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- May's government quietly slips out a long trail of inconvenient announcements as MPs head for recess.
- Government accused of trying to bury bad news over the Easter break.
- Damning reports on child refugees, and modern slavery are held back until MPs are leaving Parliament.
- The government quietly announces a major U-turn on benefits.
- New figures reveal social housing is vanishing under 'right to buy'.
LONDON - A rather cynical tradition has developed in recent years in which, in the final days and hours before MPs leave Parliament for an extended break, the government releases a deluge of embarrassing reports, statistics, and statements in an apparently deliberate attempt to bury them.
This Easter has been no different. Here are just some of the inconvenient stories Theresa May's government has tried to bury over the past 24 hours.
The government has made a major U-turn on benefits
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As a result the government later introduced a large number of exemptions in an attempt to fight off criticism of the cut. However, so widespread were the exemptions that the policy only ended up affecting a very small number of people once it was eventually introduced. As a result the government today quietly ditched the policy altogether.
"I am today announcing that the Government will amend regulations so that all 18-21 year olds will be entitled to claim support for housing costs in [Universal Credit]" the Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey acknowledged in a statement slipped out on parliament's website today.
The Home Office has lost track of 600,000 people
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Government employees interviewed by the inspectors were damning. "We were initially told that the system would tell us if someone has or has not left the country," one anonymous employee said. "It sounds so simple, but the reality is that there are so many ways in which the data can get muddled and confused. Internally, there was no comprehension at the vast and complicated nature of the data and the patterns we are seeing."
The 'right to buy' scheme is causing social homes to vanish
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According to a statement by the housing minister Dominic Raab, the statistics reveal that "while the number of homes available for social rent has increased, some local authorities have not been building enough Right to Buy replacements to match the pace of their sales,"
Overall, the new statistics show that since the right to buy scheme restarted, there have been around 63,000 sales of social homes as opposed to just 16,000 new builds. This means that four times as many homes have been sold as those that have been built to replace them.
Ministers are not doing enough to protect child refugees
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The government is failing to prevent slavery
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