Calls For Review Into Benefit Penalties

There are calls for a full independent review into Jobcentre's handling of benefit penalties.

It's over concerns benefits are being stopped unfairly - when a person was either ill, attending a job interview or on work experience.

A group of MPs will today call for an investigation into the process and to see whether targets for sanctions exist.

JJ Tatten from The Warren Project in Hull recently launched a campaign on the issue. He says many vulnerable young people in the city have been wrongly targetted and it's having a serious impact. He told Viking FM:

"When we looked at the root causes of debt, homelessness and food poverty one of the primary causal factors was unfair benefit sanctions. This is young people being unfairly sanctioned for either being at a funeral, being at the bed side of a critically ill friend, being at a job interview or while they were on work experience; it does seem that it is a different rule for young people and they do appear to be the targets of sanctions that need to be hit so we welcome that something is now being done about it.

"If you have nothing, to be in a situation where you have even less than nothing is just impossible. It's plunged people into homelessness, they've had to depend on friends and family who often don't have very much money themselves so it exasperates the problem and there's no need for it, that's the most galling thing, it is just uncivilised.

"If you suddenly find youself in a situation where you have no money, nowhere to live, you cannot afford to feed yourself and you're already in debt, that is going to impact your mental health in a massive way because you incorrectly start to question your own worth and to have that further impacted upon by unfair sanctions is going to do some serious damage.

"I think that that committee when they look into the reasons behind unfair sanctioning will realise that some job centres in some parts of the country have been acting as a law to themselves and all we ask is that they consider each and every case reasonably."

Dame Anne Begg MP, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, said:

“Benefit sanctions are controversial because they withhold subsistence-level benefits from people who may have little or no other income. We agree that benefit conditionality is necessary but it is essential that policy is based on clear evidence of what works in terms of encouraging people to take up the support which is available to help them get back into work. The policy must then be applied fairly and proportionately. The system must also be capable of identifying and protecting vulnerable people, including those with mental health problems and learning disabilities. And it should avoid causing severe financial hardship. The system as currently applied does not always achieve this.”