Benefits: Sanctions

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

As I just said, we are having one review, undertaken by Matthew Oakley. My colleague the Minister for Employment is also looking at this area very closely, and I am expecting the details of the review that she is overseeing to be published reasonably soon.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that sanctions had not increased significantly. Perhaps he would look at a Written Answer given in another place to Mr Timms on 4 July, which suggested that the amount of money withheld from JSA in sanctions in 2009-10 was £11 million. Only halfway through 2012-13, it was £60 million. If it carried on at that rate, that would constitute a tenfold increase. Anyone who has ever been to a food bank will have heard horror stories about people being sanctioned for trivial or disgraceful reasons. Can the Minister please get a grip on this?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the relative figures are that since 2010 the volume of sanctions has run at between 3% and 5.5% whereas between 2005 and 2010 the rate was running between 2% and 4%. One of the most encouraging elements of the new regime is that the proportion of people on high-level sanctions has fallen quite steeply and is now down by 40% from 10,000 per calendar month to 6,000 per calendar month.