UPDATE: Both tweets deleted. Looks like this is something the DWP and some employers would rather taxpayers didn’t know about.

Probably not the best PR for a wealthy businessman to be seen publicly boasting about how he is happily using taxpayers’ money to subsidise his staff wages.

So it’s a bit strange to see this tweet from the DWP quoting the MD and owner of pub chain Whiting and Hammond bragging about how so very little he pays his staff that his workers have to rely on Universal Credit to get by:

Unfortunately for the DWP,  Whiting and Hammond are now publicly denying everything that was said in the quote.

So much so, in fact, that they have asked the DWP to take down the tweet:

Blimey. Perhaps Theresa May and the DWP are so desperate to find any support at all for their utterly disastrous and so very cruel Universal Credit project, they’re resorting to making up quotes?

The problem for Brian Keeling-Whiting, however, is that he seems to have ‘forgotten’ he appeared in a recent but little-seen DWP publication aimed at employers called the “Employer Guide To Universal Credit“, in which Brian also boasts about using taxpayers’ money to subsidise his staff expenses:

I’m guessing Brian probably thought his quotes would only be seen by a handful of other employers  – but now his boasting has been revealed to the general taxpaying public about how he’s using their money to subsidise himself, he’s quite rightly panicking a bit.

I feel there may be a boycott coming on …