The Government has doubled down on plans to toughen up the benefit sanctions regime despite internal research concluding they have limited effect in getting people into work.
Ministers are ramping up the application of sanctions on people out of work, meaning more people will face having their benefits cut if they do not meet requirements for finding a job.
The measures are designed to strengthen the application of current sanctions as well as applying them to new cohorts of people, including single parents and lead carers.
But a research document published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) last week said evidence shows sanctions do not actually help people into better jobs or more hours, leading to calls to reconsider the sanctions crackdown.
It also specified that people with children are more negatively impacted by sanctions than others, finding work at a slower rate.
Treasury and DWP sources have insisted, however, that the Government has no intention of changing the measures.
Under the current plans, the application of universal credit sanctions will be ramped up through automating parts of it and increasing training for Jobcentre Work Coaches – who are responsible for applying them.
Plans to apply conditionality rules for claimants with children – which would see them face sanctions for the first time – are due to be implemented this year.
Doubling down on the plans, a Government source argued the internal report “doesn’t consider the deterrent effect of sanctions in the first place – which is a huge part of the reason they exist”.
Labour has argued that the current approach to getting into work “has been a failure” with sources saying “bigger reform is needed” – but the party has not called for sanctions to be softened.
Morgan Wild, head of policy at Citizens Advice, warned the Government research shows “sanctions are causing hardship” among benefit claimants.
He told i: “People who have been sanctioned can end up earning less, being pushed off benefits or away from support altogether – and they’re increasingly coming to us for help.
“Sanctions are failing to deliver the government’s intended goals of improving work outcomes for those on universal credit.”
The internal research into sanctions was commissioned in response to a committee of MPs warning in 2018 that they had a questionable impact on improving work outcome and negatively impacted claimants’ health and wellbeing.
Ministers had initially refused to share the research but were ordered to do so by the Information Commissioner.
The report concluded sanctions decrease the rate at which people leave universal credit into higher paid work and those with children find work at an even slower rate.
Sanctioned claimants earn on average £34 per month less than non-sanctioned claimants over a six-month period due to moving into lower-paid work, the report said.
“In summary, a sanction leads the average claimant to exit less quickly into PAYE earnings and to earn less upon exiting,” the report said. “In a narrow sense, this constitutes a negative impact of a sanction on claimant finances.
“However, this excludes the wider role of a sanction, which acts to incentivise compliance with a conditionality regime that encourages work search and earnings increases.”
You know what would work….radical thought but…….imagine if……the job center actually got you a job.
Instead of just providing some random unskilled workers to tick some boxes.
But nah let’s just sanction more poor people during a cost of living crisis off the back of a global pandemic.
“Don’t work”? Picking on people who can’t defend themselves works in and of itself thank you very much!
Really though, these policies are enormously popular with the British electorate, that’s why they work.
So they’re openly introducing policy changes that they know cost more money and don’t help people find work just for the sake of cruelty.
As someone on UC with mental health issues, it’s incredibly hard to feel positive about my future. Feels like I cannot talk to them about my issues out of fear of being sanctioned. I’m even paranoid about going into more details because they could look into my Reddit comment and track me down.
I thought I was going to pass out at my appointment today.
I am more likely to get sanctioned than find a job with UC.
HARSHER PENALTIES ON THE POOREST PEOPLE – THE TORY WAY
It doesn’t matter if it works or not. As long as it appeals to the voters who have been convinced any benefit claimant is a scrounger taking money from their pocket. Same as the assylum seeker policy.
Big kudos to whoever at DWP successfully got the report showing sanctions don’t work published. That must have been a battle.
Its been 7 years since I last was on the system beyond a winter and I still fear the brown envolopes through the mail and worrying if the system had decided to randomly punish me like it did others, the fact they are automating it even more with even harder sanctions when people literally kill themselves is mind boggling.
The tory way I guess, give no kindness to the poor, make them suffer and offer no real, actual help out of poverty or unemployment.
The goal of these policies is to create maximum insecurity for the unemployed. Make them desperate for a job. Any job. It’s wonderful from the point of view of corporate employers.
An employee that can quit anytime and still afford food, water, electricity, a phonebill, etc.. is a terrible situation from any CEO perspective. Employees that know they have no alternative have significantly less bargaining power.
They will accept terrible working conditions or low wages, they will fear speaking up for their rights or unionizing. Reducing the bargaining power of labor is the goal.
In Germany, they had the Hartz reforms to significantly reduce unemployment benefits.
To quote German Minister Peter Hartz, who created the Hartz reforms:
**”Those who refuse to work for a corporation should not be able to eat”**
While this won’t impact on huge numbers it will impact on certain social groups that enjoy good support from the general public. Just one aspect of the inability of the Conservatives to connect with the working public these days.
The Conservative Party is really going to struggle to get back into government in the future. So many bad memories of what a Conservative government is like for so many people, far more than has ever been the case previously. It’s only the over-70s who are still quite keen and I really doubt many will be turning out to support the Tories in ten years.
The point of benefit sanctions has always been to increase misery. They work as intended.
>Universal credit benefit sanctions to be made tougher despite Government’s own report finding they don’t work
Goes to prove that sanctions are not about getting people back to work, but all about Tories giving meaning to their miserable existence by kicking those beneath them just so they can feel good and empower themselves.
remember. unemployment is something neo-libs engineer into the economy as part of their religion.
As always: The cruelty is the point.
Conservatives believe that being poor is a moral failing and therefore must be punished. They don’t care what the evidence says will improve peoples lives, because they *don’t want* to improve peoples lives. To them, immiserating the poor is a moral good. It enshrines their hierarchical belief through punishing the wicked (poor people).
Once more for the people in the back: the cruelty is the point.
We really need to replace the unemployment parts of universal credit with a basic income.
No making people attend a job centre, no sanctions. Just give them the £75 a week.
It’s frankly ridiculous that we spend billions every year on paying for staff and buildings across the entire country to administer unemployment benefits when it would be cheaper to have them register over the phone and just pay them the money.
And we know it would work, because that’s exactly how it worked during lock down.
But but guys like the free market and Brexit will sort everything out right?
The Johnson-Truss-Sunak Gov’t has shown a strong commitment to policies that don’t work for the majority of the country.
honestly, my experience with dwp has been one filled with ignorant under qualified employees making life changing decisions for me. they hate the disabled and actively discriminate against them by rejecting applications from vulnerable people because they know they may not have the support or ability to appeal or understand this rancid process. i don’t know how anyone can be involved with this organisation, let alone pass such disgusting, callous changes to the system, and still sleep at night.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
General Melchett
How much tougher can you get than forcing someone to live on fresh air for 3 months?
I know there’s 6 months (182 days), but from what I hear that one’s rare.
If you decide to refuse a job offer for a reason the government disagrees with, that’s what they will do. Also if you get sacked, they do that.
EDIT:
Just for perspective, here.
Wages are shit because people will take the jobs no matter how shit the pay is.
On the other side of the coin, the government forces potential workers into hardship if they don’t accept shit wages and take those jobs.
Elsewhere, people complain that wages don’t go up. Gee, I wonder why that is. Perhaps it’s because freedom of choice is denied to our poorest, which leads to heavily tilted job markets, which in turn depresses wages.
If I were in government (and I wouldn’t be, don’t worry), I would set up a union of job seekers (and tbh, probably sundry other types of benefit claimants). I would bring the power of collective bargaining to the realm of those less fortunate. These people need the option to be able to actually fight back and secure decent jobseeking conditions. They need to be granted the ability to find work that works for them, rather than being shoved into work for work’s sake.
What an absolute joke. The sooner we get these clowns out of government the better.
What a joke, after that long suppressed damning report the government did outlining how sanctions have the opposite effect on helping people work and increases suicide….fml they are repellent
Another example of the vile ideology of Conservatives, they’re only doing it to save money and they’re doing it to people who can’t fight back, despite knowing these are some of the people in greatest need of support.
They see being poor as a character failing, not a failure of society to help people. The Tories would never admit that unemployment is in part caused by education inequality, lack of investment is many regions, or simple bad luck. In their mind, being poor is a personal choice that people make and should be punished for.
Nothing the tories like more than beating on the poor.
I hope the poor votes them out.
Horrible bastards. They f***ed the country with their braindead economic schemes and now they want the most destitute in society to pay for their mistakes
Yet another pure ideology moment from a party that claims not have an ideology
THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES
^literally
No Government ever lets facts get in the way of their ideologies.
Imagine if society was set up to help people instead of alienate.
Because they don’t care about the evidence around their policies. The cruelty is the point.
It’s obvious why; the rich want the poor dead, the state doesn’t want to pay for people, and the voters love to see people who aren’t them suffer (Goes hand-in-hand with the fact that if you asked someone if prison sentences and punishments should get harsher, almost everyone would immediately say yes, regardless of how tough they already are).
We are the worst species on the planet! Not only do we attack our own weak and vulnerable but we also take away the more peaceful methods of leaving this shit stain we call earth, just to force us to stay and suffer as much as possible.
This government is entirely driven by ideology, not sense
So when claimants are left destitute for six weeks so will their children … for no other reason than to punish the poor. Guessing the government needs to create the prison classes for the next few decades or what’s the point of paying for all those prisons?
Universal Credit isn’t there to provide the unemployed with support and benefits, it’s a money saving scheme. It’s there to look for any excuse to deny said benefits. It’s there to strongarm people into work that’s entirely inappropriate for their current situation. And, lately, it seems to have become a recruiting ground for the floundering public sector, which is truly despicable. Pay public sector employees properly? Treat them like actual human beings? Nah, it’s fine, we’ll just bully UC claimants into the vacancies!
I nearly got sanctioned for taking my 1 year old son to the job center with me to sign on. The bloke said if I was looking after my son then I wasn’t looking for work.
Luckily the manager of the job center walked past and heard me arguing with him.
She asked me to come to her office and explain what the problem was.
Once I told her, she was livid, said she’d had problems this staff member before and not to worry, I wouldn’t be getting sanctioned.
We have proved our bullshit doesn’t work. So we have decided to double down and see if that works…..
As being self employed and on universal credit I think these conditions should get a mention, the minimum income floor was raised from 1200pcm to 1300pcm with required hours of 36hrspw and in a start up period of 12 months I was afforded with expenses being deducted from my monthly income and had £300.00 in UC payments.
After the start up period ending my payments were based on assumed earnings of £1300pcm which results in a nil award, if I earn over 1300pcm it results in a nil award.
My expenses/mileage allowance are no longer taken into account from my take home pay (I am still obligated to declare them or I will be sanctioned).
If I earn less than 1300pcm I will not be considered gainfully self employed and have my nil award benefits stopped.
To gain any cost of living/low income support I would have to give up my business and reapply for being looking for work up to 36hrs per week and before I would be eligible for a payment I would have to liquidate my business assets.
It’s not just those out of work that they are screwing over,in work poverty and the minimum income floor have put millions of self employed people right in the shit.
As if only receiving £250 a month wasn’t hard enough.
So, recently, I’ve been sanctioned. We receive universal credit (child tax credits) I never had to attend meetings etc. Then all of a sudden I was asked to attend weekly appointments. OK, fair enough, but the times they gave were impossible to attend as they were always between 2.50pm-3.40pm…the time I pick my children up from school. I told them this but kept being given the same time and they sanctioned me for missing the appointments. I received a message from them stating that the sanction would end once I make and attend an appointment. I went down to the local centre and was told because of the amount of hours my wife works I’m not actually supposed to attend any meetings and the member of staff sent me on my way.
I have appealed the sanction and it’s at the decision maker…so fucking frustrating!
Our cost of living energy payment was also sanctioned (unless last month was the final payment)
So we were punished for no reason whatsoever. It’s such a cruel system. And the government, those that make the decisions and those other sadistic scumbags that make life difficult for people that have it hard enough can quite frankly fuck off and get some work experience in defenestration.
42 comments
The Government has doubled down on plans to toughen up the benefit sanctions regime despite internal research concluding they have limited effect in getting people into work.
Ministers are ramping up the application of sanctions on people out of work, meaning more people will face having their benefits cut if they do not meet requirements for finding a job.
The measures are designed to strengthen the application of current sanctions as well as applying them to new cohorts of people, including single parents and lead carers.
But a research document published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) last week said evidence shows sanctions do not actually help people into better jobs or more hours, leading to calls to reconsider the sanctions crackdown.
It also specified that people with children are more negatively impacted by sanctions than others, finding work at a slower rate.
Treasury and DWP sources have insisted, however, that the Government has no intention of changing the measures.
Under the current plans, the application of universal credit sanctions will be ramped up through automating parts of it and increasing training for Jobcentre Work Coaches – who are responsible for applying them.
Plans to apply conditionality rules for claimants with children – which would see them face sanctions for the first time – are due to be implemented this year.
Doubling down on the plans, a Government source argued the internal report “doesn’t consider the deterrent effect of sanctions in the first place – which is a huge part of the reason they exist”.
Labour has argued that the current approach to getting into work “has been a failure” with sources saying “bigger reform is needed” – but the party has not called for sanctions to be softened.
Morgan Wild, head of policy at Citizens Advice, warned the Government research shows “sanctions are causing hardship” among benefit claimants.
He told i: “People who have been sanctioned can end up earning less, being pushed off benefits or away from support altogether – and they’re increasingly coming to us for help.
“Sanctions are failing to deliver the government’s intended goals of improving work outcomes for those on universal credit.”
The internal research into sanctions was commissioned in response to a committee of MPs warning in 2018 that they had a questionable impact on improving work outcome and negatively impacted claimants’ health and wellbeing.
Ministers had initially refused to share the research but were ordered to do so by the Information Commissioner.
The report concluded sanctions decrease the rate at which people leave universal credit into higher paid work and those with children find work at an even slower rate.
Sanctioned claimants earn on average £34 per month less than non-sanctioned claimants over a six-month period due to moving into lower-paid work, the report said.
“In summary, a sanction leads the average claimant to exit less quickly into PAYE earnings and to earn less upon exiting,” the report said. “In a narrow sense, this constitutes a negative impact of a sanction on claimant finances.
“However, this excludes the wider role of a sanction, which acts to incentivise compliance with a conditionality regime that encourages work search and earnings increases.”
You know what would work….radical thought but…….imagine if……the job center actually got you a job.
Instead of just providing some random unskilled workers to tick some boxes.
But nah let’s just sanction more poor people during a cost of living crisis off the back of a global pandemic.
“Don’t work”? Picking on people who can’t defend themselves works in and of itself thank you very much!
Really though, these policies are enormously popular with the British electorate, that’s why they work.
So they’re openly introducing policy changes that they know cost more money and don’t help people find work just for the sake of cruelty.
As someone on UC with mental health issues, it’s incredibly hard to feel positive about my future. Feels like I cannot talk to them about my issues out of fear of being sanctioned. I’m even paranoid about going into more details because they could look into my Reddit comment and track me down.
I thought I was going to pass out at my appointment today.
I am more likely to get sanctioned than find a job with UC.
HARSHER PENALTIES ON THE POOREST PEOPLE – THE TORY WAY
It doesn’t matter if it works or not. As long as it appeals to the voters who have been convinced any benefit claimant is a scrounger taking money from their pocket. Same as the assylum seeker policy.
Big kudos to whoever at DWP successfully got the report showing sanctions don’t work published. That must have been a battle.
Its been 7 years since I last was on the system beyond a winter and I still fear the brown envolopes through the mail and worrying if the system had decided to randomly punish me like it did others, the fact they are automating it even more with even harder sanctions when people literally kill themselves is mind boggling.
The tory way I guess, give no kindness to the poor, make them suffer and offer no real, actual help out of poverty or unemployment.
The goal of these policies is to create maximum insecurity for the unemployed. Make them desperate for a job. Any job. It’s wonderful from the point of view of corporate employers.
An employee that can quit anytime and still afford food, water, electricity, a phonebill, etc.. is a terrible situation from any CEO perspective. Employees that know they have no alternative have significantly less bargaining power.
They will accept terrible working conditions or low wages, they will fear speaking up for their rights or unionizing. Reducing the bargaining power of labor is the goal.
In Germany, they had the Hartz reforms to significantly reduce unemployment benefits.
To quote German Minister Peter Hartz, who created the Hartz reforms:
**”Those who refuse to work for a corporation should not be able to eat”**
While this won’t impact on huge numbers it will impact on certain social groups that enjoy good support from the general public. Just one aspect of the inability of the Conservatives to connect with the working public these days.
The Conservative Party is really going to struggle to get back into government in the future. So many bad memories of what a Conservative government is like for so many people, far more than has ever been the case previously. It’s only the over-70s who are still quite keen and I really doubt many will be turning out to support the Tories in ten years.
The point of benefit sanctions has always been to increase misery. They work as intended.
>Universal credit benefit sanctions to be made tougher despite Government’s own report finding they don’t work
Goes to prove that sanctions are not about getting people back to work, but all about Tories giving meaning to their miserable existence by kicking those beneath them just so they can feel good and empower themselves.
remember. unemployment is something neo-libs engineer into the economy as part of their religion.
As always: The cruelty is the point.
Conservatives believe that being poor is a moral failing and therefore must be punished. They don’t care what the evidence says will improve peoples lives, because they *don’t want* to improve peoples lives. To them, immiserating the poor is a moral good. It enshrines their hierarchical belief through punishing the wicked (poor people).
Once more for the people in the back: the cruelty is the point.
We really need to replace the unemployment parts of universal credit with a basic income.
No making people attend a job centre, no sanctions. Just give them the £75 a week.
It’s frankly ridiculous that we spend billions every year on paying for staff and buildings across the entire country to administer unemployment benefits when it would be cheaper to have them register over the phone and just pay them the money.
And we know it would work, because that’s exactly how it worked during lock down.
But but guys like the free market and Brexit will sort everything out right?
The Johnson-Truss-Sunak Gov’t has shown a strong commitment to policies that don’t work for the majority of the country.
honestly, my experience with dwp has been one filled with ignorant under qualified employees making life changing decisions for me. they hate the disabled and actively discriminate against them by rejecting applications from vulnerable people because they know they may not have the support or ability to appeal or understand this rancid process. i don’t know how anyone can be involved with this organisation, let alone pass such disgusting, callous changes to the system, and still sleep at night.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
General Melchett
How much tougher can you get than forcing someone to live on fresh air for 3 months?
I know there’s 6 months (182 days), but from what I hear that one’s rare.
If you decide to refuse a job offer for a reason the government disagrees with, that’s what they will do. Also if you get sacked, they do that.
EDIT:
Just for perspective, here.
Wages are shit because people will take the jobs no matter how shit the pay is.
On the other side of the coin, the government forces potential workers into hardship if they don’t accept shit wages and take those jobs.
Elsewhere, people complain that wages don’t go up. Gee, I wonder why that is. Perhaps it’s because freedom of choice is denied to our poorest, which leads to heavily tilted job markets, which in turn depresses wages.
If I were in government (and I wouldn’t be, don’t worry), I would set up a union of job seekers (and tbh, probably sundry other types of benefit claimants). I would bring the power of collective bargaining to the realm of those less fortunate. These people need the option to be able to actually fight back and secure decent jobseeking conditions. They need to be granted the ability to find work that works for them, rather than being shoved into work for work’s sake.
What an absolute joke. The sooner we get these clowns out of government the better.
What a joke, after that long suppressed damning report the government did outlining how sanctions have the opposite effect on helping people work and increases suicide….fml they are repellent
Another example of the vile ideology of Conservatives, they’re only doing it to save money and they’re doing it to people who can’t fight back, despite knowing these are some of the people in greatest need of support.
They see being poor as a character failing, not a failure of society to help people. The Tories would never admit that unemployment is in part caused by education inequality, lack of investment is many regions, or simple bad luck. In their mind, being poor is a personal choice that people make and should be punished for.
Nothing the tories like more than beating on the poor.
I hope the poor votes them out.
Horrible bastards. They f***ed the country with their braindead economic schemes and now they want the most destitute in society to pay for their mistakes
Yet another pure ideology moment from a party that claims not have an ideology
THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES
^literally
No Government ever lets facts get in the way of their ideologies.
Imagine if society was set up to help people instead of alienate.
Because they don’t care about the evidence around their policies. The cruelty is the point.
It’s obvious why; the rich want the poor dead, the state doesn’t want to pay for people, and the voters love to see people who aren’t them suffer (Goes hand-in-hand with the fact that if you asked someone if prison sentences and punishments should get harsher, almost everyone would immediately say yes, regardless of how tough they already are).
We are the worst species on the planet! Not only do we attack our own weak and vulnerable but we also take away the more peaceful methods of leaving this shit stain we call earth, just to force us to stay and suffer as much as possible.
This government is entirely driven by ideology, not sense
So when claimants are left destitute for six weeks so will their children … for no other reason than to punish the poor. Guessing the government needs to create the prison classes for the next few decades or what’s the point of paying for all those prisons?
Universal Credit isn’t there to provide the unemployed with support and benefits, it’s a money saving scheme. It’s there to look for any excuse to deny said benefits. It’s there to strongarm people into work that’s entirely inappropriate for their current situation. And, lately, it seems to have become a recruiting ground for the floundering public sector, which is truly despicable. Pay public sector employees properly? Treat them like actual human beings? Nah, it’s fine, we’ll just bully UC claimants into the vacancies!
I nearly got sanctioned for taking my 1 year old son to the job center with me to sign on. The bloke said if I was looking after my son then I wasn’t looking for work.
Luckily the manager of the job center walked past and heard me arguing with him.
She asked me to come to her office and explain what the problem was.
Once I told her, she was livid, said she’d had problems this staff member before and not to worry, I wouldn’t be getting sanctioned.
We have proved our bullshit doesn’t work. So we have decided to double down and see if that works…..
As being self employed and on universal credit I think these conditions should get a mention, the minimum income floor was raised from 1200pcm to 1300pcm with required hours of 36hrspw and in a start up period of 12 months I was afforded with expenses being deducted from my monthly income and had £300.00 in UC payments.
After the start up period ending my payments were based on assumed earnings of £1300pcm which results in a nil award, if I earn over 1300pcm it results in a nil award.
My expenses/mileage allowance are no longer taken into account from my take home pay (I am still obligated to declare them or I will be sanctioned).
If I earn less than 1300pcm I will not be considered gainfully self employed and have my nil award benefits stopped.
To gain any cost of living/low income support I would have to give up my business and reapply for being looking for work up to 36hrs per week and before I would be eligible for a payment I would have to liquidate my business assets.
It’s not just those out of work that they are screwing over,in work poverty and the minimum income floor have put millions of self employed people right in the shit.
As if only receiving £250 a month wasn’t hard enough.
So, recently, I’ve been sanctioned. We receive universal credit (child tax credits) I never had to attend meetings etc. Then all of a sudden I was asked to attend weekly appointments. OK, fair enough, but the times they gave were impossible to attend as they were always between 2.50pm-3.40pm…the time I pick my children up from school. I told them this but kept being given the same time and they sanctioned me for missing the appointments. I received a message from them stating that the sanction would end once I make and attend an appointment. I went down to the local centre and was told because of the amount of hours my wife works I’m not actually supposed to attend any meetings and the member of staff sent me on my way.
I have appealed the sanction and it’s at the decision maker…so fucking frustrating!
Our cost of living energy payment was also sanctioned (unless last month was the final payment)
So we were punished for no reason whatsoever. It’s such a cruel system. And the government, those that make the decisions and those other sadistic scumbags that make life difficult for people that have it hard enough can quite frankly fuck off and get some work experience in defenestration.