Labour demands action over jobcentre targets

Iain Duncan Smith asked to get to bottom of every case as new evidence emerges of sanctions against jobless people

Jobcentre staff have contacted the Guardian to say it is widespread practice for managers to set targets for removing benefits. Photograph: Rex Features

Labour responded to fresh evidence suggesting jobcentres around the country are being given targets to find reasons to take away jobseeker's allowance from claimants by demanding that the government speed up and widen the remit of an independent review into the regime of benefit sanctions.

Liam Byrne, shadow work and pensions secretary, said his party would table amendments in the Lords on Monday to widen the terms of the proposed inquiry if ministers did not give an undertaking "to get to the bottom of every sanction issued by a jobcentre where targets were in operation".

The shadow cabinet member was responding to an internal email from a jobcentre manager published in the Guardian this week that appeared to indicate that there were targets and league tables of sanctions being deployed in Walthamstow jobcentre. An adviser manager in the jobcentre had written: "As you can see Walthamstow are 95th in the league table out of only 109 [jobcentres in London and the Home Counties]."

Jobcentre staff have since contacted the Guardian to say that it is widespread practice for managers to set targets for removing benefits, sometimes under the guise of benchmarks or expectations for the number of sanctions levied. A separate investigation suggests there is evidence from jobcentres around the UK that pressure is being applied on staff to remove more people's benefits.

It was also reported that staff in a jobcentre in the West Midlands were this week told that the team who submitted the most Stricter Benefit Regime "Refusal of Employment" referrals would be rewarded with Easter eggs. The staff were told there was drive on this particular type of sanction.

A jobcentre source said: "This is an abhorrent trivialisation of the impact of such sanctions on the most vulnerable people in our community. We are not selling time share or insurance policies, these are people's livelihood being rewarded by confection."


Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, was confronted over the initial revelations in the Commons on Friday. He said: "I can absolutely commit to the fact that there are no targets for any sanctions whatsoever. To emphasise that, I should point out that the head of Jobcentre Plus has issued a reminder to everybody in the estate that there are no targets and that there will be no targets, and that anybody using those targets will be disciplined."

Pressed again, he said: "Anybody caught imposing a target will be dealt with. That is absolutely clear. That message has already gone out. It went out before on innumerable occasions."

In the same debate Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, urged jobcentre workers to come forward to describe the situation in their offices. She said: "The email is not the work of one over-enthusiastic member of staff. When it mentions league tables and the role of divisional managers, it is clear that this is not happening by accident.

"I trusted ministers when, on Tuesday, they claimed that there are no targets whatsoever. I now see that means that they are either simply admitting that they do not know what goes on in their own department, or that they were not giving us the full truth on Tuesday in this house.

"We need an independent review to get to the bottom of this problem, and to understand just how out of control this toxic Work Programme is."

On Thursday, the Department for Work and Pensions said it would set up an independent inquiry into the use of sanctions this week in return for Labour supporting emergency legislation deigned to clarify the right of the DWP to impose mandatory work activity.

Emergency legislation is being passed to prevent the DWP having to repay nearly £130m in benefit claims following the court of appeal's "Poundland" ruling that people had unlawfully been made to work unpaid.

In a letter to Duncan Smith on Friday, Byrne said scandals such as the one published in the Guardian were "exactly why we sought and secured independent review of the sanctions regime written in to the jobseekers' bill.

"In the light of these latest revelations, can I ask you to guarantee – today – that this independent review will get to the bottom of every sanction issued by a jobcentre where targets were in operation."

Byrne also asked why if the instruction banning targets had been sent out on innumerable occasions it was simply being ignored by managers – and if the DWP would, in the light of Duncan Smith's comments, discipline managers imposing targets and also allow staff to speak up about the imposition of targets without fear of being disciplined.

Ministers have given little detail of how long the inquiry will take or its composition.

Guardian