Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

It is impossible to know how many people do not go to their MP, but I make my best efforts to be as accessible as possible to my constituents so that people know that they can come to me for help. What I find when following up on individual cases with the DWP, whether relating to sanctions or other problems with the benefit system, is that it is extraordinarily responsive and willing to review cases and reverse decisions that turn out to be flawed. I am reasonably confident that the DWP steps up and corrects mistakes when they are made.

[Hannah Bardell]

I cannot help but notice a deep irony in the hon. Lady’s comments. She cites examples of where the system has failed and of when her constituents have not been served well, and my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South is bringing forward a Bill that will help all our constituents and help the system to be fairer. How can she not see that irony and not support the Bill?

[Helen Whately]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady has been listening to what I have been saying. I think I have recognised that the system has problems. Mistakes will be made in any system of such a scale, but that does not mean that the answer is to impose some more top-down legislation. It is better to try to improve how the system works and to support jobcentres that might not be doing so well to come up to the level of those that are doing best.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

Who wants to come in?

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for deeming me worthy to be given way to. On contrasting lifestyles, does she share my disappointment and alarm about the fact that we can have legislation that targets some of the poorest people in society, but we cannot find the legislative means to tackle people such as Philip Green who have stolen workers’ pensions but who are happy to keep their own yachts and who are taking away from people at the bottom of our society?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Absolutely. Without wanting to put words in my hon. Friend’s mouth, I wonder whether she is suggesting that there is a bit of political ideology behind all this.

The Bill does the best that we can do, working within the system. The Government cannot really argue with what is proposed, because they claim that they do it anyway. They claim that they already take people’s circumstances into account. If that is the case, they should just agree to the Bill. The hon. Member for Bournemouth West said that he would not support the Bill because my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South had said that she was opposed to sanctions, full stop. I want to know how supporting the Bill is going to end the sanctions regime. It is not; it is going to make the regime a little bit more humane, but there is, sadly, nothing in the Bill that will end the sanctions regime.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

Absolutely. As I said at the start, I feel as though I am banging my head off a brick wall. In fact, I think that that might be a better use of my time.

If we are already doing this, the requirement in the Bill for someone’s caring responsibilities to be taken into account when considering a sanction happens already, does it? Tell that to my constituent Claire, a single parent who was summoned to an interview with the jobcentre on a day the following week at 3 pm, the exact time that her six-year-old gets out of school. She asked whether the meeting could be changed to 3.30. No. Could it be changed to earlier in the day? No. Could it be changed to another day? No, it had to be on that day at 3 o’clock, the time that she needed to pick up her child from school. She said, “Should I leave my child there, or should I take my child out early?” She was told, “We don’t care, as long as you get here, and if you do not get here at 3 o’clock on that day, we are sanctioning you.” Were her caring responsibilities taken into account? No. I do not want to hear that that was an incorrect decision or an isolated case. I am sick of hearing that. It was not an isolated case, because we hear about this all the time. I could talk about it until midnight and I would not get through, such is the number of times I have heard about it.

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. When it comes to the system not working, does she agree that we have heard about very many cases and it is quite clear that Conservative Members are not listening? A constituent of mine, who had Parkinson’s and who fell twice coming to my office, had been sanctioned—against the DWP’s own recommendations that people with degenerative diseases should be treated through a paper process and not be subjected to interviews. Twice I wrote to the DWP, but only when I brought his case to this Chamber was it properly dealt with. That is not how the system should work, and the Bill would address that.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Absolutely. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South on proposing this Bill, and I thank her on behalf of many of my constituents. If the Bill is successful, it will provide some protection. If not, it will at least have raised the issue again, and people out there will know that somebody in here cares about what happens to them.

I will start—I say “start,” but I have been going on for quite a while—by offering the treat that the hon. Member for Bournemouth West is looking for by arguing against the entire sanctions regime. I challenge him to respond to my arguments. I saw Government Members being given a sheet of paper with a list of suggested interventions, but I have experience, and lots of it, on my side, so challenge away.

I will argue on three levels. First, there is the financial argument. I will use only factual arguments, and the sanctions regime costs us more to run than it saves—that is before we look at the long-term hidden costs. Secondly, there are the academic arguments. Conditionality in the welfare system does not work. It is not me making that argument; it is academics. I will share their findings, and let us see whether Government Members have actual evidence to the contrary—not opinions, but evidence. Thirdly, I will make the moral argument, and here Government Members can make a counter-argument because we all have a different moral compass—morality can be subjective, a matter of opinion. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that anybody who thinks it is right that we sanction the benefits of people who are already in poverty needs their compass reprogrammed pronto.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

That is absolutely correct, and what does that say about the democracy of this place?

The fact is that most of the respondents in the research were already keen to find work—most people are—and even the practitioners who are imposing the sanctions regime are sceptical about its benefits. As we have already heard, DWP staff are under incredible pressure. When I spoke about the aspirations they have to reach, the hon. Member for Bournemouth West challenged me to provide the name of the whistleblower who told me all about this, and then just hope that they stay in employment. I will not do that, but I will point him to an article on a journalist’s website called “Common Space”, in which Fraser Stewart talks about how he gave up his job and became unemployed because he could not bear to keep up with the targets or aspirations that were set for him. The hon. Gentleman can have a look at that, although I am surprised he does not know about it already.

I was glad to read the research to back up what I have always known, which is that conditionality does not work. I do not think people have to be that bright to see why it does not work to have somebody standing over them telling them, “You must do it”. I wonder how many of the Conservative Members who have spoken today require a stick to be wielded over them for them to go out to find work. [Interruption.] They have the Whips—that is a very good point—but how many of them went out into the world of work and said, “I’m not going to bother doing this”. What makes them so special, because they will all say, “No, no, I always wanted to work”? I was always keen to work, but so are most people. Most people have aspirations.

[Hannah Bardell]

I promise my hon. Friend that I am intervening on her for one last time. Is she aware of this year’s “Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, support and behaviour change” project report? It states that

“the impacts of benefit sanctions are universally reported by welfare service users as profoundly negative.”

It also found that sanctions have pushed some people into committing survival crime. Is not the fact that people in our society are pushed into committing crimes just so that they can survive a shame and a stain on our society?

[Anne McLaughlin]

That is an absolute shame on our society, and it costs more money, because when people commit crimes, we have to detect them and punish criminals.

I want to talk about a friend—[Interruption.] Wheesht! If an hon. Member wants to intervene, they can do so.