In our latest guest opinion piece, Dr David Webster from the University of Glasgow gives his critical view on the presentation of sanction figures. After their election in 2010, he writes, ministers embarked on a campaign of ‘sanctions’, that is, withdrawals of benefit, against claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance. They inherited a level of 533,000 a year, but drove it up to a peak of over one million in the year to October 2013, while also increasing the length of the penalties. Numbers of sanctions have since fallen, but only to a rate which is similar to the highest seen before 2010. It happened without any announcement, taking claimants and voluntary organisations by surprise. Read the full blog post

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