Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Mike Weir Excerpts

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

[Patrick Grady]

rose—

[Mike Weir]

rose—

[Lucy Frazer]

I will make some progress.

Secondly, the hon. Lady questioned how people can provide evidence that a bus or a train was late. I can think of a number of ways of doing so, such as taking a photograph of the dashboard or asking a member of staff to provide evidence. Thirdly, she said that staff may be affected, but I have already covered that point.

In conclusion, the hon. Lady’s Bill is important because we need to assess what works and what does not work. I welcome the call for consistency, because it is absolutely vital that we have a system that works fairly throughout the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I normally say that I am very pleased to take part in a debate, but, unfortunately, I am not very pleased to do so today because we are having to discuss a terrible subject. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) on the way she introduced this very important Bill. I cannot match her passion and, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be glad to hear that I will not match her length, but I want to make a few points.

I listened very carefully to what the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) said. Nobody on the SNP Benches disputes the fact that working is important—we all want everybody who is able to work to be in work, and that should be fundamental for everybody in every political party—but when she was talking about decision makers, she mentioned that we have a judicial system in which the judge does not know anything about the case. The fundamental difference is that such a person can go to court and present their case to the judge, but that is not possible in relation to decision makers in this process.

I want to comment on some of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns). I have always found him to be a reasonable chap, but I was disappointed by what he said. He made a point—it is often made by Conservative Members—that taxpayers and benefit claimants are somehow different and neither the twain shall meet. He must realise that many benefits claimants were taxpayers and probably will be taxpayers again in the future. He quoted Beveridge, but these people have paid into the system for many years, and they often find themselves having to claim benefits because they have had an accident, they are ill or have a mental illness, or for many other reasons. It is totally wrong to look at the two as different: benefits claimants have been and will be taxpayers, and they are trying to get from the system what they are entitled to, but the hon. Gentleman does not seem to accept that.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I, too, heard the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns). I understood that he was making a broader point about taxpayers. Will the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir) answer this question, please: what is his view on the principle of sanctions? Should there be sanctions at all, yes or no?

[Mike Weir]

We are not discussing the principle of sanctions today. We are discussing a Bill that sensibly seeks to mitigate the current system. Whether there should be sanctions at all is another debate for another day, but it is not what we are debating today. Many Government Members have spoken about mitigations in the system. It is true that people can get hardship payments, but it can take many weeks. Not only that, but the hardship payments are a percentage of what people would get from benefits. Despite what many people seem to think, benefits are hardly over-generous in the first instance. People who get by on benefits find that they cannot get by on hardship payments.

Parts of my constituency are relatively prosperous. Many people work in the North sea oil industry, for example. In the downturn in that industry, people lost well-paid jobs. Many of them came to me absolutely flabbergasted at the amount of money they got by signing on because they had believed for so many years the rubbish pushed by some of our media that all people on benefits live the life of Riley, which is absolute nonsense.

The point has been made that there is nothing new in the sanctions system, which is correct—sanctions have been part of the system since at least 1996—but what is new is the number of sanctions and how they are imposed. The system is deeply flawed, and SNP Members have long called for a full independent review of it. Even the National Audit Office found in its recent report that a shocking 24% of jobseeker’s allowance claimants received a sanction between 2010 and 2015 and that the rate of sanctions varies dramatically. That is not right and the Government must listen to the concerns about the damage that the application of benefit sanctions has on individuals and their families.

The report also states starkly:

“sanctions are not rare. A quarter of Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants receive them at some point”,

which blows apart the Government’s assertion that only a small minority receive them. Worse still, there is absolutely no consistency in the figures. The report finds that some Work programme providers made more than twice as many sanctions referrals as other providers within the same geographical area, even though claimants are randomly allocated, so that case load characteristics are identical for each provider. That would not happen in a fair system.

There should be no more than a minor variation if the system is used uniformly. Clearly it is not, which the Bill would address by adding a clear code of conduct. The point is that, wherever someone is subject to the system up and down the United Kingdom, the same principles would be applied, and it would not be left to individual variance from place to place. The NAO believes that the DWP does not use sanctions consistently, noting that sanctions referral rates

“have risen and fallen over time in ways that cannot be explained by changes in claimant compliance.”

The Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South has introduced would make a start on the process. Hon. Members accept that it does not do away with the sanctions regime. She is very intelligent and knows perfectly well that such a Bill would never get through the House in its current form. However, the Bill would go a long way to ensure that there is a coherent, unified process for all jobcentres and that advisers take a claimant’s personal circumstances into account before issuing sanctions. Advisers would be compelled to take into account whether a person is at risk of homelessness and whether they have caring responsibilities or a mental health condition that could be exacerbated if their benefits were sanctioned.

It is interesting to note that in March 2015 the Work and Pensions Committee published a report, “Benefit sanctions policy beyond the Oakley Review”, which recommended, among other things, that the Government take urgent steps to implement fully the outstanding recommendations of that report. To be scrupulously fair, the Government have taken some measures. They have trialled the yellow card system and we still wait to see what the outcome of that trial will be.

[Mhairi Black]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I hope that the Minister will address that point at the end of the debate, because in a written answer to my question asking when the details of the yellow card system would be published, the answer was the end of November. We are now into December.

[Mike Weir]

When my hon. Friend has been here as long as I have, she will realise that a political month can go on for a very, very long time.

The point is that many of the people who are subject to sanctions are vulnerable or, frankly, leading chaotic lifestyles because of mental illness. In its comments on the Bill, SAMH, which has a scheme in my constituency, said:

“People with mental health problems are among the most vulnerable of benefit recipients, are 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.”

SAMH also makes the point that

“Sanctioning this group…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.”

In response to a Scottish Government consultation last October, it added that

“The number of sanctions applied in Scotland doubled in the last year, and individuals with mental health problems are disproportionately affected.”

According to Mind, figures obtained by a freedom of information request in November 2015 showed that 19,259 people with mental health problems had their benefits stopped under sanction in 2014-15, compared with just 2,507 in 2011-12. That is a 668% rise in just three years, which cannot be just or right.

These people are already vulnerable. The reason that they are perhaps not fully compliant with the rules is not that they are wilful but that they are unable to do so. A sanction will make matters worse and will not make them more likely to get a job; in other words, it is a completely counterproductive process. In fact, it could be even worse than that, because these people are also the least likely to look into how they can then get a hardship payment or how they can appeal. We get people coming into my office after they have been sanctioned completely unaware of the system and how they go about appealing a sanction or how they go about getting a hardship payment, and that happens despite the work that we do and despite the excellent work that Angus Council’s welfare benefits team do to point people in the right direction.

There are people, particularly those with mental health problems, who simply fall through the cracks, and the danger of not having a unified system is that more and more people will fall through those cracks. Many other Members will have stories of people in similar circumstances. Crucially, however, the Government also did not accept the WPC’s recommendation that they should

“establish a broad independent review of benefit conditionality and sanctions, to investigate whether sanctions are being applied appropriately, fairly and proportionately, in accordance with the relevant Regulations and guidance”

that already exist.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not appropriate for somebody to be sanctioned in circumstances such as those of a constituent of mine, who did not turn up for a meeting because the letter about it was sent to the No. 5 in a different street to his?

[Mike Weir]

It is absolutely incredible that such a thing could happen, which just goes to show the difficulties in the system as it works at the moment.

Many Government Members have claimed that international evidence clearly shows that benefit regimes supported by conditionality reduce unemployment and that the regime in the UK is clear and effective in promoting positive behaviours to help claimants back into work. However, a recent study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council found that most claimants’ experience of welfare conditionality and sanctions was a wholly negative one, creating widespread anxiety and feelings of disempowerment. That is hardly a shock to those of us who have had to deal with the issue when they have turned to us for help.

More telling, however, is that a Government-backed employment project run by Oxford City Council and the DWP found in June that cutting benefit entitlements makes it less likely that unemployed people will find a job. It said:

“Conventional wisdom suggests that taking money off benefit claimants (eg by sanctions or cutting benefit rates) acts as a financial incentive to get a job. Our analysis says that the opposite is in fact true”.

[Peter Grant]

I have to disagree with my hon. Friend’s initial comment that he would not be able to match previous speakers’ passion, because I think he is doing that very well. In my constituency, when a major employer closed down, the DWP joined a taskforce to help the redundant workers back into work. The taskforce organised a half-day recruitment fair. Claimants who should have been signing on the day of the fair were told that they would be sanctioned if they met employers to get a job on the day they were supposed to sign on. Does he agree that changing legislation to prevent such things would improve the credibility and acceptability of any remaining sanctions?

[Mike Weir]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that again illustrates the complete illogicality of the system.

Research has linked sanctioning to food insecurity, demand for food banks and destitution. According to the Trussell Trust’s figures, benefit sanctions are a major contributor to its delivering more emergency food parcels in 2016 than at any other time in its history. The NAO has also thrown into doubt the cost-effectiveness of sanctioning. If we passed the Bill, we could start to reduce the number of needless, senseless and counterproductive sanctions by introducing into the system a clear code of conduct and a fairer means by which to look at the personal conditions of the person being considered for sanctions. The Bill builds on the good practice in some jobcentres, as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South fairly pointed out in her introduction. It would protect the most vulnerable from falling into poverty and prevent what are often already chaotic personal lives from getting even worse.

The Scottish Parliament is getting new powers to establish employment schemes to assist those at risk of becoming long-term unemployed and to support disabled people back into work, although benefit conditionality and sanctions remain a reserved matter. The Employability and Training Minister, Jamie Hepburn, has confirmed that the Work First Scotland programme, which will provide employment support for more than 3,300 disabled people from next year, will be voluntary and will not use the threat of sanctions. In a rare moment of agreement, I am pleased that the DWP has agreed that the programme can be voluntary and that no sanctions will be applied. I hope that this is a sign that the Government are now beginning to see the merit in looking at the matter afresh. From this small step, I urge the Minister to go further and to support the Bill, which would put the regime on a proper and consistent footing and in the process make a real difference to many people’s lives across the whole United Kingdom.