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An Alternative To Benefit Sanctions?
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So this is a big topic at the moment, a big issue. A lot of people on benefits are getting sanctioned for not complying with job centre and work programme demands. People get left with nothing to live on. Many people find this unacceptable, i also find it cruel and a flawed system.
As they seem to want to go down this road of 'do as you're told or face punishment' what else could they put in place instead of taking money away and leaving people with nothing? I think they could do some kind of 'community service' type thing where the person finds themselves having to do 4 hours in the local charity shop or picking litter in the local park on saturday morning or something until they decide to comply.
This must be a better idea than leaving people destitute and could even benefit them if they were getting a bit of work experience!
Thoughts?
As they seem to want to go down this road of 'do as you're told or face punishment' what else could they put in place instead of taking money away and leaving people with nothing? I think they could do some kind of 'community service' type thing where the person finds themselves having to do 4 hours in the local charity shop or picking litter in the local park on saturday morning or something until they decide to comply.
This must be a better idea than leaving people destitute and could even benefit them if they were getting a bit of work experience!
Thoughts?
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Comments
I've been sanctioned twice in six months - Once as the result of a computer error, once because I'd accidentally let my phone auto-correct my postcode on a job application into lower case letters (I know!). The former incident left me without any money for four weeks though it was eventually back dated. The latter incident unfolded in late January and they made it so that the two week period fell across six weeks, so I had no money at all until March. I was nearly made anorexic as I couldn't afford to eat and I only yesterday received a letter saying they will consider my case for potential back dating.
In addition to all that it has probably kept me on benefits as well, as I can't always afford to get to job interviews and it knocks my confidence in an interview tenfold as the prospect of needing work boils down to whether I will be eating that week.
I think a basic citizens income is the way to go. It would keep people going and motivate the majority to keep on top of a job search - there would be a minority that abuse the system but when has that not ever been the case? It would also potentially SAVE the taxpayer money - the amount spent on sanctions is ridiculous, especially as over half of them are overturned. They could save further money by scrapping schemes like the work programme which have been proven to make unemployment worse than it would have been if the Government hadn't done anything at all.
The days of benefits claimants being scroungers are over - it isn't fair to make people live in fear just because there aren't enough suitable jobs to meet demand. I didn't work hard at school only to finish a few years ago to be looked down on by society and punished by an incompetent job sector that doesn't know what to do with me other than empty my table of food and make my life an utter misery.
I've always strongly believed that the work programmes should be scrapped and the money used to train people for new skills ect, skills such as nurses, engineering which the UK is crying out for. This would make us less reliant on workers coming in from other countries to fill the gap. I have nothing against imigrants btw.
It's a truly horrendous waste of time. The last course i had to attend there we were all patronised to death with common sense stuff that you would have learnt by the age of 13. No one wanted to be there, everyone was so miserable. It was obvious everyone was there for only one reason - they knew they would get sanctioned otherwise
I think it depends on what the punishment is for. If they missed some form of workfare training then the time they missed should be added to their sentence. If they missed a guided job search session, as I did in February and got sanctioned a months money for, a more reasonable form of torture than possible starvation in a flat with no electric or gas would be to make them do 9-5 Job search for a couple of days at the work programme centre.
When I was in my teens I did cash in hand work for a short time twice but the place I worked at the first time got in trouble because of tax (and for employing kids that should've been at school). I'm not sure if its the same everywhere but the only work I know of that's cash in hand is building work and its hard to get if you don't already have years of experience.
The other issue with sanctions is that they are incredibly damaging. If a person is literally only scraping by, then how can losing their benefits for weeks at a time actually help or encourage them? Talk about kicking someone when they're already down.
Then there's the activity just for the sake of it. You need to complete X number of job applications a day, irrespective of whether you have the skills for those jobs. What a waste of time for the person and for the advertising company. Sifting through hundreds or thousands of irrelevant and pointless applications just so some nerk in a Government department can see a target achieved.
A sanction should be the last resort, not the first. Use some common sense and don't penalise people unjustly.
Totally agree
Or, you know, we could just not refer to anyone as a scrounger.
Iain Duncan Smith's new Pip system (replaces DLA) - already a shambles !!
Personal independence payments are a punishment of the poor and ill
Polly Toynbee
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/11/iain-duncan-smith-pip-payments-punish-poor-ill-dying?CMP=twt_gu
It's amazing, we have this thing called a minimum wage for work. If we are going to create a magical million of jobs for the unemployed, we should pay them the legal minimum for their time.
No one should be sanctioned without proper prior notice detailing the reason a sanction is proposed, and giving them proper time to appeal as well as setting out exactly how to make that appeal. And NO sanction should apply until the outcome of that appeal. It should most definitely not ever be the case that the first time someone knows they've been sanctioned is when they attempt to use the cash machine on the day their benefits were meant to be paid. To leave someone destitute, with absolutely no notice and no real idea why is completely disgusting in my opinion.
The rules need to be properly clarified too, it can often be down to a JC adviser's discretion whether or not to put someone forward for a sanction, that should not be the case. There should be clear, written guidelines on when a sanction can be applied and claimants should also be fully aware of those guidelines.
If claimants were doing a reasonable job in return for payment then they wouldn't be unemployed.
If there is enough work to keep 2 million JSA claimants occupied then make them proper jobs, and pay them the minimum wage (at least) and the problem would be solved.
You talk about "something for nothing", yet seem to think it is OK for councils and companies to essentially get labour for nothing,
But there's the other issue. JSA only makes up a very small percentage of the welfare budget, yet are one of the main scapegoats for the recession and the cost of welfare (along with the sick and disabled). If JSA was completely scrapped tomorrow it wouldn't cut income tax for working taxpayers by much, if at all.
Yet it is pensioners that account for over half of the welfare budget, but little if any of the welfare cuts affect pensioners. Why?. Pensioners tend to be active voters.
Indeed, but the cuts are supposed to be about saving money and that just isn't really going to happen unless they can tackle costs of the biggest benefactors of the welfare state, and the burden is growing and set to grow further as the population ages.
It IS going to have be looked at at some stage, but it is a political hot potato given that pensioners are active voters.
You might want to do a bit of research into citizen's income. It is a concept supported by liberals and libertarians alike.