Fresh written proof comes as head of Jobcentre Neil Couling claimed previous leaks pointed to an isolated incident
Fresh written proof has been leaked showing Jobcentre staff are being set targets to sanction benefit claimants, and warned they will face disciplinary action if they do not meet the targets.
The document from the Malvern Jobcentre newsletter came as the head of the Department of Work and Pensions [DWP] estate Neil Couling insisted a previous leak to the Guardian showing targets was, according to his hunch, "an isolated incident and not something that is widespread".
The government has agreed to hold a 12-month inquiry into the sanctions regime, but Labour is pressing for a quicker inquiry that looks at specific allegations.
The Malvern Jobcentre newsletter states: "We are now into the new sanctions regime ... and we are currently one of the worst performing offices with sanction benefit referrals and unless we improve we will put under special measures. That will mean staff from other offices and the performance team coming into Malvern and looking at all our processes to see how we can improve our SBR [stricter benefit regime] performance."
The newsletter adds that the Jobcentre will have "little say" on subsequent recommendations and its staff may have their "personal individual performances" monitored to "achieve the end result".
"We do not want this," the newsletter goes on. "My plea to you is to identify SBR issues and refer to DMA [sanctioning] where appropriate".
The document passed to LabourList adds overall performance should be 5 % of the live load.
Yet in a letter received by many jobcentre staff on Monday , Couling denies there are national targets for applying sanctions and adds "individual targets should not appear in performance agreements".
He says: "We do keep management information on the numbers of referrals but that is to monitor for anomalies, for example it might highlight where there are higher numbers of sanctions than one might expect. They are not league tables." He defends the tougher conditionality regime introduced in September including greater requirements to provide regular evidence of efforts to seek work.
He states: "Sanctions and conditionality are important tools for advisers in helping people back to work. The international and national evidence shows they play an important role in making the system work effectively and people return to work more quickly and spend less time on benefits where public employment systems make use of sanctions.
"Where sanctions are appropriate they should, without hesitation, be used. So if you are an adviser you should not be surprised if, from time to time, your manager does challenge you about whether you are applying the sanctions regime appropriately. That is right and proper and that will continue. This challenge though does not constitute a target, nor is it evidence of one."
But
Numerous jobcentre staff have contacted the Guardian since last Friday's story on targets for sanctions to claim such targets are part of the culture at their workplaces.
There may be a dispute about definitions that leads to the contrast between what is being said at national level, and what is reported at local level.
Couling told the Commons' public accounts committee (PAC) last week: "We do track sanctions. We are quite keen to avoid any misunderstandings that there are targets attached to these."
The Department for Work and Pensions permanent secretary, Robert Devereaux, also told the committee: "Imagine you are the manager in a particular office and you can see that many of your advisers are sanctioning at a particular rate and by and large it is 5%, 8% or something like that, and Fred in the corner is doing 2%.
"What you are down to is managers making judgments, but one of the things they would look at – this seems to me perfectly reasonable – is do you think it is easy to do a sanction? It is much easier to just let it wash. People must put themselves into a difficult place on the part of society to do a sanction, so all the manager is trying to do when looking at the rates at which people are sanctioned is to try to think whether that sounds reasonable."
Couling also said he did have management information on which offices did the most sanctions. But he said he did not use this information "to go round to other offices and say they should be at this level, or that".
Asked by the committee chair, Margaret Hodge, what he did use it for, Couling replied: "I do it mostly because people ask parliamentary questions about it, and if I don't have it I am told it is terrible that I don't have it. What I want to try to get across to people is that there is no right level."
