2014 October

The invisible unemployed: “half of unemployed do not claim benefits” – so who are they?

Originally posted at NatalieLeal.Blogspot.co.uk This chart from a report by Inclusion tells a story. Actually, it poses a lot of questions. At the last count just under half of all unemployed people in the UK were not claiming benefits. That’s almost one million people and it’s going up all the time. But where are these people? How are […]

How we did it: tracking overpayments to prisoners in England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Yesterday we reported on how prisoners in Northern Ireland were being paid  £1.94 million in benefits they were not entitled to. In this post Gesbeen Mohammad explains the background to the story. This story began when Help Me Investigate was approached by an individual who was confused by the contradiction between replies to two different Freedom of Information (FOI) requests: This request by […]

Prisoners overpaid £2m in benefits in Northern Ireland

Prisoners in Northern Ireland have been paid £1.94 million in benefits over the last six years, despite not being entitled to them, according to data obtained by Help Me Investigate. And “overpayments” to prisoners – the official term for paying benefits to those in prison – have increased by more than half in the last year for which figures were […]