IPSO upholds accuracy complaint about disability Motability scheme against Daily Telegraph

GRACE SPARKS complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Telegraph breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “‘Disabled’ drivers claim £40k cars for free”, published on 8 July 2023. A similar version of this article also appeared online, under the headline “People on benefits with mental health problems given cars worth £40k” and was shared on the newspaper’s official “X” account.

The complaint was upheld, and IPSO required The Telegraph to publish this adjudication to remedy the breach of the Editors’ Code.

The complainant said the article misrepresented the Motability Scheme, designed to provide people entitled to mobility welfare payments with access to a vehicle. She denied that claimants could claim a vehicle “for free”, as reported by the print headline; or that they were “given” cars, as reported by the online headline. She also said the article was inaccurate to report that “people who say they are immobilised by anxiety or depression can claim £40,000 cars on benefits” and that a survey found that “nearly a third of those who cited anxiety as their primary condition were granted the enhanced rate, which would make them eligible for the car scheme”. While she accepted that those with a mental health condition – such as anxiety and depression – could qualify for the Scheme, she said that the threshold for qualification exceeded these conditions on their own.

The Telegraph said that the text of the article – both online and in print – accurately reported how claimants applied to the Scheme. However, it accepted the headlines were inaccurate. The newspaper had published a correction, in print, and in its established Corrections and Clarifications column, 9 days after it had received the complaint from IPSO. It also amended the online headline and offered to publish a correction beneath the headline. Later, during IPSO’S investigation into the matter and 83 days after the article was published, the newspaper offered to publish a standalone correction on its website. It also offered to publish this correction on its “X” account.

IPSO found that the article – both online and in print as well as the newspaper’s post on X – had significantly misrepresented the Motability Scheme: claimants did not receive vehicles for free. Instead, those deemed eligible were able to claim subsidised leasehold cars through the scheme, and they had to meet at least some of the cost, either via giving up a portion, or all, of their Personal Independence Payments (PIP), or by paying additional amounts on top of their allowance.

Further, in IPSO’S view, the references in the article, taken together, including the findings of a survey from 2020, suggested that those with mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression could qualify for the scheme. However, the assessment criteria for the Scheme make clear that claimants are unable to qualify if they only have a mental health condition; diagnoses of depression or anxiety would not make a claimant eligible under the Scheme, unless these conditions also affect their mobility.

For these reasons, the Committee considered that the newspaper’s characterisation and presentation of the Scheme – information that was publicly available – represented a failure to take care not to publish inaccurate and misleading information, and a breach of Clause 1(i).

Given the article misrepresented the conditions of taxpayer-funded scheme, this was considered significantly misleading and, as such, required correction under Clause 1(ii) of the Editors’ Code.

The Committee concluded that the action taken – and offered – by the newspaper did not fulfil its obligations under Clause 1(ii). While the print correction had been published promptly and with sufficient prominence, it did not acknowledge the significantly misleading impression given by the headline and the article as a whole regarding the eligibility criteria of the Scheme, or adequately correct it.

Further, the newspaper’s offer to publish a standalone correction – in relation to the online article and X post – was not considered sufficiently prompt, particularly given the prominence and significance of the breach: a standalone correction was required and had only been offered 83 days after the article was published, and 29 days after IPSO had launched its investigation into the matter.

The Committee therefore found a further breach of Clause 1(ii). The complaint under Clause 1 was upheld.