Outrage merchant the Daily Mail is at is again farming disability hate for clicks. And as has become its persistent favourite pastime of late, the shitrag is targeting people living with mental health conditions.
In particular, the tabloid published an article implying people living with anxiety are defrauding the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) welfare system.
The article simultaneously managed to paint not-for-profits offering support to disabled people navigating the enormously inaccessible personal independence payment (PIP) application process as abettors and enablers of this benefit fraud, instead of the helpful organisations they actually are.
The Mail on Sunday ran with the headline:
Taxpayers shelling out £800 a MINUTE in disability benefits to people claiming to suffer from ‘anxiety’ – as private firms cash in by coaching claimants in exchange for half their payout
According to the article, this is because in 2025, PIP payments for anxiety equated to £427 million. The maths is correct, but it’s entirely unclear where it got that figure from.
Of course, the right-wing rag racket relies on this. Without providing details on how it got to that conclusion, it’s impossible to properly scrutinise its claims, and that’s the whole point. It can pull attention-grabbing figures out of its own arse, but the public is meant to believe it because that’s what its ‘exclusive’ exposé has put in print.
DWP processes are grueling and inaccessible
It’s baseless regardless. For one, whatever figures the Mail has used of people claiming PIP for anxiety, it’s already false anyway. Official data on PIP communicates that people claiming it are living with anxiety conditions. That’s to say, they aren’t necessarily claiming for anxiety alone or even with anxiety as the primary condition.
However, the bigger point here is that people who are claiming PIP for anxiety would be perfectly entitled to do so because it’s been awarded to them after the DWP’s grueling assessment process.
Naturally though, the Daily Mail being the right-wing ghoul it is made sure to suggest PIP is easy to obtain, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Instead of highlighting the reality — that data shows of those with anxiety who apply for PIP, well below half actually manage to get the financial support — the Mail amped up its ‘sickfleuncer’ outrage-baiting.
Only this time, it threw in an ‘investigation’ claiming to uncover a “thriving benefits industry” that is:
cashing in on Britain’s disability benefits boom by coaching claimants through the system in exchange for pocketing half of any government payout.
Naturally, the shadow secretary for work and pensions, Helen Whately, made a cameo to put her hypocritical saviourism on full display.
She told the Mail:
Benefit-fixers make a fast buck on the backs of the vulnerable. Cash from people who work hard and live within their means goes straight to the coffers of these chancers.
Because disabled people having agency to pay firms for help with complex paperwork, as an access need, is inherently fraudulent. I’m sure the Mail will be running an undercover sting on rich people paying tax advisors to exploit loopholes any day now.
Scroungers and scammers: Two sides of the Mail’s vilifying coin
These organisations wouldn’t need to assist people with claims if the DWP made its process accessible in the first place. If it wasn’t wrongly denying PIP to huge numbers of disabled people and actively trying to trip them up all the while.
The Mail’s outrage essentially boils down to the fact these firms charge people for their services, but it conveniently glosses over the fact the majority of the advice these companies offer is free of charge. After vilifying disabled people for clicks, it’s a little hard to swallow that the Mail now suddenly gives a shit about their exploitation.
Ultimately, that’s not what it’s gunning for with this. Its undercover journalists asked leading questions, designed to entrap the organisations so as to paint them as scammers.
A reporter supposedly asking for help with PIP forms because they “couldn’t be bothered to do it myself” says more about the stigmatising ‘lazy scrounger’ perception of the Mail’s wannabe investigative journalists than anything else.
Giving disabled people advice and support applying for benefits isn’t some fucking huge fraud industry, but the Mail sure wants readers to think that.
Maligning claimants with mental health conditions
The Daily Mail’s divisive rhetoric is there to sow hate towards disabled communities. In particular, it’s targeting vulnerable groups it wants the public to see as undeserving of support.
Research from the Canary previously found the right-wing media cranked up its attacks on disabled benefit claimants by 1130% between 2023 and 2024. Nearly half of these scapegoated claimants living with mental health conditions.
It has been apparent for some time that the right’s agenda is to whip up politically-motivated moral panic over mental health disability benefit claims.
In tandem with Labour’s attempts to peddle mental health over-diagnosis — including a whole damn review to prove it led by a controversial psychiatrist — the Mail’s article is just another propaganda piece to manufacture consent for future PIP cuts.
The timing is therefore no big coincidence either. The Mail is ramping up its vilification of PIP claimants right as the DWP is carrying out the Timms Review call for evidence.
Overall, this is the Mail doing what it does best: profiting from a bigotry ‘boom’ of its own machinations and lining the pockets of billionaires. If anyone’s cashing in off the backs of disabled people’s lives, it’s this callous Labour government and gutter outlets like the Daily Mail dutifully laying the groundwork.
Featured image via the Canary
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