"Stitching-up benefit claimants is all part of the job"

[dutchman]

Former Jobcentre Plus adviser tells of a “brutal and bullying” culture of “setting claimants up to fail”



Last week Iain Duncan Smith met a whistle-blower who has worked for his Department for Work and Pensions for more than 20 years.

Giving the Secretary of State a dossier of evidence, the former Jobcentre Plus adviser told him of a “brutal and bullying” culture of “setting claimants up to fail”.

“The pressure to sanction customers was constant,” he said. “It led to people being stitched-up on a daily basis.”

The man wishes to be anonymous but gave his details to IDS, DWP minister Esther McVey and Neil Couling, Head of Jobcentre Plus, who also attended the meeting.

“We were constantly told ‘agitate the customer’ and that ‘any engagement with the customer is an opportunity to ­sanction’,” he told them.

Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, the member of the DWP Select Committee who set up the meeting, has renewed her call for an inquiry into inappropriate sanctioning.

“I am deeply concerned that sanctions are being used to create the illusion the Government is bringing down unemployment,” she said.

Sanctions pre-date the Coalition as a way of ensuring benefit claimants, who include the jobless and sick and disabled people on Employment Support Allowance, attend appointments and apply for jobs. But under the Tory-led Government, they have soared – to 897,690 a year from the most recent data.

Sanctions can last from a couple of days to three years, and leave claimants destitute.

Abrahams says that ­sanctioned people only continue to be counted as unemployed as long as they continue to sign on.

The DWP says most people who receive a sanction remain on Jobseeker’s Allowance for the duration of their sanction and so will be included in the claimant count.

IDS and his department have repeatedly denied there are targets for sanctions.

“They don’t always call them targets, they call them ‘expectations’ that you will refer people’s benefits to the decision maker,” the whistle-blower says. “It’s the same thing.”

He claimed managers fraudulently altered claimants’ records, adding: “Managers would change people’s appointments without telling them. The appointment wouldn’t arrive in time in the post so they would miss it and have to be sanctioned. That’s fraud. The customer fails to attend. Their claim is closed. It’s called ‘off-flow’ – they come off the statistics. Unemployment has dropped. They are being stitched up.”

For 20 years, the whistle-blower loved his job as an adviser. He says: “It was really rewarding helping people into work.”

But he says the culture changed after the election of the Coalition.

“Customers were being deliberately and inappropriately targeted,” the whistle-blower says. “I would see people crying in frustration, knowing they have been stitched up. Yet my Jobcentre was held up as a shining example to others. One of the district managers came to congratulate us. There was a total disrespect for the customer.”

Advisers were told to “inconvenience” benefit claimants, he says. “I was told see them face to face, agitate them. ‘Let’s inconvenience the customer’, they said, ‘get on these people from day one’.

“They were treated appallingly, lots of conditions put on them. Many of them were vulnerable people with low self-esteem or coming back off sick. We were setting customers up to fail.

“If I do my job well and their claim is managed well, there should be fewer sanctions. Instead, good advisers were the ones who sanctioned more people. It was a daily mantra, ‘Have you sanctioned anyone?’

I particularly remember a well-qualified father, he was desperate to work, with a wife and child to support. I was told to agitate him. They said, ‘Tell him he’s got to apply for factory and labouring jobs. Change his contract. If he doesn’t take the jobs, stop his benefit’. It was a trap.”

When managers refused to listen, he became sick with stress. “My body just gave up,” he says. “I had high blood ­pressure, I was put on beta-blockers. I was in a state of physical collapse.”

Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, says Esther McVey had agreed to a sanctions inquiry, but has since made a U-turn.

She says: “Just what are Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey trying to hide?

“This Government has developed a culture in which Jobcentre Plus advisers are expected to sanction claimants using unjust, and potentially fraudulent actions, in order get people off the dole.

“This creates the illusion the Government is bringing down unemployment.

“The last thing Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey want is for this uncomfortable truth to be uncovered.”

[rebbonk]

That's why the unemployment figures are down! Who do they think they're fooling?

[rebbonk]

Whilst some may well be deserved, this is an attrociously high figure...

[dutchman]

Polly Toynbee: "Mentally ill people need to be helped, not hounded"



Neglect of the mentally ill is bad enough, but now consider how the Department for Work and Pensions deliberately torments them. I just met a jobcentre manager. It had to be in secret, in a Midlands hotel, several train stops away from where she works. She told me how the sick are treated and what harsh targets she is under to push them off benefits. A high proportion on employment and support allowance have mental illnesses or learning difficulties. The department denies there are targets, but she showed me a printed sheet of what are called "spinning plates", red for missed, green for hit. They just missed their 50.5% target for "off flows", getting people off ESA. They have been told to "disrupt and upset" them – in other words, bullying. That's officially described, in Orwellian fashion, as "offering further support". As all ESA claimants approach the target deadline of 65 weeks on benefits – advisers are told to report them all to the fraud department for maximum pressure. In this manager's area 16% are "sanctioned" or cut off benefits.

Of course it's not written down anywhere, but it's in the development plans of individual advisers or "work coaches". Managers repeatedly question them on why more people haven't been sanctioned. Letters are sent to the vulnerable who don't legally have to come in, but in such ambiguous wording that they look like an order to attend. Tricks are played: those ending their contributory entitlement to a year on ESA need to fill in a form for income-based ESA. But jobcentres are forbidden to stock those forms. These ill people's benefits are suddenly stopped without explanation: if they call, they're told to collect a form from the jobcentre, which doesn't stock them either. If someone calls to query an appointment they are told they will be sanctioned if they don't turn up, whatever. She said: "The DWP's hope is they won't pursue the claim."

[dutchman]

DWP Admits Using Fake Claimant’s Comments In Benefit Sanctions Leaflet



Government officials have admitted that claimant’s comments used in an official benefit sanctions information leaflet were “for illustrative purposes only”.

The revelation comes in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from Welfare Weekly, in which we questioned whether the comments used in the leaflet were of a genuine or fake nature.

Welfare Weekly asked the DWP to provide any evidence or information to prove that the comments used in the publication were from “genuine” claimants.

Within days of submitting our request to the DWP, the original information leaflet suddenly disappeared from the government’s website without explanation.

However, we had already downloaded a copy of the leaflet (pdf) in anticipation of the response to our FOI request.

That leaflet included comments from two sickness benefit claimants who had supposedly been affected by benefit sanctions, Zac and Sarah.



According to the leaflet, Zac had said: “I let my work coach know in advance that I couldn’t go to our meeting because I had a hospital appointment.

“I had a good reason for not going to the meeting and proof of the appointment. My benefit payment hasn’t changed and we booked another meeting I could get to.”

While Susan had allegedly said: “I didn’t think a CV would help me but my work coach told me that all employers need one. I didn’t have a good reason for not doing it and I was told I’d lose some of my payment. I decided to complete the CV and told my work coach.

“I got a letter to say my benefit would go down for two weeks. I was told it was longer than a week because I missed a meeting with my work coach back in March.

“My benefit is back to normal now and I’m really pleased with how my CV looks. It’s going to help me when I’m ready to go back to work.”

However, Welfare Weekly can reveal that neither of these comments came from genuine Employment and Support Allowance claimants.

Both comment’s were completely made up and included to “help people understand when sanctions can be applied and how they can avoid them by taking certain actions”, according to the DWP.

The response to our Freedom of Information request reads:

“The photos used are stock photos and along with the names do not belong to real claimants.

“The stories are for illustrative purposes only."

Goebbels would have been proud

The DWP also claimed its staff had received thank-you cards from claimants who'd been sanctioned!

[rebbonk]

Let's face it, IDS is well versed in telling lies . - CV anyone?