The NEF instead sets out the case for an alternative approach that would better balance support and accountability, to improve experiences and outcomes while retaining public support.
The NEF recommends ending the most strict and prescriptive aspects of the current approach to conditionality, such as a specified number of hours per week of job search and the requirement to apply for and accept any job recommended by a work coach.
This approach would look to maximise genuine engagement with support and would only resort to conditionality as a backstop:
- During an initial period (NEF suggests three months), work coaches would look to engage with people voluntarily, with a focus on understanding their experiences, skills, aspirations, and barriers and building an effective working relationship.
- Support should be flexible and built around a genuinely co-produced plan, which sets out mutual expectations between the work coach and the person they are supporting, but not prescriptive requirements to be monitored and enforced.
- If, after an initial period of attempted voluntary engagement, there is no evidence of activity or progress, a work coach could request a review as to whether more prescriptive conditionality is required. Additional barriers such as disabilities, health conditions, and caring responsibilities should exempt people from this.
- If more specific requirements are set but not met, a warning and another review should occur before any sanctions are imposed. Sanctions should never take a household below a minimum level of income necessary for them to meet their essential costs. Sanctions should also be refundable if someone reengages.
The NEF says that: “This approach would shift the system away from a starting question of “How much conditionality is it reasonable to place on this person?” to one of “How can we most effectively engage with and support this person?”.
Findings from an NEF online survey of more than 2,000 adults in the UK, include that:
- 69% favoured trying to support people into secure, fairly paid jobs with opportunities for progression over getting people into any job as soon as possible
- 62% thought jobcentres should prioritise offering a positive service to those who want support over enforcing sanctions against those who don’t follow the rules
Tom Pollard, head of social policy at the NEF said:
“Politicians tend to assume that the public want the strictest regime around out-of-work benefits possible.
“Successive governments have tried to push people back to work through poverty-rate benefits and the threat of sanctions.
“We now know that this approach is making it less likely that people will get into good jobs that they can thrive in and is pushing many to feel unable to engage with Jobcentre support in the first place. All of this is leading to a higher a greater cost to the public purse.
“The public is ready for our benefits system to shift from a focus on compliance to positively supporting people into good jobs, and our new government should listen.”
Ken Butler DR UK’s Welfare Rights and Policy Advisor said: “The NEF research is a welcome debunking of the dangerous myth that the use of conditionality and sanctions will increase the employment of Disabled People.
“However, while it seems to exempt Disabled people from “prescriptive conditionality, the NEF suggests it use for claimants after a trial voluntary period of three months.
“Employment support should not be compulsory and backed by sanction threats.”
Employment support needs to sell itself and be co-produced by Disabled people and of a quality and personalised design that will lead to its voluntary take-up.
The NEF report Terms of engagement: Rethinking conditionality to support more people into better jobs is available from neweconomics.org.
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