My Lords, I speak to Amendment 57, tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton, and with the support of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. Its purpose is to provide for a full, independent review of the operation of the sanctions regime, to determine the effectiveness of sanctions in moving claimants into sustained work as well as any adverse impact on particular groups. It echoes a recommendation made twice by the Work and Pensions Committee but rejected by the Government.
The Government gave three main reasons for rejection in response to the committee’s recent report on sanctions. First, they wanted the improvements already made to bed in. Welcome as the improvements may be, they do not meet all recommendations from either the committee or the earlier Oakley review. There is evidence from many quarters that problems persist. Secondly, the Government argue that international evidence is clear that benefit regimes tied to conditionality get people into work. Last week the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, pointed to how the international evidence is not unequivocally in support of the value of sanctions and getting people into sustained work and achieving positive, longer-term outcomes. In any case, I do not see the relevance to the case for a review of this sanctions regime. Similarly, the Government point to wide agreement that sanctions play a vital role in supporting conditionality—up to a point, provided they are,
“applied appropriately, fairly and proportionately”,
to quote the Work and Pensions Committee. But the whole point is that few agree that they are. That is why we need an independent review that goes beyond the narrow remit of the Oakley review, helpful as that was.
Last week the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, referred to the toxic effect of sanctions. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, cited some of the evidence, drawing on her experience as a member of the Fawcett inquiry into the impact on women, particularly lone mothers, rather spoiling the rosy picture painted by the Minister on Wednesday night.
There is also evidence from a wide range of organisations, such as Gingerbread, Citizens Advice and local advice agencies, including an Advice Nottingham report I helped to launch the other day. More evidence has emerged since our last sitting from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty, in the foreword to which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed shock at sanctions’ contribution to widespread hunger and reliance on food banks; and from Crisis, which published a study from Sheffield Hallam University that found that sanctions were leading to homelessness and exacerbating the situation of those already homeless, particularly those
with mental health problems. I do not have time to document this evidence, but I want to interrogate some of the department’s responses to the Work and Pensions Committee’s recommendations, drawing on an analysis by Dr David Webster of Glasgow University, to whom I am indebted, as I am for his regular analysis of the sanctions statistics. I am glad to say that these show some improvement recently, but the rate remains well above the pre-2010 rate.
The response to the committee’s report was perhaps spun to give the impression that it had conceded rather more than it had. In particular, what was dubbed acceptance of a yellow-card system looks more like a deferred red card to allow for representations to the referee. I am sure my colleagues know that I do not normally draw on football metaphors. The recommendation was that the:
“DWP pilot pre-sanction written warnings and non-financial sanctions”,
for first-time incidents of non-compliance. The response was to,
“trial arrangements whereby claimants are given a warning of our intention to sanction, and a 14-day period to provide evidence of good reason before the decision to sanction is made”,
and to,
“provide further evidence to explain their non-compliance”.
That is a welcome improvement but I am sure noble Lords can spot the difference. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, himself, in a previous role, called for first-time non-compliance to be met with a written warning rather than a sanction. The Oakley review called for the trial of non-financial sanctions for first-time failures. SSAC, too, favours such an approach.
In eliding it with a recommendation for an independent review, the department also rejected without explanation the call for an evaluation of the efficacy and impact of the four-week minimum sanction period under the 2012 Act, compared with a minimum period of one week. Perhaps we could have an explanation now.
The current chair of the Work and Pensions Committee has written to the Secretary of State to express his disappointment at the refusal to accept the recommendation on monitoring the destination of sanctioned claimants. As he argues:
“Monitoring employment outcomes is surely fundamental to understanding … the ultimate aim of getting claimants back into work and out of poverty”.
The Secretary of State’s response to this crucial recommendation referred simply to quality-assuring universal credit statistics, with a reference to other unspecified factors that might affect claimant destinations, which was not very encouraging. Surely the department wants to know whether sanctions are moving claimants into sustained work and what happens when they are not. The Crisis study found that, perversely, sanctions were pushing some of those affected further from the labour market and that homelessness service users were begging, borrowing and stealing to meet their daily need. Indeed, some actually said that they were trying to get put into jail because it would be better than destitution. Surely the department wants to know the impact on the health and well-being of those sanctioned and their families, which, again, the Crisis study and others have shown can be very negative.
These are all issues that an independent review would address and that I really believe that the department itself surely wants to know the answer to.
5.15 pm
I will finish by putting a human face on the operation of sanctions. I recently co-hosted with my noble friend Lord Beecham the presentation of a report, Our Lives: Challenging Attitudes to Poverty in 2015, which recounted 20 true stories, illustrating the damaging effects of previous social security reform and the endurance and efforts to survive of the people affected. One of the women whose stories were told, called Sally in the report, spoke at the meeting, which was also addressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro. People were very moved by her account of how her disabled son, who lived with her, was sanctioned. It is a shame that the Minister could not hear her, so I am enabling him—and her—to hear an edited version now.
Sally’s son had had extensive back surgery, which limited him in what he could do. He was forced to leave college in order to sign on. She explained that,
“once on JSA, Chris had no consideration shown for his condition, but was bullied and pressured and put down, judged. He was sent for jobs he could not do because of his back. The disability adviser was the same and no help. On the way to an appointment at the back to work scheme provider, his bus was held up with a number of roadworks and with no credit on his phone, he panicked. He arrived 10 minutes late and signed in at reception. The adviser sat glaring at Chris for a while as she typed away, before walking over to him and going at him verbally abusing him including a threat of a sanction. When the sanction happened I couldn’t believe it. In tears I asked an adviser what am I meant to do, chuck him out? She told me, ‘Fine, let us know when you’ve done it because we need to update the change of circumstances’. It was soul destroying. I had to support him on my benefits. I felt disrespected. They showed such callous, unfeeling indifference. In shock and shame and embarrassment, I went to a church food bank, their humanity and kindness and awareness of the huge struggles we all face made me weep. I still keep in touch with them.
Seven months later at the tribunal the papers clearly showed the adviser had lied [a regional manager of the work scheme provider had accepted that Chris should not have been sanctioned as he signed on but was just a bit late]. I felt sick to my stomach and really disturbed the whole time and I hated the politicians who spoke on the telly who strongly maintain that sanctions are rare, that it’s a last resort”.
She praised the tribunal and the food bank and finished by observing, “There but for the grace of God go any one of us in need”. Afterwards, when I asked her if I could have her speaking notes, because I said to her that I wanted to try to relay what she said to this House, she added—she said, “Please say this”, although she did not want to say it herself in the meeting—that her son had said to her at one point, “If it wasn’t for you, Mum, I’d throw myself on the tracks and kill myself”. This is what this inhumane system is doing to people. Its operation must be reviewed. I beg to move.