Psychics given government grant to help relatives contact the dead

Two psychics from Wales have been awarded £4,500 of government funding to teach people how to 'communicate with the dead'. Paul and Deborah Rees, who are both self-styled mediums, have been awarded the cash under the Government's Want2Work job creation scheme.

The couple, from Bridgend, south Wales, will use it to instruct people on how to contact friends and relatives "on the other side". Critics are astonished that the award was approved by the Department of Work and Pensions bureaucrats, and now the Welsh Assembly has launched an investigation. The mediums themselves confess to being "surprised" at securing the grant. But they insist that the "mere £4,500" of public money will be put to good use at their centre, the Accolade Academy of Psychic and Mediumistic Studies.

Jonathan Morgan, a Conservative member of the Assembly, said: "It is an utter disgrace that taxpayers' money is being wasted and given to an organisation that believes it can teach people how to communicate with the dead. The people administering the scheme should be disciplined for allowing this project to get public funding and the money should be recouped."



Mark Wallace, campaign director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "People work hard to afford to pay taxes and the last thing our money should be spent on is this kind of hocus pocus. At a time when people who are alive are losing their jobs it's absurd that money is being spent trying to contact the other side."

Mr Rees, 40, who went into full-time clairvoyancy after losing his job as an upholsterer, said: "People who feel that tax money has been wasted should remember that if they'd lost a child they would go to a medium (for reassurance) that their loved one had passed safely and is in a better place,

"People who have lost mums and dads or a child deserve all the respect in the world in their grieving, and they deserve a medium who can give them respect. Our job is to provide substantial evidence to bring ease to people's grieving - and that's what I would say to people who query the award."