To present a frozen £10 payment, worth a fraction of its original value, as indulgence is another example of grievance-mongering dressed up as journalism.
The Telegraph faced another round of mockery this week, for an article entitled: ‘Labour’s Christmas bonus. It’s for welfare claimants of course.’
Since December 1, a £10 Christmas ‘bonus’ has been paid into the bank accounts of people receiving certain benefits.
The payment is not new, nor is it a Labour initiative. It was introduced in 1972 by Edward Heath’s Conservative government under the Pensioners’ and Family Income Supplement Payments Act, at a time of high inflation, as a measure to help low-income households at Christmas. It became a permanent, though never uprated, fixture.
Today, the bonus remains £10, tax-free, and is paid to recipients of specific benefits such as the state pension and Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Despite repeated calls to increase it, the amount has been frozen for more than five decades.
When introduced, £10 had real purchasing power. Adjusted for inflation, campaigners estimate it would now be worth around £169.
None of this context troubled the Telegraph. Instead, the paper framed the payment as evidence of Labour favouring “welfare claimants” over “the rest of the country.” The article sneered:
“Across Britain, millions of people claiming welfare have received their annual Christmas bonus: a tax-free payment of £10 paid to those receiving a dizzying array of state benefits… For the rest of the country, the government is behaving less like a generous benefactor and more like the Grinch.”
Such framing is deeply misleading. The bonus is not a discretionary handout, not newly introduced, and not evidence of handouts. It is a Conservative-era policy that has steadily withered through political neglect. To present a frozen £10 payment, worth a fraction of its original value, as indulgence is another example of grievance-mongering dressed up as journalism.
And it didn’t go down well among readers online.
One reader asked: “This has been paid most years since 1972. Did you also have a pop every year when the Tories paid it?”
Another said: “It’s £10 and has been for decades! Don’t be too jealous!”
Others pointed out that the payment was originally designed to ensure families could afford a Christmas meal, something it no longer comes close to doing.
Another example of the paper’s habitual willingness to strip policy of history and scale in order to stoke division, pitting ‘workers’ against pensioners and disabled people over a sum that barely buys a sandwich.
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