Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Debate between Conor Burns and Michael Tomlinson

Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

First, I say to the hon. Gentleman that I did not say that benefits are not a right; benefits are a right, and a right that I fully respect and uphold. Secondly, on the point that we have heard many times—we had Opposition day debates on it when I was a bag carrier in the Treasury—as he knows, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, when he was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, reconfigured HMRC by focusing on more regional offices, so that we can have greater impact in the collection powers of HMRC and the focus it has on ensuring that the tax collected is the tax owed.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. He mentions the Beveridge report. I am reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) that it is from 1942, but in fact the sanctions regime goes back to 1911 and the setting up of the first unemployment benefits regime.

Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Debate between Conor Burns and Michael Tomlinson

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

I am very comfortable with the figures that I have given the House, and I see the Minister nodding his affirmation that those figures are indeed correct.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I am happy to confirm that my hon. Friend is correct. I have the House of Commons Library briefing paper here and it confirms exactly what he has said about JSA claimants falling to around 2% in each of the first six months of 2016 and ESA claimants falling to around 1% between May 2011 and May 2016. He is absolutely right to say that Conservative Members do not lack compassion and empathy. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) was right to say that we are dealing with individual human beings, not statistics, but the statistics are nevertheless important.

[Conor Burns]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend. I could not have put that more eloquently myself.

Sanctions regimes are not uncommon. In fact, most developed economies attach conditions to the receipt of benefits. Recent European studies in Switzerland in 2005, in the Netherlands in 2013, in Denmark in 2011 and in Germany in 2014 found that benefit cuts substantially increased employment take-up among sanctioned persons. In 2013, the Government commissioned an independent review into sanctions and implemented all its recommendations.

We should put aside the misconception sometimes portrayed by Members that sanctions are the automatic default that the system rushes towards. In fact, a claimant has to go through an incredibly long journey before they reach the point of sanction.