PRIVATE EYE
PAUL FOOTAWARD 2025
PATRICK BUTLER and Josh Halliday have been awarded the 2025 Paul Foot Award for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism.
In a Guardian campaign, the pair exposed the rigid rules and unfeeling bureaucracy that govern carer’s allowance, revealing that carers had been prosecuted for accidentally claiming the allowance alongside part-time work, even when some of them had reported their earnings to the Department for Work and Pensions. In the case of one man who was convicted for over-claiming 30p a week, the DWP has since acknowledged he made an innocent mistake. Labour has now set up an independent review of the allowance and raised the earnings limit for those claiming it.