CAmpaign against universal credit sanctions
responding to the minister at the DWP
Have you written to the Minister at the DWP and received a response similar to this one?
If so and you would like to respond back to them here are some details which you might like to use. Feel free to add to this/ remove sections which aren’t relevant.
Claim: Changes to conditionality means families get more support.
Reality: The change to 30 hours work requirement is not support, it is a threat. A threat to single parent families and those on low incomes, to increase their hours to unrealistic levels, or risk having essential financial support for them and their children withheld. Support is in fact what single parent families need. They need it in the form of flexible work requirements based on individual needs, dedicated work coaches for single parents, a functioning childcare system and employers who are incentivised to provide truly flexible working opportunities. It should also be noted that single parent families require childcare for reasons other than purely to undertake paid work. Single parents are an active part of the community with responsibilities at their children's schools for example. They also often require childcare for medical appointments and taking one child to an appointment. For many, many families, the logistics and financial impact of working 30 hours (which in turn requires more than 30 hours of childcare) will not work in practice.
Claim: Data shows that working leads to a decrease in poverty.
Reality: The data shows an incredibly complex situation and it's not as simple as stating that increasing hours lowers poverty. Working age single parents now have the highest rates of poverty amongst working adults with 43% living in poverty. Furthermore, the issue around single parents earning is a gendered issue as well as a family set up issue. In 2018 a father in a couple earned on average £16 per hour, compared with £14 for a single dad. For a mother in a couple average pay is £12 per hour whilst for a single mother it stood at just over £8 per hour. Whilst these amounts may have risen there has been no effective approach to address the inequalities in pay for these groups.
Claim: The work requirements will be tailored to an individual's circumstances.
Reality: If this flexibility is to be honoured, then the 30 hours work requirement should not be introduced because it acts as a fear mongering and threat based policy to single parent families. If there is to be real flexibility in the system then such targets need not be included at all and rather dedicated work coaches who understand single parent families circumstances, should work with individual families to identify a work-life balance that works for their own circumstances and isn't based on a blanket policy ruling as is currently being suggested.
Claim: Requirements to meet work coaches supports single parent families.
Reality: Without support for childcare how are single parent families supposed to attend those meetings in the first place?
Claim: 48 hours notice for an interview and 1 months notice for starting work is sufficient for single parent families.
Reality: The strict time limits on this are very worrying for most single parent families. Whilst many single parents can and want to work, these kinds of targets do not help. Research shows conditionality has the opposite affect of what it is trying to achieve. Instead of threating single parents with these kind of requirements there should be more flexibility built into the system. Many single parents do not have family support nearby and so arranging childcare with 48 hours notice is unreasonable. As for starting a job within 1 month if a child requires a nursery place waiting lists can be over a year and are rarely available within a month. Is the DWP aware for example that many of the school nursery places are only available with a September start date and the vast majority won't allow a start date not on the first day of a new term. The level of details in these sanctions suggests that the DWP are completely unaware of the realities single parent families deal with daily.
Claim: Sanctions are only imposed with good reason.
Reality: 62% of sanctions for single parents were overturned when formally challenged (compared with 54% of others) showing that for a huge number of single parents sanctions are enforced unfairly. Furthermore, plans to automate the UC sanction processes risks many more single parent families falling through the cracks and facing sanctions with dire consequences for single parents and their children.
Claim: DWP have a hardship payments process which works effectively.
Reality: Hardship payments can be hard to access, are only 60% of the benefit entitlement and then result in lower payments in future UC payments until this payment is 'paid off'. This does not address the financial hardship faced by single parent families who experience sanctions either in the immediate moment, nor for the subsequent months whilst claimants are paying this back.
Claim: The increase in childcare support available for single parents through UC will be sufficient.
Reality: While the increase in the amount single parents can claim back was initially to be welcomed, these new rules show that supporting single parents is the least of the concern of this government. These amounts are still far from the amount that childcare actually costs and many single parents will simply be unable to access the childcare needed to undertake these additional hours even if all other factors would enable them to work more than 4 days a week.
Claim: Upfront payments for childcare support will ease the burden.
Reality: Single parents have already been told that this will not cover holiday childcare costs, a key challenge for single parents and one that only increases the more hours a single parent works. If holiday childcare continues to be excluded from the upfront payments system single parent families will continue to struggle and find themselves forced into debt merely for working.
What is this all about?
On 15th March 2023, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced that the 30 hours funded childcare would be expanded to all under fives. What he did not announce was the Government’s plans to implement much stricter sanctions for those on Universal Credit. These were reported in the Guardian on 22nd March. These plans include withholding benefit payments from parents unless they:
Are available for work up to 30 hours a week once their youngest child turns three, nearly double the current requirement of 16 hours.
Meet with a job coach every three months – up from every six months – as soon as their child turns one. Parents of two-year-olds will have to attend coaching monthly.
We have set up a campaign for people to write to their MP and government Ministers to highlight the problems with these changes. You can find more details about it here.
TAKE MORE ACTION
Take a look at our take action page for other campaign activities.