This evidence on benefit sanctions is vital – and shocking – information

Last Updated: February 21, 2017By

The number of financial penalties (‘sanctions’) imposed on benefit claimants by the Department of Work and Pensions now exceeds the number of fines imposed by the courts.

In Great Britain in 2013, there were 1,046,398 sanctions on Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants, 32,128 on Employment and Support Allowance claimants, and approximately 44,000 on lone parent recipients of Income Support. By contrast, Magistrates’ and Sheriff courts imposed a total of only 849,000 fines.

Sanctioned benefit claimants are treated much worse than those fined in the courts. The scale of penalties is more severe (£286.80 – £11,185.20 compared to £200 – £10,000).

Most sanctions are applied to poor people and involve total loss of benefit income.

Although there is a system of discretionary ‘hardship payments’, claimants are often reduced to hunger and destitution by the ban on application for the first two weeks and by lack of information about the payments and the complexity of the application process.

The hardship payment system itself is designed to clean people out of resources; all savings or other sources of assistance must be used up before help is given.

Decisions on guilt are made in secret by officials who have no independent responsibility to act lawfully; since the Social Security Act 1998 they have been mere agents of the Secretary of State. These officials are currently subject to constant management pressure to maximise penalties, and as in any secret system there is a lot of error, misconduct, dishonesty and abuse.

The claimant is not present when the decision on guilt is made and is not legally represented. While offenders processed in the court system cannot be punished before a hearing, and if fined are given time to pay, the claimant’s punishment is applied immediately.

If the claimant gets a hearing (and even before the new system of ‘Mandatory Reconsideration’ only 3 per cent of sanctioned claimants were doing so), then it is months later, when the damage has been done.

‘Mandatory reconsideration’, introduced in October 2013, denies access to an independent Tribunal until the claimant has been rung up at home twice and forced to discuss their case with a DWP official in the absence of any adviser – a system which is open to abuse and has caused a collapse in cases going to Tribunal.

Yet the ‘transgressions’ (DWP’s own word) which are punished by this system are almost exclusively very minor matters, such as missing a single interview with a Jobcentre or Work Programme contractor, or not making quite as many token job applications as the Jobcentre adviser demands.

Benefit sanctions are an amateurish, secret penal system which is more severe than the mainstream judicial system, but lacks its safeguards. It is time for everyone concerned for the rights of the citizen to demand their abolition.

Source: Benefit sanctions: Britain’s secret penal system | Centre for Crime and Justice Studies

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7 Comments

  1. NMac February 21, 2017 at 11:31 am - Reply

    Truly shocking, but not surprising.

  2. Barry Davies February 21, 2017 at 3:07 pm - Reply

    There is also the bonus for every sanction imposed that the dwp staff receive. they have personal gain as the main reason to impose them.

  3. mrmarcpc February 21, 2017 at 4:58 pm - Reply

    It is so distasteful with what the nazi party are getting away with and the public’s indifference, it makes me ashamed to be British!

  4. j green February 22, 2017 at 2:18 pm - Reply

    Jobcentre staff get paid a bonus of £10 per person they sanction

    • Mike Sivier February 23, 2017 at 4:09 pm - Reply

      Can you provide evidence of this?

      • mrmarcpc February 24, 2017 at 4:04 pm - Reply

        Knowing the tories, I wouldn’t be at all surprised that they would do this, give the staff backhanders to get people off the sick!

  5. Shane McLaughlin March 2, 2017 at 5:28 pm - Reply

    Can’t we,the people,stand up against this?it is a absolute disgrace after paying your taxes,you ask for help and get treatment worse than that of a criminal?! I f%£#@*-g hate the Government! Was it Churchill or Wilson who said they would look after from the cradle to the grave when this was first introduced? We need a new Government of people who know what’s going on!

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