Housing benefit cuts: Just how desperate is the secretive DWP?

When government ministers resort to briefing what purports to be new statistical evidence on important policy issues to selected lobby journalists rather than making it available to the public, it is clear indication that they are unsure of their ground. The Department for Work and Pensions has been a hotbed of this sort of quasi-official briefing for several months, as has been pointed out here and by FullFact.