UK Parliament / Open data

Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

My Lords, I should like to support my noble friend by saying that I am mortified about the additional numbers on the other side as the result of our strenuous debate. I thought that we might have persuaded a few more to abstain.

I hope that the Minister can agree to this amendment. There are three broad reasons why we need new guidance and clarity on the sanctions regime: the issue of targets/norms, good cause and compliance. The Joseph Rowntree

research that came out in December 2010 shows that claimants have a low level of awareness of sanctions and that the more disadvantaged they are, the higher the risk of sanctions and the less knowledge they have about them. This applies to young claimants, those with a disability, those with a poor education, those with large families and those from an ethnic minority. The research shows that they are not out to flout the system but that they have poor information or non-intentional behaviour such as forgetfulness. In that context, I want us to support my noble friend’s amendment.

I turn first to the issue of targets. The Minister was at some pains to explain to us earlier that “targets” is a relevant word only where you are rewarding behaviour, but when you are punishing it, that is a “norm”. We know that if you exceed, you get a target, and that if you underachieve, that is a norm. It is clear that targets or norms, whatever we want to call them, are the enemy of mitigation. Using them to allow the Secretary of State to claim clean hands while the staff do the dirty work under pressure from above is completely unacceptable. We need clear evidence, guidance and clarity from the Minister on the sanctions regime to ensure that targets do not stand in the way of mitigation. If people are allowed to mitigate and sanctions numbers therefore reduce, so will the targets, and staff will obviously have an incentive to fail to ensure that claimants follow good procedure and appropriate behaviour because they themselves face disciplinary action. That is a moral, or immoral, position, into which they should not be put.

Secondly, we need this guidance to ensure that claimants are aware that they may be able to mitigate sanctions by establishing good cause. My noble friend gave the example of the lone parent unable to attend an interview. Every parent in this House has had a child who has been sick and they may have missed an interview as a result. There is no doctor’s evidence because, by the next day, the child is well. Certainly that happened to me on numerous occasions. However, in this new, suspicious, look-for-any-benefit-cutting-excuse, hunt-them-down culture, of course we all now assume that any lone parent will keep her child at home and away from school simply to avoid an inconvenient interview. She says that the child was poorly, but why believe her? As she can provide no evidence, the office has got her and another tick is put on the whiteboard.

The third reason for needing guidance on mitigation is that, as the courts have indicated, claimants need to know and have a right to know how they may end their sanction by complying with jobcentre requirements. This issue marks the crucial line as to whether we are using sanctions to reduce the benefit bill or whether we are using them to change behaviour. If it is the first, giving little information or hope for people to find their way back into the system, then the Minister risks creating a growing underclass without income, without much hope and without any help. But people, as Carlyle pointed out 150 years ago, will not starve quietly. Some may have families to help them, and they will be the relatively lucky ones. Some may beg, while others will cross the line into thieving, drug selling and semi-criminal behaviour. This is what the Rowntree trust warns us of. They will come to regard

social security laws, in so far as they understand them, and increasingly other laws, as not applicable to them. We will all then pay a high price. If it is the second—that instead of simply trying to cut the benefit bill on any hook we can find, we want people to change their behaviour and sanctions are part of the tough love regime, as I believe they should be—then we absolutely must encourage people to end sanctions by complying with what they are expected to do. When they do so, we should rejoice, even though it means fewer ticks on the whiteboard of targets to be met.

Research evidence shows up that up to two-thirds of those sanctioned do not know the whys or wherefores, or what they can do about it. The Minister, whose integrity we totally respect, accepted at Second Reading that that was indeed the case and that therefore the issue of sanctions had to be revisited. If the issue has to be revisited, he should now accept my noble friend’s amendment, because it amplifies what he himself has already agreed. Mitigation means ending the culture of targets and, incidentally, protecting any whistleblowers in the process. It means ensuring that people have the help that they need to claim good cause where that exists and it ensures mitigation so that claimants will know how they can end the sanction by conforming to benefit requirements. I hope that all in this Committee agree on these three goals. In which case, I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
744 cc950-2 
Session
2012-13
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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