Sanctioning of Benefit Recipients

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Nearly 1 million people have had their benefits stopped—the highest number since jobseeker’s allowance was introduced in 1996—but 58% of those who appealed their sanctions won. That is what this debate is about.

Labour Members do not say that people should not be sanctioned, but we do say that sanctions should be fair. They should be imposed only when claimants wilfully do not do everything that they have agreed to do—unlike the young man I recently met at a protest against Atos, who was like so many people on benefits. He wanted to work, but had suffered a rugby injury and was on ESA. He has worked in construction and had had his own window cleaning company that employed two other people. He went to university but then got his rugby injury, which triggered chronic migraines. He also got depression. The medics are currently trying to work out whether the migraines cause the depression or the depression causes the migraines.

The young man was sacked from his last job because he had three days off with a migraine. He went on to ESA for three months, after which he was sent for another assessment. He contacted Atos to say that he could not attend because he was in hospital, but he was still sanctioned. He appealed, and Atos actually apologised. He was told that he would not have to have another assessment for at least a month, but was then immediately sent for more assessments. He gave up and went on to JSA, but not before he had attempted suicide. He suffers from a double whammy: as a 30-year-old, he has had to give up his flat because he is entitled only to the shared room rate. We should not be treating ill and disabled people in this way.

After pressure from Labour Members, the Government agreed to arrange for an independent inquiry into benefits sanctions. When will we see its report? I, for one, am disgusted by the way in which sanctions are being applied unfairly, without good cause, and with no humanity. I wonder how Mr Oakley, who is conducting the inquiry, is going to produce the report, given that when my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) asked how many benefit claimants had been sanctioned for different periods of time, the Minister—not this Minister but the right hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey)—replied that the information was not readily available and it would cost too much to get it.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is not just the number of sanctions but their length? The minimum period is four weeks, so those who are sanctioned spend too much of their time trying to deal with the acute financial problems that that causes rather than looking for work, which might be the purpose of the sanctions in the first place.

[Julie Hilling]

Absolutely; I agree. If the purpose of a sanction is to give somebody a bit of a shock—to say, “Look, you need to comply with the things that the Department is asking you to do”—then it does not need to be four weeks long, a year long, or three years long. We need action to get the person to comply with what they need to do; we do not need them starving, becoming homeless and living in the cold. As my right hon. Friend says, those things do not allow them productively to seek work.

I am a parliamentary patron of the YMCA, which has undertaken research and produced a report called “Feeling the Benefits”. The YMCA found that in the first seven months after the reforms of October 2012, more than a quarter of a million young people were sanctioned—1,000 every day. It also reported that there has been a significant increase in the number of vulnerable young people being sanctioned, detrimentally affecting their physical and mental well-being. Eighty-four per cent. of the young people surveyed reported that they had had to cut back on or go without food. They said things like: “I didn’t cope, I had no one.” Another said: “It’s how long they left me with no money, knowing I was pregnant and had to buy my own food.” Another said: “I was unable to eat and it was lucky that the YMCA could help.” Another said: “You have a much more negative attitude to life as a whole.” Another said: “It cost me my home and food.” Another said: “I went three months living on food parcels, which is really degrading because you lose all your dignity. It’s not just physically hard, it’s mentally hard.”

The YMCA reported that sanctions, instead of helping those young people get into work, actually made it harder. One said: “It stopped me searching for work as I had no money to get to different employers.” Another said, most tellingly: “My focus turned to survival rather than gaining employment.” The young people accepted the need for sanctions for those not doing what is required of them, but all believed that they had to be fairly applied. Three quarters of them felt that the way in which sanctions were currently being applied was not fair. They believed that there were three main areas where communication had failed: they were not given enough support on how they could avoid being sanctioned, an explanation of why they had been sanctioned or practical advice on what they could do once they had been.

The YMCA is calling on the Government to do a number of things, including ensuring that key information on the welfare system is better tailored and communicated to young people. It says that a claimant should have an individual as a single point of contact within their local Jobcentre Plus, who should remain constant wherever a claimant is in the system—whether on a work programme, work experience or wherever.

The YMCA also proposes that young people should receive a clear explanation, in writing and face to face, of why they have been sanctioned, and that claimants who are homeless or in emergency accommodation should be exempt from the same job search rules until they have found somewhere to live. It seems an absolute nonsense that we expect someone who is living on the streets to apply for so many jobs per day when what we need to do is get them into accommodation and make sure they are feeding themselves properly, and then deal with the issue of work. It is a hierarchy of needs—first of all, people need food, water and somewhere to live.

The YMCA has also proposed that where claimants are living in supported accommodation, as well as providing the claimants themselves with information about a sanction, Jobcentre Plus should provide that information to the supported housing provider. There is an absolute logic there: if a young person who is in difficulty and is being supported is suddenly sanctioned and so is no longer able to pay their rent, they run the risk of falling out even of the supported system.

The YMCA also proposes that a duty be placed on Jobcentre Plus to provide people being sanctioned with a suitable notice period and an opportunity to have the decision reconsidered prior to removing any benefit payments. I will go on to talk about cases in which, if a proper review had been done in the first place, the sanction would never had been applied and people would not have been left in dire circumstances with no money for a period of time. I hope the Minister will take the time to read the YMCA’s report and will take action on its contents.

I recently met senior officers in my local Jobcentre Plus. We had a very productive discussion about the difficulties faced by many people and the particular difficulties faced by those whose lives are most chaotic. But as soon as I asked about sanctions, the atmosphere absolutely changed. I asked about targets, and they said that there were definitely no targets—I accept that. However, they then went on to talk about the performance management of Jobcentre Plus staff. An adviser will be spoken to if they do not refer claimants for sanctions often enough. That means the adviser cannot exercise common sense or accept explanations for why a claimant is a few moments late or has been unable to attend their interview that the rest of us would see as perfectly acceptable. The claimant potentially loses benefits immediately until the decision maker either accepts the reasons or applies a sanction. That could push the claimant into debt, leaving them with no food or money for rent, and getting them into difficulty with their housing.

I have been told that people have been given an appointment on a Sunday and have then been told that they should have realised that the appointment was for a day on which the jobcentre would not be open. They have therefore had their benefits suspended because they were not able to sign on and see their adviser—on a Sunday. There are cases of people who have applied for more jobs than are required but because they did so through a job club or through their own initiative rather than applying on universal job match the jobs were not counted and the claimants were sanctioned.

The young man who is now a volunteer in my office was given a job advert once as he was leaving the jobcentre and was told that he may like to apply for the job. The first line of the job description asked for a qualification that he did not have so he did not apply for it. He was honest: the next week he went in and said—even though he could have fibbed and said that he had applied for the job, as the jobcentre staff would not have known—that he had not applied for it and gave his reasons why. They sanctioned him, even though he had applied for more jobs than he needed to.

Another case is that of Peter, who was sent to a Work programme provider. He turned up when he was told to but was told that the programme did not exist and that he should go home. He went back to the jobcentre and explained the situation. The work provider backed up his story, but he was still sanctioned for four weeks, because the provider and the jobcentre could not get their story straight.

I am aware that you are asking me to wind up, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I have many more cases that I would love to tell the House about—really dire, terrible cases, in which my constituents have been wrongly treated and, it seems to me, punished simply for trying to do the right thing. One thing I would say is that if the jobcentre would only talk to the person, find out what had happened and why, start from a point of believing their story and carry out the investigation before they applied the sanctions, we would not have people living in such misery.

Although I hate sanctions, I accept that some people do not engage or do the things that they are called on to do to receive benefits. I accept that those people should face sanctions, but those sanctions have to be based on common sense. If someone is in hospital or at a job interview, or is held up by a traffic accident, they should not have their benefits cut off. If they cannot read, are ill on the day of the appointment or are given the wrong day by the jobcentre they should not be left with no money to feed themselves and their family. The current sanction regime is not fair, is not working properly and needs to be changed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Webb]

I will not for now, because I only have a short period and I want to respond to all the points that Members have made. [Interruption.] It was a mistake. The hon. Gentleman asks why it was 60%. There was a miscoding. That was not the correct figure.

It is important that the sanctions regime is evaluated. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for his positive comments on the work that is being done by Matthew Oakley, which is looking specifically at the sanctions regime. It is considering communications to claimants. A number of hon. Members have stated that for sanctions to be effective we must communicate to people what has happened to them and why. I accept that entirely, and if right hon. and hon. Members have examples—some of which they cited during the debate—the Employment Minister would be pleased to receive details of individual cases where the processes that we want to work are not working.

To return to the evaluation, Matthew Oakley will soon complete his report. It will come to the Department and we will respond positively and constructively. We will then publish not only our response but the independent findings of the reviewers in full. There is no secrecy about that; it will be in the public domain, and rightly so, together with the actions we are taking. That is not the only evaluation. We have published a range of evidence, including the Jobcentre Plus offer evaluation and the universal credit customer survey, which provide information about customer awareness of sanctions and the effectiveness of the regime in encouraging compliance. We also monitor the use of sanctions and publish quarterly statistics. In a sense, we could have a second and third review and all the rest, but the focus is on seeing what the first independent reviewer says and publicly responding constructively to that, making changes, publishing evidence, monitoring and taking action, rather than on starting another review with another reviewer for perhaps six or nine months, or whatever, so that it is Christmas before things change. We want to get on with learning from these reviews.

The Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, who is not in the Chamber at the moment, asked about sanctions for employment and support allowance, and it is important to stress the low level of ESA sanctions. At any point, fewer than 0.5% of individuals in the work-related activity group are sanctioned, so although volumes have increased because the number of people on ESA has gone up, that rate remains low. It is not the case that people on ESA are being sanctioned all over the place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) mentioned the link to housing benefit—I felt a certain amount of nostalgia when he explained to the House where Sandwell is, because that is where I was born and went to school. He made the important point that if someone is sanctioned on jobseeker’s allowance, that should not lead to the loss of housing benefit. Although income-related JSA passports to housing benefit, housing benefit is available on the basis of low income and not necessarily on whether someone satisfies the requirements for JSA. We entirely accept that we must ensure that people are not incorrectly thrown off housing benefit because their JSA has been sanctioned in some way, and we are considering that issue as part of the Oakley review. It is not our intention for people to lose their housing benefit.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan raised an interesting question of whether, for example, someone who is sanctioned under universal credit risks losing the whole household payment. Funnily enough, that problem is sorted out under universal credit, because instead of having JSA here and housing benefit there, and the JSA computer telling the council that someone is not on JSA any more and their housing benefit stopping, if it is all one payment the sanction is just to the personal allowance bit and housing help remains unaffected. It will be better under universal credit.

I was pleased to hear from a number of hon. Members that the universal sanctions regime is attractive and responds so that when people correct whatever caused the sanction, in many cases that sanction will stop. I will pass to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Employment Minister the view of a number of Members in this debate that the sooner we move forward with the universal credit sanction regime, the better. I am encouraged by that.

On the proportionality of sanctions, there has not been much discussion about the detail of the higher, middle and lower rates, but since the system was introduced the proportion of claimants sanctioned at the highest level fell markedly after the introduction of the new system. Hardship payments are available—again, that has not been discussed much—at a rate of 60% of the benefit. People may not be aware of that, but where someone has no income it is important to be aware that hardship payments are available at a rate of 60% of benefit.

[Julie Hilling]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Webb]

I will not, if the hon. Lady will forgive me, because I want to respond to the points already made.

There was some discussion of targets—this is a bit of a chestnut—and to be categorical, there are no targets for sanctions; that is not the way it works. The point was made that statistics are gathered at jobcentre level and among advisers on their use of the sanctions system, and again the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan—I am wrecking her credibility here—made exactly the right point. We want consistency, and we cannot know that we have that if we do not gather data on what individual advisers are doing. If people go to a jobcentre and talk to adviser A or adviser B, and adviser A sanctions everyone who walks through the door and adviser B never sanctions anyone, the system is not working.