Recommendation 36

Sanctions can have a negative impact not only on disabled people’s employment prospects, but on their overall wellbeing. The Minister told us that the conditionality regime forms part of a “menu of support” and that sanctions are only used as a last resort, but even he acknowledged that it is in “no one’s interest” for a sanction to be 78 Disability employment gap applied. We welcome the fact that DWP has very recently adopted a new approach to conditionality, with a focus on voluntary engagement, for some disability benefit claimants. But this change is long overdue. In response to this report, DWP should set out the evidence in support of its new approach, what involvement disabled people had in developing it, and what plans it has to evaluate it. It should also provide its most recent evidence on the impact of sanctions on disabled claimants, including on their mortality, as well as any lessons it has learned from the suspension of the conditionality regime during the coronavirus pandemic. It should also set out in response to this report the action it has taken in response to our predecessor Committees’ reports from 2015 and 2018 on benefit sanctions and their impact on disabled people and people with health conditions, including their recommendations that some groups should be exempt from sanctions and that DWP should explore options for non-financial sanctions and that it explore options for a warning to be issued for a first sanctionable failure. In particular, it should explain what it has done to engage claimants in provision and conditionality, as it undertook to do in 2018. It should commit to reducing the number of disability benefit claimants who are subject to conditionality and decrease the value of sanctions. The Department should only impose sanctions when all other avenues have been exhausted.