Student Blog: THE SUN today calls on readers to help end the benefits frauds that cost the country a record £1.2BILLION last year.

Feed URL: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/criticalthinking/2017/04/21/student-blog-the-sun-today-calls-on-readers-to-help-end-the-benefits-frauds-that-cost-the-country-a-record-1-2billion-last-year/feed/?withoutcomments=1

It can be argued that the statistics used within this headline are misleading and exaggerate the true extent benefit fraud is committed in Britain. For example, by looking at the annual figures for ‘overpayment’ of benefits in 2012/13 on the GOV website, it can be highlighted, that the overall percentage of total benefits expenditure that are overpaid accounts to 2%. Moreover, this has stayed at a similar measure since 2004/5. Thus, it can be highlighted that using solely numerical data that is not in comparison or compared to how much is spent within the government on welfare is inappropriate. This is because, it allows people to assume this is considerably higher than what it is. Similarly, The Sun have not defined what ‘fraud’ is, for example on the government website, the statistics also include money that is accidentally overpaid to people, opposed to people intentionally committing benefit fraud. Thus, overall it can be emphasised that the headline is misleading.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.