Coming soon: the great universal credit deception | Aditya Chakrabortty

A leaked memo shows that the Department for Work and Pensions is about to embark on a PR campaign to defend its worst ever policy

How to sell the unsellable? How to pretend utter chaos is a plan coming together? How to persuade the public, who just refuse to buy it, to at least keep on paying for it? I believe I have found the answer.

It comes in the form of an internal memo from the Department for Work and Pensions that somehow floated past my desk. Published on the staff intranet just a few days ago, on 2 May, it is signed by three of the department’s most senior officials, including the DWP’s director of communications and Neil Couling, its head of universal credit. And it is that toxically controversial benefit which is its subject.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2E865VX