The number of benefit payments suspended since a tougher regime was introduced last year has increased by 11 per cent, new figures have shown.
The Department for Work and Pensions said jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) claimants who failed to do enough to find work, turned down jobs, or have not turned up to appointments had their payments suspended 580,000 times between October 2012 and June.
Just under 400,000 individuals were involved, as some had their benefits suspended more than once. In Birmingham and Solihull 17,010 sanctions were imposed on claimants between October last year and June.
Just four per cent of decisions involving claimants in Birmingham were overturned on appeal - compared to a national average of just under five epr cent.
Employment Minister Esther McVey said: “This Government has always been clear that, in return for claiming unemployment benefits, jobseekers have a responsibility to do everything they can to get back into work.
“People who are in a job know that if they don’t play by the rules or fail to turn up in the morning, there might be consequences, so it’s only right that people on benefits should have similar responsibilities.”
The most common reason for a sanction, which can result in benefit payments being stopped, was a failure to actively look for work. Sanctions are graded as ‘higher’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘lower’ – depending on the frequency of the offence.
Nationally, the statistics show 1.3 million sanctions decisions on JSA claimants since the new regime started in late October last year. Around 580,000 were classified as adverse leading to a sanction, 387,000 were non-adverse, and 378,000 were reserved or cancelled. Of the adverse decisions, 223,000 led to the loss of the allowance for four weeks for a first offence and 48,000 lost JSA for 13 weeks.
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