Government must urgently re-assess "benefits sanctions regime at times so counter-productive it just seems pointlessly cruel"

No evidence the Committee received was “more compelling than that against  the imposition  of  conditionality  and  sanctions on people  with  a  disability  or  health condition.  It does not work.  Worse, it is harmful and counterproductive.”

In a report published today, Tuesday 6 November, the Work and Pensions Committee says that the human cost of continuing to apply the existing regime of benefit sanctions – the “only major welfare reform this decade to have never been evaluated” – appears simply too high. The evidence that it is achieving its aims is at best mixed, and at worst showing a policy that appears “arbitrarily punitive”. 

The Committee says the Coalition Government “had little or no understanding of the likely impact of a tougher sanctions regime” when it introduced it in 2012 with the stated aim, as the NAO describes it,  that “benefits, employment support and conditions and sanctions together lead to employment.” At that point, Government promised to review the reform’s impact and whether it was achieving its aims on an ongoing basis.  But six years later, Government “is none the wiser”. What evidence there is shows that, at best, the effectiveness of sanctions is mixed. At worst, it shows them to be counterproductive.

As one expert witness suggested, “if it was not for the embarrassment, the Government would have suspended ESA sanctions altogether as soon as that National Audit Office finding came out that sanctioned ESA claimants were less likely to get into work.” 

Single parents, care leavers and people with a disability or health condition are disproportionately vulnerable to and affected by the withdrawal of  their  benefit.  Until Government can show unequivocally that sanctions actually help to move these claimants into work, it cannot ‘justify these groups' continued inclusion in the sanctions regime’. In the meantime, and until that positive link is proven, people who are the responsible carer for a child under the age of 5, or a child with demonstrable additional needs and care costs, and care leavers under the age of 25, should only ever have a maximum of 20% of their benefit withheld.

DWP must urgently evaluate the effectiveness of the reforms to welfare conditionality and sanctions since 2012, including their impact  on people's financial and personal well-being. Until the Government “can point to robust evidence that longer sanctions  are  more  effective,  higher  level sanctions should be reduced to 2, 4 and 6 months for first, second and subsequent failures to comply”.

Government should also “immediately  stop  imposing  conditionality  and sanctions  on  anyone  found  to  have  limited  capability  for  work,  or  who  presents  a valid doctor's note” stating they cannot work. Instead, it should work with  experts to develop a programme of voluntary employment support for those who can get into work.

Randomised Controlled Trials have shown sanctions had no effect on in-work claimants' outcomes, and work coaches are not yet equipped to get enough decisions right. Sanctioning people who are working is too great a risk for too little return. DWP should not proceed with conditionality  and sanctions  for  in-work  claimants until full  roll-out  of  Universal  Credit  is  complete, and even then only introduce sanctions on the basis of robust evidence that it will  be effective at  driving  progress  in  work.  

Committee Chair Rt Hon Frank Field MP, said: “We have heard stories of terrible and unnecessary hardship from people who’ve been sanctioned. They were left bewildered and driven to despair at becoming, often with their children, the victims of a sanctions regime that is at times so counter-productive it just seems pointlessly cruel. While none of them told us that there should be no benefit sanctions at all, it can only be right for the Government to take a long hard look at what is going on. If their stories were rare it would be unacceptable, but the Government has no idea how many more people out there are suffering in similar circumstances. In fact, it has kept itself in the dark about any of the impacts of the major reforms to sanctions introduced since 2012. The time is long overdue for the Government to assess the evidence and then have the courage of its reform convictions to say, where it is right to do so, ’this policy is not achieving its aims, it is not working, and the cost is too high: We will change it.” /ENDS  

Notes to eds 

1We have available a number of case studies of the impact of benefit sanctions, including those the Committee heard in oral evidence, including Jen, a wheelchair user who sofa surfed and slept in the college library for a YEAR, including all through her exams, because she had been erroneously sanctioned - for her entire benefit, she was receiving none of her entitlement - and it took that long to resolve it.  Her story is on p 48 of the attached embargoed report

And we heard from Luke, who was sanctioned because he had been admitted to hospital with severe epileptic seizures and missed a JCP appointment. The evidence of his hospital stay was rejected and he was also subject to a wrong sanction which it took him a long time, and going to the press with his story, to get resolved.  His story is on p 47 of the attached embargoed report.

Full details of the Committee’s Benefit sanctions inquiry