A Glasgow University study that sought to examine whether the controversial practice of stopping benefit payments to claimants deemed to be in breach of benefit rules has a negative effect on their health including mental illness and suicide has been halted after government ministers reneged on a longstanding promise to release sanctions data.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been accused of a “culture of secrecy” when it insisted researchers resubmit approval for the release of the data – after nearly four years of delays since ministers first agreed to share it.
The DWP has repeatedly faced criticisms it is blocking or burying politically uncomfortable research. Last month MPs had to force the publication of a DWP-commissioned report showing people on low incomes reliant on disability benefits struggled to meet basic living costs. Ministers have refused to publish the DWP’s own internal evaluation of sanctions effectiveness, also promised to MPs in 2019, while research originally commissioned back in 2018 assessing the impact of benefit policies on food bank use has also yet to see the light of day.
Prof Nick Bailey, who is heading the Glasgow sanctions project, said that had the data been shared as originally agreed with the DWP in 2018, his research would have been in the public domain by early 2020.
The Glasgow study proposed to link anonymised DWP data and NHS health records to track changes in the health status of sanctioned individuals, identifying for example if they had been given antidepressant prescriptions, treated for a worsening of underlying conditions such as asthma, or even taken their own life. The study could supply unprecedented detail of the potential impact of benefit sanctions on family breakdown and children’s health and schooling, as well as making visible the wider societal and NHS costs of sanctions, for example through the increased use of health services.
There is a growing body of research indicating benefit sanctions are linked to poverty, food bank use, depression and other illness.
A recent Glasgow University paper analysing international studies of sanctions reported “significant associations with increased material hardship and health problems” as well as evidence sanctions “were associated with increased child maltreatment and poorer child wellbeing”.
DWP blocks data for study of whether benefit sanctions linked to suicide | Benefits | The Guardian
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