UK Welfare Sanctions & Disappearing Welfare Claimants

ꕤ Article SOURCE https://www.rt.com/uk/329080-benefits-welfare-cuts-destitution/ Disappearing Welfare Claimants https://www.rt.com/uk/329080-benefits-welfare-cuts-destitution/ Close to 1.5 million benefit claimants could face destitution after disappearing from the welfare system, a former Labour minister has warned. Published time: 15 Jan, 2016 14:10 Field warned the government is unaware of how many claimants have been left impoverished because it is failing to properly monitor why they have disappeared from the welfare system. Following a forensic audit of the government’s welfare reforms, he found that the whereabouts of 1.5 million UK residents who drop off the state’s welfare rolls each year is unknown. The study, which will be published in full by Civitas on Monday, was authored by Field and his senior parliamentary researcher Andrew Forsey. It found that some of the welfare claimants who have been wiped off the system were hit by benefits sanctions, while others may be in jail or abroad. The study said that roughly half a million benefits sanctions were imposed on welfare claimants in the financial year 2014/15. It called upon the government to conduct an urgent survey of those citizens whose benefits are scrapped annually under the government’s sanctions regime. The report welcomed the government’s decision to trial a yellow card early warning scheme, but suggested the policy should be supplemented with non-financial sanctions for claimants who fail to meet the terms of their welfare program. It suggested the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) introduce trials whereby vulnerable people are offered a“grace period,”during which requirements imposed on them are softened to ease the “transition or acute difficulty.” The report also called for greater transparency, and urged the government to reveal how much expenditure is withdrawn under its benefits sanction regime. “The number of sanctions was halved in the year leading up to the 2015 election, but it still remained at half a million. Sanctions are therefore being applied at a scale unknown since the Second World War, and the operation of sanctions on this scale makes for a most significant change in the social security system as it has existed in the post-war period,” Field and Forsey wrote. “A number of people – we know not how large a number – are being totally disconnected from both work and welfare, and risk being exposed to destitution.” “Justice calls for a major survey of what happens to the hundreds of thousands of people thrown off the welfare rolls each year through the sanctioning process.” Field and Forsey said it is absolutely unacceptable for the government to strip benefits from masses of people annually and not concern itself about how this group of people will survive. “The ability to track the wellbeing of the whole population is now a part of being a grown up government, let alone a ‘One Nation’ government,’” they added. The DWP said Forsey’s and Field’s claims are baseless. “People leave the benefits system for many reasons, including when they go to work – which is good news,” a DWP spokesperson told the BBC. “It’s extremely unlikely anyone would leave the benefit system because of a sanction. The truth is we have record employment and we spend £80 billon supporting millions of people who are unemployed or on low incomes.” Field resigned from the government under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the wake of the 2010 election, he led an independent review into poverty in Britain for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. He also co-chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in Britain in 2015. https://www.rt.com/uk/329080-benefits-welfare-cuts-destitution/ Field = Frank Field It looks as though he has completely changed his tune? He's gone from being pro sanctions to lobbying on behalf of the sanctioned?  That doesn't make sense. Field is also opposed to freedom of speech, by the look of the Wikipedia entry. "Private views thought to be damaging to public conduct, and expressed in public, would be monitored and suppressed." [Wikipedia] The guy sounds like the Stasi.  Sounds rather scary.  lol  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Field_%28British_politician%29  '“Moral and civic duties provide the very foundations upon which civilised life is built and are a proper area for legislative prescription and if necessary sanctions”' -- Frank Field [purportedly, book:  'Neighbours From Hell'] Source | Wirral Leaks "Frank, who has attacked the Conservative government for cutting benefits to the poor, is ready, for those who fail to abide by his model of society, to…well…cut their benefits! Not only this, but the imposing of sanctions should be seen as a criminal justice matter! ‘The agency deciding what action should follow a repeated failure to meet a [citizen’s] contract should be the police and only the police. Once the police have the required  evidence to levy a sanction…[it] should automatically come into operation on the appropriate benefit.’" Source | Wirral Leaks 'Wirralgate Cover-up' mentioned.  Sounds ridiculous.  It's about a tape recording of using 'inappropriate language' (eye-roll).  Local council thing.  More | here. Enjoyed the Wirral Leaks article.  Interesting analysis of policy and poverty. ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Check out how the UK government let up on screwing the vulnerable public in the lead-up to the election.  What's the bet that was a deliberate slackening of sanctions they otherwise would impose? Democracy doesn't work.  People are still fighting for the same things that keep getting wound back by governments, and governments are always inefficient and dodgy. People shouldn't have to incessantly campaign for their governments to do the right thing.  They should be doing it, and they should be transparent without people having to campaign for transparency -- all the time. I don't think they have a right to sanction anybody.  The government is the front for the interests that have appropriated land and privatised it, effectively corralling or imprisoning free men as labourer-slave human livestock, who are no longer free to live off the land that was stolen from free men:  hunters and warriors.   Those that have stolen land and imprisoned free men are therefore obligated to provide for the well-being of those whose heritage they have usurped and whose self-sufficiency they have denied.  How's that for an argument?  lol It sounds reasonable to me, because if you dismantle society as it was, privatise land and deprive a people of the ability to sustain themselves in their customary way (ie dismantle a way of life that involved freely and communally living off the land), in order to create societies that are based on usurping land and usurping resources for the benefit of a few, then those people that have basically been displaced by such are system are undeniably entitled to sustenance etc.  I'm talking about responsibility of nations to nationals, rather than notions  of universal responsibility. PS ... I think I might have a romanticised view of the 'displaced' by the system.  Just checked out some tabloid mayhem reports, and I'm horrified by what I see.  Where are the proud hunters and warriors I imagine? Now I'm kind of inclined towards state totalitarianism, strict breeding restrictions, and a selective breeding regime.  lol ꕤ