Are the government’s welfare reforms evidence-based?

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Summary:

• The government has announced a further set of measures aimed at getting beneficiaries into paid work, including through extensive use of sanctions

• The data from National’s previous such attempt, in 2013-14, suggest such measures create significant churn from people moving off and back onto the benefit

• Research indicates that moving into certain forms of work can be worse for people’s mental and physical health than being on a benefit

• Research also suggests sanctions are harmful to those who receive them, and can actually slow down people’s movement into paid work; this is because beneficiaries’ lives are often complex and sanctions can add to that complexity

• Supportive measures – such as training and mental health support programmes – are more likely to be effective than punitive ones

  

The ‘welfare to work’ drive continues

The government this week announced a new suite of measures aimed at moving people from welfare to work. The measures are as follows:

• Requiring Jobseeker Support recipients to reapply every six months;

• Making it mandatory for beneficiaries with work obligations to complete a ‘jobseeker profile’ before receiving a benefit;

• Extending the period over which rule breaches count against a beneficiary (and thus may be used to sanction them) from 12 to 24 months; and

• Creating two new sanctions that Work and Income can use before resorting to the ultimate sanction of benefit cuts: putting half someone’s benefit onto a payment card that can only be used for a limited range of products and services; and making beneficiaries carry out community work.

This announcement comes on top of a 50% increase in sanctions already under this government. Among roughly 380,000 working-age beneficiaries, 10,389 sanctions were issued in the three months to June this year, up 3,630 from the previous year. The main reasons for sanctions were not attending appointments and seminars (6,069 people) and failing to prepare for work (3,360).