Should benefit claimants who refuse extra hours of work be sanctioned?
Universal Credit claimants on low earnings can already be required to look for more pay or hours, and those who refuse without good reason can be sanctioned. In-work conditionality applies below about £991 a month for a single person and about £1,597 for couples, with requirements meant to be reasonable. Sanctions remove 100% of the standard allowance for a set period, and sanction numbers rose to about 67,600 in January 2026 according to figures reported in May 2026.
28 Opinions
There are already rules enough. Minimum floor income deals with most of this already
Many working people on benefits are on 0 hour contracts. They don't know from one week to the next how many hours they will be on the rota to work. Many would like the stability of having a core set of hours and days which they could build on. I don't think a working person on benefits should be available to work 24/7 and accept any extra hours they are offered without having any say. For example, not everyone can do a double shift if asked to on short notice.
UC sanctions are often punitive and unfairly applied (I know a dozen benefit claimants). The basic UC pays well below market rate for rent, plus about £11 per day to live off for a single person, including all bills, food and transport. These people regularly use food banks to survive. Let's reward those going for work of course, but there's only so much "stick" these people can take, and it's not much before becoming catastrophic.
If you're refusing work while on benefits then it's only right that you are sanctioned as being on benefits is to help you when you are struggling.
Speaking from experience at least 10 years ago when I last claimed it may have changed now, I done all the over time God sent to try get off benefits and I ended up getting less money at the end because I was taxed on my wage + my OT they cut my benefit entitlement for the month that I done OT I was worse off and when you have young kids every penny counts you cant afford to lose money. It's work more earn less. They need to make work pay so people can get off benefits
If there are rules around how this is applied then it is a common sense policy. There clearly needs to be some work done on the level of UC reduction plus money earned if they lose £1 for £1 why would they bother with the extra hours?
There will always be exceptions & excuses about this group or another. The real issue is designing practical rules which provide assistance where needed but also make it pay to work. We often hear how it’s not worth working because of regulations. This is nonsense as it just puts greater financial stress on the State. The object should be to eliminate support through employment but some Political Parties rely on keeping their voters as supplicants.
All unemployed able bodied men should be required to do regular community work, or risk losing their benefits.
On the assumption the decision making process is reasonable, the question says this has already happened to 67,600 people, so it must have been judged as necessary and proportionate.
It’s far too easy for people to get free hand outs. In many cases they will be only marginally better off or even worse off when working if you factor in the combination of lower benefits, high taxes, and commute costs. We need to change this