Kate Bell
The Department for Work and Pensions launched its White Paper on the Universal Credit last week. One of its most heavily trailed elements was the increase in sanctions for those who fail to seek or find work (on top of the already announced automatic sanction of 10% of Housing Benefit for those on Jobseeker’s Allowance for more than a year).
The White Paper wants to introduce the power for advisers to remove people’s benefits for periods ranging between one week and three years. When advisers believe that claimants would ‘benefit from experiencing the habits and routines of working life’ they will have the power to mandate them to four weeks of compulsory work activity. And advisers will also be able to
“require some jobseekers to attend their local office more frequently to demonstrate the steps they have been taking to return to work; require some people to broaden their job search earlier in their claim; and raise the number of steps they expect a customer to take in any week to have the best prospects of finding work”.
There’s little evidence that these proposals will help those out of work to find jobs, given that there are currently over five jobseekers for every vacancy. But work on Community Links’ Deep Value project, which is examining the importance of effective one to one relationships in public services, suggests that giving advisers more power to sanction claimants may in fact make employment programmes less effective.
