Method used to identify claimants as “unwilling to work”

Department for Work and Pensions did not have the information requested.

Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

I refer to remarks attributed to Iain Duncan Smith reported in the Daily Express dated Friday, September 26, 2014 and visible at http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/5...

He is reported to have said (in part) "We're not just getting people back to work, we're making real inroads into that stubborn part of the out-of-work group who are in housing estates and unwilling to work.”

Please supply the evidence relied on by Iain Duncan Smith when making those remarks. In particular, please provide:

• The numbers in the out-of-work group who are in housing estates and unwilling to work during 2010 and for all subsequent years for which statistics are available
• The method used to identify claimants as “unwilling to work”

Yours faithfully,

Mr Harris

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PO-BUSINESS-SUPPORT DWP, Department for Work and Pensions

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Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Department for Work and Pensions's handling of my FOI request 'Method used to identify claimants as “unwilling to work”'.

I thank you for having provided a very small part of the information I requested. However, you have not provided information for the main part of my request, ``In particular, please provide:

• The numbers in the out-of-work group who are in housing estates
and unwilling to work during 2010 and for all subsequent years for
which statistics are available
• The method used to identify claimants as “unwilling to work” ''

Please now provide me with the requested information. Thank you.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/m...

Yours faithfully,

Mr Harris

DWP freedom-of-information-requests, Department for Work and Pensions

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information owner within the Department who will respond to you direct. 
 
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expect a response within 20 working days.
 
Should you have any further queries in connection with this request do
please contact us.
 
For further information on the Freedom of Information Act within DWP
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[1]http://www.dwp.gov.uk/freedom-of-informa...
 

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Dear DWP freedom-of-information-requests,

I remind you that it is now over a month since I requested an internal review. Please respond fully within the next seven days in order to avoid reference to the ICO

Yours sincerely,

Mr Harris

Dear DWP freedom-of-information-requests,

I notice that my reminder to you did not appear to generate the usual automatic response. I will therefore allow you a final 5 working days to respond to my review request before raising a concern with ICO

Yours sincerely,

Mr Harris

DWP freedom-of-information-requests, Department for Work and Pensions

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PO-BUSINESS-SUPPORT DWP, Department for Work and Pensions

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Dear Mr Harris
 
 
Thank you for your request for an internal review, please see attached our
reply.
 
Once again, we apologise for the delay in the response.
 
Regards
 
DWP Business Support
 

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Chloe left an annotation ()

Sounds a bit obvious but I'm thinking try your local JSP .
Go in ask to see someone like a manager supervisor or the like and just ask . What's the worst they can do tell you to get lost?
That's what I'd try you got nothing to lose

Mr Harris left an annotation ()

Thanks for the suggestion, Chloe but the result of my request is that we now have the OFFICIAL line that "the Department does not define “unwilling to work” therefore data is not held on this topic."

Mr Harris left an annotation ()

The DWP doesn't define “unwilling to work” so they have no information. See http://ukwelfarebenefitstruthseek.blogsp... for more comment and analysis

Gavin Shaw left an annotation ()

The following information is from a case in which a Jobseeker had signed a "Jobseekers Claimant Commitment Form" in doing so, appealing against this at a Tribunal Hearing presented the following issues:

1. Actively Seeking Work:

A. You will be obliged to undertake any and all steps that appear in this agreement as ones that you will do in order to find work. However, Actively seeking work is not limited to whatever is agreed within the document itself which you are required to sign and say you WILL DO take such steps to gain employment. That said, if you state that you are willing to use UJM to seek work every single week, then you must seek work using UJM every single week or face a sanction. If you are told you must agree to search for work for up to 35 Hours a Week, refuse to sign the agreement. It is not a legal requirement to be made to do such, as stated by the PCS on September 18th 2014. Whatever you are happy with putting in the Agreement as being steps you will take each and every week in order to stand the best chance of gaining employment, not risking a sanction, then that is what you should do. Theoretically, you should just use everything in your Jobseekers Agreement as the same to what you put in your Claimant Commitment, as far as "section 1(2)(b) of the Jobseeker’s Act 1995" is concerned, that is relating to the re-branding of the Jobseekers Agreement Name Change That becomes "Jobseeker's Claimant Commitment" and the section itself relates to nothing more.

B. Failing to follow the steps set out in your "Jobseeker's Claimant Commitment" could end up with a Jobcentre Plus Adviser accusing you of failing to look for the right type of work. This would also be backed up if appealing against this at a Tribunal, but the fact is that both parties decide to overlook (or ignore) both the terms of the Jobseekers Allowance Regulations 1996 ("the Regulations") and also what the standard wording in the agreement actually says. Both Jobcentre Plus Adviser & Tribunal will agree that you had failed to comply with requirements that were not in the agreement. They will not consider whether those requirements were consistent with the Regulations.

C. The Jobseekers Act imposes duties on claimants and also gives rights. Requirements imposed on you in both Agreement and in general must be consistent with law. Both Adviser & Tribunal could well be requiring more of you then necessary, and what the law requires. The first error made by both Adviser & Tribunal will be that they try to apply a negative test, not a positive test. The law imposes a test that asks what a claimant did. The Adviser & Tribunal looked at what you did not do, not what you did do.

D. Section 1 of the Jobseekers Act 1995 (“the Act”) imposes the requirement that a claimant actively seeks work. Section 7 of the Act defines the test:

“a person is actively seeking work if he takes in that week such steps as he can reasonably be expected to have to take in order to have the best prospects of securing employment”.

In other words, if asked, a claimant must show what he or she did that week to get work.

E. Regulation 18 (1) Provides:

“... a person shall be expected to have to take more than two steps in any
week unless taking one or two steps is all that is reasonable for that person to do in that week.”

This is the benchmark for judging the reasonableness of the claimant’s act

Regulation 18 (2) illustrates (but does not define) this by listing steps that are reasonable for a person to be expected to take.

F. That this is the benchmark is confirmed by the standard wording on the agreement you are given. You are to record “three weekly jobsearch activities” each week on the back of the form. That is an indication on the form itself that the law does not require that you do Agreement where, as here, that requires that you undertake significantly more than three activities a week.

E. Further, There is nothing in the Act or the Regulations requiring that a claimant must comply with everything in the Agreement. The reverse is the case. The
agreement must comply with the law. To be valid, a jobseeker’s agreement must comply “with the prescribed regulations in force”: section 9(1) of the Act. The pattern of the legislation is that a jobseeker’s agreement must comply with the test of actively seeking work in sections 1(2)(c) and 7 of the Act and regulation 18 of the Regulations and not the other way round.

F. You are likely to be required by the Agreement to take 6 steps each week and several other steps from time to time. That is clearly more steps than the regulation requires of him to meet the test of “actively seeking work”. And it is more steps than the Agreement asked him to record. On the facts, the secretary of state's representative now accepts that you took 6 steps in the week and that those six steps met the test in section 7(1).

G. The questions to be asked where it is alleged that someone is not actively seeking work are those following from section 7(1) and regulation 18(1), not from the
agreement. They pose three questions, to be answered by the claimant’s actions that week:

(A) Should the claimant be expected to take at least three jobsearch steps that week, or is it reasonable that only one or two be taken?

(b) What steps were taken?

(c) In the light of that reasonable expectation and those findings, were the steps taken by the claimant “such steps as he can reasonably be expected to have to take in order to have the best prospects of securing employment” (section 7(1))?

If the steps by the claimant taken meet that test, it is irrelevant that the claimant did not also take some other step, whether or not it is in the jobseeker’s agreement.

In my opinion, while you seeming as though you are "Unwilling to work" you have been made to appear this way, simply through the agreement being more towards what the Adviser wants you to do, on top of what an original jobseekers Agreement asks of you.

Where a claimant fails to meet one of those things they agree to if signing a claimant commitment, then they are basically stating they are unwilling to work, and a Tribunal will see it this way.

in actual fact, the claimant has done more then what was required of them in order to continue receiving benefits, just that it means fulfilling the requirements through completing up to 6 Steps each fortnight, and not what was agreed in the claimants commitment.

This information coming off just one tribunal court hearing that went in favor of the DWP.