In one leaflet a smiling “Sarah” said she was “pleased” to have had her benefits chopped, as it helped her change her ways.
Advertisement
She didn’t say “It’s going to help me when I’m ready to go back to work” despite what the leaflet would have you believe. “Then my work coach found me a job that suited my skills but I didn’t apply for it, so my JSA has been stopped for six months”.
In response to a FOI by a website called Welfare Weekly, the government department revealed that so-called misbehaving claimants like “Sarah” and well behaved claimants like “Zac” don’t actually exist.
Initially the DWP did not rule out continuing to “test” the original version with the fictional characters alongside one where the pictures were silhouetted and a note was added that they were “illustrative”.
The front-runner in the Labour leadership added his name to the growing list of critics who have condemned the Department for Work and Pensions after it admitted making up comments from supposed “benefit claimants” that appeared in a leaflet about the sanctions system.
Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, did not have any knowledge of its production, according to departmental sources. The spokeswoman said: ‘We will continue to cut down on bogus claimants and asylum seekers, as soon as we have made some up to cut’. I didn’t have a good reason for not doing it and I was told I’d lose some of my payment. “Instead of fabricating quotes pretending the system is working, he should scrap unfair sanctions targets for jobcentre staff and do more to protect vulnerable people from facing benefit sanctions”.
On Tuesday it emerged two quotes from “Zac” and “Sarah” giving positive accounts of benefits sanctions were fake and the images alongside them were stock photos.
Learning disability charity Mencap accused the Department of “unacceptable” behaviour.
The Daily Jobseeker is a DWP website providing CV and interview tips, information on the Universal Credit and other advice for jobseekers.
“Benefits are a lifeline to many people with a learning disability who rely on them to make ends meet”.
“The DWP need to understand and accept that misleading the public is not acceptable and we urge them to make a public apology at the earliest possible convenience”.
The Unite union’s assistant general secretary Steve Turner said: “This is a shameful attempt by Iain Duncan Smith to bend the truth and gloss over the human misery of his cruel sanctions regime”.
Advertisement
The DWP said: “We want to help people understand when sanctions can be applied and how they can avoid them by taking certain actions”.
