No evidence to support daily trips to the Jobcentre

The Jobcentre has a tactic I've looked at before whereby a claimant is required to go in every day to have their job seeking activities checked over. The official line is that it is to support claimants into work. Others suggest it's intended to make claiming so difficult and unpleasant that a claimant will sign off. Or that it sets people up for a sanction.

So I asked DWP what evidence they had that such a regime made it more likely that claimants receiving this particular support will get and sustain employment . After the usual delay, referral to the Information Commissioner and an inadequate response it turns out that "no evaluation of the Daily Work Search Review has been carried out as yet".

The only alternative evidence they offer is about  "Supervised Jobsearch Pilots" but they won't publish the results of these citing Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act. That scheme which involve claimants spending 35 hours a week being supervised at a "provider" is too different to  stand much chance of providing useful evidence about the benefit of having to pop into the Jobcentre every day.

So this "daily trips to the Jobcentre" regime is not backed up by any evidence before it was introduced or since it was started in April 2014.

It may therefore be unreasonable (in the legal sense of the word) for Jobcentres to impose this regime on claimants. Failing or refusing to comply with it may not legally attract sanctions

I'm asking people with more knowledge of Welfare law for their opinion - do not act on this yet!

The Joys of Regulation 23

The Jobcentre's powers to compel claimants to do things (useless or not) have limits but they have a nice little trick to get around the regulations.

Let's say you want to put on an information session for 50 jobseekers. Maybe you believe it's a good and useful session and compelling attendance your chosen group of claimants is the right thing to do. Or, more cynically, you know it's a great way to frustrate and inconvenience them into closing their claim. No problem - it works either way!

There's no official way to compel attendance at a Group Information Session - the guidances says:

5.  There is no mandatory requirement for claimants to attend a Group
Information Session and as such DMA action does not apply.  If a claimant
does not attend their Group Information Session their claim must not be
closed.  (Source)

So what a lot of Jobcentres are doing is to issue a letter inviting claimants to the session but which goes on to say that afterwards they'll have an interview with an advisor and threatens that failure to attend the interview could result in loss of JSA.   This is "correct" because the The Jobseeker’s Allowance Regulations say:

23. A claimant shall participate in an interview in such manner, time and place
as an employment officer may specify by a notification which is given or sent to the
claimant and which may be in writing, by telephone or by electronic means

What many jobseekers have found (me included) is that there is in fact no interview - just the session which may or may not be useful - and certainly wasn't in my case.

It's time it stopped

Shirebrook (Mansfield Station Road) Jobcentre and Sports Direct

Readers may remember my post a few months ago about how this Jobcentre had a much higher sanction rate than any other in the country. The DWP explained: "The main reason for the high proportion of sanctions recorded in Shirebrook is the high number of locally advertised, suitable job vacancies which are not applied for.'' Put another way, there are loads of jobs in the area but the local claimants can't be bothered to apply for them and are rightly sanctioned.

I said at the time that it might be true and I've come across a possibly related related story. 

This other story concerns "Sports Direct" whose largest depot is less than a mile from this Jobcentre. It is alleged in the Daily Telegraph (!) that they are bad employers:

"Or what about the allegations of sharp work practices at Sports Direct’s biggest depot in Shirebrook, near Mansfield? In April, a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation claimed to have exposed some shocking working conditions. Among the policies the programme claimed to have uncovered included the public shaming, through tannoy announcements, of employees who bosses think are not working hard enough, and a "six strikes" rule where someone can be sacked for committing too many minor infringements. The list of a 36 potential "strikes" included talking, spending too long in the lavatory, taking time off sick and even failing to have a clipboard and pen on hand at all times, Dispatches claimed. Workers told the documentary that they live in fear of being fired at any moment and that security is so tight they are frisked at the end of every shift"

So it might be that the reason people are refusing to apply for "the high number of locally advertised, suitable job vacancies" lies in the reputation of this employer.

DISCLAIMER: This is speculation. I could be entirely wrong linking these issues - but I might not be. Further work is needed to get to the truth. This FOI request may help resolve the issue

Excellent truth-seeking by Welfare Weekly

The headline is "Exclusive: DWP Admits Using Fake Claimant’s Comments In Benefit Sanctions Leaflet" and the full story shows how they used the Freedom of Information Act to unearth the evidence.

The Mystery of Mansfield Station Road Jobcentre

The suggestion that Jobcentre staff have targets to find ways to stop payment of benefits to claimants ("sanctions") is still very much alive and there's been a curious related development.

It started off with an FOI request to find out how many JSA claimants there were at each Jobcentre so it would be possible to calculate sanctions per claimant at each office. This got slightly complicated because the names of the offices were not consistent across both sets of data. It's a problem we had ourselves when we attempted a similar exercise last year

After some persistence, Anna Smith succeeded in getting consistent office names and data - a good result!

When Anna looked at the data, she noticed something strange:

``At Mansfield Station Road, the sanctions rate (calculated as [total number of sanctions] / [total number of claimants]) is 23% over the two years. The average rate at all Jobcentres is 5.5%. This would make the rate at Mansfield Station Road twice that of any other Jobcentre.''

She submitted a review request and the answer was not the data error I expected - it was much more interesting than that:

``We can confirm that the figures we supplied for Mansfield Station Road Jobcentre in Shirebrook are correct.

Shirebrook has a very active and buoyant job market, offering a variety of vacancies including; warehouse, catering, cleaning, administration and driving. These job vacancies are easily commutable for the residents of Shirebrook and offer a variety of shift patterns. The buoyancy of the local labour market is reflected in the Jobseeker’s Allowance register at Shirebrook greatly decreasing.
 
Work Coaches are there to support jobseekers into employment. This involves completing quality interventions with our jobseekers to ensure their Claimant Commitments are robust and they continue to satisfy the conditions to receive benefit. The main reason for the high proportion of sanctions recorded in Shirebrook is the high number of locally advertised, suitable job vacancies which are not applied for. ''

In short, there's loads of jobs in Shirebrook but the local unemployed can't be bothered to apply for them and the Jobcentre is dealing with this robustly by sanctioning them.

Now, this could be true and it appears to be evidence of the system working correctly. It's still surprising that Mansfield Station Road Jobcentre should be so far ahead of the field. It's possible that staff have changed their approach to adapt to their local factors.

Another possibility is that the available vacancies don't look attractive/feasible for many of the unemployed in this former mining area. I'm inclined to reject that possibility because claimants could still apply for these jobs even if they believed they stood no chance of getting an offer. I would also expect similar communities to have somewhat similar statistics.

I'm pretty sure Mansfield Station Road Jobcentre are doing something different but I can't tell if it's justified or not.

A Good Source of Evidence

The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee report "Benefit sanctions policy beyond the Oakley Review" is out today and has links in to lots of evidence - including our FoI request about Benefit Related Deaths - blog post here

Sanctions help jobseekers into work of some sort

This may be the final post in this series that started here. You will recall that Esther McVey said there was evidence that the imposition of benefit sanctions helps claimants into work. Along the way we've seen mainly old, non-UK data used to support this. I asked the DWP if they had anything based on UK and/or recent data.

While waiting for that, I dug up a paper based on recent UK data that says that "sanctions are an ineffective tool for improving labour market performance." Along the way also I discovered another paper that says that "Benefit sanctions not only reduce unemployment durations but also reduce post-unemployment employment duration and earnings."

Today I got the response from DWP. No, they haven't  got anything based on more recent UK data. So I've thanked them and sent them details of what I found.

Sanctions help jobseekers into poor quality work?

Some of the papers the DWP and I have been reading suggest that (imposed) sanctions help people into jobs while others say the contrary. I've found more work based on Swiss data that says "Benefitt sanctions not only reduce unemployment durations but also reduce post-unemployment employment duration and earnings."

This is quite logical. For a start, the data is from 1998-2003 when the Swiss unemployment rate was around 1.5-4.5% (See http://www.tradingeconomics.com/switzerland/unemployment-rate) so there may have been "scroungers" refusing to take available jobs. However, sanctioning them has pushed them into lower quality jobs. This is understandable too - jobseekers will have taken just about any job to alleviate the crisis but the sanctions actually harmed longer term prospects.  In more detail:

"The clear persistence of negative sanction effects on earnings up to two years after unemployment exit may be explained by lock-in into the accepted job or by faster return to unemployment. Once the individual has accepted a lower-quality-job, it may be difficult for him/her to catch up with the non-sanctioned people by quickly changing to a better job. Moreover, individuals who accept a worse paid job are more likely to leave this job and return to unemployment. Both lines of reasoning explain why sanctions lead to a reduction in post unemployment earnings."

When you study the DWP literature, it is all about getting people into work as soon as possible. The idea that being a more selective jobseeker could be a better long-term approach doesn't seem to have occurred to them.

Related posts here and here and now here

Sanctions help jobseekers into work? (Contrary evidence)

I wrote recently about the debate over the effectiveness of sanction as a tool to get the unemployed to try harder and get jobs. The DWP had come up with a load of evidence that it is effective although that evidence is non-UK and old enough to be from a different employment climate. I've asked for more recent research based on UK data but in the meantime I've found some myself. It comes from Howard Reed of Landman Economics and is published by Oxfam.

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE BENEFIT SANCTIONS? An investigation into the effectiveness of the post-2012 sanctions regime for Jobseeker's Allowance claimants uses a technique similar to that used Boockmann to analyse data from Germany during 2006-7. Sanction rates vary from place to place - as I have shown myself - so this should be reflected in re-employment rates. Boockmann used this to show that sanctions helped people into work but Reed found "The results show no evidence that Jobcentre Plus districts with higher rates of sanctions between October 2012 and June 2014 experienced greater decreases in unemployment or increases in employment than districts where sanctions were used less often" and goes on to say "Overall, this report finds that sanctions are an ineffective tool for improving labour market performance."

A slight weakness in this paper is that it appears to accept the geographic variation in sanction rates as essentially random. There's some work by David Webster showing that sanction rates tend to be higher in areas of high unemployment. Perhaps staff are keen to encourage jobseekers to try harder in jobs deserts? Somewhat futile!

A further related post is here

Sanctions help jobseekers into work?

Benefit sanctions are supposed to give jobseekers an incentive to take necessary action to get in to work. Agencies such as Citizens Advice say they can be counter-productive when actually imposed "Claimants are distracted from job-hunting as they focus on putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their head." In contrast, on 4 February 2015, Rt Hon Esther McVey MP, Minister of State for Employment told the Work and Pensions Committee "... and there is further research that, should somebody have been sanctioned, it helps them into work afterwards."

So I asked for the evidence and (unusually for the DWP) they sent it!

"The minister referred to a range of international evidence regarding the impacts on
employment following a benefit sanction. Recent studies from Denmark, Germany,
Netherlands and Switzerland show an increased employment uptake for recipients of
unemployment insurance or welfare benefits after a benefit sanction has been imposed"

See below for the research they've relied on together with some other data I thought was relevant:

Source	Location	Dates	Typical Sanction	Unemployment then/January 2015
van den Berg G, van der Klaauw B, van Ours J (2004) Punitive sanctions and the transition rate from welfare to work. J Labor Econ 22:211–241	Holland	2003-2005	20% 1-2 months	6%/7.2%
Abbring J, van den Berg G, van Ours J (2005) The effect of unemployment insurance sanctions on the transition rate from unemployment to employment. Econ J 115:602–630	Holland	1992-1998(?)	5% 4 weeks	?/7.2%
The Effect of Punitive Sanctions on the Transition rate from Welfare to Work Qureshi	Denmark	2007-8	33% 3 weeks	2.2%/4.6%
van der Klaauw B, van Ours J (2013) Carrot and stick: how re-employment bonuses and benefit sanctions affect exit rates from welfare. J Appl Econometrics 28(2):275–298	Rotterdam, Holland	2000-2003	10%	5.3% */7.2%
Svarer M (2011) The effect of sanctions on the exit rate from unemployment: evidence from Denmark. Economica 78(312):751–778	Denmark	2003-2005	2-3 days or 3 weeks 15%	5.7%/4.6%
The Effect of Benefit Sanctions on the Duration of Unemployment Rafael Lalive	Switzerland	1997-8	3 weeks 100%	4.5%/3.5%
Boockmann et al (2014) Intensifying the use of benefit sanctions: an effective tool to increase employment? IZA Journal of Labor Policy 3:21	Germany	2006-7	10%	9.5%/5%

Data source Click on the "Jobless figure for the country of interest. A * indicates incomplete data.

We could argue about the definition of"recent" but let's not other than to observe that the data for this research mostly pre-dates the general rise in unemployment during 2008.

During this period it was employers who had a hard time in the job market so lighting a fire under lazy "jobseekers" might well have persuaded them to take jobs that would otherwise have remained vacant.

At times of high unemployment it's still possible that some sanctioned jobseekers will compete very hard and get jobs that the non-sanctioned also tried for but total unemployment will be unaffected.

What would be useful is some research from a time of high unemployment, preferably from Britain and I've asked DWP if they have any However, the study in Germany at a time of 9.5% unemployment (Boockman) is close but it makes the usual mistake of  looking at higher employment of a small group subjected to a particular treatment while ignoring the displacement of their untreated competitors.

So, strictly speaking, DWP have answered the question. Things we don't know include:

• How much evidence to the contrary is out there
• If the DWP is aware of it
• If there is more relevant UK evidence from a time of high unemployment

 

Severity of Sanctions 

 

This is another important factor. Most of the sanctions in the table above are less severe than current UK regime. In the UK, sanctions are for a minimum of 4 weeks and can go up to 3 years. Nominally they are 100% benefit cuts although the little advertised and restrictive hardship payments system can reduce them to to 40%. Form this is could be argued that the UK is more coercive leading to better results. There's two main objections to this logic:

• The usual one about the futility of coercing people into non-existent jobs
• Whether the jobseeker is close to destitution or not

To expand on the second point, some jobseekers have sufficient savings for a sanction not to be an immediate distraction from jobseeking while still unpleasant and "motivating". It's also plausible that for some claimants, it does (as mentioned above) render them "distracted from job-hunting as they focus on putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their head"

So, the research that's really needed should look at the effects of sanctions on near-destitute jobseekers. One way of detecting this is to look at the fate of sanctioned jobseekers  with very low savings. The DWP should have the savings data but so far as I know, they haven't attempted a correlation with fate.

Perhaps an FOI request for another day?

Part 2: Sanctions help jobseekers into work? (Contrary evidence)

Benefit related deaths

It's often alleged that there is a connection between how the DWP treats claimants and the untimely death of some of them. The DWP sometimes investigates these cases, EG:

"The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has carried out 60 secret reviews into benefit-related deaths in less than three years, Disability News Service (DNS) can reveal."

Understandably, people want to see these reviews in case wrongdoing is identified. Also understandably, the DWP don't publish them saying "Section 123 of the Social Security Administration Act (SSSA) 1992 makes it an offence for anyone who is employed in social security administration to disclose without lawful authority any information which he acquired in the course of that employment and which relates to a particular person" See here for an example FOI request where this and other arguments are deployed

However, a more modest request got better results Here the request was mainly for numbers

In the "60 peer reviews following the death of a customer":

1. How many reviews identified that all local and national standards had been
followed?
2. How many reviews identified that some local or national standards had not
been followed?
3. How many reviews identified that some local or national standards need to
be revised/improved?
4. What action has there been to date in the cases referred to in my questions
2 & 3 above?

This is essence of the response:

in fact only 49 of these reviews had been conducted in circumstances where the claimant had died.
...
33 out of the 49 cases referred to above contained recommendations for
consideration at either national or local level.

National recommendations have been referred to the Customer Journey team
for inclusion in their regular reviews. Local recommendations have been
referred to the appropriate office to be taken forward.

This isn't actually an admission of wrongdoing but it seems unlikely that many of the "recommendations" will be drawing attention to good practice in these unfortunate cases,

10May2015:  This related FOI response shows that 10 out of 49 cases had a sanction at some point during their claim.

Sanctions comprehensive monitoring regime

The DWP tells the world "Sanctions are used as a last resort and the DWP has put in place a comprehensive monitoring regime to ensure that sanctions are always and only applied where appropriate to do so." (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/benefit-sanctions-ending-the-something-for-nothing-culture) There is a contrary view that many sanctions are capricious, arbitrary, bullying and driven by targets to get people off benefits. (EG: http://stupidsanctions.tumblr.com/)


So what's the truth? I chose to focus on the DWP's "comprehensive monitoring regime" as that sounds to me like data and evidence and we love that.


So I asked about it. Initially I just got some Quality Assurance Frameworks and a DMA Referrals Checklist. Interesting but no data. After asking for a review I got a "summary of the quality checks undertaken" - I've plotted the accuracy rate below together with the number of cases checked:

We can see that for some months, accuracy hovered between 90% and 95% which if you want to be picky doesn't quite match "always and only applied". I was more interested in the decline that set in during Autumn 2014. The peak in the number of cases checked is interesting too. It looks like "something happened" around that time and I'd be interested in ideas about what?

I think it will be interesting to ask the same question again later in the year to see if the decline is a decline or just part of a blip. 

Given the lack of data before April 2014, I wonder if the "comprehensive monitoring regime" wasn't actually in place back in November 2013 when the original claim was made?

Sanctions used as a Last Resort

DWP people are often quoted as saying that sanctions are used as a "Last Resort" EG:

"Sanctions are applied as a last resort when claimants fail to do enough to find work, fail to attend appointments or have turned down job offers..." (1)

However, there are many claims that they as used as a first resort (2)

So what's the truth? We may soon find out via an FOI request "Number of people sanctioned for missing just one JSA appointment". This doesn't simply ask the obvious question, it also asks:

"If DWP don’t have this number, then how can Iain Duncan Smith possibly know, or be believed, that JSA benefit sanctions for failure to attend an adviser interview were only applied as a last resort?"

Strictly speaking, DWP can decline to answer that by arguing that it isn't "recorded information" but I note with approval the use of a technique I've blogged about before - ask for recorded information that should exist, force an admission that it doesn't exist and then comment adversely.

Another pertinent FOI request is about  "Sanctions comprehensive monitoring regime" which refers to this government statement:

"Sanctions are used as a last resort and the DWP has put in place a comprehensive monitoring regime to ensure that sanctions are always and only applied where appropriate to do so."

Finally, a request that asks rather directly for the evidence relied on for these statements that sanctions are used as a "last resort"

These requests are at various stages - stay tuned for updates

Daily Work Search Reviews

One of the support options for the long term unemployed announced by George Osborne back in September 2013 was daily visits to a job centre.  This has now been the reality for some claimants for a few months now in the form of "Daily Work Search Reviews". The guidance gives examples of claimants who may be suitable:

• claimants who need additional support with their jobsearch activities, which the Work Coach believes will be best provided by Daily WSR. This may include following up job applications and interviews, identifying and addressing issues such as skills gaps
• claimants who have reasonable levels of work experience but may lack the level of motivation required to seek out employment opportunities or pursue options for improving their employment prospects
• claimants who have a history of poor timekeeping in terms of attending interviews at the Jobcentre. The timekeeping requirements of Daily WSR would improve claimant's discipline and understanding of the importance of timekeeping in a work environment

This might be reasonable but I found something rather curious in the detailed design of  DWSR. Also from the guidance

61. Daily WSR times must vary on each day Monday to Friday; this varied pattern is then repeated for 4 consecutive weeks (i.e. the attendance time must be different for each day of the week but in each 4 week block the time on a particular day will be consistent).
 ...
63.The timetable must be changed every 4 weeks; the exception being that the revised timetable issued at week 8 can run for 5 weeks (i.e. until the end of the Daily WSR period).

It's difficult to see how this detail helps review jobseeking activities. As a lesson in timekeeping it seems a bit OTT for those who hope to get a 9-5 job. It offers a good chance of a sanction though when the jobseeker gets confused!

Naturally, I've been asking about the intent of the design but have yet to get a good answer 

I have found a big clue though. An obvious use of this regime is to disrupt a claimant who may be working on the side and the following paragraph hints at it:

19. Check the Customer Information System (CIS) to determine if the claimant has a Fraud Referral and Intervention Management System (FRAIMS) indicator present. If so, the Fraud and Error Service (FES) must be contacted for further advice before any decision to assign the claimant to Daily Work Search Review (WSR).

This paragraph seems to be unique to Daily Work Search Reviews. I think the intent is to frustrate fraudsters working on the side who have not yet been detected. Those already being investigated may be allowed to continue until there's enough evidence.

Of course, for the honest claimant it's a hassle but that has never worried the Jobcentre,

Update 19-Aug-14: I finally got some sort of answer.

The first interesting part was where I’d suggested DWP ask the author of paragraphs 61 and 63 for the thinking behind the variable timing aspect. They answered:

“We do not hold information on who wrote sections 61 and 63 of the Help to Work guidance”

Maybe that’s usual in the Civil Service but it seems odd to me. In many workplaces it’s normal to keep a note of who did what and why. Then, when the next person comes along and considers removing something or making a change, they do it the knowledge of why things were done the way they were. (My favourite example of the importance of records is this)

They do offer some information on the intent of making claimants turn up on a complicated timetable for their Work Search Reviews

"Information about the intent of the variable timing aspect can be found at paragraph 48. It lists claimants who may be suitable for daily work search reviews. One of the groups mentioned are

“Claimants who have a history of poor timekeeping in terms of attending interviews at the Jobcentre. The timekeeping requirements of Daily WSR would improve claimant's discipline and understanding of the importance of timekeeping in a work environment”.

This doesn’t really wash because the other groups are mentioned are those lacking motivation and those needing additional support. How are they helped by this? Also note this guidance:

"49. Key considerations for Work Coaches in determining a claimant’s suitability for Daily WSR must include:

• whether the claimant is likely to be able to understand and cope with daily variation in attendance times"

 So, to qualify for this lesson in timekeeping, you must be bad at it but not actually incapable (E.G.: Due to mental health issues)

My conclusion

The reason the timing of DWSR is as difficult as it is may well be due to an initial idea to disrupt those working on the side or to frustrate claimants off benefits and hit sanction targets. However, to be lawful, all interventions by the Jobcentre are supposed to be helpful so something benign had to be documented.

I may now move on to investigate paragraph 19 mentioned above.

See also the (lack of ) evidence fro DWSR being effective.

(Original version published 19/07/2014 20:18)

That "Jolt" again

I wrote recently about Mr Couling's surprising remarks to a committee of the Scottish Parliament that sanctioned claimants welcomed the jolt. Since then a number of FOI requests asking for evidence have been made, see here and here. Unfortunately, most of these have fallen foul of the £600 limit despite geographically limiting their request although this one faired a little better.

I have submitted a slightly different request simply asking for the evidence relied on by Mr Couling in making his surprising remarks. Like some of my previous requests, this allows the DWP to simply ask Mr Couling for the evidence and send it to me. It shouldn't be too expensive.

Analysis of a Million Sanction Decisions

I was interested to find out if  individual Jobcentres varied in their sanction rates. This is not as simple as it might seem. Front line staff don't make these decisions, they refer a "doubt" to a "Decision Maker" who may be based elsewhere.

The decision might be to impose the sanction or  reject it. (They can also "cancel" it but that's more technical). However, I decided to to stick with the number of decisions (regardless of what the decisions actually were) as a measure of the propensity of front line staff to "report" claimants.

So I downloaded the data from the DWP StatExplore" tool and to further simplify things, focussed on decisions under the "new" regime from 22nd Oct 2012. There's a load of Jobcentres with zero decisions - mainly because they're closed so I took them out. I sorted the data to show the "top" offices at the top.You can download my extract of over a million sanction decisions here but for those with less time, some headlines:

"Top" performers

  

Bottom of the league

Some of the variation is understandable. In particular, some of those places and presumably their case-load is small. I've tried to find matching caseload statistics without success. Some data I noticed:

• Hull is well know for having a lot of unemployment and hence the caseload will be high. So being near the top of the table may not be so remarkable.
• Southampton with over 5000 looks high considering that according to the council they only have 4,187 unemployed.
• Norwich has almost 5000 decisions and Norfolk County Council's unemployment figures for the whole county say In the year to December 2012, 24,000 people of working age were unemployed in Norfolk. 

I think I may have to do an FOI request for the case-load figures so I can do a proper analysis!

PS: See also a later post that resolves the caseload issue.