Please add everything we have left out in the comments below.
- There is no clear evidence that recent high employment rates in the UK are due to sanctions, or that blunt and harsh sanctions are superior to far less harmful methods to encourage compliance with conditionality.
- Sanctions succeed in instilling a fear and loathing of the system in many claimants.
Alston, P. (2018). Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, [online] 16 November. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23881&LangID=E.
- Current sanctions policy can be considered to be ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading’.
Adler, M. (2018). Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment? Benefit Sanctions in the UK. Palgrave Pivot
- Between 2010 and 2018, over 110,000 Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) sanctions and 900,000 Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA) sanctions of disabled people were applied with a further 140,000 ESA and 160,000 JSA sanctions of disabled people applied but later cancelled.
- Sanctions discriminate against disabled people. Disabled people on JSA are 26 – 53% times more likely to be sanctioned that non-Disabled JSA claimants.
Baumberg Geiger, B. (2018a). A Better WCA is Possible: disability assessment, public opinion and the benefits system. London: Demos. Available at: https://www.demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2018_A_Better_WCA_is_possible_FULL-4.pdf
- Welfare conditionality within the social security system is largely ineffective in facilitating people’s entry into or progression within the paid labour market over time.
- Benefit sanctions do little to enhance people’s motivation to prepare for, seek, or enter paid work. They routinely trigger profoundly negative personal, financial, health and behavioural outcomes and push some people away from collectivised welfare provisions.
Dwyer, P., Jones, K., McNeill, J., Scullion, L. and Stewart, A. (2018). Final findings: welfare conditionality project 2013 – 2018. York: Welfare Conditionality Project. Available at: http://www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/40414_Overview-HR4.pdf
- The Department for Work and Pensions has limited evidence on how people respond to the possibility of receiving a sanction, or how large this deterrent effect is in practice.
- The Department for Work and Pensions has not used its own data to evaluate the impact of sanctions in the UK… The DWP has not supported wider work to improve understanding of
sanction outcomes…[and] has rejected calls for a wider review.
- The Department does not track the costs and benefits of sanctions… Possible wider costs include the direct impact on people who get sanctioned, such as financial hardship or depression.
- Until the Department can show greater consistency in its use of sanctions and demonstrate that their effectiveness is proportionate to their costs we cannot conclude that the Department is achieving value for money.
National Audit Office [NAO], (2016b). Benefit sanctions. 30 November, HC 628, 2016-17. Available at: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Benefit-sanctions.pdf
- When David Clapson died he had no food in his stomach. Clapson’s benefits had been stopped as a result of missing one meeting at the jobcentre. He 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 Clapson died from diabetic ketoacidosis, caused by a severe lack of insulin. A pile of CVs was found next to his body.
Ryan, F. (2014). David Clapson’s awful death was the result of grotesque government policies. The Guardian, 9 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/09/david-clapson-benefit-sanctions-death-government-policies
- 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 impact of sanctions is life threatening for some claimants.
- The underlying fear instilled by the threat of sanctions means claimants live in a state of constant anxiety. This does not enable people to engage in work related activity.
Taggart, D., Mehta, J., Clifford, E. and Speed, E. (2020). ‘“They say jump, we say how high?” conditionality, sanctioning and incentivising disabled people into the UK labour market.’ Disability and Society. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2020.1766422
- Sanctions lead to increases in self-reported anxiety and depression.
- There is clear evidence that increases in rates of sanctions within local authorities are associated with increases in the number of people suffering with anxiety and/or depression.
- Increased severity of sanctions had no observable impact on flows into employment but have led to increases in both food bank usage and antidepressant prescribing.
- The hardship payments system is insufficient and also needs to be reformed.
Williams, E. (2020). The impact of DWP benefit sanctions on anxiety and depression. blogs.lse.ac.uk, [online] 24 June. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/benefit-sanctions-mental-health/
- In the Benefit Sanctions report published by the 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”.
- The Committee says the Coalition Government “had little or no understanding of the likely impact of a tougher sanctions regime” when it introduced it in 2012 with the stated aim, as the NAO describes it, that “benefits, employment support and conditions and sanctions together lead to employment.” At that point, Government promised to review the reform’s impact and whether it was achieving its aims on an ongoing basis. But six years later, Government “is none the wiser”. What evidence there is shows that, at best, the effectiveness of sanctions is mixed. At worst, it shows them to be counterproductive.
Work and Pensions Committee [WPC], (2018c). Benefit Sanctions. 31 October, HC 955, 2017–19.
Work and Pensions Committee [WPC, (2018d). Government must urgently reassess sanctions regime. [press release] 6 November. Available at: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/work-and-pensions-committee/news-parliament-2017/benefit-sanctions-report-published-17-19/
I am 63/2 haven’t got any job because of my age.i am worried about my uc if they stopped what Will I do no place to go no rent. It’s inhumane.no money to pay my bills to eat .
I am on the edge of a cliff, I have been waiting 9 months for a PIP decision and 11 months for a LCWRA decision, this is despite an incredible amount of medical evidence submitted by medical professionals.This evidence includes 2 medical assessments, yet I have not heard anything and my daughter is following up each time but with the same useless response that they have received the evidence and will be in touch. Nobody from these disability departments keep in touch. So I fully understand the number of suicides that take place due to PIP and DWP. In my opinion they are not suicides but should be classified as murder. If I ever stept of that cliff, I hope and would expect my case to be treated as murder.
Abbas
sanctions are inhumane and cause deprission and worry.this should be against the law in this day an age.it makes me so angry and i feel for those it affects.