How we verify
A site with this name has to hold itself to a higher evidential standard than one with a respectable masthead, not a lower one. This is the standard every piece has to clear.
1. Primary sources first
The preferred source for any claim is the document itself: the coroner’s Prevention of Future Deaths report, the select committee report, the National Audit Office study, the judgment, the FOI response, the Hansard record. Reporting about a document is used to find it, not to stand in for it.
Where a document is not public, we say so, and we say what we are relying on instead.
2. Every claim carries a date
A sentence beginning “the DWP said” cannot be checked by anybody. A sentence beginning “the DWP said, in its response of 14 June 2021” can be checked by everybody. Findings are superseded, policies are amended and figures are revised, so an undated claim becomes unreliable within months of publication.
3. Numbers get attributed to the body that produced them
Every figure is published alongside the organisation that generated it and the period it covers, because a tax gap estimate is HMRC’s estimate for a stated year rather than a settled fact, and a projection is labelled as a projection.
4. We separate finding from inference
What a report concluded and what we think it means are two different things, and they appear in different sentences. Where we draw an inference that the report itself did not draw, we say so explicitly in the piece.
5. Right of reply
Where a piece makes a specific allegation about a named individual or organisation, we approach them for comment before publication and publish the response, in full, alongside. If no response comes, we say that instead.
6. Named individuals
We name ministers, senior officials, board members and company directors acting in a public capacity. We do not name assessors, caseworkers, call handlers or junior staff, because the subject of the reporting is the decision and the structure that produced it.
7. Deaths and distress
Where a piece concerns a death we work from the inquest record and from whatever the family has chosen to make public. We do not speculate about cause beyond what the coroner found, we do not publish images of the deceased without the family’s agreement, and every piece of this kind carries crisis support information.
8. What we correct
Factual errors, misattributed quotes, wrong figures, dead links to sources, and mischaracterised findings. Corrections appear on the piece itself, dated, saying what was wrong, not silently in the background. See the corrections policy.
9. Cite us
Text on this site is released under CC BY 4.0. Take it, quote it, republish it. Attribute it and link back so the sources travel with it. If you find an error while doing so, tell us.