ephemerid wrote:OK.
I've done a little trawl of the interweb thingy and I found this -
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 1154en/htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
There are clauses in the WRA listed there which supersede previous unrepealed legislation.
Basically, the wording of the WRA means that the Secretary of State can issue new regulations any time and for any benefit.
I gather there are some exceptions for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
I am inclined to think that if there was a chance that all sanctions are illegal, some public interest lawyers would have cottoned on by now - my view is that the WRA has removed the responsibility for the S of S to provide social security based on need, and now most out-of-work benefits are based on conditions only.
If that wasn't the case, there would be a reduced payment available for those who can't work due to illness, for example - with IB, if you were found capable of work but disagreed, you could opt to have a reduced payment on hardship grounds rather than sign on, but you can't do that now.
You can claim hardship payments, but they are only available under certain conditions and they are time-limited; if your JSA or ESA is sanctioned for a jobsearching doubt, you are not likely to qualify for hardship unless you have children. You will be expected to take the hit and ask for whatever local provision exists, and it might not be cash.
It is possible to apply for hardship if sanctioned, but it's subject to referral to a decision maker - the decisions are appealable, but as with everything else, all this will be subject to Clause 99.
Short Term Benefit Advances (the unadvertised replacement for Crisis Loans) are only payable to people who have an as yet unpaid claim for benefits, and who have to show that payment is delayed or that DWP has a reasonable expectation that benefit will be paid.
STBAs cannot be claimed by people who have been sanctioned, AFAIK, because that expectation does not exist.
Re, the £10 for food thing - I don't like the wording of that petition. I don't accept that people are "rightly or wrongly" being sanctioned for not meeting their responsibilities. We know that many people are being tricked into doing things that will cause them to be sanctioned, that many of the reasons given by DWP are spurious, and most of all that even when the doubts raised are legitimate the system is so draconian that people will be sanctioned at some point.
If this achieved the desired outcome, and everyone on sanctions got their tenner for food, how would it be paid? In vouchers? What?
It would be an excuse for DWP to impose more bloody sanctions, not clean up their act and do it fairly - and there's the foolish notion I have that people shouldn't be sanctioned for ridiculous impossible unachievable conditions anyway.
It's a bad idea. If the lady concerned seriously thinks that the WRA has not superseded existing legislation, then she should be petitioning on the theory that all sanctions are illegal, not mitigating their effects with this nonsense.
Give IDS an inch, and he'll take a hundred miles - if he thinks people will happily accept a sanction if they get a tenner instead, he'll just cut benefits further. That's why I get so pissed off with all these bloody people who say they can feed their families on tuppence ha'penny as though it was something you could sustain for more than a few weeks.
The problem with the sanctions regime is that there are far too many people involved. Whether you get one or not depends on who you see when you go to the jobcentre, what the latest target is (and it could be anything - not signing up for Universal Jobmatch one week, or refusal of employment the next), and what sort of mood the "adviser" happens to be in.
Then there's the WP providers - if they don't like you, or you won't do some daft thing they impose, they can refer for sanction. And they do - 250,000 referrals last year. DWP only actioned 100,000 of them, so the majority must have been pretty spurious.
The trouble is, the referral for sanction is made on the word of whoever, and it's up to the claimant to prove that the referral is wrong.
Could you tell me where I can find the blogs/article you refer to? I wouldn't mind reading what these folks are saying.