One Parent Families Scotland is very pleased to be giving evidence on sanctions. We feel that sanctions are at the core of a system that is based on compulsion and punishment rather than on incentives and support.
The convener asked earlier about changes. The big change for lone parents is that they have to claim jobseekers allowance when their child is five, which means that they have to be available for work. Thousands of lone parents have been brought into the sanctions system. They were previously affected by sanctions on income support, but there is now the impact of sanctions on jobseekers allowance.
Just yesterday, we got a reply to a freedom of information request that indicates that, in Scotland, over a 12-month period, just under 10,000 lone parents were sanctioned and had their benefit reduced. When we take the children into account, we are talking about more than 20,000 people—lone parents and their children being affected by sanctions.
When we talked to parents, the issues that they raised were very similar to the ones that people have spoken about here. Parents are not clear about their rights. On occasion, parents are being told by Jobcentre Plus that it is within the law to leave their children alone when they go to work in the morning or before they come home. Parents do not know whether that is right. Can they leave their child or not? The boundaries are becoming confused.
At the centre of the claimant commitment that has recently been implemented is a power imbalance. The claimant commitment is at the core of the decisions that a claimant makes about what they can and cannot do, and that has an impact on sanctions. If a lone parent says in their claimant commitment that they can take a job because their mum can watch the kids in the morning, but their mum falls ill or gets a job, the claimant is still expected to be able to take a job because it is in their claimant commitment. That is an important change.
Lone parents’ flexibilities are not being adhered to. They are being expected to travel for 90 minutes either way for a job when there might not be a place for their children in the out-of-school care service. There are judgmental attitudes being taken across the board, and it came up in the evidence session at Parkhead CAB that lone parents feel that they are being judged as though they are a burden on the state and being asked why they do not have jobs. That seems to be the general attitude.
We can confirm that Jobcentre Plus staff have told colleagues that they are being asked at their performance reviews why they have not applied enough sanctions, and they are told that that will affect their performance. Anecdotal stories are coming to us about that.
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The impact of changes to welfare and the childcare infrastructure in Scotland are crucial. If there is an expectation on parents to work, where are the rights to support mechanisms to make that possible? Jim McCormick talked about other European models in which there is conditionality. Sometimes that is more severe, in a sense, in that a lot of parents are expected to return to work when the child is one. However, those countries have in a place a system that includes a childcare infrastructure and family-friendly employment, which is crucial. In the UK, if your child is off sick, the way to deal with that is to say that you are sick yourself. The system is not in place here to support parents in work and take into account responsibilities for children.
A big thing for us is that lone parents say that they are being forced into low-paid work. Parents who have degrees, for example, and are well qualified to move into well-paid employment are being told, “I’m sorry. You’re a lone parent jobseeker. These vacancies are available and you have to apply for so many a week. That is the route that you must go down.” It is very much a work first approach. Lone parents are trapped in the sense that, when children are under five and the parent wants to access training and education, it is a challenge for them to get childcare to enable that. When the child reaches five, the doors to access training, education and higher education are closed, because the parent has to be available to work and to sign on.
There have been cases this week. Just the other day, our welfare rights adviser dealt with a young woman who is pregnant and is being sanctioned because she missed signing on due to having morning sickness. An older parent, who is a kinship carer in her 50s, had been offered a holiday in a caravan in Ayrshire by social work, because she is a kinship carer. When she told her adviser that, she was told that she would be sanctioned if she could not sign on. She went on the holiday, because she wanted to put the child that she looks after first, so she just had to do with less money. Just this week, a dad in Edinburgh, who is on the work programme—Ingeus has been dealing with him—missed an appointment because it was after school hours. He was sanctioned, his benefits were withdrawn and, since then, he has been taking out payday loans, borrowing maybe £55 and having to pay back £65 or £70. Those are some of the examples.
What is worrying for us is that research and stats are showing that a high percentage of decisions to sanction lone parents are overturned. The latest figures show that 64 per cent of high-level sanctions of lone parents are overturned on appeal. A low percentage of people appeal, because people generally do not know that they can appeal, or how they can. Forty-three per cent of low-level sanctions are overturned, so there is an issue about the wrong decisions being made in the first place.