering et tu, Pontius Pilate at David Cameron and gaily mixing metaphors: '…the potassium-on-water conflagration that happened when politics and media collided – would ultimately be the grim reaper of all that had come before'. When Vine started work at the Daily Mail in 2012, Samantha Cameron felt betrayed. The truth was that at the paper I was her and her family's staunchest advocate. I was forever putting my neck on the line to defend the Camerons, both politically and personally… What annoyed me even more was the notion – unspoken but very much implied – that I should somehow act as an unpaid spokesperson for the Cameron government, that I should be a sycophant and courtesan. Some of Vine's anecdotes are so vivid, we feel we are there. During dinner at the Johnsons' house in Islington, Boris and Michael discussed whether or not to join the Leave campaign, thrashing out the implications over slow-cooked shoulder of lamb: Timescales, economic consequences, trade options, regulations, Northern Ireland: these were all in the mix. Boris sought the counsel of various third parties – a cabinet minister, a lawyer – barking loudly into his mobile (on speakerphone) in between mouthfuls, Michael listening in and occasionally contributing. Meanwhile, Vine, Marina Wheeler and Evgeny Lebedev were left making conversation 'in stage whispers'. Vine writes candidly about money worries and feelings of social inadequacy – difficult topics, bravely broached. She puts herself down wittily throughout. The stock image of a collapsed woman on the cover has a jokey deadpan feel, but there is a genuine undertow of sadness. At times one cannot believe what the Gove family endured during frontline political service. The angry dinner lady, sending their young son to the back of the line because he was a Gove. The jolly-looking 18th birthday card with a badge that their daughter Bea excitedly opened, only to find it contained a death threat for her father. And the knowledge, gleaned by security services from phone locations, that the murderer of David Amess MP trailed the Goves around, spending days lingering on the street where they lived. Politics gets the blame for a lot of the fall-out: Ultimately, I don't think many couples would have survived what we went through… George and Frances did not; Boris and Marina did not; Kate Fall and her husband did not; Matt Hancock's marriage did not. The mechanisms by which these marriages fell apart may all be different. But there is one common denominator: politics. Vine says that the Turkish Delight the White Witch offers Edmund in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe represents the intoxicating taste of political power: Power is the ultimate drug. Those who are hooked on it will, like any addict, go to almost any length to get their fix, prioritising it above all else – friends, family, colleagues. She might have added that the power of the press, her own personal creative outlet and addiction, can be just as damagingly sweet.
