The low levels that Ashton Jobcentre will go to to sanction people.

Originally posted on The poor side of life:

23 week pregnant woman sanctioned.

The above woman (wearing costume so the Jobcentre staff don’t recognise her) was sanctioned when 23 weeks pregnant. The reason you may ask…. for attending a work fare interview (work for nothing) at B&Q.
Whilst at the interview they noticed that she was pregnant and they said yep we will put you on light duties…. The jobcentre decided otherwise… in their words “we are sanctioning you because you told them that you were pregnant”.

So in other words she was meant to break all health and safety laws in the uk and not declare that she was pregnant. How on earth can this be right? It isn’t. She was heartbroken. She had walked a few miles to this workfare interview and she saw it as her last hope of not being sanctioned.

Ashton Under Lyne Jobcentre knowingly target pregnant women. On one of our demonstrations…

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IDS's 'fit for work' projections in tatters - Sickness benefits claimants were not 'faking it'

Figures released today by the Department of Works & Pensions reveal that 93% of long term sick claimants have qualified for Employment & Support Allowance following stricter 'Work Capability Assessments'.  81% have qualified for intensive support on the grounds of severe health problems.  The latest figures make a complete mockery of earlier claims made by the right wing media that the assessments showed 75% of incapacity claimants were 'fit for work' and 'weeding out the work-shy'.  

The latest figures from the DWP publishing 'scores' for Work Capability Assessments carried out between January and March 2014 show that 93% of longer term incapacity benefit claimants qualified for Employment & Support Allowance with just 6% being found 'fit for work' - a large number of whom will appeal.

Similarly figures for the same group of claimants show that in preceding quarter from October 2013 to December 2013, 90% of claimants qualified.

The figures for what are designated 'new' Employment & Support Allowance claimants show that (for the same quarter up to March 2014, large percentages of claimants are qualifying with 77% qualifying under the strict assessment regime. The new claim group is one where large numbers of claimants appeal a fit for work decision, the 23% found fit for work is likely to fall even further when the results of appealed decisions are made public.

Claimants from either the new claim or ex-incapacity cohort who find themselves 're-assessed', qualified at a rate of 93% over the most recent quarterly figures.

Not all the results are in...

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DWP urged to publish inquiries on benefit claimant suicides

Department has carried out 60 internal reviews following deaths, and campaigners say those cases likely to be tip of the iceberg


The Department for Work and Pensions has been urged by mental health and disability charities to publish its secret investigations into suicides that may have some link to benefit changes, following revelations that it has carried out internal reviews into 60 such cases.

A Freedom of Information request by the Disability News Service has revealed that the DWP has carried out “60 peer reviews following the death of a customer” since February 2012. A peer review is triggered when suicide or alleged suicide is “associated with a DWP activity”, according to its internal guidance.

Despite growing concern over the way benefits are administered in relation to vulnerable individuals, and amid a number of reports of related deaths, the department told the Guardian it had no plans to publish the reviews.

Disabled People Against the Cuts said that, because of the way the reviews were carried out, the DWP figure was likely to be the “tip of the iceberg”.

Tom Pollard, the policy and campaigns manager at Mind, told the Guardian the figures were a concern. He stressed that suicide was a complex problem but added: “It would be helpful for organisations to see what things could be going wrong in the benefit system that could lead to these tragic situations.”

Sue Bott, director of policy and services at Disability Rights UK, said DWP reviews should be transparent.

“There have been allegations and anecdotal evidence for a while that the benefits regime has tipped people over the edge. It should be looked into in a transparent way,” Bott said. “This is not just about the nature of the decision taken as to whether it was right or wrong. It’s also about the process and there is a lot of concern about the way benefits are administered.”

The DWP’s latest figures show that sanctions to punish disabled ESA claimants had risen by 470% in 18 months, from 1,096 in December 2012 to 5,132 in June 2014.

According to DWP figures released as the result of an FoI request, 62% of adverse ESA sanction decisions in the first three months of 2014 were made against people with mental or behavioural problems (9,851 out of 15,955).

The calls for transparency from the DWP come after a number of reports of the deaths and suicides of vulnerable individuals after adverse benefit decisions...

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Court case aims to restore legal aid

Victims denied justice after coalition cuts, say campaigners


Campaigners and trade unionists protested outside the High Court in London yesterday ahead of a legal challenge against the government’s draconian legal aid cuts for domestic violence victims.

Rights of Women is bringing the challenge, which argues that large numbers of survivors are being denied justice because new rules brought in by the coalition prevent them from obtaining legal aid.

The charity is disputing the legality of the changes, which set out mandatory evidence requirements for a victim seeking legal aid for a private family law case.

Lawyers for the charity say that large numbers of victims are being turned away “at the first hurdle” as they have no permissible evidence, and are left with the choice of paying a solicitor privately, representing themselves, or doing nothing and continuing to be at risk...

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Labour Challenges Nick Clegg To Back ‘Bedroom Tax’ Axe

Labour is putting massive pressure on Lib Dem MPs to get the hated Bedroom Tax scrapped before the General Election, writes political editor Nigel Nelson in the Sunday People.

In a final push before Britain goes to the polls in May, the Commons will vote on Wednesday on repealing the cruel charge.

And Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves says if there’s a majority for abolition, David Cameron must admit defeat.

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Put Blair and Straw on trial for torture, says diplomat who was fired when he warned Labour Government of UK collusion with US abuse

‘In the summer of 2004, I warned Tony Blair’s Foreign Office that Britain was using intelligence material which had been obtained by the CIA under torture. Two months later I was sacked as the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan on the orders of Downing Street, bringing to an end my 20-year diplomatic career.

When I then went public with the news that Uzbek territory was part of a global CIA torture programme, I was dismissed as a fantasist by Mr Blair’s henchmen. Now finally, a decade later, I have been vindicated by last week’s shocking Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Over 500 pages it details the CIA’s brutal abuse of Al Qaeda suspects, who were flown around the world to be tortured in a network of secret prisons. One of these was in Uzbekistan, where the US had an air base.’

Read more: Now put Blair and Straw on trial for torture, says diplomat who was fired when he warned Labour Government of UK collusion with US abuse

Terminal Cancer Patient Harassed by Work Programme Provider

The abuses of work programme providers have been blogged many times before but I am sure many of you agree all abuses must be blogged time and time again until these providers leave those in the ESA Support Group alone and more so if they have a degenerative condition that has a terminal prognosis.

So with the above in mined I turn to one lady from Bristol who has terminal cancer at just 37 years old and has a life expectancy of 0 – 3 years so it is sad indeed that she can expect just half her life lived, she says in her facebook message that she has come to terms with what will happen (very brave indeed) but the short life left would be much better if she was not harassed by work programme provider Prospects Group @ProspectsGroup and I for one agree.

It is hard enough having to deal with a bombshell that has hit her and the health conditions that terminal illness throws at her without having the wrath of DWP and Work Providers at beck and call too.

She needs her family around her and her life filled with happiness and memories not some Govt and Work Provider totally devoid of any compassion and empathy...

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Scrooge: Iain Duncan Smith's Inspiration

Sanctioned Homeless Man Dies of Hypothermia

... After talking to this lady I was stopped by a homeless chap who wanted to congratulate us on our hard work. He said that he hated this Job Centre. His friend who lived on the streets with him had been sanctioned after being taken off the sickness benefits that he was on and was put on Job seekers Allowance. He had severe mental health and addiction problems. He was sanctioned, and without warm clothes and very little food he fell asleep on the streets and never woke up. He died of hypothermia. People had passed him and thought that he was asleep. He didn’t stand a chance. And what do the Job Centre staff say? “We are only following orders.” Most don’t feel any guilt or remorse. And we know that this government doesn’t either.
We are holding a memorial service outside Ashton Under Lyne Job Centre next Thursday. We will be laying a wreath and we are desperately in need of funds to do so. We ill be doing this in memory of every person that has died as a result of this governments war against the poor. We wont forget them. Please come, bring a flower, bring some words to say but more importantly bring yourself...

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Inequality takes a hammer to a country’s growth

The sickening theory of laissez-faire capitalism finally died with the recent report from one of the West’s leading think tanks. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that income inequality actually hampers economic growth in some of the world’s wealthiest countries, while the redistribution of wealth via taxes and benefits doesn’t.

In a nutshell: the reality of what creates and reverses growth is the exact opposite of what the current right-wing, neo-liberal agenda has been espousing ever since its rise to power under Thatcher and Reagan in the eighties. Perhaps worst of all, the report showed evidence that the UK would have been 20 per cent better off if the gap between the rich and poor hadn’t widened since the eighties.

To those of us who have only just survived the credit crunch and recession, this evidence will be welcome, but hardly surprising. The surprising thing is how it took this long. To extend a metaphor, why didn’t we realise the patient had already died more than half a decade ago?

Didn’t anyone who is sane and have any common sense realise this was the case after the crash in 2008? Haven’t there been hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating on the streets about the abuses of bankers and the wealthiest 1 per cent? Haven’t we seen almost seven years of unprecedented economic woes because of this very reason – that the current system is bankrupt, in every sense of the word?

Why then have we spent such a long time ignoring the obvious? The answer is of course because the current economic philosophy benefits the all-powerful financial and business elite. But also, in this country at least, because David Cameron’s Conservative party got into power off the back of the 2008 crisis with the clever trick of rewriting the causes of that very crisis. And what did they blame? Prepare your (now factually justified) facepalm: they blamed it on too much state spending.

Before the 2008 crash the Tory strategy to get back into power had been to match the then-Labour government’s state spending and perhaps even further it. However, when the crash happened a sudden opportunity presented itself to demonise the over-bloated public sector and blame Labour‘s public spending for the economic downturn. Did it matter that evidence of the crash being caused by recklessly unrestricted banking practices was writ large over the whole world economy?  Of course not, this was cheap trick politics, and it worked. The Tories got into power and we all bought into the narrative of austerity.

Now after five years of being forced to tighten our belts, we are finally waking up to what that narrative actually was. Thanks to the OECD report, we find that the very thing that the sacrifices of austerity were made to preserve – the growth of the economy – is the very thing they are destroying. Neo-liberal, laissez-faire capitalism extends inequality, we already knew that. But now we have the evidence that inequality harms, rather than encourages growth.

Like a sick patient being given the wrong drugs, it is the very thing we thought was curing us that is actually killing us. And all the while we are told to Keep Calm and Carry On taking our medicine by the government, to keep on swallowing the same old propaganda.

What new narrative will the Government spin now?

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Auschwitz photo-op visit reveals Cameron at his cynical worst

‘Arbeit macht frei': Roughly translated, it means ‘Work makes you free’. 

David Cameron will be familiar with that phrase as it is a favourite of his 

Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith. 

Is this writer the only person who finds it more than a little sick that David Cameron visited Auschwitz on the International Day of Human Rights? What was he doing – taking notes in order to ensure that he can do a better job?

The parallels between what the Nazi regime did there, to anybody it considered subhuman, and what Cameron’s government has been doing to anybody it regards similarly are becoming so obvious that you would need to be a deaf-blind animal to miss them.

It is physically sickening to read about him lighting a candle at a memorial for holocaust victims and promising that proposals for a permanent British memorial to victims of the Nazis will be revealed next year, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the extermination camp, while his government continues to deny the fatal consequences of its own policies.

In Nazi Germany, people who were sick, disabled, or belonged to a foreign race were deprived of their human rights and shipped off to concentration camps like Auschwitz, if they weren’t “euthanized” at home under the Aktion T4 programme.

Here, people who are sick or disabled are subjected to a humiliating test intended to deprive them of the financial support they need to survive, and to implant the suggestion that it would be better all around if they simply took their own lives...

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People With Mental Health Problems Hammered By Sickness Benefit Sanctions

More than 60% of adverse Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) sanctions decisions made during the first three months of 2014 were against people with mental health issues or behavioral problems, new figures show.

Figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in response to a Freedom of Information Request, show that 9,851 adverse benefit sanctions decisions were made against ESA claimants with mental or behavioural disorders between January to March 2014.

This compares to:

• 508 adverse sanctions decisions against ESA claimants with diseases of the circulatory or respiratory system.
• 1,598 against those with diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue.
• 571 against people with diseases of the nervous system.
• 714 against people with injuries, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes.
• 2,727 against those with other health conditions or disabilities.

A DWP official said benefit sanctions are used to encourage people to “engage with the support being offered by Jobcentres, by making it clearer to claimants what they are expected to do in return for their benefits”.

However, charities and medical experts say people with mental health issues, learning problems and behavioral disorders often struggle to understand what is required of them in return for their benefits. Following strict requirements can prove to be more difficult for these groups of people, without additional support and guidance.

Commenting on similar figures from November 2013, Tom Pollard, Policy and Campaigns Manager at the mental health charity Mind, said:

“We’re very concerned that an increasing number of people on ESA are having their benefits stopped, despite the fact that there are now fewer people in the WRAG (Work Related Activity Group).

“We know that around half of people in the WRAG need support because they have mental health problems, but over 60 per cent of sanctions are imposed on this group.”

“It is unjustifiable that people with mental health problems are being disproportionately affected by this increasingly punitive system. This confirms our fears that people are being pressured to undertake activities that are inappropriate for them and are not having their mental health properly taken into account.”

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Does the Upper Tribunal says EVERY bedroom tax decision was unlawful? Yes!

Originally posted on SPeye Joe (Welfarewrites):

Is every single bedroom tax decision wrong in law and does every single bedroom tax affected household have legitimate grounds to appeal it?  I posed those questions almost 2 years ago and was accused of talking nonsense and of stirring up a direct action campaign.  Yet that is what the Upper Tribunal lead case decision says – I was right all along and that the bedroom tax decision-making process is and always has been an unlawful sham and ALL decision made are official errors or unlawful.

Remember I drafted a standard letter which was downloaded over 200,000 times which asked your council how they made the bedroom tax decision with 6 questions.  The answers to those confirm your council made official errors / errors of law in making the original bedroom tax decisions by not defining bedroom and by simply choosing to believe the myth that a bedroom is up to…

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Senior DWP Manager Congratulates Staff For Hitting Sanctions Targets

Source

Have You Seen This Man?

Barton Moss Woman Arrested and Beaten at Anti-Fracking Protest. Police thugs grin as woman is beaten

Vanda, the mother of four who made headlines last month after her brutal arrest by officers from Greater Manchester Police Tactical Aid Unit, was again arrested and beaten at Barton Moss this morning in the full gaze of the media – and Happy Mondays star, Bez, who was on the front line of the anti-fracking protest.

“I got sent to prison for being accused of doing that shit. Three grown men battering a woman on the floor…I’m in shock.” Bez

“It’s a disgrace” he told the Salford Star “A peaceful protest and… to arrest someone, smashing their head on the floor is not right is it? Especially a woman…”

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Poor People Forced to Bury Relatives in Back Gardens - Labour MP

Others are trapped by spiralling debt after taking out pay-day loans

Rising funeral costs mean tens of thousands of poor people struggle to pay for services, with some so desperate they are resorting to bury their loved ones in their garden, MPs have heard.

Labour backbencher Emma Lewell-Buck urged ministers to tackle “funeral poverty”, and said that people are being forced to sell their belongings or falling into debt by taking out high-interest payday loans to fund a decent send-off for their relatives...

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Steve Bell on food poverty – cartoon

Dennis Skinner Question to IDS about Zero Contract Hours - 08/12/2014 .

When you see news about US torture, remember this...

The news at the moment is full of the ‘revelation’ that the ‘enhanced (or coercive) interrogation’ techniques used by the CIA on so-called ‘enemy combatants’ amounted to torture.

These techniques, including waterboarding, extreme sleep-deprivation and forcing people into contorted ‘stress positions’ for hours on end, were devised by a US psychologist who has been called a ‘torture guru’.

When you see these reports, remember this: psychologically-coercive techniques devised by this same individual and his team have been forced upon British benefit claimants at the behest of David Cameron’s ‘Nudge Unit’, via a bogus ‘psychometric test’ that they had to take or else lose their benefits.

Remember this, too: the DWP’s abuse of claimants using this test was so unethical that the ‘torture guru’s organisation objected to its use – use that they had never authorised in the first place: the Nudge Unit had basically stolen parts of the material and cobbled it together in a completely untested, unethical way that had the British Psychological Society (BPS) up in arms and formally investigating the psychologist responsible.

What’s even worse is that this abuse has not stopped. Quite the contrary, in fact.

As this blog by refuted.org.uk shows, the government is planning to extend the reach of the Nudge Unit even further – as part of a package of abusive measures that will allow the DWP to abuse working claimants in exactly the same way as jobseekers...

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A Message From The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come…

Originally posted on Still Oaks:

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
The MP’s were feasting on subsidised grouse.
Their expenses claims hung, by the chimney with care
knowing the taxpayer would pay for their fare.


Outside the poor were frozen, even in bed
While visions of food and heating, danced in their head.
Their children with rickets, malnourished, no bread
For them Christmas, another day of going unfed.


Dad has been sanctioned, Mum has TB
The New Year she will not see.
No NHS, no money for treatment or care
They place their last hopes, in silent prayer.


The Wonga collectors bang on their door
The children lie quiet and still on the floor.
Dad borrowed money he can no longer pay
The landlord says they can no longer stay.


30 Thousand dead from the cold
In the 11^th richest nation in the world.
50 Thousand dead from austerity measures...

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Savage Cuts To Benefits Go Ignored In Flagship Foodbanks Report

Originally posted on the void:

Huge cuts to benefits are virtually ignored in the report into foodbanks published today by an unholy trinity of opportunistic Labour hasbeens, out of touch Bishops and austerity cheering Tories.

The growth in foodbanks dates back to before the current Government weren’t elected as Labour’s decimation of the social security started to take its toll.  The rise in benefit sanctions also began in the dying years of Labour’s administration as did the introduction of the despised Atos run Work Capability Assessment, designed to strip sickness and disability benefits from one million people.  Alongside this Labour’s normalisation of workfare led to unprecedented numbers of people forced to work without pay.
And then, as if things weren’t bad enough, along came Iain Duncan Smith.  With him came the bedroom tax, council tax benefit cuts, the benefit cap, housing benefit cuts, freezes of almost all in and out of work benefits, more…

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Shock New Figures: UK Spends Less On Healthcare, Benefits and Pensions Per Head Than Any Other Northern European Country

Originally posted on the void:

The UK spends less on social security benefits, pensions and healthcare combined per head than any other northern European country figures released by the Office for National Statistics reveal.

In news which has sent the Daily Mail spinning out of control, the UK’s spending on ‘social protection’ is lower than France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and in fact every country in Northern Europe, as well as Italy.  These figures are based on spending per person from 2012, before many of the benefit cuts were implemented.  With even more savage cuts to social security threatened, then the UK could soon slip even further down the ranking behind the beleagured economies of Greece and Spain.

Social protection covers a wide range of spending including benefits, pensions, healthcare and social exclusion.  In a worrying trend the Daily Mail has decided to lump all thse vital services under the banner of ‘welfare’ suggesting…

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Shame of MP who played Candy Crush in Commons … but authorities only care about finding out whoever filmed him

‘A Tory MP caught playing a computer game during a meeting in Parliament is to escape punishment – but the whistleblower who exposed him could lose their job.

Nigel Mills admitted having a ‘game or two’ of Candy Crush and promised not to do it again after footage emerged of him playing on his taxpayer-funded iPad.

But while he will face no further action, the person who filmed him looks likely to lose their job after Commons authorities launched a mole hunt to find the culprit.’

Read more: Shame of MP who played Candy Crush in Commons … but authorities only care about finding out whoever filmed him

Vaccine zealots refuse to accept the truth about CDC whistleblower’s apologetic texts to Dr. Wakefield

‘Controversy has erupted on the blogosphere after a screenshot of an alleged text exchange between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) whistleblower Dr. William Thompson and gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield went viral. The vindictive “skeptics” crowd was quick to denounce the screenshot as fake, but Dr. Wakefield says he really did receive an apology from Dr. Thompson for his role in covering up the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.’

Read more: Vaccine zealots refuse to accept the truth about CDC whistleblower's apologetic texts to Dr. Wakefield

What Lies Behind The Archbishop’s Demand For State Run Foodbanks Is Every Bit As Nasty As Iain Duncan Smith

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will launch a report in parliament this week which calls on the government to fund the growing network of foodbanks – many of which are coincidentally run by churches. 

This is his toxic solution to the growing hunger crisis which has emerged after the string of vindictive and bungled welfare reforms implemented by Iain Duncan Smith.

It is shameful that so many people are now dependent on foodbanks just to be able to feed their children, but to enshrine this charity within the social security system would be a disaster.  What poor people need is more money, not more foodbanks.  This is just common  sense.  But you won’t hear calls for an end to vicious cuts to social security from the clowns behind Welby’s report...

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If you’re not shocked by these facts about our firefighters, you don’t understand them

Originally posted on Pride's Purge:

(not satire – it’s the Cameron government!)

In 2011, the Cameron government decided that …….

• Firefighters will only get their full pensions at 60 instead of 55.
• All firefighters of any age will undergo regular fitness tests.
• Firefighters will be made redundant if they fail the fitness tests.
• The government’s own report found that the effects of ageing will prevent 66 per cent of firefighters over 55 from meeting the fitness levels required for the job.
• Firefighters who lose their jobs will not be eligible for their full pension they have paid into.

60 is too old to be fighting fires.  The government knows that. This is simply a way to make huge numbers of firefighters redundant and deny them their pensions.

And while the public is not aware of it – the government will get away with it.

.

Here’s a petition to the Department of Communities and Local Government:

DCLG must improve its unworkable…

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The WCA and suicide – a.k.a. ‘chequebook euthanasia’

Too ill to work means too ill to live: Work capability assessors have been asking people with serious illnesses and disabilities why they have not committed suicide.

A new phrase has entered the Vox Political lexicon following yesterday’s article on an Atos work capability assessor who asked a woman suffering with depression why she had not committed suicide: ‘Chequebook euthanasia’.

The article prompted Earl Appleby to tweet, in response: “Little surprise here, alas. The able-bodied driving people with disabilities to suicide is a hoary form of chequebook euthanasia.”

He added: “Binding & Hoche advocated chequebook euthanasia nearly a century ago.”

They certainly did. Professors Karl Binding and Erich Hoche raised the case for chequebook euthanasia in Germany’s Weimar Republic, 80 years ago, in their seminal work The Destruction of Life Devoid of Value.

This article reveals the worst about Binding and Hoche. It states that they considered people with disabilities (and would probably have added those with long-term illnesses) to be “‘useless eaters’ whose ‘ballast lives’ could be tossed overboard to better balance the economic ship of state. In speaking of those with disabilities, and explicitly advocating involuntary euthanasia, Binding and Hoche wrote:

Their life is absolutely pointless, but they do not regard it as being unbearable. They are a terrible, heavy burden upon their relatives and society as a whole. Their death would not create even the smallest gap—except perhaps in the feelings of their mothers or loyal nurses.

“Just like today!

Furthermore, Binding and Hoche drove home the economic argument by calculating the total cost expended in caring for such people. They concluded that this cost was ‘a massive capital in the form of foodstuffs, clothing and heating, which is being subtracted from the national product for entirely unproductive purposes.’

Now look at the case of Abi Fallows, as reported yesterday. This is a person who has asserted that she is unable to work – certainly for the foreseeable future – and has medical evidence to support this. The Atos assessor seized on her admission that she suffered with depression and asked why she had not committed suicide.

Not only was this a device to put the idea in her mind, it also indicates government thinking – one less mouth to feed is considerably less expense on, as Binding and Hoche would have it, “their relatives and society as a whole”.

It should be noted at this time that Ms Fallows’ case is not unique – by any stretch of the imagination...

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David Clapson’s awful death was the result of grotesque government policies

The coroner said that 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.

I’ll resist calling Clapson’s death a tragedy. Tragedy suggests a one-off incident, a rarity that couldn’t be prevented. What was done to Clapson – and it was done, not something that simply happened – is a particularly horrific example of what has, almost silently, turned into a widespread crisis. More than a million people in this country have had their benefits stopped over the past year. Sanctions against chronically ill and disabled people have risen by 580% in a year. This is a system out of control...

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Work experience schemes: Commons Library Standard Note

"Conclusions

In general, evaluations of welfare-to-work policies and workfare schemes have found that the strictest schemes are less likely to work, largely because they can deter all people from claiming benefit, even those most in need, without improving their chances of finding employment.  The OECD, in a 2005 review of welfare-to-work policies, concluded that moderate workfare requirements resulted in better results.

Research from the countries with experience of workfare schemes, particularly the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand, show little evidence that workfare raises the employment prospects of participants.  There is also some evidence to suggest that workfare is less effective in getting people into employment when the labour market is weak.

However, workfare can, via the motivation or deterrence effect, reduce the number of people claiming benefits."

www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN0624...k-experience-schemes