Anti-poverty charities and housing groups have questioned the government’s “kneejerk” responses to last week’s unrest, with one describing the suggestion that those convicted of rioting should lose their benefits even if they are not sent to jail as “destitution punishment” and “a recipe for exclusion and social division”.
At present, anyone who is jailed for an offence while receiving benefits automatically loses their payments. But on Monday, the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, said he was investigating whether the sanction could be extended to apply to those who are convicted of involvement in the riots but do not receive custodial sentences.
“I am at the moment looking to see whether or not someone who’s convicted of a criminal offence but not custodial, that we would be able to impose a similar process on them as well, that they would lose their benefits for a particular period of time relevant to that process,” he told BBC Breakfast.
The proposal was attacked by the Child Poverty Action Group, which works to abolish child poverty in the UK. “Kneejerk plans to remove benefits from people convicted of less serious offences are dangerous and very likely counterproductive,” said Imran Hussain, the group’s head of policy. “How can a society that delivers double punishments for the poor, treating the rich and the poor differently, be called a fixed society – or the kind of world we want to live in?” more