argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Michael Fraser Weir (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that again illustrates the complete illogicality of the system Research has linked sanctioning to food insecurity, demand for food banks and destitution. According to the Trussell Trust’s figures, benefit sanctions are a major contributor to its delivering more emergency food parcels in 2016 than at any other time in its history. The NAO has also thrown into doubt the cost-effectiveness of sanctioning. If we passed the Bill, we could start to reduce the number of needless, senseless and counterproductive sanctions by introducing into the system a clear code of conduct and a fairer means by which to look at the personal conditions of the person being considered for sanctions. The Bill builds on the good practice in some jobcentres, as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South fairly pointed out in her introduction. It would protect the most vulnerable from falling into poverty and prevent what are often already chaotic personal lives from getting even worse The Scottish Parliament is getting new powers to establish employment schemes to assist those at risk of becoming long-term unemployed and to support disabled people back into work, although benefit conditionality and sanctions remain a reserved matter. The Employability and Training Minister, Jamie Hepburn, has confirmed that the Work First Scotland programme, which will provide employment support for more than 3,300 disabled people from next year, will be voluntary and will not use the threat of sanctions. In a rare moment of agreement, I am pleased that the DWP has agreed that the programme can be voluntary and that no sanctions will be applied. I hope that this is a sign that the Government are now beginning to see the merit in looking at the matter afresh. From this small step, I urge the Minister to go further and to support the Bill, which would put the regime on a proper and consistent footing and in the process make a real difference to many people’s lives across the whole United Kingdom.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): We all in the Chamber agree on the need to do our bit, but according to Trussell Trust figures more than 1 million food parcels a year—the highest number since the war—are going out across every constituency in the country. Is that not clear evidence that the system is not working. After the second world war came the post-war social contract, and this shows the worst parts of the breakdown of that consensus, which was once shared in the House.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): In that case, let us look at the Trussell Trust’s own statistics, showing that 44% of all food bank use is due to the two key areas of benefit delays and benefit sanctions. I believe it is our responsibility to resolve that matter. Does the hon. Lady not agree that when we are talking about nearly 50% of people using food banks because of a failure of the benefit system, it means that there is a fundamental and direct link between the two and that the Bill amounts, frankly, only to a modest gesture to help improve those circumstances?
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The statistics show that the price of this sanctions regime as it currently stands and the subsequently overturned decisions is £50 million to the taxpayer. The Bill would change how benefit sanctions are administered. It is not about ripping the system apart, but about trying to make it more efficient precisely because we want to save taxpayers’ money as well as a lot of the hassle that some people have to go through.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am interested in the point that the hon. Lady is making about the social contract. Should not the same apply to all those women who paid into a contractual pension scheme—the WASPI women? Are they not also entitled to have that money paid back to them by the state?
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Lady for letting me intervene again. She has spoken about how positive work is, and how it gives us all self-esteem and great benefit. No one disagrees with that point, which has been made many times in the House, but let us be clear about the suggestion that sanctions somehow encourage or motivate claimants. The hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) said earlier that, according to the National Audit Office, analysis showed that sanctions work internationally, and I do not dispute that. My point is that, in the United Kingdom, analysis of the benefit sanctions system suggests that there is no evidence that sanctions imposed by the Department for Work and Pensions have a positive effect on job outcomes. Does the hon. Lady accept that?
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Lady said France imposes sanctions if somebody refuses two reasonable offers of jobs. There is a world of difference between that and imposing sanctions on somebody because they are five minutes late for an interview or for any number of other trivial reasons why people have had their money taken off them.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I appreciate what the hon. Lady is saying, and ask her to join me in trying to get that same experience in those jobcentres to become the norm throughout the UK? This Bill seeks to spread that consistency and good quality of staff throughout the UK.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene. First, I am more than happy for this Bill to be looked at and to have different inputs, so the Government should support it in principle and we can then thrash out in Committee the technicalities of how it can be implemented. Secondly, if the Government are genuinely interested in listening, it might be an idea for the hon. Lady to speak to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I have been trying for weeks to get a meeting with him to discuss the Bill, but I am yet to have even a reply.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Today started so well. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) took us on an incredible journey through the sanctions system, explaining why we need the Bill to pass, and many of my colleagues and many Labour Members made really powerful interventions—but then things just started to go wrong. I am standing here feeling like I am banging my head on a brick wall. I feel powerless. As an MP, I feel that I can do nothing to get the message through and to make people understand. If I feel powerless, depressed and, to be honest, close to tears at times, how on earth must somebody who actually has no power and who is at the mercy of this Government when they are using the benefits system be feeling? I do not even want to make this speech, but I will anyway As MPs, we often have to manage the expectations of our constituents. I would say that I am pretty good at fighting for them, sometimes tooth and nail—as no doubt are many others who have talked about supporting people in difficult situations—but we have to let them know that we do not have a magic wand. If I did have a magic wand and could make it do something today, I would get rid of the pernicious sanctions in the benefit system, because they are cruel and unnecessary I always say that the Conservative party knows the cost of everything and the value of absolutely nothing, but the sanctions do not even tick the Conservative box of being cost-effective. The irony is that, despite all their clamouring to reposition themselves as the party of working people—that is even more laughable—the Tories are simply showing their true colours by allowing the system to persist My hon. Friend’s Bill is based, quite rightly, on the premise that having a decent job is in an individual’s interest, as we have heard from the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately). I agree with that, and the vast majority of people will try their level best to get one where one is available. The Government, with their usual deeply cynical view of humankind, have developed this policy based not on their view of the value of work, but entirely on their disdain for those who happen to be without it.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Not yet. I am going to talk about my mother, who is slightly more important to me than the hon. Gentleman. My mother regularly told me—I was a not-too-confident child—that I was as good as anyone else. She said that I was no worse and, being Scottish, no better, but as good. Let me tell those on the Government Benches today—not all of them need to hear this, but most of them do—that the same goes for us all. My constituents, whether they are in work or not, and whatever their reason for being out of work— illness, lack of jobs or a lack of self-confidence—are every bit as good as every one of them. Government Members are not better than my constituents. They may have been treated better in life and had better opportunities, but that does not mean that they deserve better, because they do not.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Christopher Charles Stephens (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I remind everyone in the Chamber that the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents DWP staff, supports the Bill, because too often its "members in DWP are forced to implement the policy against what they know is in the best interests of claimants."
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): That is absolutely right and I completely agree. I am glad that my hon. Friend has brought that up again The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) has said that Government Members have as much compassion as Opposition Members. I suppose that depends on his definition of compassion. Was the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) compassionate when he said that people were terrified of getting a job? In other words, he was saying that they are lazy and work shy. Then, when we attacked him for saying that, he sniggered.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Let me think: do I want to give way to somebody who speaks about my constituents in that way? No, I do not. My constituents who are out of work are every bit as deserving of a decent life as any Government Member. If they agree with that, they need to ask themselves how valued and respected would they feel if someone stood over them, pointing the finger, tutting away, treating them like naughty schoolchildren and taking away their entire income by way of punishment for minor misdemeanours. Except they cannot imagine that, because most of them—I take the point made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) about being unemployed—have been nowhere near that kind of life. Well, lucky them.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Hannah Mary Bardell (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for deeming me worthy to be given way to. On contrasting lifestyles, does she share my disappointment and alarm about the fact that we can have legislation that targets some of the poorest people in society, but we cannot find the legislative means to tackle people such as Philip Green who have stolen workers’ pensions but who are happy to keep their own yachts and who are taking away from people at the bottom of our society?
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Absolutely. Without wanting to put words in my hon. Friend’s mouth, I wonder whether she is suggesting that there is a bit of political ideology behind all this The Bill does the best that we can do, working within the system. The Government cannot really argue with what is proposed, because they claim that they do it anyway. They claim that they already take people’s circumstances into account. If that is the case, they should just agree to the Bill. The hon. Member for Bournemouth West said that he would not support the Bill because my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South had said that she was opposed to sanctions, full stop. I want to know how supporting the Bill is going to end the sanctions regime. It is not; it is going to make the regime a little bit more humane, but there is, sadly, nothing in the Bill that will end the sanctions regime.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Government Operations
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am going to repeat what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). The staff at the DWP are supporting the Bill. They want clarity, and they think that they do not have it. They are on the frontline doing the job, so if they think that they do not have that clarity, we should listen to them.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Absolutely. As I said at the start, I feel as though I am banging my head off a brick wall. In fact, I think that that might be a better use of my time. If we are already doing this, the requirement in the Bill for someone’s caring responsibilities to be taken into account when considering a sanction happens already, does it? Tell that to my constituent Claire, a single parent who was summoned to an interview with the jobcentre on a day the following week at 3 pm, the exact time that her six-year-old gets out of school. She asked whether the meeting could be changed to 3.30. No. Could it be changed to earlier in the day? No. Could it be changed to another day? No, it had to be on that day at 3 o’clock, the time that she needed to pick up her child from school. She said, "Should I leave my child there, or should I take my child out early?" She was told, "We don’t care, as long as you get here, and if you do not get here at 3 o’clock on that day, we are sanctioning you." Were her caring responsibilities taken into account? No. I do not want to hear that that was an incorrect decision or an isolated case. I am sick of hearing that. It was not an isolated case, because we hear about this all the time. I could talk about it until midnight and I would not get through, such is the number of times I have heard about it.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Absolutely. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South on proposing this Bill, and I thank her on behalf of many of my constituents. If the Bill is successful, it will provide some protection. If not, it will at least have raised the issue again, and people out there will know that somebody in here cares about what happens to them I will start—I say "start," but I have been going on for quite a while—by offering the treat that the hon. Member for Bournemouth West is looking for by arguing against the entire sanctions regime. I challenge him to respond to my arguments. I saw Government Members being given a sheet of paper with a list of suggested interventions, but I have experience, and lots of it, on my side, so challenge away I will argue on three levels. First, there is the financial argument. I will use only factual arguments, and the sanctions regime costs us more to run than it saves—that is before we look at the long-term hidden costs. Secondly, there are the academic arguments. Conditionality in the welfare system does not work. It is not me making that argument; it is academics. I will share their findings, and let us see whether Government Members have actual evidence to the contrary—not opinions, but evidence. Thirdly, I will make the moral argument, and here Government Members can make a counter-argument because we all have a different moral compass—morality can be subjective, a matter of opinion. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that anybody who thinks it is right that we sanction the benefits of people who are already in poverty needs their compass reprogrammed pronto.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend, who is my MP, for giving way. Is it not ironic that we interrupted today’s debate to talk about the UK’s response to global poverty and the sustainable development goals? Does she recognise, as I hope the Minister does, that the Government have a duty to meet those sustainable development goals and eradicate poverty here at home, too? In fact, as we have heard in all the testimony today, the sanctions regime makes that poverty worse.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Macroeconomics
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): If it is in order for me to say so, that is the last time I will let the hon. Gentleman intervene. When there is expenditure, it is about political choices. I choose to support people who are at their lowest, and I choose not to pay £400 million to redecorate Buckingham Palace. As he knows, I was talking about the long-term hidden costs.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): That reminds me of a constituent who wrote to me about his benefits being sanctioned for 13 weeks and about how he is now back in work and how he hates benefits scroungers because they caused the sanctioning to happen.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle, because the most important thing in this debate is that I say "hon. Member", is it not? She said that she is not talking about Buckingham Palace, but her Government are, and she is supporting the Government to redecorate Buckingham Palace, while saying that we cannot support people The other thing is that the people on £480 a week may well be unemployed at some point and may well face benefit sanctions.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): No, I will not let the hon. Lady in again It does not take a genius to work out that it will cost more if we put people out on the street. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South cited the figure from Crisis, which has done some studies. It found that 21% of the people it spoke to said that they became homeless as the result of a sanction. How much is it going to cost to rehouse people and to deal with the health and mental health problems that result from their having nothing, losing their home and being on the street? All sorts of figures are being batted around, but according to a story in Scotland’s Daily Record, the National Audit Office has said that, when the figures are added up, it costs £135 million more per year to implement benefits sanctions than we save by them. I think that that proves the financial argument On the academic argument, I have a report on welfare conditionality from the Universities of Glasgow and York. I am happy to send it to people if they want to read it. The report shows that conditionality in the welfare system does not work, if by "working" we mean that it helps people to move into employment. It does not help people into employment. The first wave of findings found that, in all the research on the impact of the current sanctioning regime, only one individual thought that sanctioning made them more active, which is less than 2% of those interviewed. Later, I will read out what somebody said.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Labor
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): That is absolutely correct, and what does that say about the democracy of this place The fact is that most of the respondents in the research were already keen to find work—most people are—and even the practitioners who are imposing the sanctions regime are sceptical about its benefits. As we have already heard, DWP staff are under incredible pressure. When I spoke about the aspirations they have to reach, the hon. Member for Bournemouth West challenged me to provide the name of the whistleblower who told me all about this, and then just hope that they stay in employment. I will not do that, but I will point him to an article on a journalist’s website called "Common Space", in which Fraser Stewart talks about how he gave up his job and became unemployed because he could not bear to keep up with the targets or aspirations that were set for him. The hon. Gentleman can have a look at that, although I am surprised he does not know about it already I was glad to read the research to back up what I have always known, which is that conditionality does not work. I do not think people have to be that bright to see why it does not work to have somebody standing over them telling them, "You must do it". I wonder how many of the Conservative Members who have spoken today require a stick to be wielded over them for them to go out to find work. [Interruption.] They have the Whips—that is a very good point—but how many of them went out into the world of work and said, "I’m not going to bother doing this". What makes them so special, because they will all say, "No, no, I always wanted to work"? I was always keen to work, but so are most people. Most people have aspirations.
Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Hannah Mary Bardell (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I promise my hon. Friend that I am intervening on her for one last time. Is she aware of this year’s "Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, support and behaviour change" project report? It states that "the impacts of benefit sanctions are universally reported by welfare service users as profoundly negative." It also found that sanctions have pushed some people into committing survival crime. Is not the fact that people in our society are pushed into committing crimes just so that they can survive a shame and a stain on our society?