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Soaring number of sanctions against unemployed amid claims that DWP staff are being told to trip people up with paperwork
Rising numbers of vulnerable jobseekers are being tricked into losing benefits amid growing pressure to meet welfare targets, a Jobcentre Plus adviser has told the Guardian.
A whistleblower said staff at his jobcentre were given targets of three people a week to refer for sanctions, where benefits are removed for up to six months. He said it was part of a "culture change" since last summer that had led to competition between advisers, teams and regional offices.
"Suddenly you're not helping somebody into sustainable employment, which is what you're employed to do," he said. "You're looking for ways to trick your customers into 'not looking for work'. You come up with many ways. I've seen dyslexic customers given written job searches, and when they don't produce them – what a surprise – they're sanctioned. The only target that anyone seems to care about is stopping people's money.
"'Saving the public purse' is the catchphrase that is used in our office … It is drummed home all the time – you're saving the public purse. Feel good about stopping someone's money, you've just saved your own pocket. Its a joke."
The claims came as the big businesses handed contracts to get the long term jobless into worktoday said the government should privatise jobcentres so that their firms could work with people who have been jobless for less than a year.
Statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show the total number of cases where people have lost their benefits has soared since the beginning of 2010 to 75,000 in October, the latest month available. The figures also reveal the number of claimants with registered disabilities being cut off has more than doubled to almost 20,000 over the same period.
This follows a change in the rules in April last year where sanctions were extended to claimants who were late for jobcentre interviews and other less serious offences.
When a claimant is sanctioned their jobseeker's allowance is stopped. They then have to apply for hardship payments, which are usually about half the allowance, or just over £30 a week. John, in Wigan, has been sanctioned for six months and says he has to rely on food parcels and must sleep on his friend's couch. "It's left me in a state of depression. I've lost weight, I'm tired … I feel like I've been attacked for no reason."
The whistleblower blamed the targets. "We were told suddenly that [finding someone to sanction] once a week wasn't good enough, we were far behind other offices, and we went to a meeting where they compared us with other offices, and said we now have to do three a week to catch up. Most staff go into work and they're thinking about it from moment one – who am I going to stop this week?"
The DWP denies there are specific targets, but the Guardian has seen email evidence of referral targets in one office, and the issue of targets has been raised by employees on online forums.
The DWP said: "To say that we are targeting vulnerable people is ridiculous. We only sanction people if they do not adhere to their agreement. We are massively expanding the help and support that jobseekers will receive to ensure that they get the right help and support to get into work. If someone is incapable of work, they will continue to receive unconditional support."
But the whistleblower said the policy hit the vulnerable instead of hardcore benefit cheats, who he said were a small group. "The young often fall into it, because they haven't been there long enough, they are generally a major target. The uneducated are another major target. I've seen people with … seriously low educational standards and it's easy to exploit them."
He said staff had different ways to ensure they could stop benefits for a set amount of people. "So, for example, if you want someone to diversify – they're an electrician or a plumber, they may not want to go into call centres or something. What you do is keep promoting such and such a job, and you pressure them into taking it off you, the piece of paper. Then in two weeks you look at the system, you ask them if they applied for it … they say no – you stop their money for six months.
"You very rarely see the hardcore taken because they know the forms – they know it better than the staff, the system."
Shirley Cramer of the charity Dyslexia Action warned that the true impact on people with learning difficulties was likely to be higher because in many cases it was a hidden disability. "Because we know there are large numbers of them, and that they are hidden, and that they are over-represented in disadvantaged groups, they are very much at risk. And we know that with a bit of help they can be terrific employees."
Martin John, national officer for the Public and Commercial Services Union, said ministers had demanded a tougher approach since the general election. "We are against the use of targets for labour market sanctions, and are worried about the financial impact on people."
Citizens Advice has reported a significant rise in clients who have had their benefits cut. Andy Robertson, a caseworker in South Tyneside, an area with 13% unemployment, has a huge pile of paperwork for appeals, and says his casework has more than doubled in the last year. "What's happening at the moment is possibly the worst thing I've ever seen with regard to practice from the DWP. Clients seem to be getting sanctioned for next to nothing," he said.
Robertson worked for eight years as an adviser and financial assessor at jobcentres. He has also seen the changes affect many vulnerable clients, such as those with dyslexia or mental health problems. "Advisers were previously exercising their discretion … now the client-adviser balance doesn't seem to exist any more."
Yvonne Fovargue, the Labour MP for Makerfield, raised the issue of sanctioning in parliament during a reading of the new Welfare Reform Act. She is worried that at a time when funding to support groups such as Citizens Advice is being cut, an even stricter regime is being introduced.
Fovargue said the situation would only get worse with the drive to bring people off incapacity benefit and on to the jobseeker's allowance, where they are suddenly exposed to these sanctions.
The whistleblower also thinks there will be an impact. "A lot of them haven't been in work for a number of years. So I'm not expecting them to understand the system … which will make for easy sanctions.
"This cannot be right that we are using a department that's supposed to help people into work to stop them getting benefit that a lot of them are entitled to."
In Wigan, John said he first found out he had been sanctioned when the money did not appear in his account on the usual day. His jobcentre told him it was because he had missed the deadline for three jobs. He said his Jobcentre adviser said he would send application forms in the post, but they arrived too late. "It's outrageous … to leave someone with no money for six months. It's totally hindered my jobsearching, I spend all of my time dealing with these problems now."
The whistleblower says his office has been told there is no more money for back to work training from April. "From April, we offer no provision … nothing, no training course, nothing. The funding ends at the end of March.
"[Now] your office can shine through one of two targets. You can either shine through getting people into work, but that's really difficult. Or you can stop their money, and that's really easy."
Case study John Robson, 53, South Shields
"It never seems to go away. Every day you're thinking: 'I haven't got a letter today, so obviously there isn't a sanction going against me.' Another day there's a brown envelope from the DWP and you think: 'What's this for?' There's always that cloud hanging over you."
Robson was made redundant from his job as a delivery driver 13 months ago. "I was 17 when I started work so I've been working for 35 years. I'm not Jack the lad who's never been in a job and is trying to con the government. I want to work, I just can't get a job.
"You try your best, and the minute you do something wrong, they're on you like a ton of bricks."
Robson has been sanctioned three times. First he was ill and missed a jobcentre appointment. Next he was sanctioned for not applying for one job. "I was sure I had applied for it but I couldn't find evidence that I had. If you apply for job after job after job, and you get nowhere with it, you can lose track."
Robson turned to Citizens Advice for help. He won the appeal, but his financial situation remains precarious. "It reached the point where I'd visit my mother and sit there for hours just to get warm, use her shower and cooker, because I couldn't afford the gas and electricity."
Recently he was sanctioned for a week, again for not applying for a job. "Because of all the hassle with them I thought, 'What the hell,' and just gave up on it. I shouldn't have accepted it, but you get ground down so much. So many things go wrong when you're unemployed, and you just get so disheartened.
"It's actually quite frightening being out there. And nobody seems to care. It's like a lot of things of life – things are set in place by people who don't actually experience it themselves."
Additional reporting: Lisa Evans
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Government admits Jobcentres set targets to take away benefits
Department of Work and Pensions backtracks on denial of Guardian investigation that some jobcentres have been taking people off benefits amid pressure to meet targets
Jobcentre staff around the country have been involved in a drive to kick people off benefits amid pressure to meet welfare targets set by their managers, the government has admitted.
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) initially dismissed revelations in the Guardian last weekend that Jobcentre Plus employees were tricking vulnerable claimants into losing welfare entitlements. A whistleblower said staff at his jobcentre were given targets of three people a week to refer for sanctions, where benefits are removed for up to six months.
The work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, appeared on Sky News on Sunday claiming it was "claptrap" that anyone would "hand out edicts to staff to sanction three people", and said the story was a "conspiracy".
Since then, further email evidence has been uncovered showing individual or group targets are being imposed to stop people's benefits at offices across the country. In some cases staff have claimed they have been threatened with sanctions themselves if they do not reach the targets.
Following the Guardian investigation, a group of trade unions representing jobcentre staff have written to management seeking "urgent clarification" on the issue of targets for referrals and sanctions.
The DWP has backtracked and released a statement confirming the practice had been going on in some offices due to a misunderstanding between the department and some jobcentre managers. It insisted this was no longer the case.
"A few weeks ago ministers discovered that their message to be clearer about conditionality had been misinterpreted by a small number of Jobcentre Plus offices who had imposed targets for the number of sanction referrals. These targets were immediately removed.
"We are clear that there is no wrong or right level of how many sanctions an office should make and they should only be made where people have not adhered to their jobseeker obligations. We have already taken rapid steps to reinforce this message to our staff. Ministers would not countenance any target for sanctioning customers."
The Guardian has spoken to several more jobcentre staff who, speaking anonymously, claim that targets and pressure to stop people's benefits still exist in their office, and that vulnerable clients are often affected. One employee claimed the practice had been going on at his office since they joined in July 2009.
One personal adviser backed up claims that targets led advisers to "set up" claimants. He said: "On the question of tricking customers – it's quite true. You box them in so that they go wrong themselves. The whole system is now orientated to stopping rather than enabling."
He said people with poor English skills were often targeted in his office. "For example, an African man who had managed to get part-time work and was studying English. His jobsearch was far more adequate than most, but managers specifically spent time going through it and comparing it to his agreement to see where they could trip him up. It was deemed inadequate and he was sanctioned. It's easy to sanction these people because he didn't know what was going on."
Another jobcentre employee with several years' experience said: "If staff are chasing targets, they will themselves target the easiest [claimants], for example people with learning disabilities, or people with English as a second language. It's the easiest way to meet those targets under pressure."
He said he had seen people threatened with the sack for not meeting targets. "If you are a good adviser, you would actually expect to sanction less people, as you will convince them of the importance of meeting the conditions to get their jobseeker's allowance [JSA]."
Another former personal adviser said the priority was clear when he joined in July 2009. "The first thing that happened is they took us to a presentation where we were shown a big league table of statistics, including sanctions. They pointed out the offices that were doing well – it's like it's a big competition.
"I was threatened by management for asking too many questions. I felt what we were doing in some cases was unlawful." He said he believed offices had "their own take" on social security law in terms of the strictness with which they were sanctioning people, and that "management, and the culture of [Jobcentre Plus] – with only a few exceptions – viewed claimants with contempt."
A jobcentre personal adviser agreed that targets for sanction referrals were not new, but said: "The targets [for sanctions] have got higher and the options for getting people into jobs have got fewer. People are being treated as numbers, there is no sense of individuality.
"The advisers in our office are struggling to get through the huge numbers of claimants, so no wonder [the claimants] are being treated like numbers … We are pushing people through as fast as possible."
It has also emerged that Citizens Advice in Wigan, one of the areas investigated by the Guardian, had compiled a report on the "growing problem in the way the jobcentre are dealing with the issue of sanctions", and had submitted it to the DWP.
The report says 41 people came to Citizens Advice with the problem between September 2010 and January this year, compared to eight people in the same period the previous year.
"We feel that many of our clients who are genuinely doing all they can to improve their chances of seeking employment and are meeting their jobseeker's agreements in full, are being unfairly sanctioned," the report said. "It could be argued that the way some JSA sanctions are applied is vindictive."
Cases documented include a homeless man and clients whose homes were at risk due to the knock-on effect on other benefits. The report says many of the people sanctioned often did not realise until they checked their bank accounts, and that some clients had been "actively advised against appealing [against] their decisions" by jobcentre staff.
A jobseeker who signed on for the first time on Monday told the Guardian: "I did not expect the conversation I had with the jobcentre adviser, who was completely unknown to me. He seemed very afraid, that if he didn't carry out these instructions he would be the next one signing on.
"He asked me to imagine: 'A manager comes round on a Friday afternoon and says I have to find one more person to sanction to meet my target; I have one client with previous for GBH, and another with learning disabilities. Who am I going to choose?'"
The Public and Commercial Services Union general secretary, Mark Serwotka, called on Iain Duncan Smith to apologise for "outrageous spin". "When this story broke Mr Duncan Smith described it as claptrap and a conspiracy, but faced with the overwhelming evidence that these targets are still in place, his department has been forced to backtrack.
"The secretary of state should issue a full and public apology. When MPs return from their Easter break he should also be asked to explain to parliament why he tried to mislead the public.
"We fundamentally oppose the use of targets for welfare sanctions and we call on the Department for Work and Pensions to put an immediate stop to this abuse of the system."