Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mhairi Black]

My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point. It is covered by the second part of the Bill, which I will touch on later.

It is clear that DWP decision makers are not making any genuine assessment but are simply rubber-stamping referrals, because the proportion of people being sanctioned for not actively seeking work has risen to 98%. No real consideration is being given to the individual’s circumstances and life.

On health, “Living at the Sharp End”, a recent Citizens Advice Scotland research report on the causes and impacts of gaps in income for Scottish citizens advice bureau clients, found that benefit sanctions were one of the top five causes of a period of no income. One of the most striking findings from an analysis of the report’s 47 case studies is the impact that gaps in income have on the mental and physical health of clients in the sample. Of those case studies, almost a third mentioned worsening mental health issues as a result of a gap in income, and two of them explicitly mentioned suicidal thoughts.

I ask Members to think of the process that people already have to endure. As I said at the beginning, they are already terrified before they go into the jobcentre, never mind when they end up as part of the sanctions process. [Interruption.] If an individual suffers from depression, anxiety or any other mental health condition, the system as it stands completely neglects what life is like for them when they are having a bad day or are struggling. In response to a Scottish Government consultation in October 2015, the Scottish Association for Mental Health said:

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

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

The Health Committee is conducting an inquiry into suicide and the causes of suicide. Since the crash of 2008 and the increase in the number of unemployed people, we have seen a sharp rise in the number of suicides, particularly among middle-aged men, who suffer at rate of 3:1. The idea that the financial changes that this country has seen over the past seven or eight years have had no impact is, frankly, wrong. How people are treated really matters, not just for the quality of their life, but for whether they survive.

[Mhairi Black]

My hon. Friend makes her point succinctly.

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[Mhairi Black]

The idea that individuals and citizens in our society are reliant solely on the charity of others to eat and to feed their children shows that we are sliding backwards down a hill to Victorian times.

[Dr Whitford]

We also have to acknowledge the increase in malnutrition in this country, particularly micro-malnutrition, which means a lack of vitamins and minerals. People who are living precariously with low-paid jobs tend to have poor nourishment, and if they are reliant on food banks they have no access to fresh food, given that the vast majority of them do not provide it. We are, therefore, laying down problems for the future.

[Mhairi Black]

What Sean in Glasgow got across was that one of the main reasons behind the anxiety that prevents people from having nutritious food and from feeling confident enough to get out of their bed if they are depressed and to get a healthy diet comes down to the pressure that the system as it stands puts on mental health.

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[Mhairi Black]

That point speaks for itself. This is not a political argument; it is factual. The system is costing money; it is not giving us good value for money. It is causing a lot of distress and hardship for many people.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Over the last seven or eight years, pressures on the mental health services in this country have increased. It may not simply be that the sanctions regime is not saving money; the regime is likely to be costing money, because it is driving more people to require support.

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[Mhairi Black]

I appreciate the point that the hon. Lady makes, but with the greatest respect, she misses the point. When people are under extreme stress, they accumulate debt. That is how, as the study says, they end up in arrears, which puts pressure on councils, local authorities and the individuals themselves.

In a report published in December 2015, Crisis found that homeless service users are disproportionately affected by sanctions. In the past year, 39% of the survey sample had been sanctioned, and three quarters of the survey respondents who had been sanctioned said that it had had a negative impact on—surprise—their mental health. Overall, 21% of sanctioned respondents said that they had become homeless as a result of the sanction. The simple fact is that, no matter how we look at it or how we arrive at this point, no Government should make their citizens homeless. It does not matter whether that is happening to 21% of people affected, or whether the figure is higher or lower. One person made homeless is too many. This Bill is an attempt to prevent that situation from ever arising.

[Dr Whitford]

Is it not the case that aspects of support normally provided by central Government end up being a burden on local government? We do not allow families to live in doorways in cardboard boxes, so they will end up in temporary accommodation, which is funded by local government.

[Mhairi Black]

My hon. Friend has just echoed the arguments that have been made on that point.

I want to move on to the second main part of my Bill. It deals with hardship payments—my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) spoke about them earlier—which I view as the second-biggest problem in the system. Currently, when a sanction has been imposed, a person may be able to get a reduced-rate hardship payment, but such payments are not awarded automatically—a person will need to apply for them. Again, we must remember that we are talking about human beings who are often very vulnerable. Whether because of their mental health, their physical health, their financial situation or their caring responsibilities, they are up to their eyeballs in stress already, and when they hear the dreaded word “sanctions”, the situation becomes 10 times worse.

The system is not designed to guarantee that everyone will be listened to. Some people might be lucky enough to be listened to. The system might be fine, as I said at the beginning, in jobcentres that are managing to make this skeleton of a system kind of work, but there is no guarantee that it will be the same for everybody. When an individual hears that they are being referred for—that dreaded word—a sanction, their world often falls apart and they are thrown into utter chaos.