Sunderland journalism graduate scoops Paul Foot Award

Published on 22, May, 2025

University of Sunderland graduate Josh Halliday has won a prestigious journalism prize for a joint investigation into the carer’s allowance scandal.

Josh – alongside fellow journalist Patrick Butler – won Private Eye’s Paul Foot Award 2025 for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism for their coverage of how vulnerable British carers were taken to court for accidentally claiming the allowance alongside part-time work.

In a Guardian campaign, the pair uncovered how carers were prosecuted even though many had tried to report their earnings to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Labour has now set up an independent review.

The 2025 awards ceremony on Tuesday (May 20) was hosted at Bafta by the Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop.

Josh, who graduated with a BA (Hons) Journalism degree in 2010 and is now North of England editor at the Guardian, said: “Winning the Paul Foot Award is such an enormous honour, and it still hasn’t yet sunk in.

“It feels like a moment of long-overdue recognition of the terrible wrongs perpetrated by the DWP on the selfless women and men who prop up our failing social care system. This award is for them.”

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The Paul Foot Award was set up in memory of revered investigative journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004, and recognises the UK’s most talented and determined journalists working in the fields of investigative and campaigning journalism.

For more information on studying Journalism at the University of Sunderland, click here.