Name: Iain Duncan Smith Specialist Subject: The Bleeding Obvious

Various commentators seem to be taking a YouGov survey conducted by Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice (I'd link but they don't seem to have a website, and there are several other CSJs who probably don't want to be confused with IDS) seriously, as though it makes some kind of point. Unfortunately, YouGov don't seem to have the poll results on their site, but let's look at Janet Daley's summation of the results:

People were asked what they would prefer to do if they had £200 to give to a good cause.

The two most popular choices were: give it directly to a person or family in need (31 per cent chose this), and, give it to a local charity or church working for needy people (another 31 per cent). Among the list of possible beneficiaries was "a local authority to spend on fighting poverty" and "central government to spend on fighting poverty". The local authority got one per cent support, and central government got none.

Yes, apparently when people are asked what they would do if they were given £200 for a good cause, they chose to give it to...a good cause. Yes, stunning news there, and I'm sure YouGov were happily laughing their way to the bank when asked to prove that. It's equivalent to asking people 'if you had a pound to buy chocolate?' collating their responses, and then using that as evidence that no one likes crisps.

The point, if you haven't guessed it yet, is that the question asked in the poll was pretty much pointless in trying to make any kind of statement about social justice. You see, people don't get mythical sums of £200 that they can only give to charity, they have money that they can spend on many things and giving it to good causes is just one of them. That people regard charities as more effective than governments isn't too surprising either. That, after all, is why governments give money to charities to carry out projects and why those people who give money to charity don't just add it on to their taxes at the end of the day. But to try and use that as supposed 'evidence' for charities taking over all Government welfare work is stretching the data beyond breaking point.