Petition No welfare conditions without full employment

There are four times as many unemployed people seeking work as jobs available (Labour Market Survey, February 2014). Yet Job Centres have been told to sanction a fixed number of claimants per month, pushing many of the worst-off into destitution. Those that remain are forced into a harsh and often futile search for jobs they cannot obtain or that are simply not available. Many new jobseekers are sick and disabled, unfairly deprived of their entitlements by Atos assessments.

Welfare conditionality has failed. When the jobs are simply not there, the poorest should not be made to suffer the stress, indignity and hidden traps of the welfare conditionality regime. Nor should benefits be set at a shrinking level that reduces claimants to dire poverty.

When four times as many people are looking for work as there are jobs - and many more have simply given up in despair - punitive benefit conditions set at poverty levels are unconscionable. Stop punishing the victims; start helping them.