Janis Bright outlines the history of this controversial aspect of universal credit now being revived.

While the debate on uprating or cutting welfare benefits rumbles on, another requirement on claimants announced in September’s mini-budget has attracted little comment.

It’s the requirement on universal credit recipients who are in work already to look for more or better work – or face sanctions. The government’s September mini-budget spells out how it will apply. Currently, only those recipients who aren’t working or working very few hours are subject to the full work search requirements of UC. But in September the government quietly drew more people into the full requirements – applying to those working up to 12 hours a week – and from April that will go up to 15 hours a week (or 24 hours for couples). It means that 120,000 more UC recipients could face sanctions if they don’t try hard enough to find more or better paid work.

Not only that, the government says it will also strengthen the sanctions regime “to set clear work expectations – including applying for jobs, attending interviews or increasing the hours”. It adds: “Claimants who don’t fulfil their job-search commitment without good reason could have their benefits reduced.”

Sanctions already exist as part of the UC system, of course, but until now the absurdity of fining people, and thereby further impoverishing them, for not having good-quality work seems to have held back successive ministers from fully implementing the provisions.

Nonetheless, there have been attempts to implement strict work search requirements backed by the threat of sanctions for some working claimants. The six-university Welfare Conditionality Project (WelCond), the largest longitudinal study on this topic ever undertaken, interviewed UC recipients in that situation. It found that the requirements just didn’t fit the modern workforce. People on zero hours contracts, for example, are expected to make themselves available for work with the employer they’re already signed up with. They cannot simply take on other work. This is what one interviewee said:

“I go down [to JobCentre Plus] and say, ‘Look, I’m doing 16 hours with more hours promised.’ [The work coach says] ‘Well you’ll have to look for another job’… That’s scurrilous because I’ve got my employer on one hand wants me to do mornings and would like me to do an evening shift, you know. I never get told what day I’m working. So, I can’t go to another employer and say, ‘Look…I can probably fit in another 20 hours work a week but I don’t know when I can work for you.’”

There were problems too with the type of work people do. A cleaner working early mornings and late evenings cannot take on another similar job during the same hours. In retail, the greatest demand is for Saturdays, not generally other days of the week. This is what the project found:

“For those claiming UC in work, it was often a struggle to meet conditions to attend JobcentrePlus appointments, attend training courses or seek increased hours or multiple jobs. UC conditions often conflicted with work commitments such as shift work, commitments to recovery or childcare.

“‘The lady was saying to me, ‘Well, you can get another job’, well, I can’t get another job because I work evenings and I work in the day on this job, so I haven’t got time to get another job’.”

Some people responded by disengaging from the welfare benefits system altogether although they would have been eligible. This left them deeper in poverty. “Rang them up to say that I couldn’t come in because I was working full time. So they said that was all right. Then I got a letter saying I’d missed my interview and they’ve taken me off UC. So I thought, you know what, just stuff you. I can’t be bothered with them anymore. Mostly I’ve struggled because I just can’t be doing with them. Just going in there for them to look down at you… Basically, I’m living off 20 hours for the past couple of months and I’m paying full rent.”

In addition, working recipients reported to the project that struggling to attend JobcentrePlus appointments and increasing their hours or work or number of jobs was ineffective in moving them out of poverty or improving the quality of their work. Many people bounced between low paid work and unemployment throughout the time of the study.

The WelCond Project ran for five years to 2018. A subsequent study in 2019 by former WelCond member Katy Jones from Manchester Metropolitan University and colleagues looked at what employers think to the conditionality policy. This, of course, was before Brexit and the Covid pandemic.

The study found once again that rigid expectations on employees to increase their hours were at odds with the modern labour market. Employers didn’t think having individual employees increase their hours would increase their firms’ productivity, and they intended to continue with their existing business model of keeping labour costs low. Employers in low-paid industries tended to stress the need for flexibility in their workforce.

The team concluded that the challenge in times of low unemployment (as currently) isn’t getting people into work, but “ensuring that, where appropriate, UC claimants are supported into decent and productive work where their skills and capabilities will be developed and used effectively”. Anyone in government listening?