Benefit findings backed

The findings of a Westminster select committee on benefit sanctions have been backed by Clackmannanshire and Dunblane MSP Keith Brown.

Mr Brown submitted evidence he gathered from Clackmannanshire and Stirling councils, third sector organisations and benefit claimants themselves earlier this year to the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

The committee’s report, published this week, concludes that“the time is long overdue for the Government to assess the evidence and say, where it is right to do so, this policy is not achieving its aims, it is not working, and the cost is too high”.

Mr Brown said:“The Work and Pensions Select Committee’s inquiry finds that the human cost of continuing to apply the existing regime of benefit sanctions – the ‘only major welfare reform this decade to have never been evaluated’– appears simply too high. The evidence that it is achieving its aims is at best mixed, and at worst showing a policy that appears ‘arbitrarily punitive’.