The Great Benefit Sanctions Drive 2010-16 in Historical Perspective

This presentation describes the great benefit sanctions drive of 2010-16, when sanctions on Jobseekers Allowance claimants more than doubled before falling back to their original level, and Employment and Support Allowance sanctions also rose and fell markedly. It compares the scale and severity of this sanctions drive with historical experience, showing that on reasonable criteria it was the harshest regime ever applied since the Poor Law was superseded by National Insurance. It looks at immediate explanations before moving on to describe how a punitive sanctions system has developed over the last 30 years and considering the underlying reasons for the transformation of what for decades was a system of unemployment support run on insurance principles, into what is effectively a secret parallel penal system. It also considers why the three historical episodes of intensified unemployment benefit disqualifications or sanctions – in the later 1920s, the 1990s and the 2010s – took place when they did. It concludes by considering the outlook under Universal Credit and the prospects for reform