Ministers have backed down over a refusal to publish “sensitive” internal government research into the effectiveness of benefit sanctions that has been kept under wraps by ministers for over two years.
The welfare secretary, Mel Stride, told MPs on the work and pensions select committee that he would not appeal against an information watchdog ruling earlier this month ordering the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to release the study.
Sanctions are effectively fines – the average sanction is £660 – issued to claimants as punishment for infringing benefit conditions, such as not spending enough time searching for jobs, or failing to attend meetings with jobcentre work coaches.
Interest in the findings of the DWP report, already intense, has grown since the government announced in the budget that it would apply sanctions “more rigorously” as part of its plans to force more people back into the labour market.
The DWP study was commissioned in 2019 after a work and pensions select committee inquiry concluded, echoing comprehensive academic research, that while sanctions had little effect on getting people into work, they routinely impoverished claimants and damaged their mental health.
Although the DWP initially pledged to publish the study, it emerged a year ago that the then welfare secretary, Thérèse Coffey, had blocked its release, insisting that it contained “details of a sensitive nature” and that it was in the “public interest” to keep the findings under wraps.
The information commissioner rejected the DWP’s refusal to release the study in response to a Freedom of Information request, ruling that there was “strong public interest in scrutiny and understanding of the information available to those deciding whether to continue with a controversial policy such as sanctioning benefits”.
Announcing on Wednesday that the study would be published, Stride defended his predecessor’s decision to block publication. “I do think it [the study] presents a very incomplete picture, and I do think the reasons and rationale for not releasing it were perfectly proper and acceptable,” he said.
The normally self-assured Stride was discomfited by subsequent questions on sanctions policy by SNP MP David Linden. Stride admitted he had never knowingly met a sanctioned claimant, and was unaware how much the average sanctions penalty amounted to.
Linden said he met people every week in his Glasgow East constituency who had been rendered destitute and mentally ill as a result of sanctions. He suggested Stride’s understanding of sanctions was “highly theoretical” and removed from reality “on the ground”.
He added: “May I gently suggest, secretary of state, that if you are looking to get people back into work, plunging them into further poverty and destitution is not a particularly good way of doing that.”
Stride vigorously defended sanctions, saying it was right that the DWP should attach conditions to benefits and that there were “consequences” for claimants who did not engage with attempts to get them into work.
He was “satisfied overall” with the way the sanctions system worked, he told MPs. Sanctions were applied by officials in a “measured and proportionate” way, with a “safety net” built into the system in the form of access to hardship funds and the right of appeal to a tribunal.
“It’s very easy to characterise officials and ministers and so on when sanctions are being described, and the effects of sanctions, as somehow being heartless and uncaring. That is most certainly not the case,” he said.
