With the public distracted, there was something ghoulishly vindictive about the Department for Work and Pensions’ action last week (Universal credit claimants face tough sanctions in UK job crackdown, 27 January). It changed the rules without legislation or parliamentary approval. Jobseekers must now accept jobs below their occupation from the fourth week of making a claim for benefits, rather than three months, or face sanctions.
The DWP claims this is because unemployment is low. But it is punishing victims twice. The tight labour market is due mainly to older people preferring early retirement rather than face health risks in available jobs.
Requiring unemployed people to take jobs beneath their abilities, including temporary and zero-hours jobs, intensifies the precarity trap. Someone becoming unemployed must wait at least five weeks before obtaining benefits. Then if they managed to start receiving them, they would lose disastrously if they took a low-wage temporary job, because soon they would be back waiting a further five or more weeks without benefits.
You do not need a maths degree to work out that this new measure is cruel to people who have done nothing to deserve it. And taking a job below one’s qualifications lowers the probability of subsequently returning to one’s occupation and lowers lifetime earnings. The long-term solution to this cruel regime is abolition of the DWP, with a new agency for employment and training services, with the benefit function handed to HMRC.
Dr Guy Standing
Soas University of London
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