The following letter will be sent to MPs as an appeal to extend the suspension of benefit sanctions beyond 30th of June.
If you would like your name to be added as a signatory to the letter please email mail@dpac.uk.net with your name and any organisation that you represent.
We are also asking that you copy and paste the letter below and also send it to your own MPs urgently. You can find your MP at www.parliament.uk and follow the link to MPs and Lords.
The deadline for accepting signatures is midnight on Monday 29th June.
You can also see the online protests that are happening on the day of action on 1st July here: National [online] day of action against sanctions – 1st July
Urgent Appeal to Extend the Suspension of Sanctions beyond 30th June 2020
In this time of national emergency we are appealing to you to ask the Government to extend the suspension of benefit sanctions beyond 30th June. Removing people’s benefits during the pandemic will have devastating effects on families and children. With the economy in tatters and unemployment at record levels people need social support to see us through this crisis.
There is now overwhelming evidence of the serious harm the hostile environment of benefit sanctions inflict on the most disadvantaged members of society. That is why we are appealing to you to urge the Government to extend the suspension of benefit sanctions beyond 30th June.
In the recent Benefit Sanctions report published by the Parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee, it concludes that the human cost of continuing to apply the existing regime of benefit sanctions – the “only major welfare reform this decade to have never been evaluated” – appears simply too high. The evidence that it is achieving its aims is at best mixed, and at worst showing a policy that appears “arbitrarily punitive”.
There is clear evidence that increases in rates of sanctions are associated with increases in the number of people suffering with anxiety and/or depression. The increased severity of sanctions in recent years also has had no observable impact on flows into employment but have led to increases in both food bank usage and antidepressant prescribing. It has also been evidenced that sanctions discriminate against disabled people. Disabled people on Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) are 26 – 53% times more likely to be sanctioned that non-Disabled JSA claimants.
It has been shown that conditionality is ineffective in getting disabled people to engage in work-related activity. Instead it creates a range of perverse incentives and punishing conditions that are often negative to health.
The underlying fear instilled by the hostile environment of sanctions means claimants live in a state of constant anxiety. For some claimants this is life threatening. This does not enable people to engage in work related activity.
A tragic example of this is David Clapson. The Coroner said that when he died David had no food in his stomach. His benefits had been stopped as a result of missing one meeting at the jobcentre. Clapson, who had served in the British Army, had only left his last job to care for his elderly mum, and before that had worked for 29 years. On the day he died he had £3.44 to his name and six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date can of sardines in his kitchen cupboards. David was diabetic, and without the £71.70 a week from his jobseeker’s allowance he couldn’t afford to eat or put credit on his electricity card to keep the fridge where he kept his insulin working. Three weeks later he died from diabetic ketoacidosis, caused by a severe lack of insulin. A pile of CVs was found next to his body.
This is only one story of many unnecessary deaths caused by the DWP sanctioning policy. During the pandemic the Government has taken a ‘whatever it takes’ approach to the economy. We are urging you to take the same humane approach to people claiming benefits as a result of this national crisis.
It is really important you take action immediately as the suspension of sanctions expires on 30th June. That’s why we are urging you to make representation to Ministers today to not reintroduce sanctions.
Yours sincerely
(insert your name here)
I, along with many, many others are asking for the sanction of benefits to continue to bebe suspended to help people on very low incomes who rely on them to live from day to day during this difficult time.
Don’t bring back benefit sanctions
This decision places Disabled people between 2 life threatening positions – the hostile environment of the DWP and a pandemic that has already claimed thousands of Disabled lives. Do they risk staying at home safe from the pandemic and risk sanctions and consequential loss of income, be unable to buy food and face deteriorating mental health as a result. Risk becoming one more DWP death or suicide ? Or do they risk the pandemic and travel on public transport to job centres, work searches and become another custom of the pandemic.
The DWP and the Government are negligent not to have planned this better or delayed it and not waited till the 11th hour. Indeed are they going to do anything at all?
Please grant an extension to Universal Credit claimants, at this very worrying time
Sanctions are counter productive, punitive and make the claimant feel so utterly unmotivated. They promote misery, poverty and leaves nothing in the tank to look for work. It’s not even survival, it’s just existence. Utterly pitiful and brutal of this Govt. I work with very marginalised groups and during lockdown, the pressure had been removed. This is how you want people to be, unpressured and in a better place e to look for work.
Also need to continue suspension of UC rollout.
would like to sign this
we are all affected and we all need this
but would also remember Errol Graham and add that the burden of not extending is likely to have particular effects for Black people who may be especially unable to meet conditions due to the way in which Covid has disproportionately impacted the community.