Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Mhairi Black

Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mhairi Black]

Hold on a second. If the hon. Lady looks back, she will see in the NAO report out this week that a quarter of all people who receive JSA have been sanctioned at some point. That is what the facts are.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Another interesting statistic from the NAO report was that over a quarter of those who were sanctioned actually had their sanctions lifted on appeal. Does that not say all we really need to know about how sanctions are injudiciously used?

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[Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way; she is being very generous. I am sure that her constituents, like mine, do not want to see people who are able to work simply staying at home and taking whatever money they can, but that is not what the Bill is about. It is not about stopping sanctions for people like that; it is about doing what our constituents want and looking at the issue more humanely. They, like us, see this Government acting in a way that is bringing real stress and distress to families unnecessarily.

[Mhairi Black]

The hon. Lady is spot on and I am glad that she gets it.

As part of our public consultation, Sean in Glasgow confirmed the need for exceptions for those with mental ill health. He said:

“I live in Glasgow and suffer from a few mental and physical health conditions which affect my ability to work, and have affected my Jobcentre claims in the past (a couple of times, I’ve been too depressed to go to a meeting and my claims have been cancelled—my depression and isolation at those times left me sitting around, hungry and alone, with no money, and too depressed to deal with it), so I feel I’m qualified to talk about this topic and, indeed, recently contacted the Minister for Mental Health to discuss possible ways in which we can ameliorate the mental health burden on the NHS and increase levels of care for sufferers at the same time.”

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[Mhairi Black]

In many ways, the fact that the Bill has come before the House so near to Christmas may actually be a good thing. A number of people I have met or who have stopped me in the street up in Paisley or Johnstone have told me, “I don’t know what to do over Christmas. I don’t know where to get food. I don’t know if I can afford to get the kids any presents and be able to survive and have lighting in the House.” That is not the kind of society that I want to live in. It is not the kind of society that any Government should be proud of. The Government would be daft—it would hurt them in the polls at the next election—not to see the damage they are doing to society. Surely, when the Government hear stories like those we are telling today, they should think, “We need to change something here.” I have tried to make the Bill as palatable as possible to enable the Government to adhere to it.

[Lyn Brown]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mhairi Black]

No. I am going to make a wee bit of progress.

There is a cracking and very powerful bit in the film. As I was saying, Daniel Blake has to go around giving out his CV and all that to prove that he is trying to find work to get any money at all. At one point, a guy phones him up and says, “Listen, I want to offer you a job.” Blake says, “I can’t come into work,” and he asks, “Why not?” Blake replies, “Because my doctor says I’m not fit.” He says—

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[Mhairi Black]

I do not have the exact figures, but from the experience of my constituency office, most of the sanctions cases I have dealt with that have been overturned would have been prevented altogether had the provisions been in place.

[Lyn Brown]

I promise that this will be my last intervention, but I could not resist intervening. One thing that really struck me in the National Audit Office report is where it says:

“The Department has not used its own data to evaluate the impact of sanctions in the UK.”

How would the hon. Lady have such information when the Government do not even bother to keep it? I am sure that she agrees with me that the Government’s lack of intellectual interest in the effects of the regime is absolutely outrageous.

[Mhairi Black]

I sincerely thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. The problem is an overarching one, not just for this issue, but for all the different aspects of Government, in that their records are very poor. In the Work and Pensions Committee we have seen the complete lack of data collated by the Government.

As I was saying, the organisations that do this work day in, day out and deal with these people every day know what is happening. In fact, in many ways they know better than we sometimes do, because we are always stuck in this place and they are on the front line, dealing with individuals and listening to cases.

The Scottish Association for Mental Health has said:

“SAMH calls for all MPs to support this Bill. People with mental health problems are among the most vulnerable of benefit recipients, have been disproportionately targeted to be sanctioned and are among the least likely to understand or be able to comply with the conditions attached to their benefit. Sanctioning this group of people serves no purpose other than to make their illness worse and their personal circumstances even harder to cope with—making employment a less, not more, likely outcome. Ensuring that a pre-sanctions assessment of benefits claimants’ circumstances is carried out should lead to a reduction in the numbers of people inappropriately sanctioned; as well as not pushing vulnerable people into financial hardship and making them more unwell, the reduction in cancelled or appealed sanctions should also benefit the public purse through reduced administration costs. SAMH notes the NAO’s report on sanctions…and calls on the UK Government to rethink this punitive approach.”