Bishops and Church leaders call on Government ministers to apologise
An alliance of Churches representing Christians from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland has written to the Prime Minister asking for an apology on behalf of the Government for misrepresenting the poor.
An alliance of Churches representing Christians from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland has written to the Prime Minister asking for an apology on behalf of the Government for misrepresenting the poor.
Church leaders, including the Right Revd Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester, and the Right Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Bradford, and the Revd Stephen Keyworth, Faith and Society team leader of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, pointed out that in recent weeks senior members of the Government have given out misleading and inaccurate information about people on benefits.
Outlining the inaccuracies, they asked for them to be corrected and for an apology to be offered to those who were misrepresented.
'We are concerned that these inaccuracies paint some of the most vulnerable in our society in an unfavourable light, stigmatising those who need the support of the benefits system,' the letter states.
'No political or financial imperative can be given to make this acceptable.'
April saw some of the most controversial and wide ranging changes to the benefit system in a generation. In their letter, Church leaders, including the leaders of the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church, said that while they hold no common view on welfare reform, they all share the belief that that those in receipt of benefits are loved and valuable.
'What unites us is the belief that the debate around these reforms should be based on truthful information,' they write.
'We ask you, as Prime Minister and as leader of the Conservative Party, to ensure that the record is put straight, and that statistics are no longer manipulated in a way which stigmatises the poorest in our society.'
A separate letter from a number of the signatories was published in the Daily Telegraph today
The full text of the letter to the Prime Minister is available here
Links to two documents explaining errors in more detail here and here
Read a blogpost by Paul Morrison, Policy Adviser to the Methodist Church, on the issues raised in the letter to the Prime Minister.