THE latest pilots announced yesterday, Monday February 27, sum up everything that is wrong with this government’s vision of the benefits system. Publicly declaring their desire to help the most vulnerable to find much-needed work, while in reality imposing something very different: mandating some of the poorest in society to take part in a quick-fix scheme that will do little to help them secure work.

The truth is laid bare in the department’s own analysis, which confirms a likely risk of sanction for claimants who don’t comply with the mandatory ask placed upon them.

There is a mass of historical evidence that shows the threat of sanctions does nothing to help claimants find work, yet the Tories are hell-bent on keeping the threat, which all too often leads to the most vulnerable losing their benefits, as a key plank of their punitive regime. The threat of poverty to force people into often poorly paid and precarious work will never be something PCS can support and nor should it be acceptable to anyone in our movement.

PCS members showed during the Covid pandemic what could be delivered when left to deal with the public in a fair and supportive way. Millions of new claims for universal credit were processed, jobcentres remained open to the most vulnerable who needed face-to-face support with their benefits claims or finding alternative work, and the focus was helping those who needed it, while the conditionality and sanctions regime was suspended. The public perception of the department had never been as positive.

On the back of the latest government drive to “incentivise” the “economically inactive” into work, including “young, older, and disabled” citizens, DWP are testing the water with this latest pilot, to be introduced in 60 jobcentres and potentially impacting thousands of claimants.

And while the target audience at this stage are those already actively seeking work beyond 13 weeks, these proposals will only serve to punish vulnerable claimants, if they fail to attend extra appointments at the jobcentre, and risk plunging often very vulnerable people deeper into poverty.

The employer has also been clear that they will not recruit extra staff to deliver the additional work, placing yet more pressure upon already overworked, underpaid and highly stressed members in jobcentres.

PCS has also condemned plans to introduce “incentives” for staff working in the pilot sites. The operation of league tables for the jobcentres involved, where staff in around a third of the sites will receive a reward of up to £250 in vouchers, is abhorrent.

The union’s experience of performance league tables is that it inevitably drives perverse behaviour resulting in those participating hitting the target and missing the point — while those on the receiving end ultimately suffer. To incentivise workers to participate in a pilot that could heap misery onto thousands stops way short of what our members or the public should expect from the government.

From April, nearly 25,000 staff in DWP will be on the National Living Wage due to poverty pay. The offer of a few hundred pounds to a select few does nothing to address the systemic low pay across the DWP, and potentially sets worker against worker. The tens of thousands of DWP staff who pay out benefits, deliver vital services to pensioners, the sick and disabled, or help with child maintenance, are not being “incentivised.”

Neither is the rest of the workforce in other jobcentres not covered by the pilot. It is sickening to think in the very week several jobcentre workers are completing three weeks of strike action over low pay, job insecurity and cuts to community services, the DWP seeks to start paying more to their colleagues in different parts of the country.

If the government and employers were serious about incentivising PCS members and helping the public find good quality jobs, they would meet our demand for a 10 per cent pay rise as part of our national claim, agree to similar increases across the various sectors to help boost the economy, deliver the recruitment we desperately need, and empower all staff to help and support claimants back into meaningful work.

Martin Cavanagh is the DWP group president and deputy president of PCS — follow him on Twitter @cavanagh4.