The Work and Pensions Committee has decided to conduct an inquiry into benefit sanctions policy

Disability Rights UK wishes to make a response to the select committee of MPs investigation into benefits sanctions. We invite our supporters and those visiting our website to send us their testimony on how benefit sanctions have affected them and if they have successfully appealed a sanction and on what grounds they were successful. Finally we would also like to hear your views on non-financial sanctions too. Please could you send your testimony and thoughts by December 5th toPhilip.connolly@disabilityrightsuk.org

Background

This inquiry will consider aspects of sanctions policy which were outside the remit of the Oakley Review.

The Committee is particularly interested in: 

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) sanctions, including: whether the current ESA sanctions regime is appropriate and proportionate for jobseekers with ill health and disabilities; and the reasons for recent sharp increases in the number of ESA sanctions
Whether particular groups of ESA and JSA claimants (by impairment type; age; gender etc.) are proportionately more likely to be sanctioned than others
To follow up the Committee's recommendation for a full independent review, to investigate the purpose, effects and efficacy of benefit sanctions, and to consider the issues such a review would need to take into account, including
What are the current sanctions regimes trying to achieve and what evidence is there that they work?

 To what extent are sanctions justified solely as a means of ensuring that unemployed benefit claimants fulfil the conditions of benefit entitlement?
What evidence is there that benefit sanctions also encourage claimants to engage more actively in job-seeking and ultimately move into employment? How could this be measured?
What are the wider implications of sanctions in terms of their impacts on claimants?

What are the alternatives to the current sanctions regimes? For example:

How might the current system of financial sanctions be altered to make it more appropriate or effective?
Is there a case for non-financial sanctions?
What form could non-financial sanctions take?
Are there examples of good practice from other countries?

Submissions do not need to address all of these points.

The deadline for submitting evidence is Friday 12 December.

For more information go to http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-sele...

- See more at: http://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2014/november/mps-examine-benefit...