We KNOW benefit sanctions are ineffective and dangerous – so why do the Tories REALLY inflict them on us?
There is nothing in the report that we did not know already. It is the government’s reaction that requires study.
The comment from the Department for Work and Pensions makes it clear that the Conservative government will continue with its regime of sanctions, that has been proven to cause serious harm to many claimants.
We must therefore conclude that the sanction system is not intended to “encourage” (ha ha) people into work.
Considering what the report says it does encourage – poverty, ill-health and crime – it is logical that we should question why any national government would want to push people into such dangerous extremes.
We won’t get straight answers from the Conservatives. We must form our conclusions from the evidence.
Benefit sanctions are ineffective at getting jobless people into work and are more likely to reduce those affected to poverty, ill-health or even survival crime, the UK’s most extensive study of welfare conditionality has found.
The five-year exercise tracking hundreds of claimants concludes that the controversial policy of docking benefits as punishment for alleged failures to comply with jobcentre rules has been little short of disastrous.
Despite claims by ministers in recent years that rigorously enforced conditionality – including mandatory 35-hour job searches – incentivised claimants to move off benefits into work, the study found the positive impact was negligible.
It calls for a review of the use of sanctions, including an immediate moratorium on benefit sanctions for disabled people who are disproportionately affected, together with an urgent “rebalancing” of the social security system to focus less on compliance and more on helping claimants into work.
In the “rare” cases where claimants did move off benefits into sustained work, researchers found that personalised job support, not sanctions, was the key factor. With few exceptions, however, jobcentres were more focused on enforcing benefit rules rather than helping people get jobs, the study found.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Our research shows that over 70% of JSA claimants say sanctions make it more likely they will comply with reasonable and agreed requirements, and it is understandable that people meet certain expectations in return for benefits.
“We tailor requirements to individual cases and sanctions are only used in a very small percentage of cases when people fail to meet their agreed requirements set out in their claimant commitment.”
Source: Benefit sanctions found to be ineffective and damaging | Society | The Guardian
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why they learned a very slick art off history done well today has many yet to feel this universal credit will deal with that yet they don’t believe the many that aktion t4 is alive today culling its stock through benefits denial rolling. along without much of a ado jeff3
A DWP spokesperson said: “Our research shows that over 70% of JSA claimants say sanctions make it more likely they will comply with reasonable and agreed requirements, and it is understandable that people meet certain expectations in return for benefits.
“We tailor requirements to individual cases and sanctions are only used in a very small percentage of cases when people fail to meet their agreed requirements set out in their claimant commitment.” liar liar liar their tongues will be on fire
as it stands the dwp system itself send people with vunerabilities into major states of despair anxiety etc without the sanctions, worsen any person’s condition under vunerable adult or any adult and safeguarding regulations and you might find that the law will be turned against you, remember some of us are strong enough to make complaints and stick with pushing them through and it is a matter of time due to the inaccuracy of the reports and the stupidity of the assessment process and some decision makers that vou are going to hand me a case on a plate when the person will reach for the law when that happens we see how much you like sanctions
Because they hate us all…
it’s very clear what the Tories are up to here:
Get people off benefits at any cost so they can say: ‘look, there has been a growth in employment so austerity works.’
In reality, people are dying and suffering worsening health physical and mental and many give up because of endless hassle from a punitive regimes.
As for employment-this needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt: most jobs are poor quality, spurious self-employment, zero-hours contracts, insecure and with stagnating wages.
The evidence that benefit sanctions are random , meaningless and damaging has been clear for some years -pure ideology based on a 19th Century belief that if you’re unemployed it’s because you not willing to accept a low enough wage.
If they say we sent you a letter ask them for proof of postage and receipt with a watermarked copy of said letter.
If they claim to have handed you a letter at a previous appointment ask for a copy of said letter plus proof of you being handed the open letter, they never put them in envelopes they only hand open letters or jobs to apply for.
If it’s not enough jobs ask for a printout of all the jobs available in the area that fit with your qualifications, plus contact details for each job they claim is available and fits your qualifications. You will have to give your qualifications, but they will say it is not up to them to do this, but I say if they have the proof they will supply it or face legal action.
I believe they just say letter or not enough jobs in their sanction referral, this is because claimants don’t put pressure on the JCP/DWP to prove what they claim.
The really sad part of the research was the attitudes of those on disability benefits, who were the only group who seem to have adopted the propaganda of ” we can’t expect anything” attitude. One wonders if that was the real attitude or just the one they (we) feel is required when in contact with any form of officialdom (including academic researchers)?
Why doesn’t Corbyn use such evidence to attack the Tories? he never seems to mention the appalling suffering that is going on caused by the DWP.
The assessments and benefit sanctions is so money is cut to disabled and dependants, that it goes to private corporations and insurance companies who set up disability denying assessments, it is to cut the welfare system, give all the money UK citizens have accumulated over 70s years to private and cut useless eaters.
a corporate stripping of our assets and welfare money taxes resources and NI while killing the crew and sinking the ship. No interest or consideration of disabled have ever been seen or intended.
The tories see people on benefits and the disabled as being of no….use…. Therefore a burden we are seen to be using….. There… Resources.. So why would the tories allow us to continue living it’s the same mentality as Hitler and the nazi, s
Because the tory mindset is stuck in the Victorian times. Only anachronisms such as Ian Duncan Schmidt, Fester McVile and Lord Fraud could come up non-sense like the 35 hour week job search or else you’re sanctioned. I’d call that the modern day equivalent of the workhouse’s oakum picking, except oakum picking actually served a useful, if soul destroying, purpose.
The whole point & purpose of the 35 hr a wk job search is to be nothing but soul destroying, not to mention wholely impractical. Eg: Many small/medium sized businesses around my way now refuse to have anything to do with the Job Centre or it’s job websites as they’re sick of opening their inboxes and finding it full of applicants for a part-time NMW job who live 30 + miles away which they have to wade through. They know full well this is just JSAers fulfilling their 35 hour job search so-called obligations, so they instantly delete them.
So much for the tories being the party for small businesses. Not only does it waste the time of many job applicants, it wastes the time of businesses too. It reminds me of that old, and very wry, Soviet joke, “We pretend to build tractors, they pretend to pay us.”