desperate MEASURES: Food
bank volunteers have also dismissed the idea that take-up has been
driven by supply, not demand.
When
Neil Couling, director of benefit strategy at the Department for Work
and Pensions (DWP), told MSPs recently that Job Centres often receive
thank-you cards from people whose benefits they have stopped, it
provoked gasps of amazement among many of those who work with claimants.
In
fairness, he was responding to welfare reform committee deputy convener
Jamie Hepburn, who asked if offices were "inundated with thank-you
cards". "Yes, that is not unremarkable," Mr Couling replied.
He had previously been talking about how many jobseekers "welcomed the jolt" such sanctions gave them, and rejected claims there is a causal link between food bank use and the benefit sanctions, which can see claimants losing payments for weeks, months or even years.
The comments certainly provoked dismay at the Citizen's Advice Bureau (CAB) in Alexandria. One of its volunteers, Linsey Close, co-authored a recent report on sanctions, Unjust and Uncaring, which was scathing about their use.
Ms Close became a volunteer after using the service herself. Now she helps clients who she says are often given little detail about why payments are stopped.
Although the DWP says jobseekers should be told why sanctions are being applied, CAB advisors still regularly see people who are confused or completely in the dark about what has happened, Ms Close claims.
"People don't get a letter saying 'you have been sanctioned because you failed to put in 15 job applications'. Instead they are told 'over this period you are deemed not to have fulfilled your jobseeker's contract'."
This leads to problems for those who want to appeal against decisions, she adds. "How do you appeal when you don't know why the payments were stopped? People end up saying 'I think it was this...'."
Fairness is undermined by this aspect of the system, she says: "People's work search criteria can be given verbally, so how do you prove you were ever told to apply for 10 jobs a week, say?"
The idea that cutting payments is welcomed by those affected gets short shrift from her. "If an MP or any of us were five minutes late for work, would you expect to lose your money for four weeks?" she says. "Benefit claimants just don't have equal human rights. They don't have full citizenship as far as I'm concerned."
Read more...
He had previously been talking about how many jobseekers "welcomed the jolt" such sanctions gave them, and rejected claims there is a causal link between food bank use and the benefit sanctions, which can see claimants losing payments for weeks, months or even years.
The comments certainly provoked dismay at the Citizen's Advice Bureau (CAB) in Alexandria. One of its volunteers, Linsey Close, co-authored a recent report on sanctions, Unjust and Uncaring, which was scathing about their use.
Ms Close became a volunteer after using the service herself. Now she helps clients who she says are often given little detail about why payments are stopped.
Although the DWP says jobseekers should be told why sanctions are being applied, CAB advisors still regularly see people who are confused or completely in the dark about what has happened, Ms Close claims.
"People don't get a letter saying 'you have been sanctioned because you failed to put in 15 job applications'. Instead they are told 'over this period you are deemed not to have fulfilled your jobseeker's contract'."
This leads to problems for those who want to appeal against decisions, she adds. "How do you appeal when you don't know why the payments were stopped? People end up saying 'I think it was this...'."
Fairness is undermined by this aspect of the system, she says: "People's work search criteria can be given verbally, so how do you prove you were ever told to apply for 10 jobs a week, say?"
The idea that cutting payments is welcomed by those affected gets short shrift from her. "If an MP or any of us were five minutes late for work, would you expect to lose your money for four weeks?" she says. "Benefit claimants just don't have equal human rights. They don't have full citizenship as far as I'm concerned."
Read more...
