Advisers to Iain Duncan Smith say there is no hard evidence that stopping payments to claimants is helping people get jobs

Official advisers to Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, have called for an urgent and robust review of the government’s controversial benefit sanctions regime amid concerns that it is failing to help jobless claimants.

The independent social security advisory committee says the policy of stopping claimants’ dole payments for alleged breaches of benefit rules should be put on hold until “a firm evidence base” has been established.

Sanctions, under which claimants lose benefit payments for between four weeks and three years, have come under fire for being unfair, punitive, failing to increase job prospects, and causing hunger, debt and ill-health among jobseekers.

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Although ministers say monetary penalties are effective in helping people into jobs by changing their attitudes to work, the committee says there is no hard evidence for this and urges ministers to consider trialling non-financial sanctions.

It states in its report to ministers: “[The committee], among others, has raised concerns about the increased use of sanctions, not because we believe that they are necessarily ineffective, but because we do not know for certain that they are effective, at least in terms of getting people into good quality jobs.

“We believe that the sanctions regime needs to be tested.”

The 13-strong committee, chaired by former Department for work and pensions (DWP) permanent secretary Paul Gray, is appointed by the work and pensions secretary to provide independent scrutiny of welfare policy decisions. Its members include economist Matthew Oakley, who authored a DWP-commissioned evaluation of sanctions published last year, as well as academics and business professionals.

The committee’s report also flags up concerns to ministers over “highly sensitive” plans to impose conditions on recipients of universal credit who are in work. They face the possibility of financial sanctions if they fail to respond positively to job centre encouragement to increase their hours or move to a higher paying job.

It says guidance must be issued urgently to DWP staff on how to deal sensitively with working claimants and their employers. “An over-zealous drive to get claimants into full-time or better sustainable work without regard for, or full recognition of, the demands of their everyday life would not only jeopardise the relationship but damage the potential for giving people the support they need.”

In a statement, a DWP spokesman said: “Benefit sanctions are a longstanding part of the benefit system and encourage people to engage with the support on offer.

“We’re working closely with social security advisory committee and other groups as we head into the next phase of delivery, to ensure that claimants continue to benefit from the better work incentives and simplicity of universal credit.”

The committee also warns the DWP against an over-strict approach to the issuing of sanctions. It says frontline officials should be allowed to exercise discretion over whether to impose a penalties, especially where very vulnerable claimants are involved, such as those with mental health problems or a learning disability.

The report says: “There are suggestions that the department’s default position may have been to apply a sanction sooner rather than later whenever a failure in compliance has been identified… But there have been many voices raised to say that this is inappropriate and that sanctions ought to be a last resort.”

Initial findings from a major five-year academic research study led by the University of York into the effectiveness of sanctions presented to MPs earlier this month [14 July] reported that despite widespread political support for increased welfare conditionality “the key issue of its effectiveness in changing and sustaining behaviour remains largely unanswered”.

The social security advisory committee’s advice echoes the conclusions of a cross-party MPs report in March, which called for a review of the sanctions regime after concluding it was unfair, punitive and ineffective at helping people into work.

MPs heard evidence from the PCS union that job centre staff were threatened with performance reviews if they did not instigate sufficient sanctions on claimants, and that managers drew up sanctions targets for staff, a claim the DWP denied.



Separate evidence from former job centre employees claimed staff were encourged to “agitate and inconvenience” claimants so they fell foul of the rules, enabling their benefits to be stopped. One ex-official said unscrupulous staff would target vulnerable claimants, such as those with a learning disability, for sanctions.

Although successive governments have tightened benefit conditionality over the past 10 years, ministers dramatically escalated the use of sanctions under new rules introduced in 2012. Annual sanctions numbers, which were about 500,000 in 2010, soared to over 1m within 12 months of the new rules coming on stream.

Latest figures for December 2014 show job seeker allowance sanctions numbers fell to 700,000, as job market conditions improved, though rates, expressed as a percentage of claimants, fell only marginally.



