Sanctioning the sick and disabled: Has the coalition government's reform of the sanctions regime driven claimants of Employment and Support Allowance into sustainable employment?

Abstract

The use of benefit sanctions for the sick and disabled has become an issue of increasing
salience in the UK political agenda, with many ongoing debates questioning both their
applicability and their effectiveness in terms of achieving increased employment rates. This
paper seeks to add to these debates, by providing a critical assessment of the UK Coalition
government’s revised sanction policy, as implemented in December 2012, and the impact this
policy has had on progressing sick and disabled claimants of Employment and Support
Allowance off benefits and into sustainable work. The study adopts a mixed methods
approach, combining quantitative data analysis of the relationship between benefit sanctions
and job entry/retention rates with a qualitative investigation of ESA claimants’ own
experience with sanctions, as this triangulation of data is currently lacking within
contemporary discussions. It argues that the employment situation of those on ESA is not
positively dependent on the sanctions intervention as ESA claimants who have been
sanctioned have moved into work far less frequently than their non-sanctioned counterparts.
They have also been less likely to sustain in work within the first 13 weeks of employment.
Contrary to the common narratives that would attribute these findings to ideas of a pervasive
‘welfare dependency culture’, the lived experience of claimants suggests that sanctions do not
improve prospects to work, but instead are often self-defeating, serving only to distance
claimants from the labour market. Findings therefore suggest a need for policymakers to
better understand the complex nature of ESA claiming as involving health, employability,
societal and labour market barriers to employment.