MP blasts benefits sanctions

OLDHAM East and Saddleworth MP Debbie Abrahams has publicly lambasted a top Tory Minister for causing unnecessary suffering to thousands of benefits claimants.

The Labour MP blasted Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith at a Select Committee meeting for denying that the inappropriate use of sanctions against social security claimants is possibly contributing to the deaths of vulnerable people.

The exchange began when Mrs Abrahams asked the minister about the huge number of people who leave Jobseeker’s Allowance after being sanctioned and simply “disappear” from official records.

She said: “It is worrying that with the levels of sanctions that we are seeing, hundreds of thousands of people have had their benefits stopped for a minimum of four weeks and then approximately a quarter of these people, from the research that I’ve seen, are disappearing.

“They are leaving and we don’t know where they are going. That’s an absolute indictment of this policy and it’s a little bit worrying if we’re trying to tout this internationally as a real success story.”

Mr Duncan Smith responded: “I don’t agree with that. I think the reality is that the sanctions regime, as a part of this system, we give a huge amount of support to all those who are at the job centre.

“Job centre staff do not set out to sanction somebody just off the top of their head. They have to have pretty strong evidence and a belief that that individual is not co-operating for various reasons.”

Speaking after the meeting, Mrs Abrahams said: “Many organisations, from foodbanks to church groups and charities, have been imploring the Government to acknowledge that the new regime has created a sharp increase in the use of sanctions and has been incredibly damaging.

Research suggests more than 500,000 Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants have “disappeared” since the sanctions regime was toughened in October, 2012.

This could mean the claimant count — one of the ways of measuring unemployment — is actually 20,000 to 30,000 higher each month than government figures.