Forget 'benefit cheats' - £23bn a year is going unclaimed. How do we get that to vulnerable people? | Polly Toynbee

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

52% : Despite pinched finances, scores of councils find it pays to get elderly people their benefits, to prevent them from needing social care or ending up in A&E. Some councils use the government's £500m household support fund to give the winter fuel payment to those who sit just above the threshold for means testing.
48% : Qualifying for even a little pension credit opens a gateway to a free TV licence, housing benefit, reduced council tax or help with NHS costs.
40% : Schools try their best to reach families not claiming free school meals, but they need more support to find the 800,000 students who are missing out, in households so poor that their parents earn less than £7,400.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.