Sanctions: It’s not just austerity, it’s deliberately punitive - Michael Meacher MP

It’s called ‘sanctioning’, and it’s part of the Tory armoury designed to brutalise the poor.   DWP figures, just released after being withheld for months, show that in the last year, after the Tories introduced a new tougher benefit regime last October, benefit payments have been suspended in the case of the unemployed no less than 580,000 times on the grounds that, according to the government, they either failed to look for work or turned down a job offer or missed a jobcentre appointment.   This of course fits the stereotype vigorously propagated by the government and the Tory tabloids that unemployed people are shirkers or benefit scroungers, but it is a gross misrepresentation of reality on several grounds.   First, getting a job is mathematically impossible for all the unemployed when there are 2,500,000 people workless and only 400,000 vacancies.    The vast majority of unemployed people are extremely keen to get work, but the jobs simply aren’t there.   It’s Osborne’s economic policy which is (deliberately) keeping the jobless figures high, so why should those who can’t get work be punished, and extremely harshly?

Second, part of this brutalising of the poor is that jobcentre managers have been instructed by DWP to meet (high) targets for sanctioning, so they have been telling their staff to sanction more claimants.   The effect of this can be seen from the fact that, since the new sanctions regime was introduced a year ago, the number of sanction referrals has risen by a huge 30% to 161,000 a month.   What this means is that in order to prove their propaganda that the unemployed are lazy and not trying to get work, the government has deliberately inflated the figures for not trying to get work by enforcing artificial targets regardless of the facts.

Third, the penalties are wildly harsh, out of all proportion to any just response.  The first penalty for failing to attend a job adviser interview is a fixed mandatory 4-weeks loss of job seeker’s allowance.   If that happens again or if allegedly a person fails to take up a job opportunity, the penalty is deprivation of any benefit payments for 3 months.   A third infringement leads to loss of benefit for 3 years.   This is being applied against people who have been paying national insurance contributions of 9% of their gross incomes for years which entitles them under an insurance contract to unemployment benefit if they lose their job.

Fourthly, and most seriously, there are thousands of cases reported where sanctioning is clearly grossly unjust.   Examples are, from my own surgery and from CAB interviews: ‘Jobcentre didn’t record I had informed them I was in hospital when I was due to attend appointment’, ‘went to job interview instead of signing on at Jobcentre as appointment clashed’, ‘had to look after my mum, she’s disabled and was very ill’, ‘I didn’t know about the interview because they sent to the wrong address’, ‘I refused a job because I was in a women’s refuge fleeing domestic violence and in the process of relocating’, ‘I didn’t do enough to find work in between FINDING work and starting it’, etc., etc.


Michael Meacher MP