Politicians, including Claire Perry, the MP for the Marlborough Area, have been calling for hard evidence that food banks really are needed – and are not just being used by free-loaders.
Now a detailed survey of the finances of a 100 households has revealed that poor families in its sample which have been hit by the coalition government’s welfare reforms are running up debts at the rate of £52 every week.
The Real Life Reform project found that “Nearly eight people out of ten in the study owe money. With an underlying average debt of £2,943, some may never pay this off given that they have, on average, as little as £3 left at the end of each day for food.”
Evidence specific to the Devizes constituency is hard to find. However, there are figures deep within the Department of Work and Pensions’ (DWP) statistics that can give us a broad picture.
The only constituency by constituency evidence for the number of those who are unemployed is through figures for those claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA). But under recent government rules not all of those counted as claimants are actually receiving JSA money.
However, detailed breakdowns about the number of people being sanctioned at the Devizes Jobcentre Plus and therefore not receiving money for a varying number of weeks, do not give enough information to be really useful. They do give hints about what is going on.
The DWP launched its new regime of sanctions against JSA claimants in October 2012. These sanctions (for not attending a job interview or being late for one and so on) can mean a claimant losing his JSA money for four weeks, 13 weeks or up 156 weeks – depending on the seriousness of their breach of the regulations.
In DWP-speak this about ‘conditionality’: they will lose their JSA if they “do not meet the conditions for receiving it.”
There are three levels of sanctions. For example at the “Lower level sanctions” a claimant may lose all his or her JSA for four weeks if they fail to attend an adviser interview. On the second and subsequence offences they will lose it for 13 weeks.
At the highest level of offence – for example leaving a job voluntarily – claimants lose all their JSA for 13 weeks for a first ‘failure’, 26 weeks for a second ‘failure’ and 156 weeks for a third and any subsequent failure (with 52 weeks of their last ‘failure’.)
The monthly figures of claimants sanctioned (that is losing their JSA for at least four weeks) for the year from October 2012 at Devizes’ Maryport Street Jobcentre Plus are as follows: October 15 – November 27 – December 17 – January 2013 21 – February 10 – March 18 – April 13 – May 22 – June 30 – July 35 – August 40 –September 14. A total for the twelve months of 260 claimants sanctioned and so losing four or more weeks’ JSA.
Not, it may be thought, huge numbers. The trouble is that the DWP hides the level of sanctions each of these sanctioned claimants has incurred.
So the figure for those not receiving any JSA in May 2013 will include the 22 sanctioned during that month. But it could also include some those losing JSA for four weeks from the previous month or losing it for 13 weeks from the previous three months.
If those sanctioned at the Devizes Jobcentre Plus were only on ‘lower level sanctions’ and were first failures, the total for May could see up to 35 claimants not receiving any JSA.
Nor do we know, of course, whether they went for one of their three allowed visits to the Devizes food bank. But they certainly might need to.
The DWP has more statistical information than they care to share with the public. Perhaps they would share it with MPs who would then have a better understanding of the need for food banks in these straightened times.
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