Benefit Claimants (North-east)

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will not call what I too have heard rumours, because it is clear that jobcentres are measured on the number of sanctions they issue. There may not be official targets, but the numbers are measured and published, so of course they are compared. I know from speaking to former and current DWP employees that they are under pressure to sanction people, almost regardless of how hard they are trying to find a job.

My third and final example concerns another constituent, Adam Ross Williams. What happened to him occurred just before Christmas. In November, the jobcentre wrote to Adam to say that because he had failed to complete and return a JSA2 claim review form, which he had never received, all payments to him were going to be suspended. He immediately called to ask why the form had not been sent to him by recorded delivery or handed to him at the jobcentre, which he has to attend. He also asked if he could complete the form by phone. He was told that that was impossible and that he would have to wait for another form to be posted to him.

The form finally arrived just before Christmas, almost one month after he had requested it, during which time he had no income, going without and relying on handouts from friends and family, “when I was lucky”. Of course, many other claimants in similar situations are forced into debt, and in particular to use payday loans.

Adam’s circumstances had not changed and the form he was sent was exactly the same as the one he had first filled out. He filled out the second form, took it to his local jobcentre and asked them to fax it straight over to the DWP. However, he immediately got a phone call from the DWP saying that they had not received his form and asked if he would be willing to complete the form over the phone, which is what he had wanted to do in the first place. We must remember that all this happened just before Christmas, which is a really stressful time for everybody, particularly those on a low income or, as in this case, no income.

Adam asked for an emergency payment and he was assured that he would get a phone call confirming that he would be paid. No phone call came, so he checked with the benefit inquiry line and was told that no emergency payment had been requested, so nothing could reach him until after Christmas. And yet all that had been needed was to ask him to confirm that his circumstances had not changed. When I hear stories such as this, I wonder whether the system is designed to hound people such as Adam, who are seeking work.

I could go on for hours—I could give 300 examples, not just three—but I know that many Members from the region wish to speak, and I also want to say a little about the broader context. There are people on benefits who are abusing the system; there are what are known as “scroungers”, who take what they can get and consider benefits both a lifestyle and a right. However, they are a very small proportion of those on benefits. It is estimated that 0.7% of welfare spending is lost to fraud, in comparison with the 1.3% lost to overpayment because of mistakes.

It is of course important to tackle fraud and error, but does the Minister think it necessary to place adverts on buses in my constituency saying:

“Think you know a Newcastle upon Tyne Benefits Cheat? Report them anonymously”?

Stunts such as that fuel misconceptions about benefits and fraud. Is it any surprise that people estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than is actually the case? Perhaps the Minister can tell us how much that campaign cost and how the Department plans to measure how much money has been saved by it. I have yet to see adverts encouraging people to turn in tax evaders, despite the Treasury itself estimating the “tax gap” at £34 billion and tax campaigners suggesting that the true figure could be much, much higher. Or is this process more about, as one person complained to me, fostering a culture of suspicion and bitterness towards claimants? That is the outcome, and certainly that is how many of my constituents have come to feel.

I will quote from what Adam said to me:

“In summary, I am absolutely disgusted at how I have been treated. I feel entirely let down by my government, and like a second class citizen. What have I done to deserve this?”

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I did not mean to interrupt my hon. Friend before she reaches the end of her excellent contribution, but I wonder whether she, like me, has had cases involving former service personnel who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and, in some instances, even earlier conflicts. They were in receipt of incapacity benefit and other benefits due to their war disablement, but under the new system—the work capability tests—they have been thrown off those benefits. Does she have such disgraceful cases in her constituency? I will raise those I have come across with the Minister when she replies to the debate.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent contribution herself. I am not using all the examples I have, because I have so many. However, I am aware of the way some veterans in my constituency have been treated, and of the disgraceful impact it has had upon their lives. I look forward to hearing from her about the cases in her constituency.

My constituent, Adam, went on to say:

“How can it be right that an unemployed person…not only has the shame of completely having to rely on the government for my next meal but can have my only income arbitrarily stopped? A civil servant promises to get an emergency payment to me then what…? Forgets? So now I have to wait an extra week. Christmas is ruined…I can’t even go see my little girl, let alone put the heating on or buy some food.”

I want to make it clear that I am not blaming those who work in jobcentres or in the DWP. As I mentioned earlier, I have spoken to current and former jobcentre officers, and they have told me how they are pressurised to sanction claimants and how, as one former agent told me, the atmosphere changed immediately following the general election. Their job was no longer to help claimants into work but to “find them out”. I accept that mistakes are sometimes made, but it is the organisational culture that the Minister is responsible for, and I am sure she will want to take responsibility for it, as any business leader would. I would welcome her comments on this issue. I am sure she will acknowledge, as I do, that this challenge is not an easy one, but that much more needs to be done. That means supporting those in work, and not vilifying those seeking work or unable to work.

Five charities have come together for the Who Benefits? campaign. I know the Minister prefers charities to be seen and not heard; that is the Victorian mindset of this Government. However, the Children’s Society, Crisis, Gingerbread, Macmillan Cancer Support and Mind often work with people who find themselves in receipt of benefits. The charities are campaigning because they believe that

“politicians should do more to listen to, understand and act on the realities of people’s lives”



and to focus on

“the real reasons that people are struggling to address, like low wages, the high cost of living and the housing crisis”,

rather than demonising those on welfare benefits.

I have a number of specific questions for the Minister. First, will she make it clear in her own words how much she recognises the challenges that benefits claimants face, and outline the kind of nurturing, supportive environment that she is seeking to establish? Secondly, what measures are in place to ensure that benefit claimants are nurtured and supported, and that those who work for the DWP and its agencies treat them with dignity and respect? Thirdly, what assessment has been made of the impact of measuring and comparing the number of sanctions meted out by jobcentres? What other measures have been looked at, such as measuring the number of claimants in every jobcentre who found and stayed in work for six months? Fourthly, what sanctions are in place for those who are not respectful towards benefits claimants, and are those sanctions applied to Ministers? Fifthly, why do the Government refuse to acknowledge the link between increased sanctions and increased food bank usage? Finally, why did the recent Oakley report on sanctioning not extend to all benefit claimants? I look forward to the Minister’s response.

When the Minister’s office wrote to me asking what this debate would be about and what my concerns were, I wanted to give her lots of time to prepare for it, so I made it clear to her that the debate would centre on the culture and treatment of benefit claimants, and that I would cite examples where that culture and treatment had not met the standard that I hope the Minister aspires to. I would also like to reassure her that I have studied the recent Westminster Hall debate on benefit sanctions, on 2 December 2014. I have read the questions posed by my hon. Friends in that debate and her response to them. I think it fair to say that there is not a strong correlation between the two. I assure the Minister that she does not need to repeat the points made in that debate about the importance of getting work, the history of sanctions or the role of incentives to work. I and the vast majority of benefit claimants are familiar with them. No one wishes to make it easy for freeloaders, or foster a culture that does not recognise the value of work. That is not what the debate is about. Will she ensure—unlike on the last occasion—that she saves some time to address our concerns? They are important.

The sense that claimants are being treated as second-class citizens, scroungers and cheats has a terrible impact on their well-being and, in particular, their mental health. I have some experience of that. I was brought up largely on benefits. We were a one-parent family. My mother was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and also suffered from breast cancer. It was hard for her, not only because of our poverty but because of her shame at taking handouts. I am so glad that she did not have to face the sort of vilification and abuse that benefits claimants face now—abuse caused in part by a sustained campaign from those on the right of the political spectrum. Contrary to what many of them would imagine, I was brought up with a strong work ethic and to believe that the state should provide a robust safety net for those who need it. I am not proud that I grew up on benefits, but I am not ashamed either. I want to know what the Government are doing to prevent the demonisation of those claiming benefits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Riordan.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). She has done everyone a great service in securing this extremely important debate. I am also immensely pleased that so many Labour MPs from the north-east have spoken this afternoon: my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) and my hon. Friends the Members for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). They all took part and have spoken with compassion and forensic attention to detail, which it would be nice to see from those on the Government Benches as well.

To understand the problem, we need to think more about the reasons why people in the north-east claim benefits. The north-east is the area of the country with the highest unemployment. At the moment, unemployment is 9%, compared with a 6% national average. An issue with sanctions is that we suspect them of forming part of an attempt to massage down the level of unemployment figures, in particular in our region. It is absolutely clear, however, that there is a serious problem for people in finding work, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East pointed out. The ratio of vacancies to claimants, when that number was last collected in 2012—again, the Government are hiding more recent numbers from us—was 4:1 in the south-east, but 9:1 in the north-east.

High unemployment in the north-east is caused by economic restructuring, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool pointed out. When people move from, say, being an administrator in the local magistrates court, they are not immediately able to go and work for a biotech company. They are bound to be unemployed for a certain time. We need a safety net to support them during that period. The Government have been boasting about the level of public spending cuts in the north-east, because they believe that we were over-dependent on public service jobs, but it behoves the Government to take a more positive attitude to the people most affected by their chosen policies.

The second problem, also mentioned by my colleagues, is the overhang of heavy industry, which means that we have higher levels of industrial injuries, disabilities and chronic illnesses. Therefore, any problems in the benefit system that relate to JSA, PIP, disability living allowance, ESA, IB or industrial injuries benefit—all areas that the Department has managed to mismanage over the past five years—weigh particularly heavily in our region. In Redcar, for example—it is unfortunate that the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), who is a Liberal Democrat, has not bothered to turn up today—16% of the working-age population is on out-of-work benefits. That is not a lifestyle choice by the people who live in Redcar; it is because they face serious problems.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central talked about the problem of people with chronic conditions and disabilities who have wrongly been turned down for benefits. That continues to be a problem and I still have such problems in my constituency. It is incredibly unpleasant for people, creates misery, worsens their health and is a prime example of Tory welfare waste. The level of appeals has been as high as a third; the level of decisions overturned has also been a third—the Minister is looking puzzled, but I am quoting from what the Select Committee said about the ESA system in 2012. The cost to the public purse therefore has been £70 million per year. In the north-east, we are used to working with the Japanese and they have a “right first time” approach; we would like to see more of that in the benefits system.

The second set of problems involves the immense delays that we see over and over again. The situation is pitiable and particularly problematic at this time for people making PIP applications. Since April 2013, 670,000 people have made claims; as of last October, 287,000 people were still waiting for decisions. That is appalling; that is almost half. I know the problem is a continuing one, because my constituency office is looking at 35 such cases. At the moment, 900,000 people in this country are stuck in that waiting period. What is the Government response to the report by Mr Paul Gray? It would be helpful to hear something from the Minister. Again, however, we have the problem of the Government avoiding addressing the issue by delaying the publication of the statistics on waiting periods for some further months.

The final and most discussed set of problems is to do with sanctions. Everyone knows that we need some sanctions in the benefits system. Indeed, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East, I was a Minister in the DWP during the previous Parliament, and the last thing I did in that role was take a statutory instrument through the House in March 2010 to tighten up the sanctions regime.

Under this Government, however, we have seen an absolute explosion in and abuse of the use of sanctions. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) had an Adjournment debate on this issue in the main Chamber just before Christmas, to which the Minister responded. My right hon. Friend has discovered that, across the nation as a whole, the number of people sanctioned has doubled during this Parliament, that sanctions are longer and that a quarter of JSA claimants will now be sanctioned at some time during their claim. In the north-east, it is even worse. The number of ESA claimants sanctioned has increased at least fourfold and the number of JSA claimants sanctioned has doubled, meaning that in any year, 30,000 people are being sanctioned at any moment in time in our region.

[Mrs Hodgson]

It is obvious to the Opposition that that is what is feeding—I use that word deliberately—the rise in people accessing food banks. When I visited a food bank in Washington in December, the people there said that when they analyse the reasons why people are coming through their doors, benefit sanctions are by far the top reason given.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The sanctions problem is extremely alarming. For example, a constituent of mine, Mr A, rearranged an appointment he had missed—he had got confused because a close family member had died. When my office got in touch with the jobcentre, the sanction for that was overturned. Mr B was sanctioned for missing an appointment because he was collecting his ill daughter from school. The jobcentre falsely accused him of having a fictional child. The sanction was overturned on appeal, but in the meantime he was sanctioned for 13 weeks. In another case, Ms D was sanctioned because she refused to do a job at the weekend, when there was no child care.

There is a pattern to the sanctions cases that we are receiving, taking up and seeing overturned. I had a look at the Department’s guidelines on what constitutes a good reason for someone not being sanctioned if they miss an appointment. Good reasons include: domestic violence; health conditions; harassment or bullying at work; homelessness; travel time; domestic situations, such as bereavement or child care issues; learning difficulties; and legal constraints. We have heard examples of cases involving almost all of those reasons today.

Will the Minister deny this afternoon that there are any targets for jobcentres on sanctions? Will she tell us how many sanctions have been overturned on appeal? Will she also tell us how many of those overturned fall into those categories—how many people have been wrongly sanctioned because a bereavement, a child care problem or ill health have not been properly taken into account?

From what we are hearing it is clear that decision makers and people working in jobcentres are not clear about what is in the guidelines. When the Minister gets back to her office in half an hour’s time, will she write a letter to all the jobcentres across the land to tell them that those categories are there for good reasons and that she expects decision makers and people who work in jobcentres to take proper account of the guidelines that her Department has promulgated? We cannot have a set of guidelines in the left hand and a piece of behaviour in the right hand, and no connection made between the two.

As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, however, it should not be necessary for us to come to the Minister to tell her about these problems. She should know what they are. She should have tackled them and done something about this situation. I want to know why she has not. Why has she not sorted out the sanctioning problem? I very much hope that she will be able to tell us, in detail, what she is doing about it. She must understand that she is responsible for the misery caused to thousands of people up and down this country. Of course, it is possible that Ministers in her Department do not care about the misery they are creating, in which case, as no good reasons for what is going on have been given to us, one might say that they are the ones who should be sanctioned.

The upshot of the situation is that we have seen appalling maladministration and cases of people living in a half light that make the Kafkaesque seem totally straightforward. As my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West said, the number of people in the north-east accessing food banks has gone up, and in the six months between April and September last year it reached 40,000.

The whole situation is the result of Tory welfare waste. It is a waste of public money, a waste of official time—things get done and then redone, and redone again—a waste of the efforts of people in the voluntary sector, who would much prefer to be doing creative projects, and it is certainly a waste of the lives of the people who are on the receiving end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah]

rose—

[Mrs Hodgson]

rose—

[Esther McVey]

I will give way first to the hon. Lady who secured the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

As I said, I take full responsibility, because I would not accept anyone speaking to anyone else, irrespective of who they are, in a discourteous way. Obviously, hon. Members would like to know that, actually, claimant satisfaction has increased under this Government. It has increased in the north-east, and at the moment it stands at 81%. That is only right. We constantly monitor how people are treated and what happens.

I meet with staff, claimants and businesses daily to ensure that we are doing the best for all of them. When we talk about different people—where they have come from, their backgrounds and the various paths that they have trodden—I have always said, “There but for the grace of God go I.” That is something that I would totally live by, and which I think is only right. Anyone may be only one pay packet away from being unemployed, whether owing to redundancy, to falling on hard times or to a family matter. I live by that completely, because all of us here may know family members or members of other people’s families who have fallen on tough times and come to the state for support. It is only right that we support those people as best we can.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. She said that she will not stand by anyone in the work force if such cases are proven. Therefore, if any Member can bring evidence to her, will she commit today to looking into those cases? There are probably just a few bad apples among the work force, with the rest of them doing a sterling job.

[Esther McVey]

Absolutely. If anyone comes forward to point out what has happened, the people involved should be brought to task. I would like to think that these are instances of bad apples, because I do not believe that that reflects the 34,000 people who are doing a sterling job, and who have helped so many people into employment—that is their job. They come into the profession because they want to help other people, and it is only right that they do that. As for feeding stories to the media—words such as “workshy” and “scroungers” were used today—I can honestly say that I have never put forward a story like that, and I never will. That serves nobody’s purpose.

We have talked a lot about sanctions. Sanctions have existed since benefits were created. The Oakley review described them as

“a key element of the mutual obligation that underpins both the effectiveness and fairness of the social security system.”

Benefit sanctions provide a vital backdrop in the social security system for jobseekers. That is correct, and I think I heard Members from both sides of the House agree with that. [Interruption.]