Welfare Reform Bill

We have very limited experience of the employment and support allowance. It came in only in October last year and it is far too early to evaluate its impact. I stress again that the thrust and focus of ESA is for people who are disabled or who have a health condition and, therefore, to mirror that exactly is not necessarily appropriate. That is why I return to the fact that we want to test the conditionality provided for in the Bill. There are also issues about the extent to which sanctions effectively encourage compliance. The internal Department for Work and Pensions’ administrative data show that, under the current income support regime, around one in 20 lone parents who are subjected to the work-focused interview regime are sanctioned each year but of those sanctioned more than half go on to attend a work-focused interview within six months. We do not see sanctioning as the objective of the regime, as it means a failure of the regime, but there is evidence that a sanctioning regime is a necessary component of the conditionality in which we ask people to engage.