The impact of benefit sanctions was back to the fore at yesterday's meeting of Holyrood's welfare reform committee.
It is hard to overestimate the impact sanctions are having on some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland, and the policy of stopping the cash of people deemed to have broken jobseekers 'contracts' was prominent at the committee which is currently considering the impact of welfare reform on women.
The Scottish Government should use new powers over welfare due under the Smith Commission's recommendations to mitigate the ill effects of sanctions, argued Mark Ballard of the charity Barnardos. Marion Davis of One Parent Families Scotland, added her concerns about the impact of sanctions on families.
That followed the publication earlier in the week of a Welfare Reform Tracking Study commissioned by the Scottish Government from Heriot Watt University which followed people on benefits to see how cuts and policy changes were affecting them. Participants reported being put under more pressure to seek work as a result of changes to benefit conditionality (the jargon term which covers sanctions). However they saw no improvement in the limited support on offer to help them find jobs. "Jobcentres were described as places of conflict rather than help," the report concluded.
Meanwhile those taking part in the Government's work programme were not convinced it was helpful. "Respondents reported feeling either written off or pushed into unsuitable jobs, while their own skills, interests and constraints were given little consideration."
It isn't just women who are affected by any of this, of course, and sanctions are pushing children into poverty whether deployed against men or women.
Around 90% of single parents are women, however and so they will be the bigger group affected by a plan to demand they look for work when their children are younger.
Scotland's resident expert on sanctions, Dr David Webster of Glasgow University, has just published his latest analysis of the current statistics. This shows that across the UK sanctions have fallen. Having peaked at 6.77% of those on Job Seeker's Allowance per month in the year to March 2014, they are now at 5.94%. This is, at 702,000 sanctions in 2014, still double the usual rate prior to the last coalition government.
Dr Webster points out that the new UK government has still to reply to a report from the Work and Pensions Committee on benefit sanctions policy. It came out on March 24th, giving ministers too little time to respond before the general election, but called for a comprehensive independent review of sanctions.
Among its particular concerns were the plans to threaten part time workers with sanctions if they do not increase their hours (it said there was no evidence this would work), the problem of people being given conflicting demands by Work Programme contractors and Job Centres then sanctioned when they fail to fulfil both, and the disappearance of a group of people from the benefit system who we know have not gone into jobs.
It called for pre-sanction written warnings and tailored support and hardship payments for those affected by sanctions, especially those with children.
Given the widespread concern from all parties, Dr Webster is surely right to insist that ministers must now respond to this report. "It is extremely critical of the sanctions regime," he points out. "It is vital that [its recommendations] should not be lost in the new Parliament."
The DWP meanwhile, says a response will be made to the report once a new committee is formed. Despite the figures quoted by Dr Webster, it continues to describe sanctions as a last resort, used only in a "tiny minority" of benefit claims.
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