Ahead of this year’s Autumn Statement, Mel Stride, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, unveiled a new initiative called the ‘Back to Work’ plan. The aim of the package is to focus on the over 1 million people who are either long-term unemployed or have long-term health conditions or disabilities and who depend on welfare benefits for their income.
The measure does include providing additional individual support, but there is also an intention to introduce additional levels of conditionality and sanctions, including additional contact with the Jobcentre for some Universal Credit claimants, mandatory work placement trials, and a review for those people who remain unemployed after going through Restart. This review might trigger additional work-search conditions and if claimants do not adhere to these they could see their claims denied altogether.
The plan further specifies stricter sanctions for those considered to be “disengaged” – people, for example, who do not attend multiple successive Jobcentre appointments. Potential sanctions here include closing benefit claims and withholding additional support, such as free prescriptions and legal aid.
The plan follows on from, and ties in with, previously announced plans to change the medical assessment system for disability benefits. DWP have been “consulting” on the idea that from 2025 the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – used to determine the severity of health limitations for employment purposes- will be altered, the aim being to reducing the number of claims for “limited capability for work and work-related activity” (and also, potentially, the total number of “successful” claims). People in the limited capability for work and work-related activity category get a higher level of support with fewer conditions attached.
It was in the context of this consultation that the Government started to put about the idea that developments in “home working” would make it easier for people with illnesses and disabilities to find work, and this presumption seems to inform the “Back to Work” proposals in general.
We think that many of the points we made in our response to the DWP consultation are apposite to the “Plan” overall, and we make our submission available here:
Whilst the funding of additional support is welcome the overall flavour of the “Plan” is a cocktail of deplorable attitudes: bad-mouthing claimants, talk of them “taking tax-payers for a ride”, sits alongside the dismissive, de-humanising conviction that coercion, pestering and punishment are the only language that the poor understand – the whole wrapped up in expectations of the options available to the sick and disabled that are blissfully free of any input from lived experience.
Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, was quoted in Personnel Today” as saing: “At a time of record sickness levels and persistent worker shortages, the government should be focused on tackling the drivers of ill health, while supporting those with long-term conditions who want work to find a job that is right for them.
“Pushing people into ‘any job’ will not alleviate worker shortages that some sectors are facing. It is vital the government’s offer provides adequate support for some of the most vulnerable people in society into good quality, secure and long-term employment.”
“The government’s previous proposals to push people into ‘any job’ have not resulted in long-term results – and the Department for Work and Pensions’ own evidence from 2020 suggests sanctions are not effective and slow people’s progress back into work.”
Dr Roman Raczka, President-Elect of the British Psychological Society, said:
“While there are some positive elements of the new ‘Back to Work Plan’ from the government, the increased threat of benefit sanctions is hugely damaging and a big step backwards.
“We know that the threat of benefit sanctions is detrimental to claimants who are struggling with their mental health. Mandatory activities, combined with the threat of sanctions create a toxic environment of fear and put simply, they do not work.
“Poverty and mental health is a vicious cycle and the answer to tackling the growing number of people struggling with their mental health is not threat or fear, but rather to treat people with compassion and provide access to appropriate professional support.”
According to the “Benefits and Work” website, the level of Universal Credit sanctions is already close to returning to its peak: “The latest DWP statistics reveal that over half a million universal credit (UC) claimants have been sanctioned in the year to July 2023. The proportion of claimants sanctioned is now getting close to the peak rate in October 2022”.
We should bear in mind the findings made by John Hills in his 2015 study “Good Times, Bad Times: The welfare Myth of Them and Us”. Our ever-changing lives, and our insecurity as workers to the vagaries of chance, mean that all of us face the risk if relying on the support of the welfare system at some time or other, not just some advantage-taking welfare-dependent minority.