A wide-ranging independent review of the government’s controversial benefit sanctions regime is urgently needed to address widespread concerns that it is unfair, excessively punitive, and does little to help people get into work, according to a cross-party committee of MPs.

The MPs’ report follows a short inquiry undertaken amid public concern that sanctions were being imposed inappropriately, causing hardship, destitution and ill-health, and routinely forcing jobseekers to rely on food banks to survive.

Sanctions are financial penalties, stopping claimants’ benefit payments for at least four weeks for apparent breaches of jobcentre rules, such as missing appointments or failing to carry out enough job searches.

But the inquiry heard evidence that sanctions were often imposed for trivial infringements. Claimants often did not understand why they had been given sanctions, and often struggled to cope without income.



Fresh legal safeguards are needed to ensure that vulnerable claimants who are most at risk of sanctions are properly protected, especially those with mental illness or a learning disability, the work and pensions select committee says.

The committee chair, Dame Anne Begg, said: “No claimant should have their benefit payment reduced to zero where they are at risk of severe financial hardship to the extent of not being able to feed themselves or their families, or pay their rent.”

The committee also recommends the creation of a body similar to the Independent Police Complaints Commission which would investigate all cases where an individual dies or kills themselves while in receipt of working-age benefit. The inquiry was set up partly in response to a petition signed by over 200,000 people shocked by the death of diabetic former soldier David Clapson, who died penniless in July 2014, 18 days after sanctions were imposed on him.

The committee calls on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to make emergency hardship payments immediately available to claimants with sanctions who need them, instead of forcing them to wait 15 days.

Although the report backs the principle of sanctions, it criticises the government for being unable to demonstrate that a harsher benefit regime introduced by the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith two years ago has encouraged claimants back to work.

Begg said that despite mounting evidence that sanctions cause hardship for people on low incomes, “there is currently no evidence on whether the application, or deterrent threat, of a four-week sanction makes it more or less likely that a claimant will engage with employment support or gain work.”

The committee calls for a “yellow card” approach whereby claimants who breach rules for trivial or unintended infringements receive “pre-sanction written warnings” rather than having payments stopped.

It recommends ministers should not proceed with plans to introduce sanctions for some low-paid workers in receipt of universal credit until they can demonstrate that those sanctions will be effective in encouraging claimants to obtain more hours or better-paid work.

Although the committee heard detailed evidence from witnesses who claimed jobcentres operate informal “targets” for issuing sanctions on jobseekers, the report makes no specific recommendations on the issue.

Official figures show sanction rates have increased rapidly since the coalition introduced tighter benefit conditions in October 2012, and over 1m sanctions were issued last year. In some areas up to one in 10 of all jobseekers were given sanctions in 2013-14.

A DWP spokesperson said: “As the report recognises, sanctions are a vital backstop in the welfare system and are only used in a small minority of cases where claimants don’t do all they can to look for work.

“Every day Jobcentre Plus advisers work hard to help people into jobs, and we continue to spend around £94bn a year on working-age benefits to provide a safety net that supports millions of people.”

Debbie Abrahams, Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, who instigated the DWP select committee’s inquiry, said: “The mountain of evidence that was put before the select committee by religious organisations, academics and charities, not to mention those actually affected by inappropriate sanctions themselves, pointed overwhelmingly to a system that is inhumane and deliberately created to skew unemployment figures.”

Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: “The committee’s recommendation for a full and independent review, which looks at the legislative framework of sanctions, gets to the heart of the problem. The law and rules on sanctions are a complicated and confusing mess which need urgent, comprehensive reform.”

Rachael Orr, head of Oxfam’s UK poverty programme, said: “MPs are right: it is time for the government to pause and think again on benefit sanctions.

“Sanctions have helped fuel the steep rise in food bank use which is nothing short of a national scandal, yet there is scant evidence that this tough approach is effective in getting people back to work.”