Benefit Sanctions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) on securing the debate, and other Members who have spoken passionately about their constituents and the situations that they have seen. I want to highlight a couple of constituency situations as well.

The sanctions regime for employment and support allowance is particularly punitive, going by my experience in my constituency office. It has put sick and disabled people into serious hardship for unacceptably long periods. I have a constituent in the ESA work-related activity group who suffers from serious clinical depression. As a result he has been totally unable to get to advisory interviews and take part in work-related activity. He should be in the support group but has not been able to advocate that for himself because of his condition, which has compounded his situation. He was sanctioned for an entire year and has been unable to recomply to get the sanction reduced to a fixed period. He should not have been sanctioned at all, but it is clear that the structure of the ESA regime and the increasingly punitive sanctions imposed by the Department for Work and Pensions are targeting the sick and vulnerable.

Despite guidance that states that claimants must be officially notified of sanctions in writing, many jobseeker’s allowance claimants have been sanctioned without an official warning and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) said, without any understanding of the reason for the sanction. A constituent of mine lost his benefits from 2013 when he was sanctioned for failing to attend an interview. He was told verbally that he had been sanctioned, and the sanction should have lasted four weeks. He was not given further information about how to challenge the sanction. It is estimated that over the past five years, 28,000 claimants in Scotland have been sanctioned without official notification in writing from the DWP. Following the switch to automatic notification of sanctions by the DWP in 2015, my constituent finally received notification of his sanction two and a half years late. That burden of administrative error puts people into situations of great confusion and misunderstanding. They do not know why they are in such circumstances, and that is unacceptable and should not happen.

[Michael Tomlinson]

The hon. Lady again highlights very effectively some hard cases involving the most vulnerable people. There are examples in my constituency as well. However, just so that I can understand, is it her party’s policy that there should be no sanctions at all? After all, sanctions have been in place for some time. Alternatively, is the issue simply that they are not being implemented correctly?

[Alison Thewliss]

The sanctions regime as it stands today is unacceptable. The hardship that people are placed in, the stress on their lives and the effect on their children and wider families is unacceptable. The sanctions regime is not fit for purpose. It targets entirely the wrong people and makes things worse.

There is particular concern at the citizens advice bureau in Bridgeton about the question of the first sanction, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan. People are not challenging that first sanction. They think, “I’ll ride that one out. I can wait a week. I can manage. I can cope,” but if they do not challenge it the system decides that they have accepted the reason for the sanction, and that it was fair and justified. When something else happens—the next time their bus is late, or they have to pick up a child, or they are ill or in hospital, or some other thing happens—the second sanction will be far more punitive and the third one, should there be one, even more so. The first sanction is crucial, and that fact is not getting out to people. I cannot stress enough how much I would like people to challenge the first sanction on every occasion. An awful lot are overturned, because they are not fair.

The last case that I want to highlight puts the tin lid on how ludicrous the system is. I do not know, but I imagine that hon. Members from parties outside Scotland will not have seen the front page of The National this morning. It reports on a case that I highlighted about a constituent who was on universal credit and sought work. He obtained an offer of employment, which was great—that is what we want for people. As with all jobs, a start date was negotiated and agreed; that was fine. However, because of the expectation of compliance with the claimant commitment, which is the core requirement at all times for receiving universal credit, that constituent faced the threat of sanction even though he had a confirmed offer of employment. The new employer of that person will be the DWP. Well done, guys; that is absolutely tremendous. You could not make it up. The Government urgently need to review universal credit, particularly to ensure that the transition to employment is managed properly and is not subject to sanction. It is ludicrous to sanction someone who has complied and done everything they ought. It is crazy.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I repeat my question on that. Is it the position of the hon. Lady’s party that there should be no sanctions regime at all?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that he should be sanctioned because he was late for the debate today? I hope he loses a week’s, a month’s or a year’s wages as a result.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I had good cause.

[Alison Thewliss]

Did you? Then you should explain it to someone else and see if they consider that fair. That does not happen to my constituents. Why should the hon. Gentleman have a different set of rules?

I have another case I want to raise, although it is not the case of a constituent of mine. However, the lady who told me about it affected me deeply. She was in Central Lobby a few weeks ago, and was so upset; she was in tears and absolutely broken. Her brother had committed suicide. He died with £3.44 to his name because he had been sanctioned and lost his benefits. He committed suicide as a result of the pressure put on him by the policies of the Government. The sanctions regime needs to be resolved and reviewed, and that must happen now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

I come back to my point that if individual Members want to raise specific cases with me, they are very welcome to do so.

I do not have time to touch on the overall improvements to the sanctions process, which I know we have discussed before, or the Work and Pensions Committee. We keep the operation of the sanctions system under constant review—as we do all our policies—to ensure that it continues to function effectively and fairly. We will continue to do that.

I will touch on the pilot of the yellow card system, which gives claimants an additional period of time to provide evidence of good reason before a decision is made. That will help to strike the right balance between fairness, conditionality and individual circumstances. Our intention is that the trial will operate in Scotland from March 2016, running for approximately five months. It will be carefully designed and delivered, with a clear process, training and guidance provided for all staff involved. The trial will be evaluated in full to assess the impact on the individual behaviours and understanding, and we will carefully monitor all the relevant data to consider the extent to which the warning system trial affects sanction decisions. We will make the findings available from autumn 2016. There are already a number of opportunities for people who are sanctioned to present more evidence, and of course, that will be part of an ongoing system of review. We are working with our work coaches to develop that.

As today’s debate was secured by members of the SNP, I would like to raise some particular points about the situation in Scotland. First, I am pleased to say that today’s employment figures show that Scottish employment is up significantly, by 178,000 since 2010, and that Scotland has an employment rate of 74.3%, which is higher than the UK average. We are seeing very strong levels of employment growth in Scotland. Unemployment has fallen by 63,000, with the number of people in work in Scotland now close to a record high. That is not just because of economic policies, but because of employers expanding their businesses and doing more to support the economy. There are plenty of figures on that, but I do not need to quote them. Members in all parties can access today’s employment figures.

However, I want to touch on something that has not been raised today. When it comes to welfare provision in Scotland, we have the Scotland Bill, and the devolution package in Scotland will make the Scottish Parliament one of the most powerful devolved Parliaments in the world. The Bill will also apply to welfare provision in Scotland, which will be tailored to local circumstances. Powers will include: a power for Scotland to create its own employment programme to help the long-term unemployed and disabled people into work; the power to create new benefits in any area of devolved responsibility; powers in universal credit to determine how and when claimants are paid and how much some claimants get for housing support; and the power to legislate for top-up payments to people in Scotland who are entitled to a reserved benefit.

This of course puts more power in the hands of the Scottish Government, and Members of the Scottish National party can now be up front with the public in Scotland on what they will do with this new devolved power and how they will apply the new powers to their welfare system.

Although we have had a full debate today, I think it is fair to say that sanctions are not a punitive measure, contrary to what the Scottish National party Members—[Interruption.] They are sitting there giggling right now, but I would not trivialise the support that has been put in place by this Government to help people into work; I think that is quite insulting, actually, to many of our work coaches and the people who work in the welfare area providing support for individuals.

This is part of a wider framework of policy to provide support to encourage claimants into work. Today’s labour market figures show that. Not only are we seeing high levels of employment, but the claimant count rate is at its lowest level since 1975. Conditionality and sanctions have played a role in that, and it is only right that we continue to keep under review the policy of sanctions, and continue to work to do more, to do better and to provide the support to help people get back into work. That is why we have the new joint health and work unit, set up by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health between them, and why, during the autumn statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced a new work and health programme. That will come in in 2017 to support individuals with significant barriers to work and, in particular, help them to get back into work, through the welfare system, with support. Of course, universal credit is part of that. It gives people the help that they need to increase their earnings, move away from welfare dependency, and importantly, make sure that work always pays.

Thank you for chairing the debate this afternoon, Mrs Gillan, and I thank all hon. Members for their contributions.

[Alison Thewliss]

On a point of order, Mrs Gillan. I was going to say this in an intervention, but the Minister was not taking interventions. I wanted to correct the record on the person I mentioned who died. It was not suicide; it is actually a lot more sad than that. He died from diabetic ketoacidosis from not taking his insulin. He had no electricity for the fridge in which it was stored.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Well, that is not a point of order for the Chair, but I appreciate that the hon. Lady now has that on the record, and has set the record straight. Dr Whiteford, you have two minutes for a brief wind-up.