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The country’s biggest civil service union has written to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to express its “disgust” that it has entered into a media partnership with The Sun newspaper, which it accuses of “demonising benefit claimants”.
From 23rd January to 18th April this year, DWP says it will be working with The Sun to run an awareness campaign to “give wider visibility of key campaign messaging for Move to UC (M2UC)” – the move to replace the array of legacy benefits with the single Universal Credit system.
The Department for Work and Pensions says the aim of the partnership is to reach current Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants through a “trusted” non-government voice to help reassure them about their upcoming move to Universal Credit.
But the union is angry over what it describes as The Sun’s history of “demonising benefit claimants” as supposedly “work shy” and “shirkers”.
It is not known yet how much the Government deal is worth to the Murdoch-owned news outlet.
It comes after Sun owner News UK admitted, in a settlement last week, that it previously hired private investigators who used illegal methods to target Prince Harry and Lord (Tom) Watson in the run up to the 2011 phone hacking trial.
The PCS union has now written to the DWP over the move, saying: “This was not brought to PCS through the consultation process, but raised to group officers by concerned members, who saw it posted on DWP’s intranet as a done deal.
“The decision by DWP to enter into a media partnership with The S*n is incredibly insensitive given the track record of a “newspaper” that is no friend of working people or benefit claimants.”
“PCS members will never forgive or forget their role over decades in demonising benefit claimants as “work shy” and “shirkers””.
The union spokesperson added: “Furthermore, many of our members are still deeply affected by The S*n’s outright lies about the behaviour of supporters during and after the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989, which claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool Football Club fans and has left thousands severely traumatised.”
PCS has a long-held policy of supporting the campaign group ‘A Total Eclipse of The S*n’, boycotting sales and forcing DWP to remove copies from departmental premises.
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PCS has written to DWP leaders demanding that they “withdraw immediately” from the media partnership with the tabloid.
“We have been inundated by members in Merseyside and around the UK venting their anger at their employer and demanding that DWP has no dealings with a publication that does not have the interests of workers and benefit claimants at heart, but spreads division and hate,” the union said in a statement.
“DWP must see sense and withdraw from this partnership immediately as they run the risk of losing the goodwill of staff; and our members’ job is hard enough without losing the trust, confidence and respect of the benefit claimants that we serve,” the PCS spokesperson added.
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On the unofficial civil service workers’ Reddit forum, some members criticised the union’s priorities. One member wrote: “PCS [is] once again picking a fight that isn’t in the interest of its members”. Another member said: “Hybrid working is the single biggest issue members want them to tackle.”
Another added: “If a union is complaining about this of all things then things must be incredibly good. How does this time and effort…benefit 99.9% of members?”
“We are required to be apolitical as civil servants. This is clearly a government department doing so and thinking about reach, rather than ideologies from the last century that an increasing majority in the country no longer recognise and certainly don’t support,” one replied.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We support millions of people every year, and we use a range of communication tools to ensure people know about the support they are entitled to as they move to Universal Credit.”
An official told Byline Times the department will respond to the letter from PCS in due course.
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