MP: End Benefit Sanctions Affecting Children

The UK Government should end benefit sanctions on families with children, according to a Fife MP.

Glenrothes member Peter Grant has said the UK Government's claims about welfare do not meet the reality facing those receiving state subsidies.

Many Scots claim to have been sanctioned for missing Job Centre appointments despite having a valid reason for doing so.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said more people are in work under the Conservatives, people on low incomes are paying less tax, and those on universal credit are now better off.

Mr Grant has raised the issue in the House of Commons.

The Glenrothes and Central Fife MP said the debate showed "just how out of touch the Tories are."

"In response to questions about child poverty they kept on repeating statistics about people in work and out of work. The fact is that for a great many people in this constituency having a job doesn’t get them out of poverty. Low wages and exploitative contracts mean that more and more people don’t earn enough to live on even if officially they’ve got a full time job." He said.

“The Tories’ response is to punish the poor for being poor and to punish the sick for being sick. Benefit sanctions are being imposed for the flimsiest of reasons and with no thought whatsoever to the damage they will cause. 

"We’re not talking about using sanctions to weed out the cheats and scroungers, we’re talking about a government that according to whistleblowers from inside the DWP is setting out to trap people into making a mistake so that they can be sanctioned. It’s bad enough when this happens to fit and healthy adults but when the victims are families with young children it’s inhuman. How can it ever be right to starve a newborn child as a way of punishing its parents for some imagined misdemeanour?”

Mr Grant added that the Secretary of State had provoked a furious reaction on the SNP benches when he claimed that “exhaustive” checks were always made before anyone was sanctioned. He said, “This might be what the spin doctors are telling the Secretary of State but it’s not what my constituents are telling me and it’s not what desperate parents are saying when they turn up at foodbanks to collect emergency food parcels to feed their children. Families who are already struggling to get by are being plunged deeper into poverty by the deliberate actions of this government and no amount of patronising words from the Secretary of State is going to hide that fact.”