Job seekers are expected to travel for three hours a day for work or face benefit sanctions under new Universal Credit rules, a Scottish MP has revealed.
Rules forcing claimants into a 90 minutes each way commute would leave people having to travel between Glasgow and Dundee on a daily basis to avoid losing benefits, David Linden MP said.
Linden, the SNP’s Work and Pensions spokesman, has slammed the Tory levelling up agenda as a “smoke and mirrors” exercise after the Department for Work and Pensions confirmed claimants are expected to take up job offers miles away from their home.
Linden said: “It is ridiculous that the Tory government expects people to take a job that requires travelling the equivalent of Glasgow to Dundee, or Birmingham to London, each way or be sanctioned. It shows just how out-of-touch they are with real life and ordinary families.
“I expect Tory cabinet ministers have no idea how much it would cost to travel the equivalent of 90 minutes to a job each way, potentially at peak times and five days a week or the increase that could make to childcare costs.”
In a response to a written Commons question by Linden, the DWP said that under the new Way to Work scheme a claimant is expected to take a job within four weeks - reduced from three months - even if it was a 90 minute commute each way to work, or be sanctioned.
The Glasgow East MP said: “Norman Tebbit callously told people to ‘get on their bike’ to look for work when there was mass unemployment under the Tories in the 1980s.
"This ridiculous rule is taking up the Tebbit mantra and forcing people to go miles further or face having their benefits cut.”
Claimants are also expected to take a job even if it has nothing to do with their skills, experience, training, or demands unsuitable hours.
The SNP Work and Pensions spokesman said the new scheme, which aims to move half a million people into work by the end of June, is just “painting over the cracks”.
Linden said the new policy directly contradicts the ‘Levelling Up’ White Paper, in which Cabinet Minister Michael Gove stated that “people deserve to live in a country where life is not a postcode lottery, where by staying local you can go far.”
Linden said: “The Tories’ whole so-called ‘Levelling Up’ agenda is quite frankly smoke and mirrors and the new Way to Work scheme is plain callous.
"It won’t make a blind bit of difference to in-work poverty until the Westminster government does the right thing and brings in a Real Living Wage.”
“The UK government must scrap sanctions completely and take a more targeted approach to support people finding work that will empower them - not force them into insecure, low-paid, jobs with the threat of sanctions hanging over them.”
The DWP responded that sanctions are only ever used when someone fails to comply with reasonable and appropriate commitments without good reason and that a claimant must normally be willing to travel up to 90 minutes each way to work.
A DWP spokesperson said the rule has not changed with the introduction of Way to Work but added: “Work coaches take an individual’s circumstances and capability into consideration when setting commitments, ensuring they are realistic and achievable.
The official added: “There are measures in place to help people with their travel and childcare costs, including the Jobcentre Plus Travel discount card, and parents on benefits can be reimbursed up to 85 per cent for their childcare costs.”
To sign up to the Daily Record Politics newsletter, click here.
