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Punitive and ineffective: benefit sanctions within social security

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Abstract

Benefit sanctions are now a central component of the UK’s increasingly conditional social security system. Over the last two decades their reach has been extended beyond Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) claimants to include the majority of lone parents, many disabled people and, since the introduction of Universal Credit ( UC) in 2013, low paid workers in receipt of in work wage supplements and housing benefits. Utilising original data generated in a large (n.481 wave a), repeat qualitative longitudinal panel study this paper explores the impact of benefit sanctions on the lives of those in receipt of highly conditional social security benefits. It is concluded that benefit sanctions routinely trigger a range of profoundly negative outcomes that do not enhance the likelihood of people moving into paid work.

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... The chronically ill and disabled community who are unfit to work were identified by successive neoliberal administrations as being an unacceptable financial burden on the State (Mills, 2022;Garthwaite, 2015; Dwyer, 2018;Groves, 2015;Hiam et al, 2017;Stewart, 2019a) in order to stigmatise disability benefit claimants (Baumberg, 2016) and to successfully discredit the concept of the welfare state. Evidence of psycho-coercion began as political rhetoric replaced facts with fiction when creating a 'climate of hostility' (Birrell, 2011;Mills, 2017). ...
... Whilst the State Retirement Pension and unemployment benefit are financial obligations that the DWP cannot restrict, every successive neoliberal administration since Thatcher planned the reduction of the increasing costs of the welfare state by gradually threatening the income of the chronically ill and disabled community, and by challenging the validity of their claims (DWP, 2008), which peaked during the Coalition administration (2010-2015) (Boardman, 2020;Dwyer, 2018;Garthwaite, 2011). ...
... They were all disregarded by the DWP, as is the growing mental health crisis directly linked to the fear of the next WCA, and the constant DWP threat of sanctions. To date, the DWP have disregarded all published research which identifies the ongoing and inevitable public health crisis created by social policy reforms and the use of the WCA (Boardman, 2020;Dwyer, 2018;Dwyer et al, 2019;Barr et al, 2016;Gentleman 2011;2014;2015;Patrick, 2012;Mills, 2017;Cummins, 2018;Stewart, 2018a;2019a;2019b;. ...
Article
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The 1982 Thatcher Cabinet minutes identified the intention to adopt ‘the politics of fear’ to coerce the British public to accept the need for private income replacement health insurance, to remove the financial burden of the National Health Service and the welfare state. Every administration since Margaret Thatcher adopted social policies to move towards this ultimate political ambition, which has bipartisan support. The difficulty was that the psychological security of the UK welfare state was embedded within the public psyche and removing it would take a long time. Forty years later, that ambition has now been achieved. Thatcher’s devotion to neoliberal politics, which is an ideology that supports free market competition with an emphasis on minimal State intervention, meant that the political ambition to reduce the financial burden of the welfare state would be relentlessly pursued by successive administrations. The breakthrough to justify introducing the ‘politics of fear’ followed the 2008 global financial crisis. The Brown ‘New Labour’ administration was obliged to fund a fifty billion pounds bank rescue package, which increased over time and significantly increased the national debt. Elected in 2010, the Coalition administration used the size of the national debt to justify the introduction of austerity measures, which were designed to reduce the costs of the welfare state and guaranteed that those in greatest need would endure preventable harm. This was the beginning of the end of the UK welfare state as funding was removed from essential public services, which generated human suffering on a vast scale.
... *Papers found from our updated search/expert consultation Qualitative studies provide further insight into how the Benefits system is experienced. Reported experiences were overwhelmingly negative across studies, with interactions with the benefits system perceived as a cause of anxiety, stress, or depression (Scullion & Curchin, 2022;Dwyer, 2018;Dwyer et al., 2019;Wright et al., 2019), which often exacerbated any existing mental illness. One study focused on veterans' experiences of the welfare system and reported that many Benefits Agency staff had a lack of understanding of trauma and its associated impacts, leading to a worsening of veteran's existing mental health problems (Scullion & Curchin, 2022). ...
... Participants often reported living in constant fear of benefit sanctions, whilst the use of benefits sanctions increased levels of poverty and food insecurity, which negatively impacted claimants' mental health (Wright & Patrick, 2019). Studies involving claimants both with or without existing mental illness identified cases in which negative interactions with the welfare system and benefits sanctions led to participants experiencing suicidal thoughts (Dwyer, 2018;Wright et al., 2019;Dwyer et al., 2019). ...
... reduce or remove sanctions for minor transgressions, or when there has been a breakdown in communication due to literacy or language barriers. CA (May 2018, May 2019), MMH (March 2019), Dwyer (2018) Delays to payments -Reduce or eliminate the UC five-week wait for payments -Suspend requirements to repay Advance Payments or reduce repayment rates CA (May-18, Feb-19) MMH (Apr-20) Support to find work -Increased time for people to access support to help find work at the Job Centre, with staff trained to understand the needs and situations of job seekers with mental health problems -Reduce focus on paid work which can undermine support or treatment offered by healthcare professionals -Make use of 'easements' to reduce the extent someone with mental illness has to apply for work or engage in WFIs ...
Research
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This report was written by the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit for the Department of Health and Social Care in July 2022. It summarises available evidence regarding the impacts of social security policy and the benefits system on claimants' mental health and wellbeing, and ways in which harms to mental health might be mitigated. This report uppdated the search from a systematic review published in 2021, and scoped relevant reports and qualitative literature. It is a summary, not a systematic review of the academic literature.
... Individual studies frequently stress the negative consequences of sanctions for areas including financial stress and debt cumulation, adverse physical and mental health outcomes, hunger and utility cut-offs, increased reliance on food banks, survival crime, rent arrears, eviction and homelessness. Benefit sanctions are also reported to have negative repercussions for family relations, including impacts on the well-being of children, their cognitive development and education (Griggs and Evans, 2010;Watts et al., 2014;Dwyer, 2018;Webster, 2019). Further criticism of sanctions policies come from studies which have shown that they lead to the diversion of limited resources by key public services to address these consequences (National Audit Office, 2016). ...
... In part, these arise through the immediate financial impacts of sanctions. These can be expected to initiate or worsen pre-existing debts, rent and utility arrears and severely restrict expenditure on basic necessities, such as food, heating and electricity (Dwyer, 2018). However, non-financial routes are also argued to be important. ...
... Both material and psychosocial pathways are again relevant. For example, sanctions can increase parental stress which may affect parent-child relationships and child development, while lack of funds for school-related costs such as food and transport can lead to reduced school attendance (Peters and Joyce, 2006;Dwyer, 2018). If sanctions are associated with longer-term adverse labour market consequences for adults, wider research indicates that children are likely to be adversely affected. ...
Preprint
[Published version (Open Access) available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047279421001069] In recent decades, the use of conditionality backed by benefit sanctions for those claiming unemployment and related benefits has become widespread in the social security systems of high-income countries. Critics argue that sanctions may be ineffective in bringing people back to employment or indeed harmful in a range of ways. Existing reviews largely assess the labour market impacts of sanctions but our understanding of the wider impacts is more limited. We report results from a scoping review of the international quantitative research evidence on both labour market and wider impacts of benefit sanctions. Following systematic search and screening, we extract data for 94 studies reporting on 253 outcome measures. We provide a narrative summary, paying attention to the ability of the studies to support causal inference. Despite variation in the evidence base and study designs, we found that labour market studies, covering two thirds of our sample, consistently reported positive impacts for employment but negative impacts for job quality and stability in the longer term, along with increased transitions to non-employment or economic inactivity. Although largely relying on non-experimental designs, wider-outcome studies reported significant associations with increased material hardship and health problems. There was also some evidence that sanctions were associated with increased child maltreatment and poorer child well-being.
... The explicit aim of sanctions policy is to improve employment outcomes, and as a result an extensive empirical literature has developed that examines the labour market impacts of sanctions in terms of employment re-entry, post-unemployment earnings, job stability and labour force attachment (McVicar, 2014). A growing area of research, furthermore, investigates wider impacts in terms of outcomes such as financial hardship, homelessness and food bank usage (Griggs and Evans, 2010;Dwyer, 2018). ...
... Additional qualitative research identifies similar negative psychological and emotional impacts of sanctions that are imposed on groups such as lone parents, disabled people and homeless people (Dwyer, 2018;Dwyer et al., 2018;Johnsen and Blenkinsopp, 2018;Dwyer et al., 2020). ...
... The main findings can be summarised as follows: Previous research in the area of sanctions and mental health exists, though is limited in scope. Existing qualitative research, for example, highlights the mental distress that claimants experience in relation to the threat and actual imposition of a sanction, though such sanction-related impacts generally do not represent the primary focus of the available studies (Wright and Stewart, 2016;Dwyer, 2018;Dwyer et al., 2018;Johnsen and Blenkinsopp, 2018;Stewart and Wright, 2018;Dwyer et al., 2020;Redman, 2020 (Paul and Moser, 2009). The research carried out in this thesis supports the view that the social security system has an important role to play in this area, given that it can either serve to compound or alleviate these adverse mental health impacts (Coutts et al., 2014;O'Campo et al., 2015;Sage, 2015a;2015b;Carter and Whitworth, 2017;Renahy et al., 2018). ...
Thesis
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Increasingly, social security systems in the UK and internationally stipulate work-related behavioural requirements for claimants of out-of-work benefits. These are accompanied by claimant monitoring as well as the threat and imposition of financial penalties, which are known as benefit sanctions. The growth in recent decades in the use of behavioural conditions and sanctions has generated significant debate and contestation, in terms of the ethical justification of such approaches and, relatedly, evidence regarding their overall effectiveness. An important topic concerns the impacts of benefit sanctions on claimants. Policymakers typically assume that sanctions will improve labour market outcomes for the unemployed, which will then lead to a range of individual and societal benefits. A well-developed literature exists in relation to the labour market impacts of sanctions, though less is known in terms of their wider effects. A small but growing body of research, nevertheless, links benefit sanctions with outcomes such as financial hardship and foodbank usage, and there is increasing concern regarding adverse impacts on mental health. This thesis investigates the relationship between benefit sanctions and mental health outcomes, and considers whether higher rates and/or longer durations of sanctions are associated with adverse mental health impacts. A quantitative study is undertaken that focuses on Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) sanctions during the period of Coalition government (2010-15). In this period, the frequency of sanctions varied significantly and their severity was increased following the Welfare Reform Act 2012. This exogenous variation is used to better estimate the independent effect of sanctions on mental health outcomes. Given data availability, the empirical investigation carries out four analyses involving different data sources, outcomes and research designs at separate data levels. The first two studies carry out longitudinal ecological analyses using local authority-level data and fixed effects models. They find that, following the Welfare Reform Act 2012: every 10 additional sanctions applied per 100,000 population per quarter are associated with 4.57 additional antidepressant prescribing items; and that every 10 additional sanctions applied per 100,000 working age population per quarter are associated with 8.09 additional people suffering from anxiety and/or depression. The third study carries out a multi-level analysis, which provides a robustness check on the aggregate-level analysis carried out in the second study. It finds that, in the post-reform period, increases in the area-level sanctions rate are associated with increases in the likelihood that JSA claimants suffer from anxiety and/or depression. Finally, the fourth study carries out a difference-in-differences analysis. It indicates that the harsher sanctioning environment brought about at the onset of the Coalition government is associated with an increase in JSA claimants newly experiencing anxiety and/or depression. These results combine to provide a robust indication that JSA sanctions are associated with adverse mental health impacts, which is an important contribution to the existing empirical literature. They suggest that UK sanctions policy is overly harsh, and that steps need to be taken to reduce the adverse effects that it entails for claimants.
... There is a risk, therefore, that sanctions policy will in fact be associated with adverse wider impacts. Indeed, a developing quantitative and qualitative literature-primarily UK and US based-highlights a range of negative outcomes that are associated with sanctions (Dwyer, 2018;Griggs & Evans, 2010). These include, though are not limited to, impacts in terms of: debt and financial hardship; rent arrears, eviction and homelessness; survival crime; domestic strain and impacts on friends, family and children. ...
... Arguably, the use of aggregated data means that the results do not solely capture imposition effects on JSA claimants. Previous qualitative research indicates that the emotional and psychological impacts of sanctions can extend beyond claimants to family and friends (Dwyer, 2018), which will be captured in the current area-level analysis. The mental health of claimants who receive a sanction, furthermore, is also likely to have been impacted by the preceding threat of having such a financial penalty imposed (Dwyer et al., 2020). ...
... Associations that hold at the area-level do not necessarily apply at the individual-level, and so a key implication of this research is to motivate additional individual-level research into the mental health impacts of benefit sanctions. With this caveat recognised, it is nevertheless important to highlight that the area-level findings from this study are consistent with existing qualitative research undertaken with claimants (Dwyer, 2018;Dwyer et al., 2020;Jamieson, 2020;Wright et al., 2020). Indeed, the findings are at least indicative of individual-level impacts, since it is not immediately clear why such relationships would hold at the area-but not at the individual-level. ...
Article
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Internationally, policymakers assume that sanctioning claimants of unemployment benefits will engender both improved employment outcomes and wider positive effects. A growing evidence-base challenges these expectations, though additional insight is needed from large-scale longitudinal research. This article contributes by conducting a quantitative investigation into the mental health impacts of benefit sanctions. To do so, it focuses on a recent period in UK sanctions policy in which rates of sanctions varied markedly and their length was substantially increased. Using quarterly panel data for local authorities in England (Q3 2010-Q4 2014) and fixed effects models that control for important confounders, the analysis provides robust evidence that Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) sanctions lead to increases in self-reported anxiety and depression. Evidence of this adverse impact is particularly clear following the increase in the length of sanctions in October 2012. The results have important implications for contemporary social security policy, which is underpinned by a similarly punitive sanctions regime. Whilst additional individual-level research is needed to fully consider the causal relationships in operation , the findings support a precautionary approach that should seek to minimise the harm associated with sanctions. This implies taking steps to reduce both the severity and frequency of applied sanctions.
... The change in conditionality is most apparent in the changes in sanctioning, a measure by which benefit payments are reduced for a set period of time in response to a claimant failing to meet required claimant responsibilities. Sanctioning is a feature of both the legacy and UC systems, with studies showing links between experiences of sanctioning and increased financial hardship (Loopstra, Fledderjohann, Reeves & Stuckler, 2018;Dwyer, 2018). Adler (2018) finds that the UC system has a higher sanctioning rate than the legacy system, estimating that in 2019 JSA claimants had a sanctioning rate of 0.5% while UC claimants had a sanctioning rate of around 3% (Adler, 2018;. ...
... The treatment effect of UC is approximately the same in this model (both in magnitude and significance), demonstrating that income level is a significant predictor of housing arrears but not the key driver behind UC's effects on housing insecurity. There is a strong body of evidence, particularly stemming from qualitative research, that demonstrates the negative impact of UC mechanisms such as claimant waiting periods, direct payment of housing elements to claimants, and increased sanctioning (Cheetham, Moffatt & Addison, 2018;Dwyer, 2018;Hartfree, 2014;Reeves & Loopstra, 2020;Stacey, 2020). The results of this study corroborate these findings, indicating that particular characteristics of UC beyond monetary benefit value impact its relationship with housing insecurity. ...
Article
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Existing research indicates an association between the introduction of Universal Credit in the UK and increased financial hardship among claimants. This policy change embodies key changes in welfare policy and ideology taking place across Europe and worldwide. This study investigates the association between housing insecurity and claiming Universal Credit in comparison to Housing Benefit and Jobseeker’s Allowance. To examine changes in housing insecurity trajectories before and after the introduction of Universal Credit, we apply a difference-indifferences fixed effects logistic regression research design to Understanding Society data (2009-2020) on benefit claimants in England. We compare how Universal Credit claimants’ likelihood of housing insecurity changes over time compared to other benefit claimants. We find that claiming Universal Credit does indeed have a significant effect on increasing housing insecurity in comparison to claiming Housing Benefit or Jobseeker’s Allowance. This effect varied across different scenarios, including a larger effect for people with disabilities and claimants moving from Housing Benefit to Universal Credit. These findings demonstrate that the Universal Credit system negatively impacts particular population groups more than others, placing these claimants at disproportionate risk of experiencing housing insecurity.
... The adoption of neoliberal politics by the Thatcher administration(s) (1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990) demanded that "Cash Not Care" (Stewart, 2016) became the only political priority for social policy funding. Human suffering was inevitable, and is demonstrated by the Project as being increased by the most recent social policy reforms, adopted since 2010, using an ongoing fiscal priority when disregarding health and wellbeing (Barr et al, 2016a;Dwyer, 2018;Stewart, 2019a). ...
... Arguably Thatcher's greatest admirer the new PM, David Cameron, immediately introduced extreme austerity measures, in addition to the ongoing social policy reforms, which guaranteed the creation of more preventable harm for those in greatest need. The austerity measures concentrated on the disabled community, with those with the most severe disabilities facing significantly more cuts than the average person (Duffy, 2017): Published academic research demonstrated the persecution of the chronically ill and disabled community by the Coalition government when aided by the press (Garthwaite, 2011), and the negative impact on public mental health (Beresford, 2016;Patrick, 2016;Barr et al, 2016a;Barr et al, 2016b;Cummins, 2018;Garthwaite, 2014;Dwyer, 2018;, carefully orchestrated by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith MP, with banner headlines in the tabloid press claiming that "75% of incapacity benefit claimants fit for work" (Peev, 2010). This dangerous propaganda worked very well and, by January 2011, there had been an increase of 213 per cent in disability hate crimes, including murder (Wheeler, 2015;Cowburn, 2016). ...
Preprint
I am the research lead for the Preventable Harm Project, that I led for ten years. The research demonstrates the plan by successive administrations to eventually replace the UK welfare state with private health insurance, identified as being Thatcher's 'dark legacy'.
... A recently concluded 5-year Welfare Conditionality project found sanctions to initiate and sustain a range of negative behaviour changes, ranging from mental health impairments to 'begging, borrowing and stealing' (Dwyer, 2018: 150-154; see also Batty et al., 2015). Sanctions have been found as encouraging some claimants to disengage with employment and support, further compounding a range of vulnerabilities and ultimately reducing individuals' chances of finding work in the future (Dwyer, 2018). This is supported by quantitative evidence, as Loopstra et al. (2015) found claimants several times more likely to drop out into 'unknown destinations' rather than enter formal work after receiving a sanction. ...
... This has been found as claimants not only experienced material harms resultant of fiscal loss (Batty et al., 2015) but also emotional harms emerging in multiplicities of fear and anxiety (Reeves and Loopstra, 2017), anger and frustration (Fletcher and Flint, 2018), as well as stigma and shame (see above). Given these harms have been found as overwhelmingly ineffective in enabling claimants to make positive, rewarding choices in the labour market (Dwyer, 2018), such phenomena can be interpreted as part of a wider strategy to ensure 'business confidence'. This is because, on one hand, harms imposed via sanctions directly benefitted capital, subordinating claimants to exploitative employment relationships (Briken and Taylor, 2018). ...
Article
The benefit sanction is a dominant activation policy in Britain’s ‘welfare-to-work’ regime. While policymakers believe in their necessity to correct behaviour, research shows benefit sanctions cause additional harm to Britain’s marginalised groups. Drawing upon a small-scale qualitative study, this article first navigates new territory, mapping the ways stigma emerges from the state – channelled through the benefit sanction – and manifests in the lives of sanctioned claimants. Acknowledging wider evidence, the sanction is then argued to have failed as a correctional device. Rather, taking into account Britain’s current politico-economic climate, the sanction appears as a weapon used to incite negative emotion in an attempt to police the boundaries of the labour market, while frequently abandoning some of the UK’s most vulnerable citizens.
... Although we find that greater focus on social capital and social security is needed, they are not always beneficial as Portes (1998), Lin (1999), Dwyer (2018), and Engelhardt et al. (2022) have suggested. For example, social capital can be used to limit opportunities for those outside of the networks, but providing social security is costly, and beneficiaries may become dependent on it rather than retaining their personal motivation. ...
... This leads to a reduction or complete withdrawal of income for individuals, and whilst they can appeal, they do not receive money whilst waiting for the appeal to be processed. These sanctions have been found to have 'profoundly negative outcomes' in terms of the financial, emotional and health impacts (Dwyer, 2018). ...
Thesis
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Background: Food insecurity has risen across the UK. Explanations for the rise include austerity policies and the rising cost of living in the context of stagnating wages. Food insecurity is associated with poorer physical and mental health outcomes. Within the UK there has been limited research which has focused on the experiences of single men, despite their over representation at food banks. Single men experiencing food insecurity are not a demographic who elicit sympathy among the public, media, or policymakers, and therefore their experiences receive little policy attention. This research seeks to explore the experiences of single men, and how their lived experience may be used to influence the policy making process. Aims: This research had dual aims. The first was to explore single men in Scotland’s experiences of food insecurity and their perspectives on the causes of their food insecurity. The second was to explore policy actors’ reflections on how lived experience data can influence policy related to the experiences of food insecurity. Methods: Photo-elicitation interviews were undertaken with a sample of 18 men, who did not have or did not live with a partner, and who were experiencing food insecurity, across Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. These interviews were analysed using abductive analysis, with the lenses of structural violence and biographical disruption applied to further understanding. Nine policy actors were interviewed remotely, using semi-structured interviews, with elements of photo-elicitation incorporating data generated by single men in Scotland. These interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings: Single men’s experiences of food insecurity in Scotland reflect the complex interplay of individual lived experience of extreme hardship and understandings of the structural determinants of that experience. Their experiences were read as a consequence of structural violence – with social security policies alongside organisations which claim to provide support, particular sites of harm. In the lives of the men there was a coalescing of harms, with food insecurity and other intersecting conditions resultant from income insecurity and poverty, contributing to physical and psychological harm. Exploring these experiences through the lens of biographical disruption, food insecurity affected individuals’ identities and disrupted participants’ relationships with eating and food preparation. Participants mobilised resources to cope with their experiences of food insecurity, however, they often reported little hope of their situations improving due to macro-level drivers of their experiences. Policy actors indicated that the combination of photographs and quotes from lived experience research had the potential to be impactful in advocacy and potentially policy briefing settings. They raised concerns, however, around confidentiality and the potential to contribute to negative stereotypes of people living in poverty. Conclusion: Single men living in Scotland experience needs-based deprivation as a consequence of structural violence, with perceptions of their vulnerability negatively impacting their ability to alleviate their situation in the immediate term through access to support. Lived experience, both directly from affected individuals and through the prism of research, may help to change perceptions, with photographs considered to be particularly impactful.
... This included the launch of Universal Credit which merged in-work and out of work benefit provision but also significantly cut many in-work benefits (tax credits) used to top up the earnings of low-paid workers and restricted access to out of work benefits, including disability benefits. Administrative methods such as sanctions and new ways of establishing eligibility were used to push people off benefits and limit case loads (Reeves and Loopstra, 2017;Dwyer, 2018). Many of these measures had the effect of encouraging employment by removing any alternative income options that low-paid workers might have had. ...
Article
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This article tests the hypothesis that unstable jobs with variable hours or pay enhance the job-finding chances of the working-age non-employed in the UK, by using a combination of the UK Household Longitudinal Study and the Labour Force Survey data and a discrete time model. We find no evidence on the share of unstable jobs in the non-employed person’s local labour market impacts on the probability to move into employment. This result holds both for men and women and for groups with low employability such as the low educated and the long-term unemployed. It is robust to alternative ways of defining unstable jobs and to the inclusion of unobserved heterogeneity. Overall, findings cast doubt on the importance of unstable jobs for employment creation in the UK.
... Few people realised that the formation of a UK Coalition government following the 2010 general election would introduce social policy reforms which were destined to create a public health crisis (Garthwaite, 2011;Doherty & Gaughran, 2014;Hale, 2014;McKee et al, 2012;Patrick, 2012;Barr et al., 2016;Mehta et al., 2018;Cummins, 2018;Dwyer, 2018;Dwyer et al., 2019;Boardman, 2020). The joining of the historically lenient Liberal Democrats with the often severe Conservatives, to form the Coalition, gave rise to hope that social policy extremes would be restricted. ...
Article
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As the world is preoccupied by the pandemic, and the British public are beginning to comprehend the full impact of Brexit, the predictable public mental health crisis created by the demolition of the UK social safety net has been disregarded by successive administrations. Few people realized that preventable harm was the inevitable creation of social policy reforms, gradually adopted by every administration since Thatcher, en route to her political ambition which was the demolition of the welfare state to be replaced by private health insurance. In order to demolish the welfare state it was first necessary to remove the past psychological security provided by the welfare state. This has been achieved, with disability denial created by significant social policy reforms since 2008. To justify the adoption of harsh and unnecessary austerity measures, which were introduced without ethical approval, the Coalition administration elected in 2010 vehemently challenged the integrity of the chronically ill and disabled community and routinely accused disability benefit claimants of fraud; whilst failing to produce evidence to support their claims. Their often hostile rhetoric encouraged a 213 percent increase in prosecuted disability hate crimes, and successive administrations disregarded the thousands of deaths directly linked to the Work Capability Assessment, which was adopted using a discredited and dangerous biopsychosocial model of assessment to restrict access to long-term disability benefit. Influenced by corporate America since 1992, the UK social policy reforms guaranteed that many of those in greatest need were destined to die when, covertly, killed by the State.
... In-depth interviews provide the opportunity to look behind policy assumptions or how policies are designed from the top down, to examine how these play out in the lives of those affected by the policies and whose experiences might otherwise be obscured or ignored. For example, the Welfare Conditionality project used interviews to critique the assumptions that conditionality (such as, the withdrawal of social security benefits if recipients did not perform or meet certain criteria) improved employment outcomes and instead showed that conditionality was harmful to mental health, living standards and had many other negative consequences 56 . Meanwhile, combining datasets from two small-scale interview studies with recipients allowed Summers and Young to critique assumptions around the simplicity that underpinned the design of Universal Credit in 2020, for example, showing that the apparently simple monthly payment design instead burdened recipients with additional money management decisions and responsibilities 57 . ...
Article
In-depth interviews are a versatile form of qualitative data collection used by researchers across the social sciences. They allow individuals to explain, in their own words, how they understand and interpret the world around them. Interviews represent a deceptively familiar social encounter where people interact, asking and answering questions. They are, however, a very particular type of conversation, guided by the researcher and used for specific ends. This dynamic introduces a range of methodological, analytical and ethical challenges, for novice researchers in particular. In this primer, we focus on the stages and challenges of designing and conducting an interview project and analysing data from it, as well as strategies to overcome these challenges.
... However, if confirmed, it would suggest that governments can achieve similar results to benefit sanctions by tweaking the design of benefits. Given the potential negative outcomes associated with sanctions (Dwyer, 2018), this is an important finding. Notes 1. Zero-hours contracts are a type of contract where the employer is under no obligation to provide work for the worker and the worker Is not under an obligation to accept work made available by the employer.; ...
Article
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Flexible employment arrangements where workers only provide labour (and are paid) when requested to by their employer have proliferated. How do workers react to the resulting instability in work schedules and pay? This study seeks to provide an answer using experimental methods. 301 low-income, working age, non-student individuals took part in an on-line experiment simulating standard and zero-hours contractual conditions. Results unambiguously support the hypothesis that work uncertainty discourages work. This is not only because variability in work availability reduced total expected pay but also because uncertainty itself is avoided, even at the cost of lower total earnings. Public benefits play an important moderating role. Workers are more likely to accept uncertain work and pay when access to out of work benefits is limited or when benefits automatically top up incomes during periods when work is unavailable.
... 25 The use of sanctions is ideologically motivated and influenced by American corporate advisers. Brutal sanctions were often imposed on claimants for being ten minutes late to an interview with the Jobcentre when the bus was caught in traffic... 18,19 This is perceived as being DWP tyranny as those in greatest need live in fear of the WCA and the DWP, which negatively impacts on public mental health. 3,13-16 3.9 In reality, there is no evidence that sanctions can or will incentivise the chronically ill and disabled community to stop claiming disability benefit and to find paid employment, which is ideologically motivated in an effort to remove the past psychological security of the UK welfare state which has been achieved. ...
Presentation
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This is a written submission to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee for their inquiry regarding health assessments for benefits.
... Molander & Torsvik, 2015)? A third dilemma runs between the clients' right to a given standard of living and the conditionality of benefits upon 'desirable' behaviour (Dwyer, 2018;Eleveld, 2018). As we shall see, these dilemmas are not limited to frontline professionals; they can also be found in the dialogue in the chain of governance. ...
Article
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Social policies are legislated nationally and implemented locally, and despite national attempts at vertical policy coordination, implementation varies. The aim of this article is to better understand variations in local implementation of national policies, emphasising, in particular, structural conditions. Our case is a legislative change in Norway that obliged municipalities to implement compulsory participation and conditionality for young recipients of social assistance. We conducted a comparative case study analysis in which, through 28 qualitative interviews, we compared six municipalities. We found that municipalities that have conceptualised compulsory participation as physical work and long hours in catch-all programmes are also the municipalities that sanction through benefit cuts. The municipalities that were more reluctant to cut benefits were those with the least straining requirements in terms of content and scope. We discuss local variation in terms of local-level path dependence, the size of the municipality and state supervision of municipalities.
... The use of conditionality is widely debated and, as a policy, it ignores the barriers that people with disabilities face in getting into employment. 32,33 It is unpopular, often regarded as punitive, undermines social citizenship, is ineffective in moving people into work and can damage people's health, thus making employment less likely. [34][35][36][37] Disabled unemployment claimants are more likely to be sanctioned than non-disabled claimants. ...
Article
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This article examines the effects of UK welfare reform since 2008 on people with mental health conditions and disabilities. The results have been profound, particularly during a time of economic austerity, damaging the social safety net and pushing many vulnerable people into poverty and hardship. It has perpetuated inequalities and increased the social exclusion of disabled groups. The holes in the safety net require repair, alongside extensive social policy reform to both protect and empower people with disabilities and long-term conditions.
... Wacquant (2009) presents traditional forms of labour regulation as outmoded, whereas Soss et al. argue that the "old tools"-"barriers to welfare participation, low levels of aid, stigmatising rituals" -are still used and "have been augmented by changes in the basic goals and operations of welfare programmes" (p. 7). Anglophone countries have led the downgrading of social citizenship, replacing status with contract (Handler, 2003) and substituting entitlements for conditional rights (Dwyer, 2018;Dwyer & Wright, 2014). ...
Article
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A defining feature of U.K. welfare reform since 2010 has been the concerted move towards greater compulsion and sanctioning, which has been interpreted by some social policy scholars as punitive and cruel. In this article, we borrow concepts from criminology and sociology to develop new interpretations of welfare conditionality. Based on data from a major Economic and Social Research Council‐funded qualitative longitudinal study (2014–2019), we document the suffering that unemployed claimants experienced because of harsh conditionality. We find that punitive welfare conditionality often caused symbolic and material suffering and sometimes had life‐threatening effects. We argue that a wide range of suffering induced by welfare conditionality can be understood as ‘social abuse’, including the demoralisation of the futile job‐search treadwheel and the self‐administered surveillance of the Universal Jobmatch panopticon. We identify a range of active claimant responses to state perpetrated harm, including acquiescence, adaptation, resistance, and disengagement. We conclude that punitive post‐2010 unemployment correction can be seen as a reinvention of failed historic forms of punishment for offenders.
... As Regan notes, as early as 1974, the Woodhouse review noted in the context of universal social insurance that "rights universally enjoyed must be accompanied by obligations universally accepted", and the enduring legacy of the 1988 Cass review has been its emphasis on "active" welfare and enhancing the labour market participation of welfare recipients (Regan 2014:28-29;Woodhouse & Meares 1974;Cass 1988). Contract welfare in the UK provides a mirror image of this trajectory and focus on "activation" (Harris 2008;Simpson 2015), manifested in the most recent incarnation of support for those who are unemployed or in low-waged employment-Universal Credit -with a highly punitive sanctions regime demonstrating that activation trumps need (Dwyer & Wright 2014;Dwyer 2018). ...
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This article examines the extent to which the Australian and UK social security systems meet their legal obligations to provide basic relief to citizens in need. Conditionality and “mutual obligation” are at the core of both the UK and Australian social security systems and are based on the concept of moral hazard, the goal being to ensure that claimants do not consider living on benefits to be preferable to engaging in paid work. Yet, we argue that the element of “mutuality” is missing in both systems; welfare claimants are subject to myriad conditions and obligations, whilst the state operates free of any legal responsibility to provide even basic relief to those in need, to prevent or alleviate extreme poverty and destitution. We outline the extent to which Australian and UK social security laws require governments to relieve destitution, examining both domestic and human rights law. We conclude that legal protections are weak and that both systems fail to meet the basic conditions of humanity toward their citizens. On this basis, we argue that such failings demonstrate a lack of integrity which undermines the standing of both the UK and Australia to invoke a claim of moral hazard to defend claimant conditionality.
... All claimants, regardless of their mental health status, routinely face a range of profoundly negative outcomes, including increased poverty and debt, reliance on charitable and informal support networks, and potential destitution when a benefit sanction is applied (Adler, 2018;Dwyer, 2018a;Fletcher & Wright, 2018). For example, this man with depression described how after being reassessed as "fit for work" a subsequent benefit sanction led to homelessness and, over time, disengagement from the social security system. ...
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The personal, economic and social costs of mental ill-health are increasingly acknowledged by many governments and international organisations. Simultaneously, in high income nations the reach of welfare conditionality has extended to encompass many people with mental health impairments as part of on-going welfare reforms. This is particularly the case in the UK where, especially since the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) in 2008, the rights and responsibilities of disabled people have been subject to contestation and redefinition. Following a review of the emergent international evidence on mental health and welfare conditionality, this paper explores two specific issues. First, the impacts of the application of welfare conditionality on benefit claimants with mental health impairments. Second, the effectiveness of welfare conditionality in supporting people with experience of mental ill health into paid work. In considering these questions this paper presents original analysis of data generated in qualitative longitudinal interviews with 207 UK social security benefit recipients with experience of a range of mental health issues. The evidence suggests that welfare conditionality is largely ineffective in moving people with mental health impairments into, or closer to, paid work. Indeed, in many cases it triggers negative health outcomes that make future employment less likely. It is concluded that the application of conditionality for people with mental health issues is inappropriate and should cease.
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This paper presents the first spatial analysis of racial disparities in the UK welfare sanction regime. As part of their austerity programme, the UK government tightened the conditionality of welfare programmes and intensified the use of financial penalties against welfare claimants who failed to demonstrate compliance with these conditions. Analysing Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) data from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Office for National Statistics between 2012 and 2019 we draw attention to the spatially uneven and highly racialised geography of welfare sanctions in England. Claimants from racially minoritised backgrounds are consistently more likely to be referred for a sanction by Jobcentre caseworkers and receive an adverse decision at the hands of institutional decision-makers. Within this, however, there are important scalar and spatial differences that warrant critical attention. In rural England, the risk of being sanctioned is substantially higher for all groups, but especially for Mixed heritage and Black/Black British claimants who in some areas are over twice as likely to be sanctioned as their White counterparts. Since ethnicity data have not been published for Universal Credit sanction decisions, the presented evidence offers critical insight into the potential persistence of racial injustice in applying welfare sanctions. We identify 'hotspots' of racism in the sanction regime, most of which are in rural areas, before offering three interpretative frameworks through which spatial and racial disparities might be explained. Any suggestion that such disparities simply derive from the behaviour of DWP staff fails to adequately account for deeply entrenched histories of welfare racism, rural racism and the role of welfare sanctioning in dynamics of racial capitalism: that is, disciplining and impoverishing racialised populations in ways that generate conditions for capital accumulation. By contributing new empirical and theoretical insights to the often neglected study of rural austerity and welfare, the paper calls for scholarship to investigate the variegations of welfare, austerity and racial capitalism in diverse rural contexts.
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The article provides a resource‐based perspective on the polymorphic regulatory welfare state. It shows regulatory and fiscal tools applied in the UK social security sector place demands on claimants' resources (i.e., possessions, labor and data) and simultaneously alter behavior in relation to these resources. The analysis exposes an operation that generates new and increasing resource pressures for claimants, providing a deeper conceptualization of a regulatory welfare state. It offers a new perspective on why regulatory and fiscal arrangements perpetuate existing inequalities and suggests an increase in welfare problems as the regulatory welfare state intensifies resource pressures.
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Resistance to housing and welfare reforms on economic, ‘practical’ grounds was shattered by the covid-19 pandemic, which demonstrated that where there is a will there is a way when it comes to providing housing. Despite a purported ‘right’ to adequate housing, many people in the UK face profound challenges accessing stable accommodation. Drawing from a biographical-narrative study, this article details experiences of men who have the right to adequate housing denied and thus experience housing insecurity. Subsequently, it explores how such insecurity exacerbates pre-existing mental health problems. The core argument of the article is that welfare reforms produced the sense of a constant threat of homelessness and destitution for the 17 male participants in the study who claimed sickness benefits. This sense of constant threat manifested itself through (a) the production of present homelessness at the time of the research and (b) and underlying anxiety, fear and threat of homelessness. The article contends that the UK social security system perpetuates the structural and emotional drivers of mental distress, creating a deleterious cycle of poverty, insecurity and ill-health, concluding that the provision of stable housing is an upstream intervention to improve mental health and reduce social exclusion.
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In this chapter we examine the historical background to poverty research, the definition and concepts of poverty, and how is it experienced by individuals, families, and communities. The focus is mainly on the UK and on qualitative studies. Poverty is a cause of human suffering and the experiences of people living in poverty are mediated by social divisions such as gender, ethnicity, and disability. It can be understood in terms of the need of material resources, but also in terms of its psychosocial effects. It has clear effects on mental and physical health. Many aspects of the lives of people in poverty parallel the position of people with mental health conditions: lack of agency, opportunity, and voice; living compromised lives with stigma and discrimination; and struggling with day-to-day functioning, employment, and housing. Poverty impacts negatively on self-esteem and produces feelings of shame and guilt in response to inadequate material and social situations. It is possible that some of the mechanisms for understanding mental ill-health may also be shared with those related to poverty.
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This chapter outlines the levels of poverty, debt, and financial hardship in people with mental health conditions, the social security system, and living conditions, including neighbourhood deprivation, housing, and transport. People with mental health conditions are more likely to be excluded from material resources than others in society. They are over-represented in low-income group, those living in poor housing, and deprived environments. They are likely to be in debt or have other financial difficulties and to be receiving inadequate amounts of state benefits. The severity of the condition and its longevity exacerbates the degree of exclusion. There appears to be a two-way relationship between mental ill-health and material deprivation: social and environmental aspects of material exclusion play a role in the cause of mental ill-health and mental ill-health leads to material exclusion. Poverty mediates the relationship between mental health conditions and the many other social problems that people face, as well as impeding their ability to cope with their mental health difficulties. People’s responses to poor conditions are universal and, for those with mental health conditions, may be more appropriately seen as a consequence of their impoverished circumstances rather than due to their mental health conditions.
Thesis
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This thesis explores the principles of administrative punishment within the legal framework of the Council of Europe with a special emphasis on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The thesis seeks to gauge the scope of individual protection that one might expect with regard to administrative sanctions as well as to identify cases, in which such protection may be insufficient. The thesis concludes with the idea that even though the ECtHR views administrative sanctioning as an ‘organic’, multi-pronged system, there are instances, where procedural safeguards which could have been invoked at the administrative sanctioning level, remain undeveloped.
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In recent decades, the use of conditionality backed by benefit sanctions for those claiming unemployment and related benefits has become widespread in the social security systems of high-income countries. Critics argue that sanctions may be ineffective in bringing people back to employment or indeed harmful in a range of ways. Existing reviews largely assess the labour market impacts of sanctions but our understanding of the wider impacts is more limited. We report results from a scoping review of the international quantitative research evidence on both labour market and wider impacts of benefit sanctions. Following systematic search and screening, we extract data for 94 studies reporting on 253 outcome measures. We provide a narrative summary, paying attention to the ability of the studies to support causal inference. Despite variation in the evidence base and study designs, we found that labour market studies, covering two thirds of our sample, consistently reported positive impacts for employment but negative impacts for job quality and stability in the longer term, along with increased transitions to non-employment or economic inactivity. Although largely relying on non-experimental designs, wider-outcome studies reported significant associations with increased material hardship and health problems. There was also some evidence that sanctions were associated with increased child maltreatment and poorer child well-being. Lastly, the review highlights the generally poor quality of the evidence base in this area, with few studies employing research methods designed to identify the causal impact of sanctions, especially in relation to wider impacts.
Technical Report
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This is a briefing regarding the planned future social policy reforms in the UK.
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Universal Credit (UC) entails an unprecedented expansion of welfare conditionality to those in work. Working-age adults (16–66) in the United Kingdom who are working part-time and on a low income will be subject to work related requirements until they earn the equivalent of 35 hours per week at national living wage. It is estimated that workers aged 50 to 66 will account for nearly a quarter of those claimants subject to in-work conditionality. A small-scale qualitative study was carried out with workers aged over 50 in receipt of Working Tax Credit (WTC) who are set to be migrated to UC. The researchers also interviewed employers who have people over 50 in their workforce. The findings show that there was limited awareness of UC and little support for in-work conditionality.
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This paper uses the principles of trauma-informed care – safety, collaboration, choice, trustworthiness, and respect – to reflect on the quality of veterans’ treatment within the UK social security system. Drawing upon new data from qualitative longitudinal research with veterans in four geographical locations across England, UK, it explores their experiences within the social security system, highlighting specific issues relating to their interactions with the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) but also the conditionality inherent within the UK benefits system. Overall, it is evident that there is a lack of understanding of the impact of trauma on people’s psychosocial functioning and, as a result, veterans are treated in ways which are variously perceived as disrespectful, unfair or disempowering and in some cases exacerbate existing mental health problems. We propose that the application of trauma-informed care principles to the UK social security system could improve interactions within this system and avoid re-traumatising those experiencing on-going or unresolved trauma. The paradigm of trauma-informed care has been used internationally to examine health, homelessness, prison and childcare services, but ours is the first exploration of its application to the delivery of social security.
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Universal Credit is the UK’s globally innovative social security reform that replaces six means tested benefits with one monthly payment for working age claimants - combining social security and tax credit systems. Universal Credit expands welfare conditionality via mandatory job search conditions to enhance ‘progression’ amongst working claimants by requiring extra working hours or multiple jobs. This exposes low paid workers to tough benefit sanctions for non-compliance, which could remove essential income indefinitely or for fixed periods of up to three years. Our unique contribution is to establish how this new regime is experienced at micro level by in-work claimants over time. We present findings from Qualitative Longitudinal Research (141 interviews with 58 claimants, 2014-17), to demonstrate how UC impacts on in-work recipients and how conditionality produces a new coerced worker-claimant model of social support. We identify a series of welfare conditionality mismatches and conclude that conditionality for in-work claimants is largely counterproductive. This implies a redesign of the UK system and serves as an international warning to potential policy emulators.
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This article brings together methodological insight from two policy-focused studies centrally concerned with understanding experiences of, and responses to, rapidly expanding welfare conditionality (that is, making claimants’ eligibility to social welfare rights dependent on engagement with mandatory behavioural responsibilities under threat of sanction for non-compliance), in the UK context. Qualitative longitudinal approaches are ideally suited to seeking a better understanding of the efficacy and consequences of welfare conditionality and enabling an exploration of how the policy assumptions underpinning this approach intersect with (and often contradict) lived experiences. In this article, we detail the approaches we have taken in employing qualitative longitudinal methodologies and explore the similarities and distinctive features of two policy studies with which the authors were involved (Patrick, 2017; WelCond, 2018). Drawing on data from our two studies, we highlight how a focus on time can deepen our understanding of policy changes and their impact on people’s past, present and future lives. We consider the difference in scale of the two studies and the respective possibilities and challenges in working with quite small and very large sample sizes, including the analytical challenge particular to qualitative longitudinal research. Further, we highlight the value of qualitative longitudinal methods for research that seeks to comprehend the varied effects of welfare conditionality on the lives and behaviour of social security benefit recipients over time. Finally, we reflect on the merits of qualitative longitudinal studies for social policy research more broadly. Key messages QLR as a tool for exploring lived experiences of welfare reform. Impacts of welfare conditionality over time. </ul
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In an era of increasing interest in and concern about destitution in the UK, the leading studies place social security problems among the principal causes. This suggests that destitution is a failure of social citizenship, with social protection systems unable or unwilling to underwrite the guarantee of a modicum of economic welfare that, according to Marshall, forms the essence of the citizen’s social rights. This article documents how the establishment of a comprehensive welfare state in the mid-20th century has been eroded by a series of social security reforms that have turned the focus back on local government and the voluntary sector for the support of the ‘undeserving’ migrant and unemployed poor. Empirical findings from a major study of destitution in the UK illustrate how the fulfilment of social ‘rights’ is becoming dependent on knowing where to seek support, having access to the right gatekeeper and enduring social stigma. The authors consider the compatibility of a welfare state characterised by strict conditionality, decision maker discretion and gaps in the safety net with the Marshallian ‘right to welfare’.
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