BENEFIT sanctions are causing “severe financial hardship”, MPs have warned, after almost 10,000 punishments were imposed in Southampton in just two years.

New figures show jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) is being docked 415 times every month in the city, normally for four weeks for a first offence.

Across Hampshire, claimants have been stripped of benefits on 23,165 occasions including in Fareham (1,848), Eastleigh (1,377), Test Valley (1,150) and Gosport (2,322).

Ministers say sanctions are imposed on people who dodge job centre appointments or avoid finding a job, to tackle a “something for nothing” culture.

But a committee of MPs has questioned whether the punishments are being applied “fairly and proportionately” and demanded a full independent review.

The report, by the work and pensions select committee:

  • Criticises the Government for removing benefits for four weeks – instead of just one – “without first testing their likely impacts on claimants”.
  • Calls for trials of “written warnings and non-financial sanctions”.
  • Calls for “hardship payments” to be available from day one of a sanction period – instead of on day 15.
  • Criticises the Department for Work and Pensions for failing to reveal how many of 49 suicides “associated with DWP activity” followed sanctions.
  • Raises new evidence that some job centres have “targets for sanctions” – despite ministerial denials.

Dame Anne Begg, the committee’s Labour chairman, warned benefits were being taken from people “who may have little or no other income” – sending many to food banks.

She said: “It should avoid causing severe financial hardship. The system as currently applied does not always achieve this.

“No claimant should have their benefit payment reduced to zero where they are at risk of severe financial hardship, to the extent of not being able to feed themselves or their families, or pay their rent.”

The report agrees some punishments for benefit claimants who fail to look for work are “appropriate and necessary”, pointing out they date back to 1911.

But it highlights evidence that some people do not know they have been sanctioned until “they tried to get their benefit payment out of a cash point but could not.”

Most lose benefits for four weeks, rising to 13 weeks for a second offence and then one year if they still fail to comply with the rules.

But “high level sanctions” – perhaps for turning down a job offer – remove JSA for 13 weeks, then for 26 weeks and for up to three years for repeat offences.

The committee first called for a full review in January last year, but the Government refused – setting up an inquiry into the use of sanctions by outside contractors only.

  

A DWP spokesman said: “As the report recognises, sanctions are a vital backstop in the welfare system and are only used in a small minority of cases where claimants don’t do all they can to look for work.

“Every day, Jobcentre Plus advisers work hard to help people into jobs, and we continue to spend around £94bn a year on working age benefits to provide a safety net that supports millions of people.”