James Elliott writes:
“Getting serious” about
mental health is all the rage in this election, with Nick Clegg talking about the taboo of suicide and Ed
Miliband’s claim that mental health is the “biggest unaddressed health challenge of our age”.
So why not pledge to
abolish benefit sanctions which punish many of those already afflicted by both
mental health issues and poverty?
Unfortunately for those being sanctioned, the
apparent Labour/coalition divide on benefit sanctions, with Labour pledging to abolish sanctions targets, is only
surface deep, and beneath it there is a cross-party assumption that sanctions
are necessary.
Unite the union has claimed over 2m people had their benefits
stopped in the last two years, meaning 2014 saw the highest number of sanctions since jobseeker’s
allowance was introduced.
This especially affect those with conditions
difficult to assess such as mental illnesses, and 120 disabled people have
been given a three-year sanction since October 2012.
Last week,
researcher Kayleigh Garthwaite told MPs she found claimants on incapacity
benefit left penniless, including a 23-year-old pregnant woman with mental
health issues, who hadn’t eaten “a proper cooked meal” in two weeks and was
living on leftovers.
Testimonies are widely available through Disabled People Against the
Cuts and DWP Unspun,
who found reasons
for sanctions included selling Remembrance Day poppies, not job-hunting on
Christmas day, not being able to afford travel to an interview, and having a
heart attack.
In the worst cases benefits being stopped has resulted in
starvation or suicide, and the Guardian believe the Department for Work and
Pensions are holding 60 “unpublished investigations” into such
deaths.
On the one hand, Labour have
pledged they will scrap the coalition’s alleged targets for sanctions,
which have caused the increase in their use, but are intending to stick to coalition,
and New Labour thinking, that sanctions are a key part of welfare.
Liam Byrne, when shadow secretary
for work and pensions, criticised and pledged to end “a nationwide
culture of targets, league tables and intimidation at the heart of the
Department for Work and Pensions sanctions regime.”
Now his successor, Rachel
Reeves has argued, “Sanctions
have been part of our social security system since its foundation, and the
principle of mutual obligation and putting conditions on benefit claims were
integral to the progressive labour market policies of the last Labour
government.”
The “last Labour
government” to which she refers used sanctions as a core part of its “New Deal” back in 1998, with the announcement that Labour was, “toughening up the
penalties for those who refused jobs or training”, in other words, they would
be using benefit sanctions.
Many of these came through "“workfare”, a
regime where jobseekers were forced onto mandatory work placements in exchange
for their benefits.
The Child Poverty Action Group, which is criticising the
coalition, said back in 1999 that
New Labour’s benefit sanctions was “a step towards a US-style workfare
system”, which Alistair Darling, Social Security Secretary at the time,
defended as “harsh, but justifiable”.
The reality for the unemployed, including those struggling
with mental health issues, is that after 2015 sanctions will still be there,
just delivered in a “progressive” and “justifiable” way.
This political triangulation from Labour isn’t good enough. As the testimonies
above show, when you lose your benefits, how are you supposed to eat?
We need to break not just with the current regime of
sanctions as Labour plan, but to break with New Labour-style “workfarism” altogether and towards social security that supports
those in need, not stripping them of their income, dignity and leaving them
alone and unsupported.
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