Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Phil O'Reilly: Former Welfare Expert Advisory Panel Member on new benefit sanctions in place from today

Transcript

Phil O'Reilly: Former Welfare Expert Advisory Panel Member on new benefit sanctions in place from today · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: New benefit sanctions come into force from today. They're non financial,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: so half of your benefit will be put on a
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: payment card for four weeks. You can only buy essential stuff.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You can't buy things like alcohol and tobacco. You can
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: also be made to do up to five hours of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: community work experience, but it's only if you breach your obligations.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Phil O'Riley is the former Welfare Expert Advisory Group member
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  Speaker 1: with us This Morning fel Good morning money. Right does
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: this actually work? This stuff?
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Certainly, sanctions do work. Exactly how well they work is
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: always open to debate. They work for two reasons. One
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: is they encourage people to get off the benefit. But secondly,
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  Speaker 2: very importantly for people like you and me who are
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: paying tax in order to give persons a befefort, they
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  Speaker 2: keep our face in the system too, that if you're
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: going to be if you're not going to play by
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  Speaker 2: the rules, there's going to be a bit of a
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: sanction on you. So they do actually work in mostly
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: context here and.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: If you read the news you would get the impression
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  Speaker 1: that everybody's going to be put on a paying card tomorrow.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, only ninety eight wealth ninety eight percent of
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  Speaker 1: benefit stories are actually fine. Only two tend to breach
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the retegations.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I mean most people what we found
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: in the worldare expert advisor. We work a few years
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  Speaker 2: ago was most people actually do try and get a job.
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  Speaker 2: And of course right now the harder to get a job,
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  Speaker 2: so it's turning up to interviews and so on, and
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: so I think you know that this is quite a
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: small minority, very small minority as matter of fact, and
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  Speaker 2: it's only one part of the sanctioned regime. And what
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: I like about the card issue Ryan in particular, is
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: in the past, taking money off of beneficiary often means
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: you're actually taking it off the kid of the beneficiary
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  Speaker 2: of the child, or the wife or the husband of
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  Speaker 2: the beneficiary of the partner. This way, you're not taking
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: any money away. You're simply sort of proscribing how it
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: might be. And I think that's actually a very sensible
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  Speaker 2: way of doing it, because the worriesome thing about taking
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: money off dealers it might as you hurt kids, and
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  Speaker 2: that's that's all. It's problematic. The work obligation piece is
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  Speaker 2: a little bit more interesting in the sense that in
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  Speaker 2: order to work, obligation to work you've got an employer
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  Speaker 2: who wants to employ you, and if you're forced to
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  Speaker 2: get to work for a community organization, that might be
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: a little more problematic. I think those two things alone,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: used expeditiously and new sensibly, I think we'll have an impact.
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  Speaker 1: Job seeking numbers have gone up, of course, twenty one
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  Speaker 1: eleven point six percent in March on the same time
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  Speaker 1: last year. Looking at the budget unemployment data that they're
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  Speaker 1: projecting it, I mean it's going it's coming down, but
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  Speaker 1: it's taking its time, right, so we will rightly see
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: more on the job seeker benefit or no massive increase
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  Speaker 1: for a while.
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  Speaker 2: That's correct, And that's the whole point about the unemployment
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  Speaker 2: benefit system more generally, it's a shopping zuber in the economy.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: As you get the economy slowing down, as you get
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: more people out of work, of course we should all
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  Speaker 2: support those people and make sure that they're not left
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  Speaker 2: on the street and all the rest of it. And
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  Speaker 2: so that's really what's happening with the job seeker benefit.
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  Speaker 2: It's simply an indication that the jobs in the economy
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  Speaker 2: are hard to come by. What should hope is that
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  Speaker 2: as we see interest rates reductions as we see changes
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: to that capital gains, so the capital tax issue coming through.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Over the next few months, hopefully we'll see the economy
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: start to pick up. And that's exactly when you get
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: those job numbers coming down. Nothing much you can do
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: about it, it's just a nature of the economy.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: There was a faux part. Don't say capital games text.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being with us this morning, fellow Riley,
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  Speaker 1: former welfare expert Advisory Group MEMBA.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live
• 3:15
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• 3:18
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