Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Abandoned
If everyone in Birmingham and Bradford vanished tomorrow would there be an outcry? That’s how many claimants – 1.5m – the DWP ‘lost’ last year in the biggest welfare shutout since WW2.

MILLIONS of people who depend on benefits to survive were purged from the welfare roll due to Tory sanctions last year, a parliamentary report found yesterday.

Nearly 1.5 million claimants were dropped off the roll in 2015 — and the government didn’t even try to find out why, the work and pensions committee found in its damning report.

The MP found that while some missing applicants might be in jail or have moved abroad, a disturbingly high number are victims of benefit sanctions.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
universal credit
Universal credit / 25 November 2025
25 November 2025

DYLAN MURPHY reports that far from helping people back into work, the sanctions regime is inflicting unnecessary trauma on working-class families

Business Secretary Peter Kyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on stage ahead of Reeves's keynote speech during the Labour Party Conference at the Liverpool Arena, September 29, 2025
Labour Party Conference 2025 / 30 September 2025
30 September 2025

Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE

Protesters on Whitehall in London, as Chancellor of the Exch
Features / 6 May 2025
6 May 2025

A new report by Amnesty International pulls no punches in highlighting the Labour government’s human rights violations of those on benefits, says Dr DYLAN MURPHY

Britain / 2 April 2025
2 April 2025