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Commons work and pensions committee calls for an end to sanctioning disabled people.

What: In a report on the government’s “harmful and counterproductive” benefit sanctions regime, the Commons work and pensions committee concludes: “Of all the evidence we received, none was more compelling than that against the imposition of conditionality and sanctions on people with a disability or health condition. It does not work. Worse, it is harmful and counterproductive.”

Why significant: Shows cross-party support from the committee for ending the use of sanctions against disabled people. Yet employment minister Alok Sharma had told the committee in correspondence that the government would be doing a “great disservice” to disabled people if it stopped sanctioning their out-of-work benefits.

Citations

House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, Benefit Sanctions
Minister says stopping benefit sanctions would do disabled people ‘a great disservice’, Pring, 2018