When Work and Pensions Secretary, Amber Rudd had wanted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to commission an “independent review of sanctions policy”, which could have included a review of both policy and delivery of sanctions by her department.
But in response to a request from DNS, the DWP has sent it documents confirming that the plans for an independent review of sanctions policy were abandoned in September 2019 by her successor Therese Coffey.
The Public Law Project (PLP), which last year published a report that found the system for challenging benefit sanctions posed “significant harm” to claimants, said DWP’s decision to scrap the review was “deeply disappointing”.
Caroline Selman, a PLP research fellow, said: “The finding is especially concerning amid growing evidence that sanctions pose harm to the health and finances of claimants and can damage their relationship with their work coach.
“Research published last year by Public Law Project revealed that people who try to question their sanctions face a complex, punitive, and unaccountable system in which legitimate challenge can feel futile.
“The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [Mel Stride] has pointed to the importance of having an ‘honest appraisal’ of everything the DWP does – he must now commit to re-establishing this review alongside publishing the DWP’s existing internal review so that the findings can be properly scrutinised and shaped into much-needed system reform.”
Among those disabled people whose deaths have been closely linked to the sanctions regime was David Clapson, who died in July 2013 after being left destitute by having his benefits sanctioned.
In 2015, DWP admitted that 10 of 49 benefit claimants whose deaths had been investigated through secret “peer reviews” between 2012 and 2014 had had their payments sanctioned.
And in December 2022, MPs were warned that the “aggressive attitude” on benefit sanctions taken by the DWP in the coalition years of 2013 to 2015 was “back with a vengeance”.
The latest documents are likely to add to concerns that DWP has no interest in improving the safety of its sanctions regime.
Ken Butler DR UK’s Welfare Rights and Policy Adviser said: “Given the extra costs that disabled people already face in their day-to-day lives, sanctions are especially punitive.
“There is no evidence sanctions work and they are both harmful and counterproductive.
“We want a system for those disabled people who might work, to get into work with the tailored and flexible support they need to do so.
“Instead people are subject to a regime that is finding coercive ways to get people off benefits when their health or other personal factors make this inappropriate.”
In addition, we need a system that genuinely supports the many disabled people to keep their job when they become disabled.
Source and for further information see Coffey scrapped plan for an independent review of sanctions, DWP admits available from disabilitynewsservice.com
See also our benefit sanctions factsheet.