Latest briefing on sanctions statistics from David Webster

I attach my quarterly briefing on the JSA and ESA sanctions statistics released by DWP on 12 August. There has been a fall both numbers and rates, but levels remain very high.

Supported by Jonathan Portes of NIESR, I made a successful complaint to the UK Statistics Authority about various misrepresentations in the DWP’s sanctions statistics and the UKSA has made recommendations for improvements. Details are given in the briefing. The briefing also has a summary of the various non-statistical events of the past quarter in relation to sanctions.

Dr David Webster
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Urban Studies
School of Social and Political Sciences
University of Glasgow

Interesting that this report refers to ‘reviews, reconsiderations and appeals’ – the definitions used are informative -

‘Mandatory Reconsideration, with initial capitals, and its abbreviation MR, means the whole new appeal system introduced on 28 October 2013
‘mandatory reconsideration’, without initial capitals, and never abbreviated, means the formal reconsideration of a sanction decision undertaken by the DWP’s Disputes Resolution Team.
‘decision review’ means the informal process of reconsideration now undertaken by the original Decision Maker (but previously undertaken by a different Decision Maker) when a claimant first challenges a sanction
‘internal review’ is a term embracing both ‘decision review’ and ‘mandatory reconsideration’
‘appeal’ means a formal appeal to a Tribunal
‘challenge’ means any challenge to a sanction decision, i.e. it embraces ‘decision reviews’, ‘mandatory reconsiderations’ and Tribunal appeals’

I agree that this is what is going on. It is not what we were told would happen. Furthermore, from my experience, cases are being ‘reviewed’, then pinged off to a distant DM and it is the work of weeks and months to get any sort of decision, never mind an MRN. Mandatory Reconsideration has become a way of booting cases off in to limbo until the claimant gives up.

Latest from David Webster -

Dear Colleague

David

Analysis from David Webster of the reasons why JSA sanctions rose and fell so much over the past six years . He says -

In particular, the analysis shows that:

1. There must have been a ministerial decision in May 2010 to push up JSA sanction referrals.

2. There was probably another ministerial decision in about October 2013 to ease them off, although this is less clear.

3. Referrals for every reason for JSA sanction are now much more likely to produce an actual sanction than they were in 2010, though it is not clear whether ministers or officials are responsible for this.

4. The rise and fall of referrals of claimants to the Work Programme was responsible for a large part of the rise and fall of JSA sanctions, and probably accounts for all of the rise and fall of ESA sanctions.

5. The decision by DWP to require Work Programme contractors to refer claimants for sanction in case of any breach of requirements, even when they are obviously co-operating, layed a major role in the rise of both JSA and ESA sanctions and in generating a huge number of abortive referrals as well as a lot of unjust sanctions. For the reasons given in the paper, I do not think the DWP is correct in claiming that its hands were tied legally in this respect. But it is in any case vital that the successor arrangements to the Work Programme, currently in preparation, should not recreate the Work Programme’s bias towards sanctions.

CPAG have now very helpfully put together a page putting together all David Webster’s briefings and other papers relating to benefit sanctions -

http://www.cpag.org.uk/david-webster